Who's-Who hammered out a few more details with Tesoro, but afterward, he didn't feel very good. He'd been targeted by a ghost.
That chubby little purple creature that looked so cute was a Ghost-type Pokémon known to humans since the earliest generations, possessing countless mysterious attributes.
At one point, some Professors even suspected that the souls of humans after death would eventually become Gengar. If Gengar attacks people, it is likely not to harm enemies but rather an attempt to increase the population of their kind.
There was never any evidence for this; it was pure speculation. Anything related to Ghost types was inherently shrouded in mystery, let alone the Pokémon world, which had never been fully explored.
Now, as Who's-Who stared at the shadows around him, the furniture shadows cast by the lamplight formed a maze on the floor. But now that maze had come to life. Gengar was moving all throughout the shadow world beneath him.
From time to time, it would pop out from strange places, sometimes poking its head out of a shadow, sometimes slowly descending from the ceiling, and give Who's-Who a good, shocking lick with its tongue.
Even if Who's-Who helplessly tried to push it away, his hand would pass right through Gengar's body as though through nothingness.
Looking at his arm passing through its body, Gengar tilted its head, stuck out its tongue, and pretended to play dead. But since Who's-Who had already endured plenty of its pranks, he was unmoved and simply watched calmly.
Seeing that its tricks weren't getting any reaction, Gengar just grinned and sank back into the shadows, going off to handle its real business.
That was the twisted sense of humor of Ghost-types. Everything so far was only Gengar playing around under limits. If it really cut loose, the impact Gengar could have on people would be much greater.
A ghost's joke could genuinely be deadly.
Meanwhile, in the most luxurious room aboard the Gran Tesoro, the Celestial Dragon Donquixote Sancho was staying there, enjoying a variety of flashy and pointless services.
According to what Tesoro privately told his inner circle, this place was specially prepared for those "rich fools," and if he didn't squeeze as much money out of them as possible, he'd feel he was doing himself a disservice.
"Saint Sancho, I heard you'll be leaving tomorrow. Boss has specially prepared a special show for you, an entertainment spot not yet open to the public."
"Hm? Oh, Tanaka. It's not one of those boring things, is it? If it's that kind of thing, I'll get angry."
Sancho was lying on the bed with a blissful expression while an air blower-like machine beside him blew air onto him. It was air supposedly collected from Mariejois, letting Celestial Dragons "breathe the Holy Land's air" even while outside.
The labor cost was enormous, so the price was sky-high.
Celestial Dragons couldn't tell the difference anyway, and they loved these kinds of things. They were always happy to sign the bill.
"Of course not. It's an exhilarating experience you've definitely never had before."
The common impression of Celestial Dragons was that they were a bunch of idiots, mainly the ones who traveled around the world the most. Aside from them, there were elites like the Five Elders and the rarely seen members of God's Knights like Figarland Garling.
These two types accounted for 99% of Celestial Dragons. The remaining 1% were "oddities" among Celestial Dragons, people like Homing, who disliked owning slaves and even willingly gave up his Celestial Dragon status.
And for nearly a century, most of those "oddities" came from the Donquixote family.
Sancho was such an example. His habits were about the same as most Celestial Dragons—extravagant, indifferent to the lives of commoners. To be precise, he was even considered one of the more "friendly" ones.
At the very least, he wasn't temperamental, flipping out without warning. The commoners working for him were basically safe; they wouldn't suddenly have a slave collar thrown around their necks. His main hobby was chasing thrills.
Surfing, bungee jumping, racing; he had a special love for dangerous activities. As long as it gave him enough thrill, it was a good pastime in his eyes.
This also meant extra hardship for the guards around him. Serving a master like this was no easy task. Those so-called "thrill rides" usually meant they had to take part as well.
Tanaka whetted Sancho's appetite with a few assurances, then slipped through the wall and left.
Meanwhile, the neon-drenched nightlife of Gran Tesoro was only just beginning.
The next day, Beckman wiped the kiss marks off his face and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window. From there, he could overlook part of Gran Tesoro, yet what he saw was something entirely different.
An eerie structure had appeared in the open plaza ahead. Its entrance looked like a gigantic mouth, with a bizarre tongue protruding from within. For some reason, Beckman's instincts told him that thing was alive.
Although he'd drunk quite a bit the night before, his mind was clear. He was certain that there had been no such building in that open space last night.
"Another new attraction…?"
This was part of Gran Tesoro's uniqueness. Enormous amounts of memory alloy had gone into the ship's construction; its surface could deform, and even the positions of its buildings could shift.
Even visiting several times a year would yield completely different experiences, so drastic overnight changes weren't strange, but this time, it felt excessive.
Before Beckman could think further, hurried footsteps suddenly sounded outside. The next moment, the door flew straight toward him.
"Beckman! Where's Shanks?! Where did he run off to?!"
