I asked the majority of my Pokémon to surround the Relicanth from a slight distance while BossBro/Slowbro and Tiamat/Milotic accompanied me as I moved closer to Relicanth to study him. No2 was in charge of using our psychic sense to keep an eye on Relicanth while I was busy checking him out; No2 also kept up the psionic probe since it was already active. No3 was responsible for our aura sense, monitoring Relicanth's life/aura signal.
My inspection began from Relicanth's tail, at least the parts that were visible. It was hard to miss that a part was below the ground, and going by what we could see, I was pretty sure that he had burrowed down at an angle, with the rear of his body being deeper in the ground. I chose to do a swift circle around his body in a clockwise direction to complete a preliminary inspection to get a better idea of what I was dealing with before I did a more thorough inspection.
By the time I made it halfway to Relicanth's front (tan head) the angle idea was basically confirmed. I was unable to look at his two pairs of pectoral fins or his one pelvic fin near the tail because they were buried underground. I did get a look at his dorsal fin near the tail, along with the red spot and tan patches on the left side of Relicanth's body.
I also got a look at the triangular spike at the back of his head, though I missed out on the full look of his elongated cheekbones since part of the protrusions of his cheekbones were also buried underground. At least the rest of his head was lying on the ground as he slept, so I was able to get a decent look at his tan head/face, though admittedly to my aesthetic sense, his face was rather dull-looking.
It was just as I was about to move on to Relicanth's right side that something extremely shocking happened. No2 noticed that the open status sheet in the background of my mind had changed. While No2 had been maintaining the psionic probe, I had not bothered closing the status sheet, so it had remained open all this time.
This was not the first time I/we had let the Observe function active for longer periods since that used to often be the case when I checked out my parents' Pokémon, though admittedly it had been a while since I last did it with a foreign Pokémon stronger than us. Yet, somehow despite this never having happened before, the modifier section had undergone a startling change.
I was pretty sure that Observe did not have a stacking/analyzing function, at least that I knew of, and yet the information in the modifier section was no longer hidden with a question mark. No idea when exactly it happened, but it appeared that Observe had undergone an upgrade sometime during the last few months (maybe a year).
It was an unexpected but very pleasant surprise, and once my excitement at the development calmed down a bit, I took a proper look at what Observe had uncovered.
'Modifiers: Mutant (Treasure Body Variant), Ability Variant
Abilities: ?
Talents: ?
Affinities: ?'
My emotions spiked right back up upon seeing the title displayed under Modifiers. Relicanth was a freaking Mutant, which meant that the overall bonus he enjoyed was at 100%, effectively doubling his BS and everything else that affected him in the background such as comprehension and adaptability. This was the first Pokémon I saw that had a higher racial value (base stat total) than the anomaly that was Bruce/Crobat.
Compared to Bruce's Huge Power and Deviant Gene boosted 937 RV, Relicanth's Mutant bonus alone boosted his RV to 970. I had a feeling that Relicanth might have surpassed the basic racial value of some of the Minor Legendaries if we disregarded their own modifiers.
Obviously, the gap became enormous once those were added, but the fact that Relicanth had reached the basic realm belonging to the minor legends was already an incredible accomplishment, though the same was true for Bruce as well I guess, even if he was short by a tiny bit.
Still, taking his mutant gene into account I was sure that Relicanth's prowess was not just limited to the (mid) Palladium stage. He likely possessed the ability to match at least (high) Palladium stage opponents. I was not sure if it was enough to push him to the next stage since I had no concrete idea just how strong those guys/gals were, but he had to be among the strongest at the palladium stage.
This made me think back to my theory that one of the alliance elders (Legendary-Class Trainers) might have entered the channel to take a look after the exploration team's investigation fell through. If that happened and the elder came across Relicanth, he or she might have deemed it not worth it after a short confrontation, resulting in the alliance giving up any further exploration of the (under)water channel.
I did not doubt for one moment that the alliance could take Relicanth down if they truly had to do so, but reality had proven that Relicanth did not act against any humans provided no one bothered him. Risking a single Elder or mobilizing multiple Elders just to take him down was likely deemed not worth it, and I could understand the rationale behind it.
Putting that aside for now, I focused on the Mutant Gene since it was labeled as a Treasure Body Variant and I was curious if I would be able to find out more in its description. I could not help but feel a tad frustrated at the result; I got my answer, but it only left me with more questions. According to the description, Relicanth unlocked his Mutant Gene due to a talent called Treasure Body, which was why his modifier had Treasure Body Variant attached to it.
