The moment Archie pressed the button, the alarm lights on the ship changed again.
A mechanical voice then announced, "Ship self-destruct sequence initiated. Countdown, 30! 29!…"
As this voice echoed, all the Team Aqua members on the ship were stunned. They never imagined that Archie would choose to abandon them at this moment, self-destructing the ship and sending them to their deaths in the vast ocean along with Aoki and Drake!
Aoki and Drake heard the alarm immediately.
However, Drake and Aoki were not together at this moment. To deal with the grunts more efficiently, they had chosen to temporarily split up.
Drake immediately rushed towards Aoki's location, but Aoki was different from everyone else; a look of joy appeared on his face.
He hadn't expected Archie to choose to abandon this ship at this moment.
Aoki immediately placed his hand on a small controller in the room. This controller was connected to the ship's central control computer.
"Chip, control the main computer, deactivate self-destruct!" Aoki commanded Chip mentally.
Tiny currents immediately flowed from Aoki's skin into the small computer on the wall.
In fact, when he first entered this ship, Aoki had secretly tried to have Chip seize control, but Team Aqua's base was, after all, Team Aqua's base. The main computer's firewall was still very strong, so after one attempt, Aoki gave up.
Fortunately, Chip's stealth ability was quite good, and they hadn't discovered it.
But now that Archie had activated the self-destruct system, wasn't this giving Aoki and Chip an opportunity?
Once the self-destruct system was activated, the main computer's firewall automatically shut down.
Chip easily infiltrated the main computer and then forcibly shut down the self-destruct device. The countdown, which was still around twenty seconds, stopped directly.
Only then did Chip bring all the computers on the entire ship under its control.
The ship that Team Aqua had spent over a decade and vast resources building, had it just fallen into Aoki's hands?
Archie would never have thought of this; otherwise, he would definitely have chosen to fight Aoki and Drake head-on.
Years of immense effort had become Aoki's spoils?
This enormous ship in the sea was practically a war fortress. Although it couldn't go on land, which greatly hindered its ability to display its power, it was precisely because of this battleship's existence that the Alliance had always been unable to locate Team Aqua.
The Alliance could still infiltrate Team Magma with Courtney, but they had never found a good opportunity with Team Aqua.
Drake rushed to Aoki's side in a hurry, only to find that the self-destruct alarm had stopped, leaving him momentarily bewildered.
"What's going on?" Drake asked.
Aoki also pretended not to know, shaking his head, "I'm not very clear either. It seems like there was a problem with the self-destruct device?"
"…"
Drake thought, 'What kind of shoddy stuff did Archie build?'
"Just now, I looked out the window and saw a small submarine leaving. My psychic sense also tells me it's getting farther and farther away. I suspect Archie might have already escaped with his three admins," Aoki said.
Hearing this, Drake pondered for a moment, "Fleeing without a fight isn't his style, unless…"
"Unless the destination isn't far from here, and he's unwilling to take more risks, wanting to awaken Kyogre first. As for us, in his plan, we might have been buried in the sea along with this ship," Aoki interjected.
Drake nodded with a solemn expression, "You know, there are at least a thousand Team Aqua members on this ship, plus the loss of the massive ship. Archie is going all-in, sacrificing the entire Team Aqua just to awaken Kyogre."
"Perhaps in his eyes now, as long as he can awaken Kyogre, everything else can be discarded," Aoki said.
"Let's go! We're going to disappoint him; we didn't perish with his base," Drake said.
Aoki nodded, recalled Tyranitar, and reappeared in the vast ocean with Swampert.
He and Drake pursued Archie's current direction, leaving the ship abandoned in the sea.
However, after Aoki and the others left, the ship suddenly started moving. What was strange was that there wasn't a single person in the cockpit; the ship was self-driving?
In fact, Aoki had Chip control the ship to leave this sea area.
He had no reason not to accept such a grand gift.
"Since you've given me such a grand gift, I'll find an opportunity to let you see the Kyogre you've been dreaming of later," Aoki's eyes grew slightly cold.
Archie was quickly becoming useless.
As for the Team Aqua members inside the ship, they had all fallen unconscious by now.
Team Aqua's ship had many special devices within it. Aoki discovered that there was a large amount of hypnotic mist, so he decisively had Chip release this mist. All the people who were originally preparing to escape fell unconscious on the ground.
These people had become Aoki's captives.
It must be said that the escape submarine Archie and his team were on was indeed fast; even Swampert's swimming speed couldn't catch up.
Inside the submarine, Archie's face was grim. Thirty seconds had passed, but there was no sound of an explosion.
"Damn it! They're all useless; even a self-destruct device can have problems." Archie punched the submarine's wall. The wall, made of some unknown metal, actually showed a slight dent.
Shelly, standing not far behind him, frowned even more at this sight.
Although Archie's physical strength was great, it was only at the level of being strong. The metal here was not so easily damaged.
In the deep sea, the pressure here was very strong. To ensure safety, the metal used was special-grade metal, which even Pokémon would find difficult to damage. But Archie's punch caused a slight dent in the metal. Although it was small, a change had occurred.
The leader's abnormality was growing.
Just as Shelly was surprised by Archie's strength, the submarine, following its navigation route, finally reached its destination: a cave buried deep in the sea.
The submarine drove directly inside.
Once inside, they found that there was no seawater in the cave's interior, and the submarine surfaced.
A dark, damp cave appeared before them.
Archie was the first to emerge from the submarine, his face filled with fanaticism, "Kyogre's slumbering place!!"
"Go! Get in!" Archie said.
Matt and Tabitha also showed fanaticism like Archie, but Shelly's face showed shock.
This… it was exactly the same environment as in that dream, a dark, damp sea cave!