After giving me a blank look, the Goldeen shared that the weakest chief among the Pokémon occupying the home zones around this stretch was a (mid) gold stage Tentacruel, which came as another surprise after Shellder's discovery since I did not expect to see any Tentacruel, or even Tentacool for that matter, while exploring this place. Consequently, I had no choice but to assume that the (under)water channel had to have a direct connection to the ocean somewhere.
I could not imagine another reasonable explanation why those two species could be found here. Hell, given the existence of both Shellder and Tentacruel, I would not be surprised if we came across other "sea" Pokémon during our exploration. That being the case, I could not help but inwardly complain about the people who wrote the alliance's exploration record I read.
Had they just tried to head as far in as possible without bothering to look at the ecology inside the channel? Granted that was probably their mission. However, some mentions of seeing Pokémon that could generally not be found in the public areas of the Meteor Falls would not have been too much, would it? I seriously doubted that they had come across a single standout during their deep diving attempt.
Maybe they thought no one would bother with the channel anyway after reading about the danger, or they simply gave no f**ks and could not be bothered to write more than they had to. I somehow had a feeling that it was the latter since most people hated writing reports, including myself, but it still ticked me off regardless.
Anyway, I understood why the Goldeen were roaming around this area if with a (mid) gold Tentacruel was the weakest boss they had to face to occupy a home zone. The strongest among them was the sole Seaking, and he was only at the (low) gold stage, so he wouldn't stand a chance at usurping any of the protectors' homes; That was what I thought right before something else came to my mind, so I turned to Goldeen and shared what had just come to me.
Logically there had to have been at least one, possibly more, Seaking that had managed to get strong enough to secure a home zone from themselves, right? In that case, they should logically be accepting, if not other Seaking, at least the Goldeen roaming around. Actually, how big were those home zones anyway? We had not seen one yet, but could it be that they could only support a small number of occupants?
I mean, given the width and height of the channel so far, that would make some sense, though it probably made up for that with its length seeing how alliance personnel had been forced to abort their exploration after diving for more than ten kilometers. Thinking of the danger those people experienced made me remember the warning as well as the offer the Milotic gave me, and combining that with the information I got from the Goldeen I could not help but wonder if the safe parts belonging to them that they mentioned to us were home zones that they occupied.
When they said it at that time, I had assumed that they meant that a stretch of the (under)water channel belonged to them, but with what I knew now, the home zone bit made more sense. Their warning of the danger and ambushes we could experience as soon as we left their parts could still work with the stretch idea, but thinking back to the whole evolution debacle, it felt a bit weird how quickly the Gyarados had arrived. Not to mention how it managed to arrive before the Bosslotic.
It would make some sense if the Gyarados territory/stretch came first, but in that case, it became suspicious how Bosslotic caught up as quickly as they did given that they would have had to go through said Gyarados territory. The same was true the other way around. However, if their respective territories were not whole stretches of the channel but home zones dotted within it, things would make more sense. As for the fiasco, that would be more reasonable if they happened to be in one of their close-by home zones.
They could have felt the undulation Feebas/Milotic released during the evolution and rushed over, with Gyarados having a slight advantage due to being a bit closer to the mouth/waterfall. As for them having one or more home zones near each other, that was not unreasonable if they were for the sake of supervising/keeping an eye on one another, though it could also serve as a point of continuous conflict. I guess I would find out if that was the case once I came across a home zone that belonged to them.
Actually, this also meant that I could stumble upon a home zone belonging to the Gyarados, so it was probably better to verify that as quickly as possible since I had to avoid those if things were truly as I speculated. '*sigh*' I ended up letting my thoughts wander off track again. Focusing back on the Goldeen, I listened as they confirmed that there were indeed multiple home zones with Seaking in charge, BUT those tended to be pretty much personal community-exclusive places.
Some wild Goldeen and/or Seaking were able to join those communities, but the requirements tended to be strict, whether they be high degrees of beauty, strength, talent, or potential. The fact that they actually mentioned beauty before strength was a bit weird, but apparently, Goldeen/Seaking were a tad vain. Who would have thought?
Honestly, it sounded more like those communities were scouting spouses, and maybe they were, though spots seemed to be slim since Goldeen said that none of those among them that tried passed which discouraged most of the others in their group. I guess the ones that deemed themselves inferior to the forerunners did not even bother trying which was somewhat sad if not rather realistic of them.
However, given the fact that there was more than one (low) silver Goldeen I could not help but lament how picky those ornamental goldfish were. It felt like they were even more selective than I was when scouting recruits for Utopia. Still, putting that aside, I decided to clarify the Milotic Gyarados home zone issue I had thought of, now that the reason behind the current Goldeen dilemma had been made clear.
