Ever since it had woken up, Squirtle had always been like this. No matter who it was talking to, it never said much, always wearing that cool, aloof expression.
Back then, Yancy had spent a long time coaxing and pleading just to get a few scraps of information about its past, which was more effort than squeezing toothpaste from an empty tube.
Still, even if it was a Pokémon of few words, its strength was undeniable, so Yancy had no room to complain.
Now, hearing what Squirtle had said, Yancy hesitated for just a moment.
She glanced at the quest log. The task only asked her to collect a certain type of stone, so there was no real urgency.
Since she had stumbled upon this legendary special maze, she absolutely could not pass it up.
Yancy nodded without a second thought. High-grade items and treasure? Of course she was going in.
What had happened with Squirtle earlier had already proven one thing: in this game, Pokémon needed specific attribute resources and items in order to evolve.
She had been wondering for a while why her Larvesta, already past level forty, had shown no signs of evolution whatsoever. Now that she thought about it, it was probably a lack of resources.
After all, both Dragonair and Squirtle had battle power that far exceeded her own Larvesta's, and the two of them had been carrying the team through dungeon after dungeon. Meanwhile, her Larvesta, for reasons she still could not figure out, had laughably low stats and pitifully weak moves. It was practically dead weight, hiding at the back every single fight.
The thought left Yancy feeling a little down.
By any reasonable standard, a Bug-type Pokémon should have been able to evolve quite early on.
So why was this particular Larvesta so completely different?
Its level was already this high, and yet there was not a single sign of evolution anywhere.
She could only hope that this exploration would turn up some Fire-type resources. Maybe then her Larvesta could finally evolve.
If it did not evolve soon, she was going to have a hard time holding her head up as the team leader.
Yancy took a deep breath, steadied herself, and guided her party toward the entrance of the Temporal Maze, which shimmered with a mysterious light. As she moved Larvesta forward and took that first careful step inside, the world in front of her changed in an instant.
The solid ground beneath them seemed to dissolve into soft clouds, and the surroundings began to warp and twist violently. When the view came back into focus, both Yancy and everyone watching the stream were left staring in stunned silence.
The space around them was vast beyond measure. Enormous gears turned slowly in midair, each one as large as a small mountain, interlocking with one another and producing a deep, rhythmic rumble.
The walls were not ordinary stone; instead, they were threaded with flowing light that rippled like the sand inside an hourglass, flickering on and off as though countless eyes were watching every intruder who dared to enter. The air was thick with an ancient, oppressive stillness.
The chat exploded.
"Holy crap, these effects are absolutely insane."
"The lighting alone beats most movies..."
"Feeling kind of dizzy. This maze looks seriously dangerous."
The flood of comments made clear that everyone had been caught off guard by the sudden visual spectacle.
Yancy took a slow breath and forced herself to stay calm. Her palm was already damp around the mouse. An opening this suffocating could only mean the enemies inside were not going to be easy. Sure enough, barely a few steps in, several dark shapes burst out from the mist ahead.
They were wild Pokémon, but something about them was deeply wrong. Their levels were as high as forty, well above what the dungeon would normally have, and their forms were distorted, as if something had been eating away at them. Their features were completely unreadable.
The battle began without warning.
Yancy could not afford to be careless. She threw herself into the controls immediately.
"Squirtle, step back and use Hydro Pump for ranged pressure! Dragonair, use Dragon Pulse to control the field!"
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and the battle on screen surged into chaos.
Squirtle had already evolved, but even so, the level gap made things genuinely difficult. The jet of water it launched slammed into the enemies and dealt damage, but there were no instant knockouts the way there usually were. Dragonair's Dragon Pulse was powerful and covered a wide area, but precisely because of that, it burned through PP fast.
The whole fight was brutally hard. Yancy had to track every Pokémon's position at all times, dodge attacks that hit type weaknesses, and carefully budget how many times each move could still be used.
After several grueling minutes of back-and-forth, the last of the distorted Pokémon finally collapsed and dissolved into white light. The battle was over.
