My first view of the core chamber was rather lackluster since a rather large stalagmite was in front of me covering my sight, though it was also covering me/us from the sight of everyone else in the room, which was probably why Hades/Gengar chose this place as our entry point in the first place. I could not help but praise Hades over the telepathy channel, and he was quite happy with my appreciation.
Anyway, I was already suppressing my signature as much as possible, but I went a step further and dedicated two thought streams to suppressing any sign of my existence/presence before carefully moving closer to the stalagmite. Nyx/Umbreon followed along seemingly leisurely though thanks to her talent she was even less perceptible than I was.
Once I had made it to the stalagmite, I carefully moved to its left edge and looked over to check out the situation in the chamber. I quickly shrunk my head back behind the stalagmite, and once I was behind the safety of the cover I could not help but let the disbelief I was feeling run wild, though I made sure that the commotion was limited to my feelings since I did not want to attract any attention by making any noise.
Once the cocktail of shock and related feelings had run their course, I cautiously made my way to the right edge of the stalagmite to take a look at the right side of the core space. Due to the fact that I had to be cautious, my view was limited to the side I was inspecting since I dared not push my head out too much.
Regardless, my inspection of the right side of the chamber revealed pretty much the same picture as the left side, and just to get the full picture I slowly climbed up the stalagmite to check out the central area of the chamber as well. I had to limit myself to climbing since I was afraid of attracting attention if I tried to levitate.
This time I finally got to see the the shimmering that Hades mentioned, along with the Dusknoir, and after catching a glimpse of them I carefully climbed back down. I could not help but sit down once I made it to the bottom. No wonder Hades and Phantump had been scared/worried. Considering what I had just seen I could not blame them for feeling like that at all.
Honestly, the only complaint I had was that Hades had not properly explained the situation so that I could have been mentally prepared, but I guess this was his idea of a harmless prank. This little shit probably wanted me to share his fright a little bit, and if that was his plan, he certainly succeeded.
Frankly, I was wondering if following Fortuna's coin toss was really a good idea, but since I could always retreat to Utopia if shit hit the fan, I decided to stick around to find out what was happening. It definitely had to be something bigger than a "simple" portal/gate to the Spirit World. I refused to believe that a lineup like this would be needed if only a few stray ghosts had to be dealt with.
There were hundreds of ghosts if not more than a thousand of them split into 12 groups gathered at certain areas along the border of the chamber with each group having a (low) platinum stage leader. Add the (low) palladium stage Dusknoir in the center of the chamber on top of that and you practically had an army of epic proportions. Who would have thought that such a powerful faction and we could definitely call this a faction since they all obviously followed the orders of the Guardian/Dusknoir was hidden in a random area of Hoenn?
Even if I employed all my Pokemon including everyone inside Utopia I would be unable to achieve a victory against the Ghost Parade gathered in this space. The best I could do if I was confronted by them was to escape inside Utopia, which was already impressive enough since not even a Master Class trainer could face this group. Forget a lone Master-Class trainer, even a group of them would likely be unable to deal with this group unless it was one full of people close to attaining the Legend class title like Master Drake.
From what I knew about the Legend class trainers, they had at least 2 Stage 7/palladium Pokemon, along with a lineup of (high) Stage 6/platinum Pokemon, so one of them should be able to match and maybe even best a group like this depending on how many Pokemon the Legend in question had. Actually, all this depended on the fact that these were all the high-ranking/strong ghosts in this cave system and that none had stayed back.
Moreover, one should not forget that most if not all of these ghosts had a family/tribe behind them so if they utilized them they could probably bolster their numbers considerably even if they only added the gold stage ones. All in all, the alliance/humanity, or rather the people of Hoenn were lucky that Dusknoir and his ghosts showed no interest in leaving their cave system. I did not believe that this cave system would have been unknown/unsupervised like this if that had not been the case.
Still, taking the ideal environment into account I could understand why they showed no interest in leaving. I mean why should they do that if the cave system met all their needs and more? Anyway, I stopped thinking about them potentially attacking Hoenn and began to go through the species I had seen during my earlier covert observation.
I noted quite a few Dusclops and three Dusknoir with all three of them acting as one of the 12 group leaders. Interestingly enough, I even saw quite a few Shadinja which indicated that the group I attracted over was not the only one, which made sense. The cave system was big after all and Shadinja were a pretty strong species, so it should not have been surprising that one or more groups could be found in the inner circle. Considering their power, it was no surprise that two Shadinja were among the 12 subleaders.
