novelnext Chapter 489 Even the deepest abyss begins on flat ground
Chapter 489 Even the deepest abyss begins on flat ground
Chapter 491 Even the deepest abyss begins on flat ground
"City Defense Master" Jero slowly lifted his finger from the control panel.
On the screen, the intruders finally discovered the truth.
Given Jero's personality, he should have been anxious and furious at this moment—after all, the defenses he had painstakingly built over the years were being breached layer by layer by these uninvited guests.
But at this moment, Jero simply stared at the scene quietly, a slight smile even appearing on his lips.
"Finally found it." He muttered to himself, "As expected of the Heavenly King of Unova, even three hours earlier than expected."
His gaze swept over the mountain of data piled up beside the control panel—rubbings of stone slabs salvaged from underwater ruins, ancient kingdom inscriptions unearthed from beneath the Path of Champions, and ancient knowledge about "how unknown totems turn imagination into reality," which Joggs had spent seven years deciphering.
Quixote was right—that sunken ruin was the most precious treasure ever obtained by the Plasma Cluster.
For Zero, the strength of this order did not lie in the faith built by the young king, nor in Vio's daily fortune made through business operations, nor in the public opinion that Smura painstakingly created for Team Plasma, nor even in the legendary Pokémon that Acromuma obtained deep in the Giant's Cave.
Rather, they are.
Those symbolic Pokémon that have existed quietly on this land since times older than human dynasties.
Even in those long-forgotten ancient kingdoms, they were still regarded as even more ancient beings, and were devoutly decorated in the deepest parts of altars and palaces to create the mystery of priests and the majesty of kings.
Their bodies are symbols. Symbols signify writing, and writing carries ancient, taboo knowledge.
With modern archaeological discoveries, a vague connection has begun to emerge between the symbols carved on stone slabs and real legends.
In the Johto region, in a tightly sealed accident record, someone witnessed how these creatures dragged the "images" in people's minds into reality—a disaster that affected an entire town. Fortunately, the outcome wasn't too bad, but it proved the extraordinary power within these spirits.
Unknown totem.
They don't fight. They don't even have the concept of fighting.
They do not resist. Most of the time, they are just a group of symbols floating aimlessly in the air.
They almost never move. If left undisturbed, they can cling to a rock face and sleep for centuries.
But they possess an ability that no other Pokémon can match—
Transforming the "image" existing in consciousness into "existence" in reality.
Quidditch initially intended to use them to make weapons. But Geralt saw further.
At that time, he said the following to the other six of the Seven Sages—
"Team Plasma's network can transport supplies, smuggle Pokémon and weapons, and allow the Order to operate freely in the shadows—but that's just activity. We need a base." His finger tapped on the unfolded blueprints. "A truly impregnable base."
The engineer paused, his gaze sweeping across every face in the room.
"I will not use simple building materials to build this castle. That would be too clumsy. Too fragile. The kind of building that mortals can build—the Alliance can breach it, the Heavenly King can destroy it, geological changes can shake it, and the long passage of time can weather it away."
His voice deepened, carrying a kind of almost pious fervor: "And I—I want the unknown totem to imagine this castle."
"I want to let their superpower fields weave every wall, every mechanism, and every body and will of the guardian Pokémon."
"Under the illusion, the Alliance cannot find it, the Uranus will be devoured by it, it will change its form according to the terrain, and exist forever as a symbol of the Plasma Cluster!"
"Give me the materials—a steel frame, concrete, alloy plates, stone slabs bearing ancient writing, rubbings of inscriptions forgotten deep within ruins, and everything that allows the unknown totems to understand"—the medium through which I will build.
"Give me the money to bribe everyone I need to bribe: the supervisors under the League headquarters, the tight-lipped construction workers, smugglers, Pokémon hunters, and as many archaeologists as possible."
"Give me knowledge—let me know how to use those unknown totems, and to what extent, so that I can integrate them with my castle."
"Give me enough time—let me design and build the most perfect city defenses for you."
