Chapter 634: Eating Energy?
The number of Aerodactyl in the clan was not large.
Counting them all up, there were only sixty. Placed within the Dragon Clan's current structure of seven great tribes, they could only rank second to last, merely outnumbering the Altaria clan that had previously come right to the brink of extinction.
Speaking of the competitive environment in this Rocky Mountain range, aside from the Tyrantrum clan, Kazuya couldn't think of any lineage whose scale could become massive.
However, the average level of the Aerodactyl clan was the highest. The primary drivers behind this were, naturally, the three Elite Four-level Aerodactyl—especially the Lv. 73 Aerodactyl patriarch, who was also a Mega-evolved fighter. The other two Lv. 70 Aerodactyl were in their prime, still possessing immense potential for growth.
Furthermore, the number of Aerodactyl that had reached the Gym Leader stage was around fifteen, ranking first among the seven great tribes.
It was worth mentioning that in this specific category, the otherwise lagging Altaria clan actually ranked second, boasting ten Gym Leader-level fighters of their own.
With levels covered, it came down to strength. In terms of average combat proficiency, the Aerodactyl clan still reigned as the undisputed first among the seven great tribes. While the average level and peak combat power carried immense weight, one couldn't ignore other biological facets.
The typing of a Rock Dragon had nothing to praise. Refraining from actively criticizing it was already considered a major layer of respect toward this attribute combination. This specific typing allowed Aerodactyl to compete for the throne of skyward sovereigns, commanding a fiercely potent anti-air presence. But placed among the broader spectrum of all-attribute Pokémon, it might not even secure a seat at the table.
The aspect of Aerodactyl most worth mentioning was the distribution of its latent potential—expressed in modern game terms, its effective base stats were exceptionally high.
Of course, in living reality, there was no such concept as "ineffective base stats." Every single facet required natural talent; it simply came down to whether the cost-performance ratio brought by that talent was high enough.
The cost-performance ratio of Aerodactyl's talent belonged to the exceptionally high category, particularly in physical Attack and Speed. Even discarding the Mega Evolution form and looking exclusively at its baseline state, Aerodactyl's speed potential ranked within the top fifteen of all Pokémon across creation. Strip away the Mythical and Legendary Pokémon, and it breached the top ten. Strip away the other Mega-evolved fighters, and it sat firmly within the top five.
This was the speed talent commanded by Aerodactyl.
To illustrate this with a practical example: an Aerodactyl relying purely on natural maturation—completely refraining from deliberately training or developing its velocity—would still command a speed that a Dragonite of identical level would find hard to match even after utilizing Extreme Speed. Unless that Dragonite had rigorously polished its velocity since infancy, it was virtually impossible to outpace it even with Extreme Speed.
This was the monumental chasm brought by raw speed talent, and it was the precise reason Kazuya had chosen to subjugate the Aerodactyl clan first.
Archeops was entirely different from Aerodactyl. They were an intensely cowardly species. Forget about a prolonged clash; before a fight even officially sparked, an Archeops might have already beaten its wings to flee several hundred meters away. The vast majority of the Dragon Clan's landlocked members stood zero chance of initiating combat under those terms, and the velocity of the Altaria clan couldn't keep pace either.
Therefore, they had to rely on the flawlessly fast Aerodactyl to execute the high-speed pursuit and liquidation. Kazuya had declared that the Archeops flock would be wiped out, so he naturally wouldn't leave them a single shred of breathing room.
The Aerodactyl territory.
Originally the sovereign domain of the Aerodactyl, this mountain summit had officially become part of the Dragon Clan's territory—their very first anchor point within the Rocky Mountain range.
Truth be told, the Aerodactyl knew how to select a fortress. The surrounding craggy rock faces structured an exceptionally elite, natural barricade; unless an adversary mastered the Dig technique, launching a successful frontal assault against this sanctuary was immensely difficult.
Kazuya was currently leading the Dragon Clan forces to rest and recuperate within the crater. During the brief clash earlier, neither faction had mathematically expended too much physical stamina. The casualty and injury rate among the Dragon Clan members was remarkably low.
Under the specific guidelines articulated by Kazuya prior to the war, the primary objective of the Dragon Clan members was containment, rather than battering the enemy into total unconsciousness. The vast majority of the Aerodactyl still preserved the bulk of their combat readiness.
