The group took a moment to recover.
Three S-ranks in thirteen pulls wasn't lucky. It was statistically offensive. The Chat Group's gacha system had operated across multiple parallel worlds for years, and the combined S-rank output of every other member totalled two. Ash had just matched and surpassed that in a single session.
Bug or blessing, the results were real.
Champion Ash: What did you pull? Show us. I've never seen three S-ranks at once.
Ascender Ash: Don't make it sound like you need gacha pulls. Every one of you is already at max power. You're all endgame accounts. I'm the only starter.
True enough. The other Ashes had entered the Chat Group at their respective peaks. Gacha rewards for them were novelties at best. The pulls mostly served as mood indicators or luck tests. For Ash, they were survival tools.
Ascender Ash: First S-rank: Limit Break II. This is for Pikachu, right?
The original Limit Break had shattered Pikachu's level ceiling, allowing it to push past a cap that should have been permanent. The trade-off was a temporary level drop, but the stat ceiling rose and growth speed increased. Without it, Pikachu would never have reached Mid High this fast.
Now Pikachu was stuck at Mid High again. Whether it was a natural plateau or another hard cap, Ash couldn't tell.
Breeder Ash: Limit Break II. That's a strong pull. Pikachu's at Mid High now?
Ascender Ash: Has been for a while.
Breeder Ash: After the first Limit Break, reaching initial Elite level should be the theoretical ceiling. But some parallel-world Ashes triggered the second breakthrough at Peak because they didn't know about Pikachu's unique properties. That works, but it caps future growth lower.
Aura Hero Ash: The jump from Peak to Elite is brutal even with the first breakthrough. Pikachu's species just isn't built for that tier under normal circumstances. The second breakthrough is where the real power curve begins.
Aura Hero Ash: Here's the thing. If you can push Pikachu to Elite level before using Limit Break II, the payoff at God Domain is much higher. The stat ceiling and power floor at equal levels will be noticeably stronger than if you'd broken through at Mid High.
Aura Hero Ash: Every strong Pikachu in this group hit Elite before the second breakthrough. None of us did it on purpose. We just happened to reach the next region, Sinnoh, before it triggered. Nobody knew Pikachu's talent cap scaled with regional travel until we compared notes in this group.
That was the hidden mechanic. Pikachu's potential wasn't fixed. It grew as Ash journeyed through new regions, each one lifting the ceiling a little higher. No other Pokémon in any parallel world possessed this trait. It was unique to their Pikachu, across every version of Ash.
Before the Chat Group, none of them had known. They'd just travelled, competed, and moved on. Pikachu reached whatever level it reached, and they'd pushed forward without questioning why some regions felt like walls and others felt like open sky.
The standard timeline had Pikachu hitting Elite level somewhere in the Hoenn region, then triggering the second breakthrough at the start of Sinnoh. Ashes who managed that were considered exceptional even among parallel worlds.
Ash hadn't reached Hoenn. He hadn't reached the Orange Islands. And his Pikachu was already at Mid High.
In terms of development speed, this Ash was the fastest any version had ever moved. His foundation was raw, his experience limited, and his journey young. But talent and luck had compressed a timeline that normally took years into months.
Ascender Ash: So I should hold Limit Break II until Pikachu reaches Elite?
Champion Ash: If you want maximum long-term returns, yes. Using it early works, but it costs future potential.
Ascender Ash: Got it. Second S-rank: something called "Jade Orb: Guidance." I don't know what this is.
Legendary Beast Ash: The Jade Orb. If I'm right, that's a Legendary medium. Tied to Rayquaza, the Sky Dragon.
A Legendary medium. The same category as the Rainbow Wing Ash carried, or the Seed of Life bonded to Venusaur. Items of divine origin, born from or given by a Legendary Pokémon. Each one carried a fragment of that Legendary's essence and authority.
As far as anyone in the group knew, these items could only be obtained through the Legendary's willing gift.
Legendary Beast Ash: The Jade Orb isn't a training booster. That's the surface-level function. Its real power is summoning Rayquaza.
Ascender Ash: Summoning Rayquaza?!
Legendary Beast Ash: Two ways to use it. First: activate it anywhere, and a Rayquaza will appear to fight on your behalf once, no conditions. Which Rayquaza answers the call and whether it holds a divine authority are unknowns. But the floor is high-tier God level. Guaranteed.
A portable God level Legendary. One use. No strings. As a defensive measure alone, the Jade Orb was worth its S-rank classification several times over.
Legendary Beast Ash: Second option: take the Jade Orb to the Sky Pillar and initiate a capture trial against Rayquaza. Fair warning. The Rayquaza that answers won't use Mega Evolution during the trial, but even without it, Rayquaza ranks among the strongest Legendaries in existence. At equal levels, it hits harder than almost anything alive.
Mega Rayquaza. The phrase sat in Ash's mind like a lit fuse. If base Rayquaza was already top-tier among God level Legendaries, then a Mega-Evolved version would be pushing against the boundary of the Creator God's own power.
Whether Mega Rayquaza could match Arceus was a question that could only be answered by the fight itself. And if the Chat Group's information about Arceus was accurate, its ability to nullify all type-based attacks meant raw power increases might not matter regardless.
Capturing Rayquaza was a fantasy at this stage. Even combining his own power with Mega Mewtwo, they wouldn't survive five minutes against a high-tier God level Legendary. The gap between sub-levels at that tier dwarfed the gap between an Elite and a Champion. One Hyper Beam from a high-tier God level Rayquaza would end them ten times over.
And the gacha had given him the Jade Orb's guidance, not the Orb itself. The physical item was still out there, waiting to be found. The capture option was years and several power tiers away.
For now, the Jade Orb was an emergency button. One summon. One God Domain ally. Save it for when nothing else would work.
Unlucky Ash: Chosen one confirmed. Breakthroughs, Legendary items, all of it. What was the third S-rank?
His tone had gone flat. Not angry. Just the hollow calm of a man who'd stopped trying to compete with the sun.
Ascender Ash: This last one is... strange. It's called "Light of Hope."
The group went quiet.
One by one, the other Ashes responded. Every message said the same thing.
Don't know.
The name was abstract, like the "Guidance of the Chosen" reward Ash had received before. No context, no obvious application. S-rank rewards came with built-in explanations that activated when the recipient returned to the real world, so Ash would learn its function once he woke up. Until then, it was a mystery even the most experienced members of the group couldn't decode.
Beyond the three S-ranks, the remaining ten pulls had yielded five B-ranks, three A-ranks, and two C-ranks. A mix of stat elevators, one pushing a Pokémon's specific aptitude to B-rank, another to A-rank, along with breeder knowledge packets and similar utilities.
The A-ranks were more interesting. One raised a Pokémon's Speed aptitude to A-rank. Another was a repeat: High-Level Smurf, a reward Ash had used before. The third was something he'd never seen.
Ascender Ash: "Glowing Cuisine"? What is this? Does it make food glow? How is this A-rank?
Chef Ash: Excuse me? Looking down on cooking? Wait, you're me. You can't look down on yourself! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make food that glows? The energy infusion alone takes...
'A new Ash.'
This was another Ash he had never seen before, and his name was Chef Ash. Could it be that in some timeline, he gave up his dream of being a Pokémon Master and became a chef?