At that moment, Kairos stared at the hovering fragment of the Arceus Tablet before him. He wanted it badly, but he didn't reach out for it right away. He understood perfectly well that nothing good ever came for free.
The thing was genuinely valuable, no question about it, but taking it meant accepting the responsibility that came with it.
He had seen the imposter's power with his own eyes. Even the phantom of Ho-Oh that Marshadow summoned could barely hold it off, and in the end, escaping was the only thing that saved him and Will.
His own strength right now was nowhere near comparable to that monster's.
If he accepted the mission without having the ability to back it up, he wouldn't just fail to complete it. He'd probably lose his life in the process.
And looking at the current situation, Giratina was sending him because it couldn't go itself. Otherwise, judging by its attitude, it would have already torn that thing apart with its own claws.
He took a deep breath, doing his best to make his expression appear sincere, and addressed the enormous phantom looming in the sky above.
"Giratina, I have no intention of refusing your request. This tablet fragment is genuinely important to me. However, you witnessed the imposter's power just now. Even the phantom of Ho-Oh that Marshadow summoned couldn't stand against it."
"With only my current strength, I'm afraid I would have great difficulty completing what you've entrusted to me. So, is there any way you could give me the power needed to fight it?"
The question was direct and practical. When dealing with a legendary Pokemon of this caliber, dancing around the point would only backfire. Better to lay his difficulties out plainly.
Giratina responded with a low, cold snort.
The sound reverberated through the hollow expanse of the Distortion World, sending the floating rubble nearby into a faint tremor. It was clearly filled with intense contempt toward the imposter, and that emotion came through unmistakably even in its voice.
"That despicable fraud..."
There was a thread of disdain running through Giratina's voice.
"It is no god, and it is unworthy of my name. It is nothing more than a lowly Spiritomb."
A Spiritomb?
Kairos blinked. He hadn't expected that the terrifying creature that had nearly wiped out their entire group was actually just a Spiritomb.
Spiritomb was a peculiar Ghost-type Pokemon in its own right, but compared to something like Giratina, a deity bound to creation itself, the gap in both standing and power was simply too vast.
Giratina continued its explanation.
"This Spiritomb stumbled upon a fragment of the Distortion World many years ago. That fragment contained a trace of my power. By stealing the energy within that fragment, it was able to disguise itself in my image and acquire the strength it now possesses."
Hearing that, Kairos instinctively raised his eyes and looked around.
He'd been too busy earlier adjusting to the weightlessness and observing those faceless shadows to examine the surroundings carefully. Now that he looked properly, he could see something was wrong. The architecture here was grand, possessing a strange and otherworldly beauty, but many parts of it were fractured and floating adrift. The sky in the distance was incomplete as well, certain areas appearing as though they had been torn away by force.
Looking carefully at the sky, the entire world resembled a glass sphere that had been shattered halfway and clumsily pieced back together. He committed that to memory.
Was that connected to why Giratina couldn't leave?
Sure enough, what Giratina said next confirmed his suspicion.
"The Distortion World as it stands is incomplete. It is precisely this incompleteness that prevents me, as its sovereign, from leaving freely. Should I depart, this world would collapse entirely, and I would suffer grievous injury. That is why I must act through you."
Kairos nodded. The logic held together now. Giratina was a guardian imprisoned here, unable to leave, which was why it needed a proxy. But he still had one question.
If that Spiritomb had only stolen a trace of Giratina's power, how had it managed to cause such massive disruption in the real world? It hadn't even flinched at Ho-Oh's phantom.
Giratina seemed to read his confusion and continued.
"Although it stole that power, it had originally been sealed away by a powerful binding long ago. The means by which it broke free of that seal was through that black mist."
At the mention of the mist, Kairos felt a tightening in his chest.
Giratina's voice went on.
"That mist absorbs the soul energy of Pokemon and other living creatures, a corrosive force that slowly devours the seal binding it. As long as it absorbs enough soul energy, the seal will shatter completely and it will gain true freedom."
Giratina paused, and a note of cold hardness entered its tone.