The ones who looked slightly more pathetic were, naturally, the three strongest Aerodactyl powerhouses. The trio of Charizards couldn't afford to extend leniency during a clash of that caliber, so they had pushed their full power from start to finish.
This was particularly true for brother-kun and his girlfriend. Their win rate against an Aerodactyl wasn't just low; it could be described as profoundly meager. Rock moves didn't merely deal devastating 4x super-effective damage against a Fire/Flying Charizard; conversely, as Rock Dragons, the Aerodactyl commanded a 4x resistance against Fire techniques coupled with a 2x resistance against Flying moves.
Facing an Aerodactyl of an identical level threshold, brother-kun and his girlfriend likely held a win rate of only thirty to forty percent. And securing that thirty to forty percent was entirely because Kazuya had frequently subjected them to rigorous special training, passing down highly practical combat mechanics and techniques. Otherwise, that calculation would have plunged even lower.
Aside from the three Aerodactyl, the trio of Charizards had also sustained a few minor injuries. Kazuya's parameters were largely fine; outside of sustaining a minor trauma from hard-接ing the Mega Aerodactyl's Giga Impact at the opening, his body would recover rapidly.
To put it bluntly, since the Aerodactyl patriarch had failed to suppress Kazuya even in his premier domain of speed, his performance across other facets was entirely crushed. He had done nothing but absorb a beating from start to finish. For him to inflict structural damage onto Kazuya, his singular avenue was to exchange injuries, unleashing specialized, high-yield techniques—but the Mega Aerodactyl clearly hadn't mastered such a repertoire.
The primary concern rested on brother-kun and his girlfriend. Their physical trauma was relatively heavy. Given their velocity parameters, they had failed to cleanly evade the Stone Edge attacks unleashed by the other two Elite Four-tier Aerodactyl, sustaining severe injuries.
The imminent clash against the Archeops flock certainly wouldn't command a difficulty curve steeper than facing the Aerodactyl clan. Even if the Archeops possessed a higher average level, their psychological traits were fixed. The moment they perceived a battle shifting toward a disadvantage, their Defeatist disposition would violently flare, instantly halving their dual offenses, and their minds would be entirely consumed by flight rather than holding the line.
Under those terms, their combat capability would undergo a massive degradation. How could they possibly compare to the unyielding, single-minded grit of the Aerodactyl?
However, despite these calculations, Kazuya still intended to wait until the partners around him recovered a fraction of their strength before mobilizing. After all, within this cutthroat Rocky Mountain range, their adversaries weren't limited exclusively to the Archeops flock; they had to remain permanently on guard against the hyper-aggressive, sigma Pokémon that might plunge down from any neighboring mountain peak at any given second.
"Yesterday, did you guys witness a flock of over forty birds flying in from that direction?" Kazuya rumbled, raising a claw to point toward the southern vector before turning his eyes to look at the Mega Aerodactyl beside him.
The Aerodactyl territory sat right along the southern outer perimeter of the Rocky Mountain range. If the Archeops flock intended to penetrate the inner rocky peaks to locate a viable nesting sanctuary, the probability of them passing immediately flanking the Aerodactyls' perimeter was exceptionally high. Thus, Kazuya directly questioned the dragon beside him.
"Ahoo." The Aerodactyl pondered briefly, then nodded his head.
In truth, a puzzle like this required zero intellectual processing, but the Aerodactyl lineage wasn't particularly bright or agile in their mental faculties, so Kazuya displayed smooth understanding.
"Which direction did they chart?"
"Ahoo." The Aerodactyl raised a claw, pointing straight toward the southeast.
Kazuya lifted his eyes to scan that sector, then withdrew his gaze, pinching his chin as his brow furrowed slightly. That coordinate sat close to the northern snowfields, mapping remarkably close to the Altaria clan's historical territory.
If his memory served him correctly, there were a few isolated patches of forested peaks and dense woods within that sector. The Archeops lineage belonged to an omnivorous classification; they could hunt for meat, but they also consumed Berries. If the external survival pressure grew overwhelming, they would choose to hole up tightly, utilizing Berries to sate their starvation.
Kazuya surmise that, barring any tactical anomalies, that flock of Archeops had highly likely wedged themselves deep within those forested peaks or dense woods to take cover.