He opened his arms as if to embrace the unfolded design drawings, the map marking the excavation sites, the densely packed numbers, and the knowledge deciphered over seven years.
Then, give me enough unknown totems.
His gaze swept over his six colleagues in turn, and he said, enunciating each word clearly, "I can show you a castle built by God."
Of the other sages besides him, only Quixote cast his vote in favor without taking it seriously, the remaining four remained neutral, while Vio resolutely opposed it.
"This is insane," he said. "Unknown totems are not bricks; they can die, they can run away, they can go out of control."
To entrust the fate of a castle to them—that's a huge gamble.
"All construction is a gamble," Gerald replied calmly. "The only difference is that you gamble on the durability of materials, while I gamble on the limits of human intellect."
Unlike their later irreconcilable relationship, they did not argue when the meeting ended.
The engineer silently packed up his blueprints, then got up and left. The financial expert simply watched the scene unfold.
But after that, Geralt changed his allegiance and joined the "King's faction" within the Order. He used his stance and tireless lobbying to win Asura's vote of approval.
Including Gerald himself, there were three votes in favor, three neutral votes, and one vote against.
Three against one.
The Council of Sages passed.
And so, the project began.
.
The first batch of Unknowns came from Team Plasma's birthplace—an ancient ruin buried deep in the seabed, the source of the Ghetsis family's treasure. Three thousand of them. They were carefully placed in specially made Poké Balls and transported from thousands of meters below the surface.
not enough.
The second batch came from the ruins of an ancient kingdom, completely forgotten by history, beneath the Path of Champions. Two thousand. When the archaeological shovel broke through the final sealed stone door, those eyes clinging to the rock walls had been waiting in the darkness for thousands of years.
It's still not enough.
Ghettoss mobilized all the resources the Order could muster. Excavation teams traveled day and night throughout the United States, intelligence networks extended to every corner where the ruins might exist, and they even went so far as to engage in numerous costly transactions with the Navy and the black markets of other regions.
Ultimately, they gathered enough unknown totems to power the castle.
Twelve thousand three hundred.
These are almost all the unknown totems that Team Plasma can find within its entire global range of activity. If the Poké Balls containing them were categorized by symbolic form, they would form twenty-eight exceptionally magnificent hills in the warehouse—each hill corresponding to a letter, a special frequency of psychic energy fluctuation, or a symbolic representation carrying ancient forbidden knowledge.
And Jero, much like computer programming, placed them all in the castle beneath the Alliance headquarters.
No, that probably doesn't qualify as "placement".
That's inlay.
Each unknown totem is fixed in a precisely calculated position—some are embedded deep in the wall, some float between layers, and some are attached to the core nodes of the load-bearing structure.
Their superpower fields intertwine and resonate with each other, eventually weaving into an invisible superpower network that covers the entire castle.
That's the castle's nervous system.
The lungs that allow this "divine castle" to breathe.
Then, the "City Defenders" began "creating" the castle guardians.
It didn't go smoothly at first.
While unknown totems can transform images in consciousness into reality, they require clear and stable "anchor points".
Creatures created purely from imagination—even if they are legendary Pokémon known to every household in Unova—cannot function properly.
Let alone being indistinguishable from the real thing, those newly formed forms, even if they only take one step, will silently disintegrate, collapse, and disappear like bubbles in the sunlight.
The solution came to mind almost immediately.
The Plasma Group's engineering department worked overtime to create three remotely controllable metal shells modeled after the images of Gopaloon, Terakion, and Vilgion.
Embedded within its core is a life-giving orb, which can continuously receive energy from various battlefields through energy collectors laid beneath the castle. This purified and compressed energy becomes the auxiliary energy source for triggering the superpowers of unknown totems—working in conjunction with tens of thousands of unknown totems to construct the will and body of those "bionic machines."
Whether by fate or coincidence, Akroma rejoined the plasma cluster at that very moment.
The mad scientist, later known as someone who pursued his "personal hobby," still possessed a degree of restrained fervor at that time. The moment he joined the project, he sent back a wealth of valuable data to Zero from the ocean off the coast of Hoenn—precious records of legendary Pokémon, as well as even stranger, unheard-of Pokémon forms.