"However, it currently has one critical limitation. The mist's power is not yet strong enough to latch onto anything but untethered souls, and it cannot stray too far beyond the seal's boundary. Once it moves outside that range, the area around the coffin, its power drops sharply."
At that, a rapid succession of images from earlier in the Ghost World flashed through Kairos's mind, and all the scattered threads snapped together at once. He remembered watching the mist move as though it were alive, surging from deep within the forest and then flowing back into the coffin. That wasn't simple diffusion; it was more like a harvest.
He also recalled the moment the mist came to a sudden stop at a certain boundary. He had wondered at the time why it didn't keep spreading. Now he had his answer: it couldn't travel too far from the seal.
That also explained the Pokemon that had been affected by the mist, explained why they had become so overwhelmingly aggressive.
It wasn't simple infection or frenzy at all. The Spiritomb was controlling them directly. Those Pokemon under its control were being driven to attack other Pokemon and humans, all for the underlying purpose of harvesting soul energy. The Spiritomb was using those pawns to accumulate the energy it needed to break its seal.
Everything clicked into place for Kairos. Once that was clear, the path forward became much less daunting.
His eyes lit up as he looked toward Giratina.
"If it's sustaining its form and breaking the seal by absorbing soul energy, then we actually don't need to fight it head-on. If we find a way to purify that mist, or cut off its connection to the mist and stop it from drawing on soul energy, wouldn't it weaken on its own, or get resealed?"
It reminded him of a dungeon boss mechanic: the boss was unkillable because weaker enemies kept feeding it power. Clear out the smaller enemies, cut off the supply, and the boss became nothing but a big punching bag.
A glimmer of approval passed through Giratina's crimson eyes. It was clearly satisfied with how quickly Kairos had grasped the situation.
"You are perceptive, human. That is precisely where its weakness lies."
Then its tone shifted, becoming heavier.
"Simple in principle, but far from simple in practice. That mist has already blanketed the core region of the Ghost World, and its corrosive effect is extreme. An ordinary Pokemon that enters would be consumed and lose its mind in an instant. And you... are too weak."
Giratina's words were blunt and landed hard.
Kairos understood that Giratina wasn't referring only to him. It meant the guardians of the Ghost World's lineage as well, and even Elite Four-level trainers like Will.
In an environment like that, where Ghost-type Pokemon of champion and Elite Four caliber roamed freely and the mist seeped in from every direction, an ordinary trainer walking in would simply be throwing their life away. Purification would be impossible, to say nothing of confronting the Spiritomb itself.
It genuinely looked like a dead end: too weak to fight it, and no way to cut off its supply.
And yet, when Kairos heard those three words, "too weak," he didn't feel discouraged. He froze.
His mind instantly echoed back to the mission description the system had issued earlier.
[Help yourself, your Ghost World lineage, grow stronger. Resolve the crisis of the Ghost World.]
He had always found that mission strange. Facing something of that caliber, even if the Ghost World's people received a power boost through some reward, they still wouldn't be able to beat the fake Giratina.
Now everything lined up perfectly. The system's mission had never been asking him to solo the boss. It hadn't been asking the Ghost World's people to go head-to-head with the Spiritomb directly.
Since a direct confrontation wasn't required, and what was actually needed was clearing away the Ghost-type Pokemon acting as its pawns and purifying the mist that served as its fuel supply, the whole thing looked completely different.
Going back to the game analogy: clear the weaker enemies, purify the mist, strip the Spiritomb of its energy source, and it would naturally weaken or even get resealed. No champion-level power needed; just enough people and proper coordination, and it was entirely doable.
This was workable.
But how was he supposed to get the trainers of the Ghost World's lineage, along with the League's people, to willingly go out and clear those dangerous Ghost-type Pokemon? That meant risking their lives. A regular game wouldn't cut it for this.
His previous game had done well, but its essence had nothing in common with life-or-death combat of this kind. He needed to make a new game from scratch, one that could simulate this kind of environment, teaching people how to fight the mist, how to coordinate and purify it together.
But what kind of game would actually fit?
Kairos began thinking through it seriously.