Unfortunately, there were no details on what exactly Treasure Body (the talent) did. Oh, I could imagine what its effects were simply by taking its title at face value and combining it with the things we learned during our exploration so far, but that would be a likely theory at best, and I wanted to know more than that. Yet, all I could hope for was that the upgrade Observe went through would continue to uncover more sections if I continued to keep it up.
Putting the talent issue aside for now, the Mutant Gene was responsible for Relicanth's incredible size. It raised Relicanth's (size) growth limit to 6 times his original limit, so he could theoretically grow up to six times the size he could have grown if he did not have the mutant gene. Assuming that Relicanth's original size matched that of an average member of his species, he actually still had room to grow.
That was quite impressive since he already dwarfed the members of the Slytherin Six in all aspects (height, length width). Finally, the gene gave Relicanth an air that evoked a feeling of awe and respect once Relicanth let his pressure/aura flow freely. This effect was somewhat similar to what the higher-grade genes of the royal and ancient lines gave, so it felt the least impressive even if that was not the case.
I was sure that aside from his strength, the aura also helped Relicanth subdue the platinum stage Gyarados, Whiscash, and Milotic. I suspected that he could have still done it solely through strength given how strong he was, but things would probably have been less smooth.
Anyway, now that I had looked through the description of his Mutant Gene, I finally acknowledged the second modifier listed in Relicanth's Modifier Section. It was pretty obvious what it signified; One or both abilities of Relicanth differed from the ones that members of his species usually possessed. I had seen nothing in this direction in the description of his mutant modifier, so it was either only indirectly related to it, which was why it did not come up, or the ability variation was unrelated to the mutant gene.
I was inclined to believe that the Treasure Body talent could have been responsible for the ability difference. It was already responsible for the emergence of the mutant modifier, so an ability modifier did not seem too out of the norm compared to that. Unfortunately, similar to the talent situation, I would have to wait and hope that Observe's upgrade would come through again.
If that happened, I would get to see what ability he had gotten first, since the ability section came before the talent one. Speaking of which, I had no choice but to wait and see if it would happen again or not, so I stopped focusing on the status sheet and resumed circling Relicanth instead. There was no need to just stand there and do nothing after all.
I noted the red spot on Relicanth's right flank, along with the tan spots it had. Before long I made it back to Relicanth's tail, signifying that I had completed the circle. Thankfully Observe did not disappoint me, and revealed the content of the ability section moments after I completed the circle.
'Abilities: Rock Head, Wonder Skin'
Relicanth usually had either Rock Head, Swift Swim, or Sturdy as their ability(ies), so Wonder Skin was the outlier here. It was a pretty useful ability and given its effect as well as title, I was much more inclined to believe that its appearance was related to Relicanth's Treasure Body. It was not surprising that a Treasure Body had Wonder(ous) Skin after all. It could have also been an independent development, but I felt that the previous idea was more likely.
Still, while I was happy to have gotten one answer, the most interesting part was still obscured, so we were back to waiting. If things went the same as they went before, it would take close to 2 to 2.5 minutes before Observe unveiled the next/talent section's content, so I decided to take some proper measures of Relicanth during that time. I took out a long stick from Utopia and stuck it into the ground parallel to the end of Relicanth's tail.
I then pulled out one of my measuring tapes and stuck its tip to the stick before moving toward Relicanth's head. Relicanth's length ended up being 17.4 meters, which was a bit bigger than I initially thought. The average Relicanth grew up to 3 meters long, so adding his Mutant Gene into the mix Relicanth could grow to at least 18 meters. That still left him with room to grow, even if it was less than the 1 to 1.5 meters I predicted.
Unless of course, he was below average, though I seriously doubted that. Still, it was curious how Relicanth had not reached the limit of his growth already considering how old he had to be. I refused to believe that anyone not born in a divine setting could reach the Palladium stage in a period measured in centuries or even millennia. If not for the risk it might pose I would have loved to talk with Relicanth and question him on how old he was and if he had been a mutant since birth or if it was something that happened later on.
Anyway, I moved back to the middle of Relicanth's body and brought out a few more sticks from Utopia before taping them together. I then stuck the long stick into the ground right beside Relicanth's skin. Swimming up a bit I moved to the other side of his body before repeating the process. Once both sticks were stuck, I measured the distance between them. I then subtracted a single centimeter to offset the gap I left between Relicanth and the sticks.
The result revealed that Relicanth was 2.58 meters wide, which was a bit less than I expected, but that was okay. Once I had measured his width I was stuck since I could not get a proper measurement of Relicanth's height, or at least his maximum height, as long as a part of his body was buried underground. As I was contemplating whether using a stick as a measuring instrument and utilizing Hade/Gengar to ensure that the stick reached the end of Relicanth's body would work, no2 noticed that the talent section had finally changed as well.
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