Among them is even the "paradox form" of the three holy swords of Unova, which is said to be found in the urban legends of Padia.
Based on the information he gathered in the Padia region—partially true folk tales, eyewitness accounts scorned by scholars, and hand-drawn illustrations from a gossip magazine called "Supernatural Science Gazette"—Acroma not only presumptuously affirmed the existence of those paradoxical Pokémon, but also presumptuously helped Zero deduce the attributes and appearance characteristics of the three Pokémon.
"Iron Rock, Iron-Spotted Leaves, Iron-Head Shell —"
At that moment, as Jero looked at the hastily copied manuscripts that had been faxed to him, and compared them with the similar-looking metal creations beside him, he murmured these still unfamiliar names and felt a strange sense of emotion—as if those fantastical creatures were created by his own hand from another world—though of course that was just unrealistic imagination.
In fact, after obtaining this data, his "creation" immediately made leaps and bounds.
By simply reading the written descriptions and hand-drawn illustrations sent by Acromima, the Unown understood the "concepts" of those Pokémon.
Thus, they no longer needed complex mechanical drawings, stress parameters, or bills of materials—they only needed to know "what it should look like." Then, those images were dragged out of the void and solidified into realistic biological forms on the steel.
Whether it was the act of "faking legends" itself that boosted the confidence of the unknown totems—once their first attempt was successful, their "imagination" became more vigorous than ever before.
The legendary giants that had failed many times before were successfully materialized this time without even the aid of mechanical structures.
The Unknown Totems seem to resonate with these ancient beings in some way—after they simulated the three Hoenn Titans, Regirock, Regice, and Registeel, they continued to "create" as if out of control.
They simulated the Reggioleci and Reggiolago from the Galilean region, from which sufficient data on plasma clusters is not yet available.
It even simulated the unique Regigigas, which was supposed to be sleeping deep within the Sinnoh Snow Peak Temple.
The reason for this might be that they existed in the past.
In an era far more distant than human dynasties, deep within some forgotten ruins in a corner of the world, the unknown totems did nothing more than to retrieve, piece together, and give flesh and blood to those "shadows" that had vanished into the river of time—those inscriptions left on ancient stone slabs, those images slumbering in ancient memories.
And the energy required to drive all of this —
Jero raised his head and looked at the huge crystal pillars around the cave.
They are not naturally formed.
They are the excrement of unknown totems. Those "imaginary remnants" that cannot be fully digested—impurities remaining in the superpower field, filtered redundant information, and fragments of spirit that cannot be integrated into new creations—crystallize, settle, and accumulate layer by layer over the long years, eventually forming these beautiful and eerie transparent crystals.
"Ha, what a perfect closed loop."
"Gero muttered, a sarcastic smile habitually appearing on his lips."
"When imagination is turned into reality, reality leaves behind residue, and that residue nourishes new imagination."
The 'City Defender's' fingers landed on the light-screen keyboard of the control panel.
Behind him, a supercomputer array composed of dozens of Metagross monsters was running at full speed. This computing power, which was once used to calculate stock market and exchange rates, was now integrated behind the engineers dedicated to Team Plasma. The psychic energy fluctuations were transmitted along specially made magnetic pipes to the deepest room in Team Plasma Castle—the Crystal Cave where the Alliance group was currently located.
He pressed the last light key.
In the next instant, all the countless "eyes" that had just been illuminated by the "Eye of Miracles"—those unknown totems that were turning their eyeballs in terror—vanished completely.
Instead, the legendary elf army, which had just regrouped, took its place.
Regigigas rose again, Regigielaech crackling with electricity, its dragon might rekindled. Their bodies were more solid, more real, more—
Overtime has begun.
Looking through the screen at the tense faces of the intruders, Jero spoke softly, "Being able to see through illusions is certainly your skill."
His voice, for the first time, resonated deep and clear between the crystals through the hidden speakers within the cave: "But—seeing through illusion and conquering reality are two completely different things."