Before long, the leader of the Bruxish woke up, and its underlings immediately surrounded it. The fall of their leader had filled them with immense fear just moments ago.
Now that it was awake, they finally felt at ease.
However—
The Bruxish leader swam to the shore and said to Julian, "What do you want?"
Its tone was relatively polite, considering it was the defeated party. Moreover, it had realized that it couldn't even defeat the injured Kartana.
And beside Kartana stood another Pokémon with an even more powerful aura.
How could it afford to have a bad attitude?
"I want to go to the bottom of the pool. I hope you won't interfere," Julian said.
If he didn't beat them into submission, there was no way he could reach the bottom of the pool.
But even after defeating them, there was no guarantee they wouldn't try something once he entered the water.
After all, underwater was where they could truly unleash their strength.
The Bruxish nodded, secretly letting out a huge sigh of relief.
As the defeated party, it had assumed it would be forced to leave the pool. But now, the other party merely wanted to go to the bottom—in its eyes, that wasn't even a real demand.
But what was there to see at the bottom? Could there be some kind of treasure?
The Bruxish leader wasn't stupid. As an Elite-level Pokémon, its intelligence was on par with a human's. After a moment's thought, it concluded that there might indeed be treasure at the bottom.
But it also doubted this possibility. After all, its kind had lived in this pool for many years, and it was familiar with every corner of it.
Meanwhile, Julian had already sent out Slowking, instructing it to take the Dowsing Machine with it.
As Slowking dove into the pool, the Bruxish group began to stir—an outsider was invading their territory!
However, their commotion died down quickly after the leader shouted a few commands.
"By the way, how deep is this pool?" Julian asked.
Bruxish Leader: "The deepest part is about thirty meters."
Thirty meters wasn't that deep, but if the treasure was buried far underground, extracting it would require considerable effort.
While Slowking was underwater, Julian walked over to a rock by the pool and said to Kartana, "Flatten this."
With a flash of blade light, the rock was cleanly sliced into a smooth, perfectly sized stone stool.
Sitting on the rock, Julian pulled out his gaming console from his system space. If not for the fact that the secret realm had no signal, he would've already played a few rounds of Pokémon Glory to pass the time.
Because the energy concentration in secret realms was much higher than in the outside world, even if signal towers were built, the signals would be severely disrupted.
And the higher the level of the secret realm, the worse the interference.
Moreover, these signal towers would inevitably be destroyed by the wild Pokémon in the realm—unless someone was stationed there to guard them permanently.
So, all the countries simply gave up on the idea of building signal towers.
Julian was currently playing a fighting game, and the character he had picked just happened to be a swordsman.
Kartana stood beside him, watching the screen with great interest as the two characters battled.
Julian shouted, "Watch my ultimate move—Blade Storm!"
On the screen, countless swords suddenly appeared around the swordsman, forming a tornado that swept the opponent into it.
Kartana: "That move is so cool! I want to learn it!"
Julian: "I'll teach it to you when you defeat Metagross."
For this kind of battle-obsessed, chūnibyō-spirited Pokémon, outright refusal wouldn't work—you had to redirect its enthusiasm in another way.
'Defeat Metagross?' Kartana turned its gaze toward the lazy, sunbathing Metagross sprawled beside Julian, eyes filled with fighting spirit. It raised its arm and declared, "Once my injuries heal, your spot will be mine!"
Over the past few days, Kartana had learned that Metagross was the undisputed leader of Julian's team.
As a hot-blooded and slightly delusional battle-loving Pokémon, how could it settle for being second best?
Kartana: "A true warrior born under heaven cannot endure living in another's shadow forever!"
Metagross didn't respond, merely giving Julian a sidelong glance that seemed to say: 'Aren't you going to do something about this?'
After beating another opponent in the game, Julian patted Metagross's head and said, "It's genderless, just like you."
This reminded him of something, and he turned to Kartana. "Hey, how do your kind reproduce, anyway?"
Many genderless Pokémon reproduced by splitting. In the games, they could lay eggs by pairing with Ditto, but that wasn't how it worked in reality.
Pokémon like Metagross, Magnezone, and Klingklang all reproduced by splitting off parts of themselves.
Among the known genderless Pokémon, quite a few were Steel-types.
Kartana shook its head—it had no idea.
From the moment it was born, it had never seen its parents. It had grown up entirely on its own.
Most Pokémon, after reproducing, would take care of their young until they were strong enough to survive in the wild. Only then would they send them off.
Only a very small number of Pokémon would hide their eggs in some secret location and then simply leave.
These newborn Pokémon would never see their parents, and whether they survived or not depended entirely on luck.
For Pokémon that grew up without any parental care, the mortality rate exceeded 90%.
As a result, such species were often extremely rare, practically pushing themselves toward extinction.
Kartana was one of them.
He had already been in this secret realm for over a month, and besides Kartana, Julian hadn't seen any other Ultra Beasts. That showed just how few of them there really were.
If it wasn't for Kartana mentioning that it had seen others of its kind in this secret realm, Julian would've almost assumed that it was the only Ultra Beast here.
As for Kartana not knowing how its species reproduced, Julian didn't find it suspicious.
Some genderless Pokémon only learned how they reproduced after reaching a certain age.
And Kartana was only thirty years old.
Reaching mid-Elite level strength by the age of thirty, all on its own in the wild, was like a regular person starting from nothing and achieving financial freedom by thirty. The difficulty was unimaginable.
Among all of Julian's Pokémon, if ranked by age, Kartana was the second oldest. The oldest, of course, was Celebi—who had lived for centuries.
"Meta~."
Metagross, who had been dozing, suddenly opened its eyes.
At the same time, Kartana, who had been watching Julian play his game, also suddenly turned its head to look behind them.
Noticing the odd behavior of both Pokémon, Julian put down his game console, casually pressing the pause button. "What's wrong? Something coming this way?"
Aside from being the Bruxish's territory, this pool was also the only water source in the area, attracting many wild Pokémon to drink daily.
Earlier, the battle had scared off any Pokémon that wanted to come close.
Now that the fighting had stopped. Naturally, some thirsty wild Pokémon couldn't resist and began to approach.
Julian glanced at the approaching Pokémon—none of them were particularly high-leveled, and none had Cyan-grade potential.
He looked down, shrugged and unpaused his game, continuing to play.
*****
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