Yancy let out a long breath as she looked at the health bars and PP counts in the status window, each dramatically lower than before.
Finally over.
Those things were so strange. They did not behave like Pokémon at all. When they went down, they just vanished.
Then she looked at what had dropped on the ground, and her eyes went wide.
The pile of glittering items and gold coins was several times larger than anything a normal dungeon would have given her.
Thirty-six gold coins. An A-plus grade ore.
There were even rare seeds and TMs she had never once seen out in the open world.
"We're rich! We actually struck it rich!"
"I knew this special maze was something else. These rewards are absolutely incredible."
"I'm so jealous. I want to run this dungeon too."
Yancy read the comments and felt a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. High risk really did come with high reward.
Once the battle wrapped up, the party moved into their usual post-fight routine of sweeping the battlefield for loot.
Squirtle was especially enthusiastic, padding around on its stubby little legs and rummaging through the pile of items like a diligent little miner. Suddenly its eyes lit up. It had spotted something in the corner.
It scurried over and dug beneath a heap of tangled herbs, uncovering a stone that pulsed with a deep red glow. The stone was perfectly translucent, and inside it, something that looked like an undying flame burned steadily. Even at a glance it was clearly extraordinary.
Squirtle picked it up and stared at it for a moment. Then, as if it had remembered something, it hesitated briefly before turning around and walking over to Larvesta. It held the stone out.
A dialogue box appeared on screen with Squirtle's words.
"Hey, Yancy... this one's for you."
Yancy blinked, then moved Larvesta to respond with a question mark.
"For me? What for?"
Squirtle scratched the back of its head a little awkwardly. That usually stern face broke into something almost shy.
"I... I spotted it while I was going through the stuff. I thought, you're our team leader. You work harder than anyone."
It paused, and its eyes were completely sincere.
"Every time we run into danger, you're the one calling the shots and keeping track of how we're all doing. Dragonair and I have both evolved, but you... you're still the same."
"I think this stone might help you. You should have evolved a long time ago. You should be stronger than me."
Staring at Squirtle's earnest eyes on screen, Yancy felt a warmth settle over her, and genuine emotion welled up.
But alongside that warmth came an uncomfortable truth she could not ignore.
Squirtle was saying all of this purely out of loyalty and affection for its team leader.
In terms of the actual game data, though, her Larvesta was the dead weight of the group.
Low base stats. Poor attributes. Weak moves.
In the fight just now, if Squirtle and Dragonair had not been up front absorbing everything, her Larvesta would probably have been swatted out in one hit.
Squirtle and Dragonair were the real carries, the core damage dealers of the team. And her Larvesta was at best a mascot, the moral support cheerleader sitting in the back.
Hearing Squirtle put it the way it did, Yancy could only feel a tired kind of helplessness.
She started to type something, then stopped, unsure what to say.
In the end, she had Larvesta reach out and accept the stone.
She had already tested it before, and it seemed like Larvesta could not actually use a Fire Stone. But this was a gift from a teammate, and that meant something.
"Thank you, Squirtle. I'll keep working to get stronger."
She was going to find a way to evolve this Larvesta, no matter what. She refused to keep dragging her team down.
The chat had completely melted.
"I'm going to cry. Squirtle is so sweet. I want a friend like that."
"My heart. Actually broken. Why don't I have friends like this?"
"When is the streamer going to evolve? Bug-types are supposed to evolve super early, aren't they? This is painful to watch."
"Right? If that Larvesta goes any longer without evolving I'm genuinely worried it's going to develop a complex lol."
Yancy read through the comments and let out a dry, tired laugh.
If evolving were that easy, things would be a lot simpler.
She tucked the unusable Fire Stone away, the party readjusted, and they pressed on deeper into the maze.
The little moment of sentimentality aside, all those rare items scattered across the ground were very real, very tangible rewards.
The deeper they went, the stranger the surroundings became, and the richer the spoils. Golden ores and blue high-grade healing supplies seemed to be practically everywhere.
