Himeko's gaze followed his.
She noticed that huge ruin standing all by itself in that abrupt basin, shaped like a giant bird statue.
With just one look,
even she could not help freezing in shock.
An Ancient Ruins!?
This style of architecture
had clearly been built specifically to worship and offer sacrifices to some powerful Pokémon!
The outline of that abstract bird-shaped Pokémon—
the more she looked at it,
the more it resembled...
Himeko's expression slowly stiffened.
Shock rose into her eyes.
From that look alone,
Shiko understood that she had definitely noticed something too.
"Go on. Be careful."
A moment later,
Himeko regained control of herself.
Looking at Shiko,
she frowned slightly and gave him a serious warning.
"I know."
The two of them met each other's gaze for an instant, then nodded in tacit understanding.
The next second,
he rose into the air
and sped straight toward the ruins.
Himeko remained where she was,
staring blankly at Shiko's figure.
For a moment, in a daze,
from that alloy dragon warrior,
she saw the shadow of the Charmander she had first met back then.
Time had passed so quickly.
In the blink of an eye,
that little guy who had only been Entry-level
had already evolved into such a powerful existence!
Scene after scene flashed through Himeko's mind like a slideshow.
Her first meeting with Shiko, his lazy figure while sunbathing on the grass, his desperate evolution during the Trainer Tournament...
All of it,
everything together,
gave Himeko a strange, unreal feeling, as if she were dreaming.
She remembered
that she had once teased Shiko,
saying that the reason he had so easily won over admirers like Lopunny and Gardevoir
was because he always happened to swoop in and save them at just the right moment.
Now that she thought about it,
it was not only Gardevoir and Lopunny.
Today,
she too had experienced what it felt like to be saved like that.
In that pitch-black crisis,
when a blinding beam of light suddenly broke through,
the rush and exhilaration it brought
really was enough to make someone sink into it and never escape.
Himeko narrowed her eyes slightly,
straining to watch Shiko's figure as it grew blurrier and blurrier.
Her emotions rose and fell without pause.
A flush slowly spread across her face as well, and no one knew what she was thinking.
A long while later,
after WarGreymon's figure had completely vanished,
she finally released Pidgeot.
Climbing onto it,
she departed in the direction of the Northern Military Division.
In front of the ruins,
Shiko stopped at the entrance.
Just as he had expected,
this really was an Ancient Ruins.
The main body of the structure had been built from stone,
and after thousands of years of erosion,
deep traces of time had been carved into it.
Even so,
the ruins as a whole were still preserved surprisingly well.
There was no large-scale collapse,
nor any serious damage.
Shiko tried pushing hard against the door.
The stone gate remained tightly shut.
He frowned,
stepped back,
and opened up a bit of distance.
Then he raised one arm high
and slashed heavily downward at the stone door.
His sharp alloy dragon claws gleamed with a cold light.
In a single flash,
it cut through the thick stone as easily as a knife slicing tofu.
Boom!!
A dull, heavy sound rang out.
The two circular stone doors, each over three meters tall,
were completely split apart by Shiko's claw,
breaking into three chunks of shattered stone.
The instant the door was destroyed,
a powerful aura surged out from within
and slammed straight into Shiko's body.
Caught off guard by the violent impact of that energy,
he forcibly steadied himself.
Once he regained his footing,
that energy that had burst out from the ruins vanished as well.
Shiko frowned
and raised his hand.
The energy from just now
had been an extremely intense negative force.
Dark! Violent! Filled with a terrifying aura of death!
It was so oppressive
that even Shiko, as he was now,
could feel the pressure from it.
He calmed himself
and his gaze gradually turned serious.
There was no mistake.
That energy
was very likely connected to that Oblivion Wing—
that Dark Death Beast.
Taking a deep breath,
Shiko cautiously stepped inside.
He noticed
that black specks had appeared on the armor around his hand and forearm.
They seemed to have formed after that negative energy from earlier had struck him and clung to him...
As long as he focused on that black spot,
he could feel that it was completely different
from the sharp, sacred, blazing, radiant iron-dragon aura his body was now giving off.
It was a dark, violent aura of death,
like a terrifying black hole capable of swallowing even sight and consciousness.
What Shiko could not understand was this:
Logically speaking,
these two completely different auras,
which stood in such fierce opposition to each other,
should never have been able to coexist inside him.
And yet now,
not only were they coexisting,
Shiko could even feel
that his body seemed fully capable of accepting
and controlling that energy as well.
What was going on?
He could not make sense of it at all.
Everything was a blur.
The inside of the ruins beyond the door was extremely dark.
Although light should have been pouring in from the entrance behind him,
this darkness
seemed capable of devouring light itself.
Even when Shiko turned back to look at the entrance he had come through,
all he saw was blackness.
There was not the slightest trace of light.
Still,
that did not stop him from moving forward.
Following the powerful aura he could sense within the darkness,
Shiko slowly walked toward the place where that aura was even stronger.
Inside the ruins,
continuing onward from the round stone gate he had split open,
he had no idea how much time passed.
The only thing Shiko could confirm
was that he had walked down a long stretch of stairs and sloping passages.
The place where he now stood
had to be at least a hundred meters underground.
And the aura he had locked onto
was growing stronger and stronger,
almost as if it had become a physical thing hanging in the air around him.
Suddenly,
the darkness before his eyes lightened a little.
Everything ahead gradually became visible under dim light.
After taking a look around,
Shiko noticed
that this place seemed to be a vast underground space carved out by hand.
Deep in front of him,
a huge stone platform stood there.
It had the shape of an alloy tower,
and at the very top there was a small raised platform.
This should be a ritual tower.
However,
for some reason,
the object once placed there for worship was gone.
Shiko analyzed silently.
His gaze passed over that ritual platform and looked farther behind it.
And the moment he saw what lay there,
a trace of surprise and shock immediately surfaced in his eyes.
(End of Chapter)
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