Ye Li discreetly slipped the microchip into an inner pocket of his clothes, its cool touch seemingly still lingering on his fingertips. He understood perfectly well that Lorelei's gesture meant far more than a simple test or transaction. It was a signal, an unspoken understanding forged under immense pressure and in the face of a common enemy.
This Ice Queen, renowned for her coldness and loyalty, had also begun to harbor deep doubts about the Pokémon League's seemingly impregnable, dazzling interior.
At that moment, their relationship underwent a fundamental change. From outright enemies on opposing sides, they quietly became temporary collaborators in a delicate arrangement. Together, they would face a far greater, far more unfathomable shadow hidden beneath the Pokémon League's halo.
At the emergency meeting on volcanic data analysis convened afterward, the atmosphere was as oppressive as magma on the verge of solidifying.
Inside the makeshift command center, all the leading geologists and volcanologists urgently summoned from across the Kanto Region sat around an enormous holographic projection table, their expressions grave. At the heart of the projection was a real-time model of the energy inside Cinnabar Volcano. The curves representing internal pressure and energy indices had already exceeded every known safety threshold, turning a terrifying deep red, and were still climbing in a nonlinear, almost vertical surge.
"The energy index is still rising geometrically, and the pressure inside the volcano has reached a critical point we have never seen before." An elderly professor with graying hair, highly respected in academic circles, pointed his laser pointer at an energy core whose readings had already gone off the charts. His voice was terribly hoarse from hours of debate. "Conventional physical cooling and pressure relief through drilling have become completely ineffective. Everyone, what we are facing now is not ordinary geological activity,