"Gold, huh~"
Falkner repeated Silas's translation in a tone that was difficult to decipher.
Although gold was indeed a fairly valuable metal, its value to Trainers really was not that high.
The only practical use for it might be feeding Rock-type or Steel-type Pokémon.
And even then, it was hardly worth the cost.
Of course, wealthy people did not pursue gold because of its practical uses. They simply liked it because something that glittered with golden light was obviously impressive and gave them status.
"Come to think of it, maybe I should stock up on some gold while I have the chance."
Silas suddenly thought of another matter.
Judging from what had been shown in the anime, the technology of the Pokémon world was clearly going to become more advanced and advanced over time. That was simply how the world was supposed to develop.
And it was not just technology related to Pokémon. The biggest changes would probably be seen in everyday life.
If that was the case, the value of gold would certainly continue to rise.
The saying, "Antiques in times of peace, gold in times of chaos," was not without reason.
Gold had a wide range of uses in many different fields.
He simply had not had any spare money before. Now that he finally had a little extra cash, he should at least consider investing some of it.
After all, money left sitting around would gradually lose its value.
"But..." Silas thought about the two new wealthy members of his team, and his expression became somewhat strange. "I feel like I still don't have any money."
He silently lowered his head.
Who would have thought that even after transmigrating into another world, he would still have to worry about feeding and taking care of his own Pokémon?
This was completely different from the impression the Pokémon world had left on him when he was a child.
"Silas, Silas?"
Falkner called his name three or four times in a row. When Silas did not respond, he curiously patted him on the shoulder.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Making money. I'm out of money again recently."
Silas helplessly shrugged.
Falkner could understand that very well by now.
Although his father was one of the world's top Flying-type masters, and their family owned one of the eight Gyms in the Johto region, that did not mean his spending money was unlimited.
On the contrary, after his father's previous failure, his old man had become stricter with him than ever.
The strength of Pokémon and Trainers who simply relied on throwing money at them to force them to become stronger was not difficult to imagine.
It was not that such people did not exist. There were actually quite a lot of them.
But their verifiable achievements were basically not convincing enough.
Well, Steven was different. He did not simply throw money at everything. That guy was a super-rich second-generation heir, but he was also a genius.
"But your rate of spending money is far more impressive than mine. As expected, raising Dragon-type Pokémon really is a bottomless pit."
Falkner sighed.
As a business partner, he naturally knew about Silas's two Dragon-type Pokémon. He also knew exactly how much Silas had spent at the Blackthorn Gym.
For an ordinary person, that was an astronomical amount of money.
Compared to the cost of raising them, the value of the Pokémon themselves was actually much less noticeable.
Jasmine spoke from the side.
"But Dragon-type Pokémon are strong. And they're pseudo-Legendaries, too."
Silas and Falkner nodded in unison.
No matter how expensive they were, that reason alone was enough.
Silas spread his hands.
"So there you have it. Hopefully, we can make a decent amount of money this time. It's only right that we shouldn't be broke when we're exploring something named after gold."
"Speaking of which, how do we open this door?"
Falkner pressed himself against the enormous stone door, but no matter how hard he looked, he could not find even the slightest crack.
"It was probably made by a Rock-type Pokémon as one solid piece. We might as well just smash it open."
Jasmine looked gentle and delicate, but the words that came out of her mouth were incredibly forceful.
Silas nodded.
"I think that's fine."
Generally speaking, a huge door like this would have some kind of mechanism, and forcing it open would probably trigger some kind of danger.
But for three powerful Trainers like them, this level of danger was not worth worrying about.
Even Falkner, the weakest of the three, would be a strong contender for the semifinals or even the championship if he were placed in a regional tournament.
In other words, if the mechanism behind this door was powerful enough to threaten their lives, they might as well wait another seven years before coming back to explore these ruins.
"Gigalith, use your brute strength and smash it open."
After roughly estimating the thickness of the stone door, Silas decisively abandoned the idea of having Blaziken or Gallade do it.
He patted the Gigalith beside him and led the other two a considerable distance backward.
"Gigalith!"
Gigalith's deep cry echoed through the underground passage.
Its rocky body was so muscular that it actually gave the illusion that it was made of flesh rather than stone.
"BOOM!"
A tremendous roar rang out.
Countless fragments of rock fell from above the three of them.
Above ground.
The exploration team and villagers outside the canyon heard the sound. They silently swallowed their saliva before retreating even farther away.
"Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey."
Falkner unhappily spat the dirt out of his mouth.
"Your attack makes way too much noise! And couldn't you at least give us a warning first? We weren't prepared at all."
Silas, who was being thoroughly protected by Gallade's Psychic powers, made it clear that this was not his fault.
"That's because your Noctowl went off to protect Jasmine."
"Goo-goo."
Noctowl, which was using Psychic to protect Jasmine from her shoulder, awkwardly turned its head.
A full 180 degrees.
"What else was I supposed to do? I couldn't exactly let Jasmine end up looking like me, could I?"
Falkner rolled his eyes.
Fortunately, he was not the kind of person who would dwell on something like that.
"Did the door open?"
"Gigalith."
Gigalith slowly moved to the side.
A massive door covered in cracks appeared before the three of them.
"Tsk. Looks like you still didn't hit it hard enough."
There was a distinctly sarcastic tone in Falkner's voice.
Silas said nothing.
He simply walked over, then raised his leg and kicked.
"Crack! Crackle!"
The stone door had already been struck with Gigalith's brute force, so it clearly could not withstand any more external pressure.
With Silas's kick, the thick door finally split apart with a thunderous crash.
And along with the door, Falkner's heart shattered as well.
He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but the two people who had already disappeared through the broken doorway interrupted him.
"Hey, wait for me!"
Falkner complained as he hurried after them and entered through the stone door.
"Gigalith, Steelix, we'll leave the outside to the two of you."
Following Silas and Jasmine's instructions, the two enormous Pokémon, one large and one small, settled down like guardian statues on either side of the stone doorway.
One transformed into a massive mass of bluish-green rock, while the other coiled itself into a circle.
"Noctowl, use Flash!"
In the pitch-black passage, Noctowl's V-shaped eyebrows lit up with dazzling white light.
"Hehe, how about that?" Falkner flashed his brilliant white teeth.
Silas gave him a strange look but said nothing. He simply silently put away the flashlight in his hand.
Falkner was still wondering what was going on when he noticed the light beside Jasmine.
His face stiffened.
Oh no. He had forgotten that the Olivine Gym Leader was here too.
Jasmine helplessly sighed.
"I was originally hoping we could avoid disturbing the Pokémon inside. Well, there goes that plan. Once you turned on that giant light, they probably already know that guests have arrived."
Falkner shrank his neck.
It seemed like he had done something wrong.
"It's fine. I don't hear anything either. Maybe there aren't any Pokémon inside."
Silas defended Falkner.
Jasmine nodded.
"That is a little strange. Didn't your Blaziken and Gallade notice anything?"
"Blaze."
"Gallade."
Both Blaziken and Gallade shook their heads.
"Even Aura can't detect anything. Either the Pokémon inside is extremely powerful, or there simply aren't any Pokémon here."
Jasmine folded her arms across her chest and muttered thoughtfully.
"If it's the latter, then how could this ruin interfere with the instruments?"
Falkner clearly did not agree with that conclusion.
"I think the Pokémon inside is simply extremely powerful. Or perhaps it's exceptionally good at concealing its Aura.
"Although Pokémon nowadays basically can't do that, who knows how well people in ancient times understood Aura? They should have been much better at it than we are."
"Blaze."
Blaziken unhappily snorted a tiny spark from its nostrils.
It looked like it wanted to beat someone up.
What should it do?
Silas patted Blaziken on the shoulder to comfort it.
"That's not impossible. Anyway, let's go inside and take a look first."
Falkner also realized that his previous words had been inappropriate. He gave Blaziken an apologetic smile.
"I didn't mean it like that. I'm just making a reasonable analysis. A reasonable analysis."
He smiled sheepishly.
"Blaze."
Blaziken nodded unhappily.
It was only because of its Trainer that it let the matter go. Otherwise, this guy, who clearly looked like dead weight at a glance, would have been the first person it knocked unconscious.
Ignoring Falkner, who was busy apologizing, Silas raised his head and looked at the murals carved into the rock walls of the passage.
"It's the story of a queen ruling a kingdom."
His expression was somewhat surprised.
In the past, Pokémon had been regarded as "monsters" rather than companions of humanity, so ancient times had been extremely dangerous.
Under such circumstances, if someone wanted to become the ruler of a country, the most important factor was having a strong enough fist, strong enough to deal with a considerable number of Pokémon.
And because of the natural difference in physical strength between men and women, kings were generally men.