While he was running the numbers in his head, working out a rough design for a new game, Giratina fell silent. It seemed to be considering how best to support this human ally, because at this point, he was its only hope.
Then, abruptly, an intensely deep black radiance began to emanate from Giratina's body.
The light shot skyward and punched straight through the Distortion World's crimson-purple sky, vanishing into the void beyond. The entire Distortion World shuddered violently with that single action, as though something had been forcibly altered.
Kairos looked up in surprise, watching the direction where the column of light had disappeared.
"What was that?"
Giratina answered calmly.
"I have temporarily suppressed the creature inside the coffin. I cannot destroy it outright, but under the weight of my power, it cannot spare the attention to control the mist beyond its confines. When you and the Ghost World's people venture into its depths, at least you will not face a direct assault from its true form."
Without the boss interfering directly, they only needed to focus on the controlled Pokemon and the mist. The difficulty had been cut in half.
Then a second, comparatively gentler black radiance rose from Giratina's claw, drifting downward and settling over Kairos before sinking into his body.
A cool, foreign sensation flooded through him, and the discomfort the weightlessness had caused him instantly faded, his body finding its balance again. Giratina spoke.
"This is a thread of my divine power. When you face mortal danger within the Ghost World, it will preserve your life once. It is only effective within the Ghost World. Do not squander it carelessly."
Kairos felt the cold, formidable energy within him and rubbed his nose.
This sensation was oddly familiar. Ho-Oh's feather had worked the same way as a lifeline back then; it seemed legendary Pokemon all had a fondness for handing out these kinds of emergency tokens, though technically Ho-Oh's had not exactly been given freely.
With this, he felt considerably more confident. At the very least, while exploring the core region of the Ghost World, he wouldn't have to worry about losing his life.
Giratina beat its enormous wings, and the surrounding space began warping again, that powerful weightlessness surging back over him.
"Go, human. Do not disappoint me."
The world spun violently, and before Kairos could say another word, an irresistible force dragged him out of the Distortion World.
---
The Ghost World.
The spot that had been relatively calm before was now littered with signs of destruction.
Marshadow and Will were in the middle of a frantic struggle against the Ghost-type Pokemon flooding in from every direction. Kairos's sudden disappearance had taken a real toll on their morale.
They were still managing to hold the line, but their mood was grim. The Pokemon kept coming in greater and greater numbers, seemingly without end. Marshadow was weaving through bursts of Will-O-Wisp, looking increasingly haggard.
Its moves hit hard, but the Ghost-type Pokemon showed no fear of death; one wave went down and the next crashed right into its place.
Will's Gengar was roaring and driving back wave after wave of Chandelure. Sweat beaded at Will's brow as he directed Gengar's attacks while scanning in every direction, searching for any sign of Kairos.
"Where the hell did that kid go?"
Will let out a frustrated curse. He wouldn't admit it out loud, but he was genuinely worried about Kairos. Kairos was just an ordinary trainer, and without Marshadow, he was even worse off than Will himself. That claw from earlier had been something that even Will couldn't have resisted.
Making things worse, the Pokemon surrounding them kept multiplying, closing in tighter and tighter.
Just as both of them realized they couldn't keep waiting for Kairos and needed to find a way out, he appeared in the air beside them as if out of nowhere.
The sudden appearance startled both Marshadow and Will. Marshadow nearly launched a Shadow Ball at him and only pulled back at the very last instant.
Will blinked hard, half convinced he was seeing a Ghost-type illusion.
Once they made out that it was Kairos, back in one piece, both of them rushed over. Still deflecting any attacks that might come from the surrounding area, they fired questions at him urgently.
"What just happened? Where did you go?"
Will didn't finish his sentence, but the meaning was plain. They had both assumed Kairos was dead.
Marshadow was staring at him with an expression caught somewhere between relief and reproach, its Will-O-Wisp flickering a shade dimmer.
"You actually came back alive?"
Kairos looked at the anxious expressions on both their faces and shrugged.
"Yeah, still alive for now."
"As for what happened... I seem to have gone somewhere very strange and paid a visit to someone very, well, very powerful."
"And I came back with good news. I have a way to deal with that thing."