Himeko tapped the silver band on her wrist and swiped her fingers across the interface, projecting a clear, floating screen in the middle of the room.
The live feed showed March 7th, Dan Heng, and Stelle standing with a few local fighters, facing down a colossal mechanical giant. Welt's eyes widened instantly, his entire focus locked onto the screen in a stunned daze.
"It looks like the young ones could use a helping hand," Himeko said softly.
She recognized the massive engine of war immediately. Without Dan Heng drawing upon his hidden depth, the three pioneers simply didn't possess the raw force to match such a machine. But Dan Heng had his own deep reasons for keeping his past locked away. If she hadn't seen the struggle, she wouldn't have intervened, but now that she was watching it live, she refused to stand by and force him to confront memories he wished to leave behind.
Tapping a digital overlay on her screen, Himeko entered a few quick commands. High above the planet, the orbital defense systems whirled to life, firing a precise, brilliant beam from the train's main cannon. The shot cut through the atmosphere, striking the mechanical giant dead-on and instantly forcing the machine into a complete emergency shutdown.
With the threat neutralized, Himeko initialized an audio link to check in on the ground team, offering a few warm words of support. When she finally looked up from the console, she realized the holographic image of their guest had vanished.
"Oh? Where did Julian go?" Himeko asked, turning to Welt. But seeing the veteran scholar standing there with his lips parted, entirely mesmerized by the data feeds, she could only shake her head with a faint smile. She had definitely asked the wrong person.
"The passenger on the line seemed to run into an urgent matter, pom," Pom-Pom chimed in, trotting over with a broom. "He cut the connection right as the sky split open, pom."
"Thank you, Pom-Pom," Himeko smiled, turning her attention back to the monitor to watch over her crew.
A Quick Detour
Down on the frozen surface, not far from the ridge where Stelle and the others were locking horns with Cocolia, Julian materialized on the peak of a snow-covered mountain.
Watching Stelle brace her boots against the freezing wind, he knew the pivotal moment was fast approaching—the exact frame where her unyielding determination would draw the direct gaze of the Amber Lord, Qlipoth.
He took a slow, deep breath, mentally reviewing the detailed parameters Herta had given him, double-checking every single variable.
Everything is locked down... wait, no, the engine is missing a spark, Julian realized, a sudden wave of sweat breaking out on his brow. I completely forgot that a dormant relic cannot ignite itself. I need to manually infuse the path of Preservation into the stone before the god looks this way.
Julian closed his eyes, drawing upon Mewtwo's immense telepathic power to expand his senses. Within a heartbeat, a vast wave of pure awareness rolled across the entire icy continent, mapping every single valley, fortress wall, and frozen branch on Jarilo-VI.
"Found a match," he muttered.
With a soft distortion of the air, his silhouette vanished from the peak, reappearing instantly in the snowy trenches outside Rivet Town. Amidst the howling wind, Captain Gepard was currently leading a battered line of Silvermane Guards, desperately swinging his heavy shield to push back a swarming horde of Fragmentum monsters.
Sensing a sudden displacement in the air behind him, Gepard's battlefield instincts flared. He spun on his heel, violently driving the edge of his massive barrier shield toward the intruder's throat.
"Let's lower the tension, Captain. I'm a close friend of March 7th," Julian said calmly. He reached out a single hand, his fingers casually catching the full momentum of the steel shield, bringing the heavy blow to an absolute halt. "I just require a minor favor from your office."
Gepard's eyes widened in sheer shock. He tried to pull his weapon back to reassess the threat, but the metal shield felt as though it had been permanently welded into the stranger's palm, refusing to budge a single millimeter. "I... I must apologize, sir, but my soldiers are currently holding a critical line. I do not preserve the leisure to assist you."
"Are you referring to these frozen strays? That's a simple problem to clear," Julian noted smoothly.
He turned his gaze toward the approaching monsters, his mind unleashing a focused wave of raw telepathic force across the valley. The exact next second, every single Fragmentum beast within a mile radius instantly dissolved into harmless gray ash, scattered by the freezing wind.
Though the mental pressure wasn't directed at the captain, standing so close to a psychic discharge of that magnitude left Gepard feeling a crushing weight against his chest. Staring at the empty valley where a life-or-death siege had just been erased in the blink of an eye, the soldier looked at Julian as if he were staring at a mythical deity.
Julian gave the stunned captain a firm pat on the shoulder. The clock was ticking, and he didn't have the luxury to wait for the soldier's mind to process the scale of the magic.