It wasn't someone trying to catch an affair, but Uta trying to catch Shanks. After discovering that Red Hair's ship had appeared nearby, she quickly tracked down this room through her connections.
Luckily, Beckman had already sent everyone else away, otherwise, the situation would have been even more awkward.
Glancing at the footprint on the door and the broken hinges, Beckman lit a cigarette.
"Uta, you've grown a lot."
If that kick had landed on him, it would've felt no different from a massage. But judging from the footprint left on the door, it would have been enough to break several ribs of a grown adult—an adult of this world.
This was completely different from Uta's former frailty. She wasn't the combat type, yet she had still been influenced by the broader environment, learning some special abilities.
"Beckman, that's not the point!"
After scanning the room and finding nowhere to hide a person, Uta could only fix her glare on Beckman.
"It's been several times already. Shanks never shows up. What exactly is he trying to do?! Is he planning to break our agreement? If we're talking about singers, I'm already number one on this sea, right?"
"Hey, Uta. Shanks is just busy with something. And the dangers on this sea are escalating, you're actually safer here than traveling with us."
Even Shanks felt scared of the Mother Flame. At present, only the Beasts Pirates seemed capable of withstanding something like that. Gran Tesoro was their money bag, so logically they wouldn't allow anything to happen to it.
Letting Uta stay here and continue her hobbies was, no matter how one looked at it, far safer than having her sail along with them. That was why Shanks rarely appeared in front of her, resorting instead to stalling tactics.
Members of the Red Hair Pirates would check on Uta from time to time. Beckman had planned to do the same, but he hadn't expected her to get the news and come straight to him instead.
In Beckman's eyes, this was actually a good thing. At the very least, Uta wasn't some nobody; otherwise, there was no way she could have obtained lodging information of this place.
Watching Uta storm off in a huff after a phone call, Beckman sighed and looked up at the sky. Some things were simply beyond his control.
Down below, Sancho and his entourage had already arrived at their designated spot. Looking at the sign in front of the haunted house, Sancho's interest suddenly dipped.
"This is what you call thrilling? It looks pretty boring to me."
"No, no, Saint Sancho. It may look like an ordinary haunted house, but you'll only understand how different it really is after experiencing it yourself. If you don't believe me, you can send anyone in to try it."
As he spoke, Sancho's attendants had already stepped forward. Even if Sancho was interested, they had to test it first; if something really went wrong, they wouldn't be able to bear the responsibility.
These attendants were considered quite steady-nerved, yet when they stood in front of the haunted house, eerie singing seemed to echo in their ears, and they even heard the call of their dream lovers.
Only after Sancho reprimanded them, they went in together, stepping into Gengar's hunting ground.
The special aspect of this haunted house wasn't that there were ghosts inside; it was that the haunted house itself was a ghost.
Beckman's memory hadn't been wrong. Before this morning, there had been no such haunted house here, because its true form was a Gigantamax Gengar. What ordinary people perceived as the entrance door was actually the belly of Gigantamax Gengar.
After Gigantamaxing, Gengar's enormous body was filled with cursed energy. Behind its massive mouth lay a passage to the afterlife. In the Pokémon world, the afterlife was a special ghost world, and here, it was the underworld.
The moment they entered, the other side of the underworld received the news. With Darkrai's current authority there, controlling the underworld's scenery was effortless.
Add in just a touch of Bad Dreams' ability and ghost's harassment, and unless someone was born without any concept of fear, there was no way they'd walk out on their own two feet.
However, Darkrai didn't directly use its Bad Dreams ability. Because everyone's inner fears were different, the Bad Dreams' scenery would also differ, and that didn't fit the traditional haunted house experience.
So when the two attendants passed through, what they saw was only a decayed, dim city.
"This place is really huge. Tesoro sure put a lot of effort into it."
Gran Tesoro itself stretched over ten kilometers, an exaggerated maritime city. At the moment, they still assumed all of this was merely part of Tesoro's set design.
"It's useless. How could something like this make Saint Sancho feel thrilled? A fake is still a fake. No matter how good the set is, it won't amount to much."
Surveying their surroundings, the attendants looked completely at ease. Though the place appeared empty and cold winds occasionally blew through it, they hadn't seen a single staff member acting as an NPC.
Their earlier nervousness faded, and they felt this would be a very simple job.
"Do you feel cold? Did they use too much dry ice?"
"A little. And aren't we going in circles? I feel like we're just walking around in place."
After walking for a while, they noticed something was off. The area was absurdly large, as if they'd fallen into a maze.
The chilling air of the underworld beneath their feet continuously leached away their body heat. Just as they realized something was wrong, both men felt a sensation around their ankles at the same time, as if something sticky had grabbed their legs.
But when they dispersed the fog below, they saw nothing at all, only the hard ground beneath their feet.
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