"Pokémon around the lower echelons of the Master tier..."
Feng Che rubbed his chin, caught in a slight logistical mismatch. Reviewing his active roster, the vast majority of his partners had already scaled past the higher echelons of the Master tier, leaving him with an exceptionally restricted selection of lower-tier combat assets.
If worst came to worst, his only viable option would be to direct his partners to intentionally suppress their latent kinetic output during the match.
He mentally audited his operational forces. His primary vanguard aces—Incineroar, Corviknight, Greninja, Hydreigon, Sirfetch'd, and Venusaur—had cleanly stabilized their metrics within the absolute, undisputed Champion tier. The remaining core of his secondary line was similarly hovering on the very threshold of that upper stratum.
The only partners currently anchoring lower baseline parameters were his ancient Beedrill and Pidgeot, alongside the Charmander gifted to him by Giovanni, and the Horsea he had personally captured. Beyond these few, he held zero low-tier options.
"Caitlin, if my available roster at that specific tier is restricted, do the exhibition protocols permit me to engage his entire line simultaneously?" Feng Che inquired, his mind completely unmoored by the traditional formats of the tournament.
"Certainly. The definitive purpose of this exhibition is to clinically demonstrate the absolute, insurmountable chasm dividing a standard Conference Victor from an actual League Champion," Caitlin explained, nodding smoothly.
"If you leverage a single common asset to systematically dismantle his entire roster back-to-back, it will serve as the absolute finest display of our League's authority."
"That tracks perfectly for my variables."
"I have only just cleared the transit gates to return to headquarters. Tomorrow morning, I shall comfortably settle this exhibition match. Once the event concludes, we can schedule a dedicated brief to parse the granular administrative telemetry of the Unova League."
Feng Che gave a casual wave of his hand, and the surrounding staff and guards smoothly dispersed to clear the corridor.
Caitlin, however, anchored her coordinates, her brilliant eyes shining with immense, unvarnished joy as she tracked the youth.
"Feng Che, my personal congratulations on your absolute ascension as the Acting Champion of the Unova region. The Caitlin Family will throw the entirety of its socio-political weight to flawlessly back your administration."
"Furthermore... that specific ancient ruin is hovering on the absolute threshold of its alignment cycle. Ensure your parameters are fully optimized without delay." Leaving her warning behind, Caitlin focused her psychic authority to execute an instantaneous Teleport, completely dissolving from space.
"It appears Star-Master的天辰 can no longer restrain his internal urgency," Feng Che murmured, lowering his gaze as his mind rapidly calculated the hidden variables.
Turning his heel, he stepped toward Alder's personal administrative suite. He was intensely determined to unearth the definitive catalyst that had triggered the former Champion's abrupt, severe ideological corruption.
Alder's private office anchored the absolute innermost sector of the League Citadel—a sprawling, two-hundred-square-meter vault densely lined with monumental rows of iron shelving. The massive units were structured into an intricate labyrinth that choked the floor space.
Perched across the shelves was a colossal archive of ancient relics Alder had systematically unmoored from global ruins across a lifetime of expeditions. Dozens of these artifacts continuously bled out a strange, unnatural energetic pulse. Scanning the layout via his high-tier psychic authority, Feng Che easily isolated several shards carrying the unmistakable, dormant malice of the Sky Fiends.
However, the residual magical footprints nesting within the relics had degraded to a microscopic, near-imperceptible threshold.
Forensic telemetry indicates Alder successfully extracted the precise ritual mechanics required to awaken those ancient fiends straight from these ruins.
The manifestation of a Fiend Cataclysm represents an absolute system-level threat to this world. Should those ancient monsters fully revitalize their core capacities, their baseline combat parameters will scale to an exceptionally terrifying tier.
Feng Che slid smoothly into Alder's heavy high-backed master chair, casually sorting through the personal assets the former sovereign had left behind. Suddenly, his fingers locked onto a heavily weathered, ancient piece of parchment. Spreading it across the desk, he found it detailed a precise tracking map pointing toward a monolithic, primeval mausoleum.
"Could this be the definitive schematic mapping the Emperor's Tomb? It appears Alder undeniably breached that forbidden sanctuary."
Pulling the ancient document free, a thick plume of century-old dust mushroomed into his face. Concurrently, a dense leather-bound journal slipped from the parchment folds, clattering against the wood.
Feng Che deployed a thin thread of telekinetic force to suspend the journal in midair before his eyes. Leafing through the yellowed pages, his data tracking confirmed it served as Alder's private personal diary, indexing the former Champion's absolute psychological breakdown.
📓 Excerpts from Alder's Private Journal
Unova League Calendar: May 29
The cumulative trauma marring my primary partners has reached a terminal bottleneck; their cellular matrices are trapped in a permanent, near-death state. These are the battle-hardened comrades who anchored my soul across a lifetime of campaigns. I swear upon my life line I shall unearth a methodology to rewrite their expiration data.
Unova League Calendar: June 10
I have finally stabilized a theoretical solution! The ancient historical records verify that the primeval Emperor's Tomb houses a forbidden, absolute ritual capable of granting permanent, spiritual immortality to a soul line. My partners—your recovery parameters are within my grasp!