I found out that my assumption was correct, which was nice to know, but also a bit worrying with the risk of stumbling upon a Gyarados-owned home zone. The prospect of being unlucky enough to run into one of those with one of the Overlord Gyarados staying there was not a good one. Just imagining the possibility of leisurely approaching a random home zone before getting blitzed in the face by a surprise Hyper Beam released by a platinum stage Gyarados sent a shiver down my back.
Getting caught off guard by an attack like that from a Pokémon of that level would likely result in an instant death for little old me, and even the existence of Utopia would not help in such a situation. Honestly, ignoring myself for a moment, I was not sure if either BossBro/Slowbro or Kun/Azuraid could survive a surprise Hyper Beam to the face if the one shooting that death beam was one of the (high) platinum stage Gyarados.
Only Mothra/Butterfree and Hades/Gengar were guaranteed to survive an ambush like that, though both would get hurt in the process; Mothra more so than Hades. As for why I believed that? Mothra was just strong enough to do so, though she would have to endure the Hyper Beam as it was. Meanwhile, Hades survived entirely thanks to his typing.
The only reason I did not think that Hades could escape unharmed despite Hyper Beam's normal/neutral energy passing through his ghost body without interacting with it was that I was sure that the heat produced as a byproduct of a Hyper Beam of that level was enough to still hurt a ghost at the (high) gold stage. Granted it wouldn't be anywhere near a serious injury, but it would definitely still hurt.
We obviously did not want such a scenario to happen, so I immediately asked if they knew which home zones belonged to the Gyarados or any other "dangerous"/overly-aggressive Pokémon. Unfortunately, the Goldeen were of limited help on that front for two reasons. First, they had not gone all that far into the stream, so they only had information limited to the home zones close to our current location. The second problem was that they did not use maps or our measuring system so translating their knowledge was a bit confusing and cumbersome.
Still, by employing a rough comparison using their description of swimming like this for this long, I was able to guesstimate that their activity range extended to roughly up to 4 or so kilometers further down the channel. Within this stretch, the Goldeen mentioned the presence of 7 home zones, of which the fourth and fifth ones belonged to the Gyarados and Milotic respectively. I honestly thought that 7 formations within such a distance was a bit much. However, given that at least the 3rd and 4th ones had apparently been set up by the Overlords, there was a chance that another one or two of them were artificial, which made it feel less unreasonable.
Anyway, I was not entirely sure how accurate this was, but going by what I managed to decipher from the Goldeen the Gyarados home zone was about 1.5 to 2 kilometers down the road on the left side of the channel, while the Milotic was also 1.5 to 2 kilometers down the road, though their place was on the right side of the channel. A bit vague, but at least we knew that the Gyarados spot came first, and that there seemed to be roughly 200-300 meters between those two places.
Honestly, from what I understood, these home zones were smaller than I had envisioned them to be. At least now I could understand a bit more why the Seaking/Goldeen were so strict with whom they let join their community. Still, given their bleak situation, I could not help but pose a final question. Why did the Goldeen insist on sticking around the water channel if they were unable to join the home zones? Why would they remain in the strong current area possessing relatively scarce sustenance sources?
Would it not be easier to simply let the current drag them away? A trip down the waterfall would be harmless to them, and given their strength, they would have an abundance of food available to them down there. Not to mention that the stream down there was almost definitely connected to the sea, so they could even follow that route if they wanted to.
The answer I received left no doubt why they would tolerate their current circumstances. It appeared that living here made getting stronger easier. If it had been just that, I might have attributed it to the strong current and strong adversaries, but they also mentioned that there were occasional fortunate ones that ended up changing luckily. They mentioned color changes and even outright physical ones, which told me that they somehow triggered a positive development, unlocking various genes including Shiny, and possibly Royal as well as Ancient genes.
Their explanation left no doubt that it was related to the channel and not some anomaly in the local Goldeen population when they mentioned that other species, or rather the less fortunate ones among them similar to the Goldeen, stayed for the same reason. Given that, I suspected that there might be a substance that was the cause of the changes those lucky ones underwent. It had to be something that occasionally got washed down the channel getting absorbed or consumed by lucky individuals.
The substance was either from a renewable source or it was part of something really big since the way the Goldeen described it, this had been going on for a while and over that period the number of lucky ones was not small. I guess the Goldeen I caught was one of the lucky ones that ended up "mutating". I would have to ask her if she was born Shiny or if her color changed later on.
Either way, my interest shot through the roof and I was really hoping I would find whatever was causing the situation. If I could get my hands on some and let Utopia analyze it, there was a decent chance that Utopia would be able to produce some as well which would give me another way to trigger modifiers aside from relying solely on Utopia's initial optimization or luck during evolutions and breakthroughs.
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