The intense white light unleashed by the explosion instantly swallowed Mew's towering Dynamaxed body.
And the blast radius was still expanding.
Everything on the ground—
whether it was layers of soil, trees, or rocks—
was blasted into powder by the overwhelming energy in that exaggerated detonation.
The members of Obsidian Team and the surviving personnel from the Military had already fled to an extremely great distance when WarGreymon began condensing the Energy Ball.
They knew full well that if they stayed anywhere near the battlefield,
disaster would definitely befall them.
That kind of heart-pounding energy and earth-shaking collision
wasn't something their flesh-and-blood bodies—or the little equipment in their hands—could possibly withstand.
On top of a distant mountain peak,
the members of the Military had gathered together.
They stared into the distance.
Within the already devastated forest,
a blazing white burst of explosive light suddenly flared.
The scorching shockwave
crossed an immense distance in the blink of an eye and came crashing toward them.
The terrifying heat rode in together with the raging gale.
Caught completely off guard,
everyone present felt their chests tighten.
The intense sense of suffocation and impact
made all their organs ache,
and their minds went blank for a brief instant.
"How terrifying!!"
Minister Kenjiro was the first to recover.
He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, then spoke.
Their current position
was at least tens of thousands of meters away from the center of the explosion.
But even so,
the aftershock from the exploding energy shell had still reached them,
and it still carried no small amount of destructive force.
And that was with WarGreymon having locked the main target of the blast onto Mew when he attacked.
If the purpose of that Gaia Force
had been pure destruction,
then it absolutely could have scrubbed clean the entire surface of all the surrounding area.
So this...
was the destructive power of a Second-tier Legendary?
An attack like this
far surpassed even the most powerful destructive weapons created by human technology.
The blinding white flames of the explosion
finally died down after lasting several minutes.
The overflowing energy completely dissipated.
This stretch of forest,
which had already been half-destroyed,
gray mixed with patches of green,
had now been transformed into nothing but a pure rocky ash-gray.
The ground had been completely washed clean.
The Wintergreen Forest region
had originally been flatland terrain, with a few hills several hundred meters tall.
But now,
the entire area had been leveled.
No—
to be precise, it wasn't flat ground.
It had turned into a basin.
A gigantic basin over a thousand meters wide and several hundred meters deep.
At the very center of that basin,
a small pink Pokémon lay there.
Its eyes were shut, its entire body heavily wounded, its breathing so weak it was like a dying thread.
Just as Shiko had expected,
under the bombardment of that powerful mutated Gaia Force,
all of Mew's stacked defensive traits had been like paper.
They had collapsed in an instant.
After being struck head-on by that enormous mass of pure energy,
even the stamina and life force enhanced by Dynamax couldn't hold out.
Mew reverted to its normal size in an instant,
then fell unconscious.
Shiko's Gaia Force
had been so powerful that it had nearly erased Mew entirely.
Although it hadn't killed Mew in a single hit,
Mew was hanging on by only a single breath now.
Shiko, who had released that blow, was also somewhat drained.
Most of the energy inside his body had been sucked dry.
After taking several heavy breaths,
he slowly descended from midair and landed at the very bottom of the basin.
Shiko nodded to himself, quite satisfied with his current strength.
If Mew represented the level of an ordinary Second-tier Legendary,
then by comparison,
his current self,
judging from the strength he had displayed,
should have already surpassed an ordinary Second-tier Legendary.
Even among Second-tier Legendaries,
he would count as one of the very best.
He clenched his claws,
then looked at the Dragon Slayer gauntlets equipped on his hands.
That abundant strength
gave Shiko, in this unfamiliar world, a powerful sense of security and solid footing for the first time.
The current him
could now be said to possess strength decent enough to protect himself.
However,
this was still far from the end.
To cross beyond the limits of the divine realm, to rival and surpass Arceus—that Creator God-level being—and become the true master of his own fate...
that was Shiko's ultimate goal.
As his thoughts turned,
the Dynamax Energy inside Shiko's body was also exhausted.
His body instantly shrank from more than thirty meters tall back down to his normal height of two meters.
A fierce wave of weakness hit him.
His mind spun with dizziness.
Staggering, he dropped to one knee and rested there for a while before feeling a little better.
And it was at that moment
that he happened to catch sight of several ugly, strange objects not far away at the bottom of the basin he himself had blasted out.
It was a large bird-shaped sculpture of apricot-gray stone.
Its wings were drawn tightly inward, as though it were about to spread them and soar into the sky.
The surface of the sculpture
was covered in broken stones and dirt.
It looked as though the sculpture had long been buried deep underground,
only to be brought back into the light by his explosion.
But what surprised Shiko was this—
the sculpture was unbelievably sturdy.
It was only a few hundred meters away from the center of the explosion,
yet under such a violent energy impact,
there wasn't the slightest crack on its surface.
After observing it closely,
Shiko noticed
that the stone material used for the sculpture was extremely ancient, with a history of at least several thousand years.
The overall shape of the bird sculpture was also very primitive,
giving off an aura of savage antiquity.
At a glance, it was clearly the work of ancient people.
Hm?
Shiko's gaze moved from top to bottom, sweeping across every inch of the sculpture's stone structure.
Only then
did he notice that on the side of the base facing him,
there was the faint outline of a circular stone door.
He froze.
Then he understood at once.
Wait!?
This wasn't a sculpture at all!?
It was a building!
Looking at that enormous bird-shaped structure, intense interest suddenly welled up in Shiko.
If this really was an ancient building,
then judging by its shape,
there was a very high chance it was an ancient ruin.
Places like that
usually hid quite a few secrets—and plenty of valuable things.
He grew excited.
His eyes moved back and forth, studying the outline of the structure.
As he looked at the curves of those spread stone wings, pale apricot in color, as though they were about to beat into the sky,
an image of a certain Pokémon suddenly surfaced in Shiko's mind.
This...
could it be that First-tier Legendary?
Yveltal—
the harbinger of death?
(End of Chapter)
[200 Power Stones = 1 Extra Chapter]
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