Even now, among the Elite Four and regional Champions across all the regions, the proportion of male Trainers was clearly much higher than that of female Trainers.
That was probably one of the reasons Cynthia would become as popular as Lance and Steven when she eventually ascended to the Champion position.
Her immense strength was one reason. Being the only female Champion among the nearby regions was another.
However, female Trainers were not without their own advantages.
Their generally gentler personalities made their achievements as Pokémon Breeders and Coordinators clearly visible.
In these two fields, especially the former, male Trainers could basically be said to be completely outclassed.
As for the latter, if Wallace had never appeared, it probably would not have developed nearly as well either.
"She must have been a very powerful queen."
Jasmine could not help nodding as she looked at the scenes depicted in the murals.
"It's a little exaggerated. She probably used the power of Pokémon, but the artist simply didn't draw it."
Silas had already seen quite a few ruins.
Naturally, he knew how much credibility could be placed on the murals found in these ancient ruins.
The one in front of them was obviously embellished with artistic exaggeration.
"Isn't that a Graveler? It just waved its hand and sent it flying. That's really ridiculous."
Falkner could not help complaining.
"It can be understood. Ancient people always described rulers like this. The fact that they didn't turn this queen into a three-headed, six-armed demon is already pretty good."
"Yeah. Didn't something similar happen around Verdanturf last time? A perfectly normal person was turned into a shadow monster. Seriously."
The three of them admired the murals as they continued walking deeper inside.
The passage was unexpectedly long.
They walked for nearly ten minutes.
Only then did a relatively spacious hall appear before them.
"It feels a little small."
Silas frowned and gave voice to the judgment that Falkner and Jasmine had already reached in their hearts.
Indeed, the hall, constructed from bluestone, was only a little over a hundred square meters.
If it were located in the center of modern-day Saffron City, a space of a hundred or so square meters would at least be worth some money.
But for an ancient queen, a hundred or so square meters would be nothing. Even several thousand or tens of thousands of square meters would still be considered small.
In the Pokémon world, land was probably the least valuable thing there was.
As long as you could defeat the wild Pokémon outside, there was land everywhere.
Rather than calling this the ruins of a queen's golden palace, it would be more accurate to call it a crude underground warehouse.
Because the ruins were so ancient, the air inside was somewhat stale.
However, it was still more than sufficient for three people to breathe.
The floor, paved with bluestone, was covered in dust, but there were no bones to be seen.
The walls had become somewhat uneven and pitted after being eroded by time, giving the entire place a rather dilapidated appearance.
At the far end of the hall stood a two-person-tall stone statue of a woman in front of a throne made entirely of gold.
"This should be the queen, right?"
Falkner spoke with some uncertainty.
"Probably."
Silas stroked his chin as he studied the distant statue.
There was a golden mask on the statue's face, while it held a scepter made of gold in its hand.
Embedded at the top of the scepter was a red gemstone about the size of a fist.
It looked just like...
"The Great Sea Spirit Scepter?"
Silas instinctively frowned.
Apart from the material of the scepter being different, the one in front of them was completely identical to the Great Sea Spirit Scepter he had seen before.
He certainly did not believe this was a coincidence.
There were so many different styles of scepters in the world. Why would these two happen to be identical?
"I feel like this scepter looks familiar too."
Jasmine also frowned.
As the Gym Leader of a city close to the Whirl Islands, she naturally was not unfamiliar with the Great Sea Spirit Scepter.
"What did you two discover?"
Falkner looked left and right. Seeing the serious expressions on both their faces, he was completely bewildered.
"Is there something wrong with this scepter?"
He scratched his head, extremely curious.
"Whatever the case, we'd better be careful. That mask and scepter clearly aren't ordinary."
Silas's expression was extremely serious.
"After all these years, there's not even a speck of dust on them. Everywhere else is covered in dust."
"Exactly."
Jasmine nodded in agreement.
Falkner looked helpless.
What exactly were they talking about? Other than the dust, what was so unusual about it? Couldn't they just say it directly?
Just as the three of them stopped and hesitated over what to do next.
"Bzzzz..."
A barely perceptible red light suddenly lit up on the mask and the gemstone at the top of the scepter.
After a thousand years.
The moment they sensed humans approaching, the mask and scepter that had remained dormant for a thousand years reacted once again.
"Damn it!"
By the time the three of them realized that something was wrong, six beams of red light had already shot toward them.
.....
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