The agonizing pain forced a sequence of miserable cries from Gigantamax Blastoise. It grew incredibly restless and erratic, stomping blindly across the arena and kicking up a colossal cloud of dust and debris.
"Gigantamax Blastoise, use Aqua Ring!" Alder bellowed at the top of his lungs.
However, blinded by the searing trauma, Gigantamax Blastoise completely ignored its Trainer's command.
"Calm down, Blastoise!" Alder shouted frantically, but his voice failed to soothe the rampaging Pokémon.
Only after a considerable delay did a thick veil of water finally manifest around Gigantamax Blastoise's massive frame. The Aqua Ring steadily began mending its structural injuries, and as countless shimmering golden particles dissolved into its hide, the agonizing pain gradually subsided.
Once it finally regained its composure, Blastoise fixed its icy, venomous glare upon Corviknight. It locked its eyes onto the Raven Pokémon, and an countless array of massive water pillars suddenly erupted around its chassis.
"That's Origin Pulse. To think the Ocean Fiend would be this staggeringly generous with its resources," Feng Che murmured playfully. Executing a specialized move of this caliber required siphoning a massive reservoir of the Ocean Fiend's divine authority.
"Origin Pulse... Did Elite Four Feng Che just say Champion Alder is borrowing the power of an ancient fiend?"
"No way... Colluding with ancient fiends is a capital crime strictly condemned by the Global Pokémon League!"
"How could a regional Champion like Alder be entangled with such forbidden entities?"
The surrounding League investigators instantly realized something was horribly wrong.
But before they could act, a sudden wave of pitch-black fog aggressively expanded, swallowing them whole.
"You all know far too much," Alder hissed, his voice dropping into a raspy, hollow register. The dark miasma condensed into an unyielding cage, locking the investigators firmly within its boundaries. "I shall dismantle Feng Che first, and then I will deal with the rest of you."
"Gigantamax Blastoise, channel the absolute majesty of the Ocean God!"
Thick plumes of freezing white mist continuously bled out from Gigantamax Blastoise's frame. The vapors rapidly interwove in midair, refining themselves into thousands of ice needles as fine as cattle hair.
The Ocean Fiend's channeled parameters are spiking. A payload of ice needles on this scale is more than enough to completely flatten Opelucid City, Feng Che calculated. It's a good thing Kyurem and Zekrom are currently resting inside the Dragon God Shrine. Otherwise, the entire city would be reduced to frozen dust by this barrage.
The thousands of ice needles shrieked forward, the vast majority tracking toward Corviknight while a stray cluster rained directly down around Feng Che's coordinates.
Feng Che calmly extended two fingers, snapping them together to catch a flying ice needle perfectly out of the air. The exact millisecond his fingers made contact with the projectile, a bone-chilling cold violently surged up his arm, nearly freezing his entire body solid.
If Feng Che hadn't immediately deployed his psychic energy to construct a protective barrier around his skin, he would have been flash-frozen into a block of solid ice on the spot. The intercepted needle instantly dissolved into a cloud of freezing vapor, swirling into the sky.
Feng Che shifted his gaze toward the captured League investigators. Every single one of them had already been completely flash-frozen into brittle, silent blocks of ice by the sudden barrage.
It seems Alder is intent on silencing all witnesses, Feng Che thought coolly. Colluding with ancient fiends is a capital crime. Once word of this operational failure leaks out, forget retaining his throne as the Unova Champion—he'll be lucky if he isn't thrown into a maximum-security prison for the rest of his life.
"Gigantamax Blastoise, maintain maximum pressure! Grind that Corviknight into frozen dust!" Alder roared venomously. He then fixed a deeply wary look on Feng Che. "To think you are actually a powerful Psychic-type user, capable of effortlessly resisting the absolute-zero frost of the Ocean God."
The power he currently wielded had been bought at the absolute cost of his own soul, obtained by prostrating himself and begging various ancient fiends for forbidden strength. As long as he successfully destroyed Feng Che here, he could harvest the youth's powerful spirit to offer as a grand sacrifice to his patrons.
"Both the Earth God and the Ocean God explicitly commanded me to hunt you down and break your vessel entirely. It appears you managed to thoroughly offend them before today. But no matter—this simply marks the hour of my ultimate ascension!" Alder laughed, a cruel, manic smile warping his features.
The freezing fog continued to expand across the arena, and within moments, a dense labyrinth of jagged permafrost spires began erupting aggressively from the mist. The localized temperature plummeted rapidly.
This mortal dares to disrupt the weather patterns of my domain? If you wish to blanket this entire sector in a blizzard, you'd better ask me if I permit it first, a booming thought resonated. Furthermore, I shall gladly siphon your stray elemental energies to accelerate my own structural recovery.
Kyurem unleashed a world-shaking dragon roar from deep within the ancestral grounds. The massive clouds of freezing fog were telekinetically drawn across space, flowing steadily into Kyurem's resting place. The dense, oppressive storm clouds hovering overhead instantly dissipated into nothingness.
Stripped of the localized weather parameters by Kyurem's passive intervention, Gigantamax Blastoise's offensive authority tanked noticeably. Seizing the opening while backed by the unyielding protection of the Delta Stream, Corviknight condensed an exceptionally massive blade of compressed wind.
"Magnificent! To think you still possess the audacity to resist!" Alder snarled. "Gigantamax Blastoise, use Origin Pulse!"
Alder's directive to unleash another maximum-output Origin Pulse was no longer aimed solely at subduing Corviknight; he intended to level Opelucid City entirely. He needed to sacrifice the populated city center to the dark deities he served. This was his binding covenant with the ancient fiends.
Only by consuming the unique, hyper-concentrated Dragon Force housed within the bloodlines of the Dragon Clan could those ancient fiends rapidly restore their primordial parameters. He had mapped out his grand strategy perfectly, only for an unmanageable variable like Feng Che to shatter his momentum.
Meanwhile, at the Abyssal Ocean Cavern.
The Ocean Fiend was resting in a deep slumber within the watery depths when a sudden surge of psychic resonance forced its way into its consciousness.
"Brilliant! So that wretched brat is hiding over there!"
"I have finally found you!"
The Ocean Fiend slowly snapped open its colossal eyes, its pupils burning with a violent, blood-red light.
"This miserable ancient seal won't be able to hold my vessel for much longer. The exact millisecond I break free, I shall summon a thousand-meter tidal wave to drown the entirety of the Hoenn region, converting it into a vast, absolute ocean!"
The historically hot-tempered Ocean Fiend, having continuously devoured the spirits of numerous humans over the years, had grown noticeably cunning and calculating.
"Deliver my absolute decree! Accelerate our operational timeline to unify the Hoenn region and purge Team Magma from our territories entirely!" the Ocean Fiend bellowed.
Instantly, a massive horde of Team Aqua grunts swarmed out from the subterranean transport docks to execute the command.
"Archie, the exact millisecond you claim absolute sovereignty over Hoenn, I shall hand down a specialized campaign for you to execute."
"You will march your primary flagships straight to the Unova region. Utilizing the maximum of my divine parameters, you shall execute the Unova Champion, Feng Che! He is the exact piece of filth I have been hunting for all this time," the Ocean Fiend rumbled in a heavy, booming register.
Concurrently, at Mt. Chimney.
The Earth Fiend had fully awakened from its subterranean slumber. Its crimson eyes glared down at the countless Team Magma grunts prostrating themselves beneath its towering altar.
"We must aggressively accelerate our timeline to conquer the Hoenn region."
"Now, our absolute directive is to wipe Team Aqua off the map entirely!" the Earth Fiend roared, its deafening voice shattering the cavern walls.
Back within the Unova Dragon Clan's territory.
Gigantamax Blastoise's physical volume had ballooned to nearly twice its original mass under Alder's frantic channeling. Yet, Corviknight's offensive momentum only grew increasingly fierce and relentless.
The sky-blotting barrage of high-velocity wind blades left the gargantuan turtle completely overwhelmed and unable to establish a solid defensive counter. Watching his partner being systematically beaten back step by step, Alder's panic reached an absolute peak.
"Corviknight, bring this to a definitive close! Use Dragon Ascent!" Feng Che commanded.
Corviknight transformed into a high-speed streak of brilliant emerald-and-gold light, launching itself like a kinetic missile straight toward Gigantamax Blastoise. Hit cleanly by the devastating impact, the colossal turtle groaned as its massive form violently deflated, forcibly dropping out of its Gigantamax state to collapse into the dirt.
"To think... you actually managed to destroy my Blastoise," Alder muttered, his voice trembling as he stared at his unconscious partner.
"In that case, prepare to bear witness to the absolute apex of my roster—the single strongest Pokémon in my possession!"
"Come forth, Bouffalant!"
Bouffalant materialized on the battlefield, its appearance perfectly matching its moniker. The absolute center of its head was crowned by a massive, dense tuft of black fur styled into a prominent afro. A pair of colossal, curved horns extended from its skull, each ringed by distinct yellow stripes.
Furthermore, the Bash Buffalo Pokémon possessed a rugged, deep brown hide and sharp yellow eyes. Relying on the sheer kinetic power of its headbutt alone, a Bouffalant could effortlessly crumple a heavy automobile into scrap metal. Within their wild herds, the individual who possessed the largest, most voluminous head of hair was universally revered as the absolute alpha of the pack.