"Can we process that favor now?" Julian asked, pulling the two pristine shards of Divine Amber from his coat and placing them into the captain's hands. "Channel your path energy straight into these stones as hard as your spirit can manage."
"Right... understood," Gepard stammered.
Since this mysterious powerhouse was an ally of the pioneers and had just saved his entire platoon from an absolute slaughter, he didn't hesitate. He focused his mind, drawing deep upon his vows of protection to pour every drop of his internal Preservation current into the twin gemstones.
Although Gepard had never drawn the direct, system-wide gaze of an Aeon, he was a deeply dedicated Pathstrider who had spent his entire life guarding the walls of his city. His internal reservoir was remarkably dense. As he emptied his remaining reserves into the metal, the dormant fragments of Divine Amber finally flickered, radiating a warm, golden glow.
Seeing the stones ignite, Julian reclaimed the relics. At the same frame, he channeled the delicate power of Azelf, gently drawing two faint wisps of Gepard's focused intent out of the air and sealing them straight into the glowing amber. While any standard source of human focus could technically satisfy the experiment's requirements, utilizing the original creator's unique spiritual signature would guarantee a much cleaner alignment.
"My thanks," Julian nodded.
Before the final syllable could clear the air, his form vanished from the trench, leaving zero trace behind.
With his internal path energy completely spent and his physical stamina exhausted from the morning's combat, Gepard's knees buckled, and he sank heavily onto the snow. He turned his head toward the distant horizon where the faint thunder of the final battle was echoing off the mountains, a new light of genuine hope finally illuminating his tired eyes.
Julian materialized back on the mountaintop, holding the two glowing shards of Divine Amber in his palms. He had deliberately requested a pair of relics from Herta's vault because his mind hadn't fully settled on which legendary companion would serve as the ultimate anchor for the Preservation path.
In his personal estimation, the two creatures that shared the deepest philosophical harmony with the concept of protection were undoubtedly Zygarde and Regigigas.
Granted, while Zygarde technically held the historical title of the Order Pokémon in the legacy text files, Julian knew its nature shared zero alignment with the cosmic Path of Order. The absolute philosophy of Order sought to forge a flawless, eternal harmony by systematically erasing all personal differences, unpredictable variables, and individual free will. Zygarde's operational logic was completely different.
Within the boundaries of its native world, the mechanical dragon functioned strictly as a guardian of the natural balance. The concept of guardianship sat in perfect, clean alignment with the Path of Preservation. Furthermore, its relentless defense of the ecosystem wasn't driven by selfish preservation; it fought to guarantee the long-term survival of all living species, mirroring the absolute altruistic spirit of Qlipoth's wall. Even if one analyzed its role as a protector of natural patterns, its core duty was defense, not the suppression of independent life. Therefore, Julian felt its blueprint belonged firmly to Preservation rather than Order.
Regigigas, on the other hand, was a creator whose legendary feats—dragging massive continental plates across the ocean and carving out habitable lands to provide a safe sanctuary for living things—bore a striking resemblance to the Amber Lord's ancient wall-building campaign. Furthermore, after expending its monumental energy reserves to secure the earth for others, the giant had quietly surrendered its consciousness to a deep, centuries-long slumber, displaying that exact same altruistic weight.
Without a cooperative Emanator standing beside him to act as a natural filter for the energy loop, Julian had no choice but to deploy both options simultaneously. He initiated the internal command loops, weaving the glowing Divine Amber straight into the spiritual matrices of both legendary summons before recalling their templates back to his core.
True to his theoretical models, the shards didn't shatter or return to their inert state; they dissolved cleanly, integrating their structure directly into the companions' code. The split second the integration finalized, the two distinct currents of Preservation energy—fully colored by Gepard's protective will—registered safely within Julian's own soul reservoir.
Down in the valley below, Stelle was violently thrown back by the icy impact of the Guardian's spear.
Right at the exact frame where her companions scrambled forward to pull her out of the crater, Julian stepped up to the very edge of the ridge. Following Herta's strict manual, he focused his thoughts, systematically igniting the two wisps of captured path energy resting inside his chest.
At the exact same frame, he manually hardcoded the projection parameters for Zygarde and Regigigas straight into the flaring current of Preservation.
Dong—!
Julian's physical vision instantly blurred, the howling snowstorms of Jarilo-VI vanishing from his senses. His consciousness dropped straight into that familiar, terrifying cosmic vacuum.
Floating in the center of the infinite starlight stood the colossal, world-shattering form of Qlipoth. The ancient titan loomed over the entire galaxy like a mountain of raw stone, its monumental amber hammer rising slowly into the blackness, preparing to strike down with the weight of eternity.
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