With the target tracked and verified, Kazuya's heart settled slightly. Only now did he possess the emotional leeway to focus his attention onto other facets—for instance, the Mega-evolved dragon standing beside him.
"How exactly did you manage to evolve into this form?" Kazuya inquired gently.
He intentionally refrained from utilizing phrasing like "How did you absorb Dragon-type natural energy?" He felt the Aerodactyl likely wouldn't comprehend that vocabulary at all.
"Ahoo?" The Aerodactyl scratched his craggy skull in sheer confusion.
What did he mean, how did he evolve? He merely went about his daily existence as normal, and then, a sudden qualitative transformation simply manifested.
Kazuya fell into a brief silence. He realized he needed to restructure his questions, targeting specific behavioral data that would allow him to deduce the parameters based on the information.
After a brief moment of deliberation, Kazuya spoke once more:
"At the exact second prior to your evolution, what were you doing?"
This question was exceptionally critical. Evolution is a natural phenomenon born from a completed accumulation of variables. For the Aerodactyl patriarch to unlock Mega Evolution, it mathematically meant that at that specific second, the volume of natural energy saturated within his body had breached the critical threshold.
Which meant, right before the evolution sparked, his behavior was actively drawing in natural energy.
"...Ahoo, ahoo."
The Aerodactyl bent down to scoop up a loose boulder from the dirt, tossing it into his massive jaws to crunch it into pieces before swallowing it down.
Kazuya withdrew his gaze. He crossed his arms over his chest, his claws resting before his snout as his eyes locked onto the earth, falling into a state of absolute, blank realization.
Prior to his evolution... the Aerodactyl was actually eating rocks.
At this exact moment, Kazuya abruptly realized something. Following a Mega Evolution, the most dramatic biological transformation manifested across an Aerodactyl's frame is the dense crust of razor-sharp stones enveloping its body.
Which meant... an Aerodactyl's Mega Evolution demanded a concentration of Rock-type natural energy, rather than Dragon-type energy.
This realization brought virtually zero practical reference value to Kazuya's personal dilemma.
No, wait... eating. Rock-type natural energy can be physically ingested through consumption. Kazuya muttered silently in his heart.
He began to calculate the variables: Could Dragon-type natural energy be physically ingested and absorbed through the avenue of consumption?
Ingesting what?
Come to think of it, he didn't even know where Dragon-type natural energy tangibly existed across the continent. Rock-type energy could be cleanly extracted from stone deposits and mineral veins, while Ground-type energy could practically be secured by munching on the topsoil. Fire-type energy was even simpler—the volcanic mountains were saturated with endless rivers of magma.
But what about the Dragon type? Kazuya couldn't fathom what kind of physical matter held a concentration of Dragon-type natural energy. Don't tell me he was mathematically forced to actively hunt and eat Dragon-type Pokémon?
He was intensely averse to taking that course. It wasn't a matter of refusing to eat Dragon-type Pokémon specifically; it was that his soul fundamentally rejected treating any Pokémon as a source of food. His companions might hunt, and Kazuya wouldn't police their primal ecology, but he personally couldn't bring himself to look at a Pokémon as sustenance. During his very first life, he had refused to look at a Caterpie as food, and in this current life, he absolutely wouldn't consume another Pokémon either.
Natural energy must possess alternative avenues of absorption and extraction. Mega Evolution during the League Era is a flawless testament to that reality. This detail isn't the primary bottleneck; the priority remains locating where Dragon-type natural energy natively exists first. Kazuya smoothly realigned his thoughts.
After concluding his dialogue with the Aerodactyl, another detail struck his mind: a Dragon Egg Group Pokémon launching a Mega Evolution didn't mathematically guarantee it was drawing in Dragon-type energy. Just like his own physical status as a Fire/Flying Pokémon, his blueprint demanded Dragon-type natural energy—an attribute entirely separate from his baseline types.
If that logic held true... for a Salamence to unlock Mega Evolution, did its blueprint demand Dragon-type energy, or Flying-type energy?
Recalling the silhouette of the Mega Salamence he had witnessed cruising the skies earlier, Kazuya uncontrollably fell into deep, silent contemplation. If that transformation required a concentration of Flying-type natural energy, wouldn't it mean his historical tracking strategies had been completely, beautifully aimed at the wrong target?
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