Aside from those two species, there were also Gengar, with three of them being subleaders; A handful of Salbeye seemed to be present as well, which was already impressive enough since there were not many wild Salbeye that managed to reach the dark gold stage, which appeared to be the minimum requirement to take part in this assembly.
There were also some Banette, and a handful or two of Mismagius, which was not bad already since they required a Dusk Stone to evolve; Still, despite their low number, one of the Mismagius acted as a subleader, which indicated that the position of subleader was purely depended on personal strength and not the number of Pokemon of the same species.
In addition to those, I also spotted a few Alolan Marowak, which answered the question I had about whether the cave system was capable of triggering the variation in the Cubone that I had seen during my earlier exploration, or it at least made me heavily suspect that it was possible.
One ghost-variant Marowak could have been a coincidence but I could see at least 20 of them, so unless they all miraculously wandered into the cave system from the outside, or evolved due to unusual circumstances that could not be copied, there was a high chance that the Cubone in this cave system evolved to Alolan Marowak instead of the "standard" one.
This actually made me remember the gossip I read on the Brightwick Gym I was heading to. People had complained online that the members of the Brightwick Gym used too many ghosts, which had been a bit confusing since there were currently only two ghost/fire types available within alliance territory and only members of the Litwick line could be occasionally seen at Mt.Pyre, with no reports of any Alolan Marowak being sighted anywhere in Hoenn.
Coincidentally, I could see both Alolan Marowak and Chadelure as well as Lampent among the present ghosts, with one of the Chandelure even being a subleader. This made me wonder if the Gym Leader and his subordinates knew about this cave system, or if they had procured their Marowak from somewhere else. The Litwick line-members could be from Mt.Pyre after all.
One thing was certain, if they knew about it, they kept it a secret since I was absolutely sure that the alliance did not know about this place. There was no way a discovery like this would not have caused a splash in at least the professor/science community. Even if the alliance wanted to keep it secret, the professors would definitely be informed. Heck, the fact that no scientists or professors were observing/studying the phenomena happening in front of me was proof enough that the alliance was in the dark regarding this place. Oh well, I ended up digressing again.
The final group surprised me though maybe it shouldn't have. There was only a handful of them but despite their rather low number, two of Golurk were acting as the final two subleaders. Golurk were known to act as guardians as well, so seeing them in a place like this was not as surprising as it could be. The only reason I was surprised in the first place, was because as far as I knew, there were no known Golurk tribes in Hoenn. Well, at least that had been the case until now.
Since there were a bunch of dark gold Golurk and even two platinum stage ones in this chamber, I was pretty certain that there had to be Golurk and Golett living somewhere in the inner circle. Honestly, this cave system was giving me one surprise after the other, but I did not mind that one bit. From everything I had seen so far, this cave system was more than enough to support the creation and continuation of a ghost specialist family.
The variety of ghost types surpassed any other place I have heard about that was not artificially made, and even if one stuck only to the ghosts that could be found here, one could assemble a diverse ghost team full of potential aces, at least from an RV/BS standpoint.
Anyway, I continued to observe the situation while occasionally daring a peek behind the stalagmite, and I noticed that the shimmering in the air got progressively more pronounced over the next half an hour. I also felt the tension among the ghosts increase along with it, and I had to admit that their nervousness affected me as well to some extent since it was clear that whatever was going to happen was about to happen.
I was not the only one that got affected by the atmosphere. Nyx and Mothra were affected as well and I had to talk to them over the telepathy channel to keep them calm. Well, calm might not be the right word here, I was distracting them to keep them from fidgeting due to nervousness. That it helped ease off my own rising nervousness was definitely a welcome side-effect.
It was roughly 40 minutes since my arrival in the chamber that I felt a sudden eruption of ghost energy so strong that even I noticed it. Hades actually came out of the shadow and confirmed that the spectral energy concentration had jumped to more than double the previous concentration, which had already been much higher than normal. The sudden eruption of energy caused the chamber to fall into an unnatural silence with none of the ghosts making any noise.
This silence was quite eerie and it was unmistakable that this was the silence before the storm. I swiftly but carefully, and more importantly silently, crept my way toward the top of the stalagmite. Once I made it there, I peeked toward the center of the chamber where Dusknoir and the presumed gate were, and I saw that the shimmer had turned into an actual circle. I could not see what was on the other side of the circle since there was a film of energy covering it, though the film was waning with every second passed.
I saw that Dusknoir's full attention was directed at the portal/circle and a quick look across the chamber showed that the same was true for every other ghost as well. None of them were moving and all of them were starting at the circle while being in a ready position that screamed that they were ready to act at any moment. The tension rose as the energy film diminished, and then just as the atmosphere started to become really suffocating, the film finally vanished.
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