The inventory was filling up fast, and every few steps brought something new worth picking up. The feeling of accumulating wealth had Yancy's heart beating noticeably faster.
During the last chaotic skirmish, Squirtle had taken a heavy hit that shaved off a massive chunk of its health, leaving it hanging by a thread. Yancy felt a pang of worry for it and reached into the inventory to pull out one of the top-tier recovery items she had just picked up.
That was when the usually silent and aloof Dragonair suddenly spoke.
"Don't."
Dragonair's voice was as cold as ever.
"Items don't work in here."
Yancy froze, her hand suspended halfway through the motion.
"What do you mean they don't work?"
Dragonair glanced at the enormous gears rotating around them and explained in a level tone.
"That's the rule of the Temporal Maze. Everything collected inside can only become real after you carry it out and it gets settled at the end. Using an item in here just consumes it. It won't do anything."
Yancy's stomach dropped. She immediately put the item back.
Thank goodness Dragonair had said something in time. That would have been a complete waste.
But then Dragonair's tone shifted, and what it said next made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
"Also, watch the time."
Dragonair tilted its head upward, gesturing for Yancy to look at the ceiling.
Above them, a massive clock-like vortex was spinning faster and faster.
"This maze is unstable. It only lasts ten minutes. When the time runs out, the space collapses and we'll be forced out."
Dragonair paused.
"And when that happens, everything we've collected in here will disappear."
Yancy felt a chill run straight down her spine.
She immediately checked the timer in the upper right corner of the screen.
Seven minutes and thirty seconds.
More than half the time was already gone.
If they did not get out right now, everything would be lost.
She looked at the stack of high-grade items filling her inventory and did not hesitate for a single second.
"Everyone, listen up! We're leaving now!"
They had already made a haul. There was no point in pushing their luck.
Getting out safely was what mattered.
She took control and turned the party around, sending them sprinting for the exit. But the moment they turned and made for the faint glowing doorway ahead, everything went wrong.
The shadows deep in the maze began to writhe and contort violently, as though something terrible was waking up.
A suffocating pressure closed in from every direction, and then a group of Pokémon radiating black aura materialized out of thin air, cutting off Yancy's path.
These were not wild Pokémon. These were members of Shadow Squad.
They all wore the distinctive red and black garments that marked the organization.
At the front was a Houndoom at level sixty, its eyes blazing with cruel red light, flanked by a pack of equally menacing Crobat and Ariados behind it.
"Well, well, kid. Fancy running into you again. Looks like you've been picking up quite a haul. Hand it all over."
A forced encounter had triggered.
Yancy's face went pale.
There was no way they could win this. The level gap was enormous, and the enemy outnumbered them three to one.
But there was no backing out now. The battle had started automatically.
She gritted her teeth and issued commands, trying to carve an opening through the encirclement.
"Squirtle, hold the line! Dragonair, use Hyper Beam to blast a gap! Move, move!"
In her panic, Yancy's inputs slipped for just a moment.
Larvesta edged slightly too far forward and ended up directly in Houndoom's attack range.
Houndoom let out a roar and launched a jet of pitch-black flames.
Yancy tried to pull back, but there was no time.
The Larvesta she controlled, caught in the opening volley of concentrated fire, went down without even a sound. It simply crumpled and went still on the ground, greyed out on screen, out of the fight.
"No!"
Losing one member did not meaningfully reduce the team's overall firepower, but it placed enormous extra pressure on Squirtle and Dragonair, who now had to face the full onslaught on their own.
Squirtle kept using Protect, its green barrier flickering and cracking under the relentless assault. Dragonair breathed streams of dragon energy, but there were too many enemies, and the barrage of attacks coming from every angle was more than it could handle.
The seconds kept ticking down.
The countdown in the upper right corner had turned a vivid warning red.
Thirty seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Squirtle knocked out one more enemy, but then a poison sting from an Ariados found its mark, and it collapsed.
Now Dragonair stood alone.
۞۞۞۞
~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones