"Boom—!" The golden Sacred Fire overflowed like a surging river turning into a sea.
Driven by the combined will of 'Ho-Oh + Ash,' it swept across the firmament.
The moment he thoroughly merged with Ho-Oh, some of the previous circumstances also appeared in Ash's mind. He instantly understood many things.
It turned out that the reason Ho-Oh bit the dust so decisively earlier wasn't purely due to Beedrill's fast and ruthless sneak attacks, but more so because Ho-Oh had been holding back from the very beginning. Its primary objective upon descending was to purify the environment and heal injuries, pouring the majority of its divine power into this. Giovanni's sneak attack could be described as a premeditated strike against an unprepared target.
And its seemingly clumsy responses afterward were even more so due to its benevolence and... guilty conscience. Ho-Oh's Sacred Fire was special to the point that it could exclusively burn away filth without harming living beings.
But if it truly let go and utilized that mighty power capable of manipulating weather phenomena over an area of tens or hundreds of miles... for example, summoning a thunderstorm covering the entire city. Giovanni's Beedrill might be fine. But Gringey City, this city that had just experienced a tribulation, would probably be reduced to ruins in an instant.
One must know that the current battlefield was the garbage dump outside Gringey City, which actually wasn't too far from Gringey City.
For instance, Ho-Oh could actually use Hyper Beam. But did it dare to use it? Setting aside the fact that this move definitely wouldn't hit Beedrill. What was important was the consequences after the move was unleashed.
If a Hyper Beam was fired off into outer space, that would be fine. If the angle was wrong and it hit the ground... it would probably create a super massive crater. Hitting the sea would result in a massive tsunami.
Ho-Oh's skill set was fundamentally unsuited for battling a super-high-speed, small-sized target like Beedrill. Mainly, Ho-Oh's personality was simply too friendly.
If you swapped in Groudon or Kyogre encountering this kind of situation, they would just be firing off map-wiping attacks everywhere. They wouldn't care at all about what got caught in the crossfire.
Giovanni's Beedrill was the extreme of concentrating its own power into a single point. Apart from its explicit attack range, it wouldn't cause much collateral damage outside of it. This was also the characteristic of human Trainers. After all, human power has its limits. Therefore, when training Pokémon, there is a great emphasis on the control of power.
But divine power is infinite. When gods like Ho-Oh made a move, they always used grand, sweeping motions. What did it mean to only use good steel on the blade's edge? They had never done such a thing, alright?
So if they really fought, the collateral damage would inevitably be extremely widespread. People, it could resurrect. But those buildings and facilities that humans had poured their blood, sweat, and lives into, was it supposed to destroy them all and have them rebuilt?
Furthermore, it harbored a guilty conscience regarding the matter of 'capturing Giovanni's son.' Ho-Oh's previous thought was actually: letting this angry fellow beat me up a few times to vent his anger is fine too, he can't kill me anyway.
After all, strictly speaking, Ho-Oh didn't possess a state of life and death in the true sense. Simply destroying its physical form could not cause any impact on its essence. Without breaking Ho-Oh's existence mechanism, it did not have the concept of life and death in the general sense, nor did a so-called health bar exist.
No matter how it was attacked, it was actually all invalid damage output.
This slacker mentality left Ash momentarily speechless. But now, it was different!
The sensation of fusion was incredibly wondrous. Ash could clearly feel Ho-Oh's power, as vast as the sea, surging within his body.
And Ho-Oh was also pleasantly surprised to discover that this Rainbow Hero not only had a resilient temperament but also possessed extraordinary skills. That peculiar Aura was perfectly making up for its shortcomings.
[Fire God·Divine Might] Driven by Ho-Oh's power, the external manifestation was not illusory light and shadow, but golden energy condensed into substance. Like the most magnificent armor, it covered Ho-Oh's wings and torso layer by layer, greatly enhancing its defense and preventing it from being easily pierced by Beedrill's stingers anymore.
[Aura Mind's Eye·Domain of the Dark Sky] Under the fused state and driven by Ho-Oh's power, the effects also experienced a qualitative leap. All things in the world have Aura, and Ho-Oh did too. This domain was no longer pure perception; countless invisible yet truly existent energy ripples surged in the void.
Like billions of invisible eyes, from all directions—up, down, left, and right—they firmly locked onto Beedrill's figure. No matter how fast Beedrill was, its trajectory had nowhere to hide under the gaze of the countless 'Aura Eyes.'
The domain's range was more than dozens of times larger than when Ash used it!
[Medium·Divine Possession] allowed their wills and powers to blend perfectly. If it was said that the previous Ho-Oh was using a support skill set. Its highest-level skills were of the support type. Then now, Ho-Oh's skills had been swapped out. The current Ho-Oh was using Ash's skill set.
Ho-Oh: '[Fire God·Divine Might] + [Aura Mind's Eye·Domain of the Dark Sky] are really useful.'
Now, this super support with an immortality passive had been equipped with a warrior's skill set. It could simply be described as... a mutated, brainless three-body-problem-esque hero of the new era, indiscriminately slaughtering everyone in a team fight.
If this appeared on the enemy team, people would definitely curse the developers to death. But if this was in one's own hands, then it felt absolutely incredible.
Although Ho-Oh didn't know how Ash obtained these abilities, it indeed learned their names from him. But that didn't matter anymore.
The Aura Hero was inherently miraculous. The last time it heard about it was from Mew regarding the Aura Hero from a thousand years ago.
—Not only the [Aura Hero], but also my [Rainbow Hero].
Ho-Oh felt that it was perfectly normal for Ash to have special traits.
"Screech—!"
Ho-Oh let out an exhilarating and hearty cry, its thoughts transmitting over: "My Hero, your power... is actually this wondrous! Haha, next time I see Mew, I definitely must show this off."
Ho-Oh knew that the Aura Hero was very special to Mew. But so what? Right now, this was its [Rainbow Hero] first. Don't even think about stealing him from me!
Ash: "...Is now the time to be talking about this?! Take care of the Beedrill in front of us first, Ho-Oh!"
Ash could feel Ho-Oh's initially depressed and suppressed emotions currently becoming excited. A healer who had played support for countless years suddenly possessing top-tier enemy search and damage output capabilities... that eager-to-try impulse was simply about to overflow.
Of course, this was definitely mixed with a little retaliatory psychology against Giovanni for infinitely 'killing' it just now. Ho-Oh indeed didn't care about whether it died or not. But it still cared about whether it lost face or not.
At the same time.
On a mountain peak far away on the outskirts of Gringey City. Giovanni stood with his hands behind his back, his gaze penetrating space to stare fixedly at the gigantic, brilliantly golden divine bird in the distance.
His face was stern and cold, revealing neither joy nor anger. But his slightly furrowed brows indicated that he had perceived the opponent's changes.
Behind Giovanni, there was a figure wearing armor.
"Fusion? Interesting..." Giovanni muttered softly to himself. Then, no longer hesitating, he raised his right hand.
On his wrist, that unique Key Stone suddenly flashed!
"Our will! Mega Evolution!"
The light of evolution crossed space, generating a strong resonance with the Mega Stone carried on Beedrill's body in the sky above the battlefield. A bridge of life and spirit was constructed in an instant, and an even more majestic power surged into Beedrill's body!
This was the bond necessary for high-level Trainers and Pokémon to take a step further. This was also the reason why Vicious, despite being a top executive of Team Rocket, could never take center stage.
"Bzzzzt—!!"
Beedrill let out a sharp and ear-piercing buzz, its form undergoing a further metamorphosis amidst the iridescent light. The three parts of its body were no longer tightly connected; a black connecting structure grew in the middle, making it appear much more agile and full of explosive power.
The antennae on its head shortened and extended backwards, like two sharp short blades. Its tail had completely transformed into a sharp cone pointing forward, featuring two grooves on it. The stinger at the tip lengthened, gleaming with a deadly, eerie light.
At the base of the stingers on its hands, structures resembling the handguards of knightly lances grew out, and its legs also transformed into twin stingers with black and yellow stripes.
At this moment, Mega Beedrill was surrounded by Bug-type energy spiraling and vibrating at an extremely high frequency. Even the air was sliced open, letting out a buzzing wail.
It was as if it were the ultimate weapon existing solely for penetration and speed! Its entire appearance looked filled with a sense of sharpness.
Giovanni and Beedrill were about to unleash their true, strongest power!
—Giovanni + Beedrill: Will we win?
—Ash + Ho-Oh: You are the challenger here.
"Here it comes!" Ash and Ho-Oh's wills warned simultaneously.
Almost the second after Mega Beedrill completed its evolution, the battle erupted once again. But this time, the offensive and defensive roles were reversed.
With Ash's skill set, how could Ho-Oh's current strength be described as just a tiny bit stronger? Now, Ho-Oh's counterattack was no longer the previous kind of wide-coverage yet low-efficiency firestorm launched after passively taking a beating.
The [Immortal Divine Bird] was seen flapping its wings.
In the sky, those countless [Eyes] formed by Aura suddenly lit up with a brilliant golden light. Every single [Eye] instantly condensed a highly compressed ball of Sacred Fire, containing the dual attributes of purification and destruction!
The next moment.
Millions of golden fiery meteors streaked across the sky, weaving an inescapable dragnet of death that chased after its prey. They predicted the landing spot of every single one of Mega Beedrill's blinks, blocking it in advance, pursuing from behind, and flanking from left and right.
"BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM—!!!"
The explosions were no longer intermittent rumbles, but almost connected into a continuous, deafening symphony of destruction. Golden fiery light erupted simultaneously all over the sky, forming a continuous, dazzling golden band of light that tightly bit onto the frantically blinking yellow figure attempting to break out of the encirclement.
No matter what, Ho-Oh was still a god. When Ash used[Aura Mind's Eye·Domain of the Dark Sky], it was primarily to receive external fluctuation information.
Now, after temporarily merging with Ho-Oh, [Aura Mind's Eye·Domain of the Dark Sky] was also drastically enhanced. It could be said: the Divine Eyes observed all phenomena in the universe; wherever Aura flowed, its power would reach.
—Ho-Oh: Please call me the Sun God now!
Ho-Oh's current state could simply be described as high beyond belief. Its Sacred Fire was transmitted through Aura. As long as it was within this Aura Domain, it could attack with zero cast time and zero travel time.
However, unlike modern popular games with fixed skill buttons. The situation was somewhat similar to The King of Fighters, which had a move list. Even if the skill could attack with zero cast time and zero travel time after being executed. The player executing the skill still needed time themselves.
It was also because of this that Mega Beedrill wasn't instantly finished off.
Mega Beedrill pushed its speed to the absolute limit. Its figure drew countless afterimages in the air, sometimes turning at right angles, sometimes climbing in a spiral, and sometimes drilling into the clouds, attempting to shake off the lock-on.
That pair of stingers, which resembled cavalry lances after evolution, waved frantically, shattering the oncoming fiery meteors in advance. Every collision erupted with blinding light and violent energy impacts.
However, the Aura Domain's lock-on was like an incurable disease; no matter how it struggled, there would always be more fiery meteors striking from inconceivable angles. It was as if it had sunk into a raging swamp made of light and heat, making every inch of progress incredibly difficult.
Occasionally, a stray spark would slip through the net and strike its body. Although it was mostly weakened by the high-frequency oscillating Bug-type power surrounding it, it still left scorch marks on its hard exoskeleton.
The purifying property accompanying the Sacred Fire made it feel waves of instinctive aversion and stinging pain.
"Bzzzzt!!" Mega Beedrill let out an anxious buzz.
This feeling of being completely suppressed and forced to run for its life was something it hadn't experienced in a very long time. When was the last time?
"Haha! Exhilarating! This is truly too exhilarating!" Ho-Oh's thoughts were filled with excitement. "My Hero~ this Aura Domain of yours is too useful~~"
It poured out its vast divine power without reservation, controlling the sky full of fiery meteors to encircle, pursue, and intercept.
While maintaining the stability and mental lock-on of the Aura Domain, Ash felt Ho-Oh's almost prodigal energy output, and his mouth twitched slightly. He could only say that after personally experiencing the so-called 'Power of a God'. It was indeed different from mortal creatures.
Giovanni's Mega Beedrill had indeed trained to a level that matched the gods. But through his connection with Ho-Oh, Ash could feel that Ho-Oh's energy reserves exceeded Mega Beedrill's by an unknown multitude of times.
It was as if these gods each had a swimming pool's worth of energy reserves, yet could only draw water using a small straw. The reason it was suppressed and beaten by Beedrill earlier was because Beedrill only needed its short-term output to be higher than Ho-Oh's.
However, this could only suppress it for a short period of time. In a battle of attrition and endurance, it couldn't win.
Considering that Ho-Oh's ability was near absolute immortality... the method to defeat Ho-Oh could be said to be limited to sealing. This was also the reason why Ho-Oh mentioned it had been sneak-attacked and controlled previously.
Ho-Oh could immune direct damage. But Ho-Oh didn't have super armor. Ho-Oh couldn't immune crowd-control skills.
And now, a very interesting thing had occurred. Practicing his skills using Ho-Oh's power, Ash now had even more experience in utilizing the Aura Domain.
Compared to Ho-Oh's method of locking onto the target first and then launching an attack. Ash felt that they could unleash the attacks first and then let Beedrill crash into them itself. Simply put, it was planting landmines everywhere within this Aura Domain.
"Ho-Oh! Feel it with your heart along with me. Dark Sky Fluctuation Eye!" Ash closed his eyes on top of Ho-Oh's head.
"Alright." Ho-Oh didn't refuse either. After all, using this skill of Ash's indeed felt very novel.
At the same time, in the sky, on the ground, and in the air, ripples surged everywhere. Ash and Ho-Oh's wills were highly synchronized in the Divine Possession state. Like two pebbles thrown into a calm lake, within that void-filling [Aura Mind's Eye·Domain of the Dark Sky], the originally relatively regular fluctuation perception suddenly became incredibly complex and dense.
It was as if two invisible fluctuation sources were oscillating simultaneously within the domain. The Aura frequencies they emitted intertwined, superimposed, and interfered with each other.
The perception ripples, which originally rippled like gentle waves, now transformed into surging undercurrents. They also resembled countless layers of invisible spiderwebs, fine to the extreme, frantically spreading and converging in all directions with Ho-Oh at the center. This was no longer a simple lock-on, but turning the entire airspace into an airtight cage.
"Bzzzzt!!"
Mega Beedrill instantly felt unprecedented pressure. Its speed, which defied common sense, was greatly restricted within this domain that was frantically stirred by the dual Auras.
Every blink felt like crashing into walls that were soft yet extremely resilient. The air became viscous, and the 'gaps' in space were being rapidly compressed and filled.
Its proud tactic of weaving through attack intervals relying on prediction and speed was rapidly becoming ineffective. The Sacred Fire that materialized out of thin air appeared from increasingly tricky angles and with increasingly fatal timing. They often waited right on the inevitable path of its turns or erupted from the blind spots of its perception.
—It couldn't go on like this!
A fierce glint flashed in Mega Beedrill's compound eyes. The high-frequency oscillating Bug-type energy around its body suddenly spiked to the limit, letting out an ear-piercing shriek. It abandoned pure high-speed evasion and chose the most direct and also the most dangerous method—offense as defense!
"Swish! Swish! Swish!"
The yellow figure no longer blindly dodged, but transformed into a swift shadow tearing through space, actively crashing into those incoming fiery meteors. Its pair of lance-like stingers stabbed out frantically at unprecedented speeds, detonating clusters of highly compressed Sacred Fire with a single strike before they could reach its body!
Boom! Boom! BOOM—!
The fiery light of the explosions almost completely submerged it. Relying on extreme speed and attacks, Mega Beedrill forcefully carved out a path amidst the torrential rain of destruction, attempting to close in on Ho-Oh's main body to deliver a fatal strike.
Although it knew it definitely couldn't win. It at least had to take down Ho-Oh in this state once. Otherwise, it wouldn't be satisfied!
However, its desperate sprinting trajectory, along with the subtle patterns that inevitably manifested under the dense interference of the dual Auras...
For instance, after consecutively destroying fiery meteors at the three o'clock direction, it would habitually deflect towards the eleven o'clock direction. When enduring the impact of a flank explosion, its body would execute a minuscule clockwise rotation to dissipate the force.
...All these details were clearly captured, magnified, and transmitted to Ho-Oh and Ash by that omnipresent, intertwining, and resonating dual Aura Domain.
"Right there!" Ash felt it was about time.
"I see it!" Ho-Oh's response carried a hunter-like excitement.
The next instant, the dual fluctuation frequencies within the Aura Domain suddenly changed, as if achieving some kind of bizarre resonance.
Just as Mega Beedrill, having consecutively pierced through five fiery meteors, was about to execute a short-distance downward-diagonal dash according to its habit to avoid the anticipated interception directly ahead—
Directly in front of it, diagonally below it, and even on both sides and behind its intended dash route, over two hundred clusters of golden Sacred Fire simultaneously lit up, condensed, and erupted without warning. They were not blindly covering the area, but systematically sealing off all its possible evasion angles.
This was a pre-set death trap, just waiting for Beedrill to step into it itself.
For the first time, Mega Beedrill's compound eyes clearly reflected that inescapable light of destruction closing in from all directions. There was nowhere to escape in heaven or earth.
It could only face this wave head-on. Therefore. Giovanni's Beedrill—Protect!
The attack intensity released through the Aura Domain was not high for Mega Beedrill. Although Ho-Oh and Ash could stack it through sheer quantity, it was still within the realm of what Mega Beedrill could fight through.
But now, there was a very serious problem. Even Giovanni's Beedrill had no way of using Protect consecutively too many times. Which meant that if they kept fighting like this. The winner would definitely be Ho-Oh + Ash.
The battlefield fell into an even more white-hot stalemate.
On one side was Ho-Oh + Ash, possessing infinite divine power and increasingly tacit coordination. On the other side was Mega Beedrill + Giovanni, possessing unparalleled speed and indestructible attacks.
The collision of energies twisted the sky, shockwaves spreading out ring by ring, dispersing even the distant cloud layers.
Fortunately, Ho-Oh had been using Sacred Fire the entire time. If it used other skills, their outward diffusion would cause destruction to reality. But with Sacred Fire, its typing could be altered into healing.
Currently, only Beedrill on the battlefield would be harmed by the Sacred Fire. This was Ho-Oh's benevolence.
...Even though the trial of the Rainbow Hero, this scam of a test, existed.
...But this similarly meant that Ho-Oh's personality would be just like this trial. In short, Ho-Oh couldn't possibly be the type of entity that destroyed wantonly.
However, thanks to Ho-Oh... this region would become quite clean and fertile in the future, right? After all, the amount of Sacred Fire Ho-Oh had released was simply too much.
Of course, these powers wouldn't vanish into thin air, but would blend into the air, seawater, and earth. At the very least, Gringey City's pollution problem was completely resolved overall.
(0_0) Entei: I'll take this chance to replenish a bit more Sacred Fire; my condition is much better now.
(.□□口.) Suicune: My future workload has also eased up a lot; I'll just need to slightly clean up certain corners and that'll be it.
() Entei: Speaking of which, Ho-Oh is having a lot of fun playing around this time.
("□") Suicune: Yeah...
____
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