Unova League Calendar: July 1
Cognitive anxiety is mounting... Could my tracking data be flawed? Where has the precise geographic coordinate of this forbidden sepulcher been anchored? Blast it all... my partners are rapidly running out of physical time. If my hands fail to clear the path to the Emperor's Tomb immediately, their vital signs will permanently flatline.
Unova League Calendar: August 15
By the heavens, the Emperor's Tomb is securely anchored within that precise sector! The entire complex is heavily fortified by an infinite network of high-lethal traps. No matter—this ancient parchment cleanly maps out the tactical counter-measures required to disengage every single defense grid. A stroke of absolute luck that my intellect is profoundly fluent in primeval glyphs.
Yet, having finalized the absolute translation of these ancient scripts, the texts yield nothing but severe, chilling warnings: "Do not disrupt the eternal slumber of the Ancient Sovereign, lest your arrogance invite an absolute, global cataclysm down upon the mortal plane."
Could this primeval monarch truly have engineered a path to permanent immortality? Immensely fascinating... exceptionally intriguing. I can no longer restrain my desire to breach the seal.
Unova League Calendar: September 10
I am a sinner... an absolute, unforgivable disgrace to the League. My hands should have never dismantled the seals governing the Ancient Sovereign. His raw, primeval parameters are monumentally immense; my vanguard lines were systematically crushed without a single shred of resistance.
He has forcefully seized my partners, locking their physical frames within the deepest containment vats of the mausoleum. Even from this threshold, my ears can continuously harvest their agonizing, structural wails.
The daily windows where my human consciousness maintains absolute cognitive clarity are shrinking at a terminal rate. I pray the subsequent sovereign who inherits my desk unearths this hidden log.
Please... I beg of you, systematically seal and lock down the soul of the Ancient Sovereign. The malevolent miasma is aggressively corroding my neural pathways. I am no longer myself...
The written record ground to a sudden, absolute halt right across that desperate plea.
The forensic indicators made it clear that Alder had leveraged a final, fleeting window of pristine lucidity to securely archive this journal across his office shelf.
It appears Alder was fully aware that his conscious alignment was being systematically rewritten by an outside entity.
This journal, combined with the primary map detailing the Emperor's Tomb, provides the absolute finest evidence block to funnel straight into the League's International High Command.
Feng Che evaluated that the Emperor's Tomb presented an exceptionally extreme hazard tier. Even commanding a roster that comfortably dominated the absolute peak of the Champion rank, his predictive sub-routines flagged that a direct confrontation against the sepulcher's master yielded an exceptionally abyssal probability of success.
His internal Future Sight mechanics were actively pulsing, flashing a high-alert warning that a monumental horror was on the verge of clearing its alignment constraints.
The Ancient Sovereign undeniably shares a dense, structural alignment matrix with the lifecycle of the Sky Fiends, Feng Che calculated.
Right at that exact millisecond, a torrential surge of raw, unadulterated malice violently erupted from Gengar's shadow. The immense wave of pitch-black spectral energy fanned outward, causing the administrative documents stacked across Alder's desk to rustle frantically.
The baseline temperature of the entire executive suite violently plummeted by over fifteen degrees within a fraction of a second.
"Rest your parameters, Gengar. I give you my absolute mandate: my line will aggressively storm the Emperor's Tomb to execute total, merciless retribution for your past trauma," Feng Che declared, his voice cutting through the freezing air with an unyielding conviction.
Siphoning the absolute certainty backing his words, the volatile, choking resentment pooling within Gengar's core gradually dissolved, receding back into its shadow.
The ghost's frame suddenly softened, its menacing posture melting away as it plopped its round chassis heavily onto the floor, its face crumpling into an exceptionally pathetic, deeply aggrieved pout.
Feng Che calmly extended his palm, pressing it flat against Gengar's cheek. He showed near-zero concern for the bone-chilling, absolute-zero temperature freezing his skin upon contact.
"Gengar, our covenant remains permanently locked in stone. Your hand has consistently reinforced my campaigns, and my shadow empire will flawlessly return that investment."
"Every single asset anchoring my roster is actively drilling to optimize their parameters for one definitive destination—to systematically claim your vengeance." Feng Che spoke with a soft, deeply grounding warmth.
"Lock this law into your conscious loops, Gengar: wherever my coordinates are anchored, you shall always hold an absolute, permanent home alongside my line."
Gengar:Wherever your vessel anchors its presence... that coordinates marks the absolute sanctuary of my home. To register the presence of true family... is an exceptionally beautiful data block.
Pristine, crystalline tears of pure spectral energy began to bead along the margins of its large eyes, staining its dark hide.
"Maintain your operational focus and steel your discipline, Gengar. I require your shadow containment sub-routines to comfortably insulate my human body against outside variables."
Following his official ascension as the supreme sovereign of the Unova League, the macro-scale of his responsibilities had expanded exponentially, rendering his personal biological safety a parameter of absolute, global importance.
On standard configurations, Feng Che consistently relied on Gengar's master-tier shadow-stealth concealment to serve as his primary, unbreachable shield against underworld variables.