"Come look, everyone! What is this?!"
The shout from deep within the ruins drew everyone's attention.
At the very heart of the ruins, two raised platforms stood to the left and right.
The archaeological team swarmed over and gathered before the two platforms, their faces flushed with excitement.
On the left platform sat an object made of three black spheres.
Two large and one small, they were arranged in a regular shape that looked like some sort of dumbbell at first glance.
Judging by its appearance alone, the black dumbbell was made of neither metal nor stone. It was pitch-black all over, with a faint dark sheen flowing across its surface, making it particularly striking in the dim ruins.
On the right platform lay a golden spoon.
The spoon was long and slender, with an elegant curve and dark yellow patterns engraved on it.
Those patterns were extremely complex, layered upon one another like some kind of ancient symbols.
Between the two platforms stood a large bell.
The bell was plain and dull gray, without any decoration. Beside the two clearly extraordinary objects, it looked as though someone had casually tossed it there.
"Dr. Hokuto! Come take a look!" a team member called loudly.
"This is an incredible discovery!"
Yet just as all the other researchers ran over to examine the two exquisite artifacts,
Hokuto, who had always been deeply passionate about the Super-Ancient Civilization, did not move.
She stood before Lu Chen, her expression frighteningly serious.
"Mr. Lu Chen," she said, keeping her voice very low for fear the others would make out her words.
"How were you able to translate the Pokémopolis Language so fluently just now?"
"That is absolutely not a level an amateur could reach!"
Faced with Hokuto's questioning, Lu Chen turned his head aside.
"I was just taking a stab at it..."
"Taking a stab at it?"
Hokuto stepped closer, her eyes filled with doubt.
"Even I wasn't certain of the meanings of at least a third of the words on that stone tablet. You read the whole thing in one go, and you're telling me you were just taking a stab at it?"
Lu Chen pretended not to hear her, his gaze drifting into the distance.
It was hardly Lu Chen's fault. To him, the language of Pokémopolis needed no translation at all.
It was merely a dialect of the super-ancient language. Lu Chen had spent over twenty years in that era, listening to it every day.
He had simply read it aloud upon seeing it.
When Lu Chen did not answer, Hokuto still refused to let him off.
Her gaze shifted to Gengar floating nearby, settling on the dark purple patterns on his body.
"And there are the patterns on your Gengar."
Gengar was floating in midair. At her words, he let out a few cackles but said nothing.
"Those patterns were the highest-order ritual markings that the Pokémopolis Empire painted on its gods."
Hokuto's voice trembled slightly with agitation.
"Those patterns were sacred symbols drawn specifically on gods during only the highest-level rituals."
She took a deep breath and looked at Lu Chen, her eyes holding shock, complicated feelings, and a trace of nervousness she herself had not noticed.
"So who exactly are you? You are definitely more than just an enthusiast of the Super-Ancient Civilization!"
Lu Chen fell silent for several seconds and hesitated for a while. Just as he was about to come clean,
"Actually..."
At that moment, the ruins shuddered violently.
Everyone lost their footing. The stone slabs beneath them gave off deep vibrations, and loose stones rained down from the vaulted ceiling overhead.
On the left platform, the black dumbbell suddenly moved.
It rose into the air, its three black spheres beginning to rotate slowly, then faster and faster.
Then a black vortex burst from its center, like some ravenous maw that had awakened.
The few archaeologists closest to the platform had no time even to react before they were sucked in whole.
Only their faint cries could be heard as their figures vanished into the black vortex.
"Aaah-!"
Screams erupted all around.
The black vortex expanded wildly, its pull growing stronger and stronger.
The other archaeologists turned and ran, but it was already too late.
Those who were too close or too slow were dragged toward the platform one after another and swallowed by the black vortex.
"Run-!"
Wang Yi shouted and pushed away two young team members beside her, only to be swept into the black current herself.
"Mom-!"
Hokuto rushed forward to grab her, but Lu Chen caught her wrist and forcefully pulled her back.
"Don't go over there, or you'll be sucked in too." Lu Chen's voice was calm. He had long since grown accustomed to sights like this.
In barely a dozen seconds, the entire archaeological team had been sucked inside, apart from Hokuto and Lu Chen, who stood farthest away.
At the sight, Hokuto's eyes trembled violently. Despair engulfed her, leaving her unable to move, and she instantly collapsed onto the ground.
Meanwhile, the black vortex contracted and stopped spinning, and the dumbbell floated into the air once more.
Dark purple light burst from within the black dumbbell, sweeping through the entire ruins.
When the light faded, an enormous Gengar appeared on the platform.
It was dozens of times larger than an ordinary Gengar, almost filling half the space inside the ruins.
Its dark purple body was covered in markings similar to those on Lu Chen's Gengar.
It spread its huge mouth in a grin and let out a deafening, eerie laugh.
"Wh-what kind of monster is that?" Hokuto's legs went weak, and even her voice shook.
Then, as though sensing the giant Gengar's escape, the golden spoon on the right platform also moved.
The spoon rose into the air, blazing with golden light.
An invisible wave of energy spread from it and collided with Gengar's dark purple radiance.
Within the golden light, the spoon swelled, changed shape, and stretched, finally transforming into an enormous Alakazam.
He held two golden spoons in his hands, his mustache hanging to the ground, his eyes flashing with the cold light of psychic power.
The two colossal Pokémon exchanged a glance, then struck simultaneously.
Ancient Gengar raised its hand and fired a Shadow Ball, the black sphere of energy hurtling toward Alakazam with a destructive aura.
Alakazam raised a spoon, and a golden shield instantly formed before him.
The Shadow Ball struck the shield, exploding into a ring of energy shock waves visible to the naked eye.
The entire ruins shook violently under that single blow.
"Another monster..." Hokuto felt her vision darken.
Worse still, the giant Gengar and Alakazam were clearly not on the same side.
The moment they met, they launched into a fight to the death, Shadow Balls and psychic shock waves flying through the ruins.
Every collision made the entire underground space quake, shattering stone and splitting the earth!
Soon, as the two gigantic Pokémon continued fighting, the battle spread farther and farther, well beyond the ruins.
The light soaring into the sky could be seen for hundreds of miles around.
Dark purple energy and golden light flashed in turns, weaving an eerie curtain of light across the sky.
Residents of nearby towns rushed out of their homes and looked toward the horizon in terror.
"What is that?!"
"An earthquake? Or are some Pokémon fighting?"
"What a terrifying aura..."
At the sight of this scene, like a natural disaster,
Hokuto sat collapsed on the ground.
She stared fixedly at the two battling behemoths, then suddenly remembered something and whipped her head toward the stone tablet.
The tablet had already been buried beneath rubble, but she remembered its contents.
"Two powers that will destroy the world... black darkness, a blackened sky, golden eyes, disrupted air currents..."
Her lips trembled.
"These are the two Pokémon the stone tablet said could destroy the world!"
"The inscription... right, the inscription..."
Hokuto hurriedly scrambled to her feet and grabbed Lu Chen's arm in a panic, her voice thick with tears:
"Lu Chen! We have to find the power the stone tablet mentioned, the one that can quell everything, inside the ruins! That's the only way to stop them!"
Boom!
By then, the situation inside the ruins could not have been any worse.
Ancient Gengar smashed a Shadow Punch into Alakazam's golden shield. The shield shattered, and the resulting shock wave swept outward, sending several stone pillars on the eastern side of the ruins crashing down.
Alakazam retaliated with Psychic, an invisible wave of psychic force knocking Ancient Gengar back.
Its body slammed into the western wall, smashing a huge breach through it.
Rubble rained down, the vaulted ceiling split open, and the ruins that had stood for tens of thousands of years came crashing apart amid the fierce battle between the two colossal Pokémon!
"It's over! Everything is over!"