Chapter 186: The Gate to the Spirit World?!
Seeing the opened door, Meowscarada squinted her eyes warily.
"Meow?"
"Grab my tail and stay close to me," Will said, patting her arm. He then picked up a piece of rubble and tossed it through the doorway.
Thud.
The stone landed on the floor, making a crisp sound. No traps. And the other side was not the Spirit World. He looked around. The Cofagrigus was gone.
Will led the way into the room. It was just an ordinary bedroom. The bed, desk, chair, and bookshelf were all intact and surprisingly clean. But a room like this, in this castle, was not normal at all. Every other room they had checked on the way up had been empty and destroyed. Everything of value had been looted or ruined. This was the only exception.
"...What's the meaning of this?" Will tilted his head, completely baffled. Why had the Cofagrigus led them here?
Flap. Sh-sh-sh.
Suddenly, a sound came from the desk in the room. He looked over. A book was flipping its pages all by itself. The scene instantly became terrifying.
Click.
The sound of Seigo's camera shutter somewhat lessened the eerie feeling.
"Meow," Meowscarada, holding Sprigatito, was frozen in place, not daring to move. She kept glancing back at the doorway, worried that some monster would jump out from the darkness.
"This... really is not good," Will thought, his own heart starting to pound. A Ghost-type Pokémon couldn't turn the pages of a book from a distance, and there was no wind in the room. So how was this book flipping on its own? And it looked as if an invisible pair of hands was turning the pages.
But even so, Will approached the desk. The book had stopped flipping and was open to a specific page. Will frowned at it for two seconds. He couldn't read it.
"Come and take a look," he said, waving Seigo over.
"What is it? An amazing discovery?" Seigo rushed over, his eyes bloodshot and in a state of extreme excitement. He had, of course, seen and photographed the book flipping.
"This," Will said, pointing at the open pages.
"Hmm? Let me see... This is about what happened twenty years ago. But the record here is much more detailed. Interesting..." Seigo skimmed the contents, snapped a few pictures, and continued, "The person who died here two decades ago was the young master of a noble family from the Unova region. At that time, the Unova region was in the final stages of a civil war... This young master came to Kalos to find a new path for his family... But on the way here, he was infected with a virus that was incurable at the time, and he passed away shortly after arriving at Shabboneau Castle."
"Hmm, this is a little different from what I heard," Seigo said, taking out a notebook and jotting down a few keywords.
Then, he flipped a few more pages, and a letter fell out from between them.
"What's this?" Seigo picked it up, glanced at it, and his face went pale. "...A suicide note."
He immediately put the letter back in the book and bowed repeatedly in apology.
BOOM!!
Suddenly, a huge crash came from the floor above. And this time, it wasn't just one sound, but a whole cacophony of noises.
"There's a battle going on upstairs!" Seigo's eyes lit up. He grabbed his flashlight and camera and bolted from the room.
"Such a strong aura," Will thought, looking up. He could clearly feel the powerful energy fluctuations.
He looked at Seigo, who had already run out, shook his head helplessly, and followed. They ran up to the fourth floor. The sound was coming from the roof.
"How do we get up?" Seigo asked, stuck.
"I'll do it," Will said. He kicked off a nearby wall and then punched a hole in the ceiling.
However, the scene on the rooftop left him stunned.
The Cofagrigus was battling a Dusknoir. And not far behind the Dusknoir, there was a purple vortex in the air, glowing with a gray light and emitting a faint suction.
"The gate to the Spirit World?!"
Will recognized it at a glance. The trauma from that thing in his childhood was too great. And that wasn't all. At this close distance, he could finally tell that both the Cofagrigus and the Dusknoir were terrifyingly strong. Both were at the Elite Four level, and both were around four meters tall, at the standard of the Era of Primal Beasts.
"Tch," Will clicked his tongue. He immediately turned and jumped back down to the fourth floor.
"What's going on?! Why is there a light up there?!" Seigo rushed up, full of questions.
"No time for talk! We have to go! Now!" Will didn't have time to explain. He turned to Meowscarada. "Stay close!"
He grabbed Seigo under one arm and leaped from the fourth-floor opening.
"AAAAAH!!" Seigo screamed.
BOOM!
Will landed, and the impact knocked Seigo out cold. But Will had no time to worry about him. He looked up. Meowscarada, holding Sprigatito, leaped down after him. Will caught them with his tail.
"Meow?"
"That Cofagrigus is strong. It's fighting another Pokémon. Whatever its reason for luring us up there, we're leaving, now," Will explained as he bolted for the exit, not stopping for a second.
They rushed out of the castle and slid down the hill. He looked back at the castle roof. The gray light was fading. The battered Cofagrigus appeared at the edge, silently watching them leave. At the same time, the figure of a young man, translucent and pale blue, appeared beside it, also watching them.
"So there really is... a spirit," Will's forehead was slick with cold sweat. He couldn't imagine what kind of haunted house they had just been in.
Click.
The sound of a camera came from beside him. Will turned his head, dumbfounded. Seigo, his face contorted in pain, was still holding his camera, and had managed to snap a picture of the rooftop. He squinted at the screen. It had only captured the Cofagrigus; the human figure he had seen with his naked eye was not there.
"Ngh..." With a painful groan, Seigo passed out again.
"Dedicated," Will gave him a mental thumbs-up.
He slid down the hill and ran with Meowscarada back to the hotel. As they ran, the entire town was dark, as if it were a city of the dead.
"That Cofagrigus... it's a monster," Will thought, shaking his head. No wonder that spirit was still around after twenty years; it had an Elite Four-level Cofagrigus, which must have been centuries old, guarding it.
"But... it even managed to fight off an Elite Four-level Dusknoir. The next one that comes... will probably be a Champion-level one, or even the ruler of the Spirit World itself. What will you do then?" Will wondered, looking back. The figures of the Cofagrigus and the spirit had vanished.
...
Back at the hotel, Will tossed Seigo onto his own bed, then led Meowscarada back to their room.
"Meow?" she asked, looking at him. She hadn't understood what he had seen on the roof, or what that human figure next to the Pokémon was.
"...Let's just sleep. We'll leave this city tomorrow and continue north. I'll try to convince Seigo, too," Will said, shaking his head. He didn't say more. The information was too much. He hadn't even sorted it out in his own mind.
He was just as confused as she was. For example, that spirit... it must have been the young noble who had died in the castle. But why hadn't they seen him before? He recalled the cold feeling on his back when he was in the castle. He had no doubt that the spirit had been right there, on his back. But why couldn't he see it then, and only later?
Perhaps... it had something to do with the gate to the Spirit World opening.
"Meow~" Compared to the complex adults, the Sprigatito in Meowscarada's arms just yawned and snuggled in, ready to sleep.
"Let's sleep. We'll talk about it tomorrow," Will said, stroking Meowscarada's head, and then lay down. He also needed to process everything that night.
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