The source of that golden radiance seemed to be something within the mechanical ruins nearby.
As Cynthia maneuvered her character forward and pushed aside a pile of scrap metal and charred debris, a powerful electrical current suddenly erupted from the wreckage, forcing her game character back several steps!
A golden fragment about the size of a fist, irregularly shaped, floated inches above the ground, slowly rotating.
It didn't look like steel, but more like flowing golden liquid, with restless tiny electric arcs dancing across its entire surface.
The fragment's surface was covered with intricate grooves and energy patterns so precise they were almost dizzying to look at, as if some incredibly complex structure had been miniaturized within it.
At this moment, accompanying its appearance, it began emanating sharp energy waves, like a compressed thunderstorm core suddenly bursting with wave after wave of electrical current!
These currents carried an overwhelming sense of pressure. Cynthia's character had only taken one step closer when the edges of her screen began showing subtle electrical patterns, and her character displayed the yellow special effects representing "static" status - electricity that seemed powerful enough to instantly paralyze and knock out ordinary Pokémon!
This thing...
At this moment, looking at what lay before her, Cynthia seemed to suddenly realize something!
No wonder she felt this looked familiar when she first saw it.
Wasn't this the fragment that had fallen from the electrical giant's body when Zeraora had shattered it with a single punch during that intense battle?
And the piece in front of her now was clearly much larger and more powerful than the other fragments. Could this be the core piece from deep within that electrical giant?
Just as Cynthia was thinking this over, facing the raging electrical currents before her, Victini on her shoulder suddenly flew up.
"Tini!!"
With his cry, deep crimson radiance erupted from his body once again, just like the power he had channeled into Zeraora earlier, though slightly weaker.
But even so, this power was clearly sufficient to suppress these electrical currents.
Soon those violent currents quieted down under the surrounding red light, retreating back into that core. Victini flew forward, directly lifting the core and bringing it back to present it to Cynthia.
"Thanks."
Cynthia was momentarily stunned, taking the core from his hands. Since this was in the game, she couldn't tell what its weight and mass were like, or what it would feel like to hold.
But a notification quickly appeared before her eyes in golden text, revealing information about this core fragment.
[Ding! Congratulations, player has obtained a special item!]
["Regieleki's Core Fragment"]
[Description: The most powerful fragment from the core center of the legendary Pokémon Electric Titan Regieleki's body. Contains Regieleki's life force and fundamental power. Simply inject it with sufficient electricity to make Regieleki reappear in this world! And it may also contain some other incredible abilities?]
Scanning through this string of information that appeared before her, Cynthia's eyebrows raised slightly. Regieleki?
So that powerful golden giant's name was Regieleki?
And at this moment, Cynthia suddenly realized another new issue - there were three characters before this Pokémon's name: Electric Titan!
Seeing these three characters, Cynthia's eyes widened. She finally understood why she felt the creature called Regieleki looked somewhat familiar when she first encountered it.
The reason was simple - like the previous Rock Titan Regirock, Regieleki also had a massive body towering into the clouds, and its body was also composed of pure elemental matter!
Regirock was rock, while this one was electricity.
It was just that the scene had been too overwhelming at the time, so Cynthia hadn't immediately thought in this direction.
But now the item description of that core fragment reminded Cynthia, making her remember this fact.
So this guy, like Regirock, was also a legendary Pokémon of the "Titan" species?
But in her memory, there were only three Pokémon belonging to the Titan species!
They were Rock Titan Regirock, Ice Titan Regice, and Steel Titan Registeel.
These three Pokémon had all appeared in the Hoenn region and were considered the legendary Pokémon with the most eyewitness accounts in the Hoenn region over the past few hundred years.
Cynthia, who was knowledgeable about legendary Pokémon mythology, naturally knew of these three's existence clearly, and had recognized Regirock's identity at first glance when encountering the Rock Titan.
But the problem was - where did this "Electric Titan" come from?? How did it replace Registeel?
As Cynthia stood there bewildered, she suddenly remembered something.
Wait, could this guy, like that Zeraora, also be an original Pokémon created by the author?
If that were the case, then everything would make sense and wouldn't be strange anymore.
But since this game had an Electric Titan as a legendary Pokémon, did other types also have corresponding Titans?
Once this thought emerged from her mind, Cynthia felt a bit of a headache coming on.
Just one Electric Titan had already caused such a huge commotion in this game.
If Titans of all other types came and pulled similar stunts, she wasn't sure if the people of this world and herself could handle it.
Of course, thinking about this, Cynthia also felt somewhat relieved that she hadn't rushed to awaken Regirock or done anything reckless.
From this Electric Titan's performance, these legendary Titans probably didn't have very good tempers, which matched the records in real-world mythology. Most of the time, they seemed to act purely on instinct, so they could easily cause devastating damage to their surroundings, other Pokémon, and even human society.
This power plant incident also served as a warning to Cynthia that if she wanted to awaken that Rock Titan in the future, she'd need to be fully prepared for battle.
Otherwise, she'd really have summoned herself a living nightmare to chase her around.
With this thought, Cynthia carefully maneuvered her game character to place the Electric Titan's core into her game inventory.
However, the next moment, her screen suddenly went black.
Cynthia was immediately startled.
Another new cutscene??
Her instinct told her that every time this game triggered a cutscene, it meant something big was about to happen.
No way, was the power plant situation... still not over??
However, what happened next didn't unfold as Cynthia had anticipated.
The cutscene's perspective quickly moved away from the power plant where she currently was, soaring through the distant sky, and soon switched to an area Cynthia was very familiar with.
It was unmistakably the desert she had visited today!
At this moment, time was approaching evening, and under the dim sky, Cynthia could still see clearly.
That mysterious and eerie tower in the desert had somehow reappeared there, standing tall among the endless yellow sand, towering into the clouds, still emanating an inexplicable attraction.
Seeing this scene, Cynthia couldn't help but be stunned.
Wasn't she at the power plant? Why was a cutscene from that area being triggered?
Could this scene just be to remind her that the tower in the desert had reappeared?
This did match her previous assessment that this tower would refresh and appear in the desert at regular intervals.
But just as Cynthia was thinking this over, the cutscene's perspective changed again, zooming in from far away, entering directly into the first floor of that tower.
The gate that had previously blocked Cynthia's progress and exploration appeared before her eyes again. At this moment, in the mural carved on the gate, the orange-yellow line at the bottom of the three symbols suddenly blazed bright.
Buzz!!
Brilliant electrical currents accompanied by golden radiance illuminated this space. The line floated and changed on the gate, finally transforming into a lightning symbol that settled there, still continuously radiating faint light in all directions.
And Cynthia could clearly feel that the gate before her suddenly shuddered at this moment, as if shaken by something.
Looking at that lightning symbol, Cynthia had a moment of confusion before suddenly realizing.
Wait, lightning?
Electric Titan??
So the yellow line at the bottom of the symbols carved on this mysterious giant gate actually represented the Electric Titan "Regieleki"?
After Zeraora defeated Regieleki, the corresponding symbol had also lit up. This couldn't be a coincidence.
Which meant...
Her gaze immediately fell on the other two symbols carved on the gate: one was a deep blue square, and the other was a brownish cube.
If yellow represented the Electric-type Titan Regieleki, then this deep blue square that looked like ice crystal must represent the Ice Titan Regice, right?
The brownish cube's corresponding Pokémon was even more obvious - it had to be the Rock Titan Regirock she had encountered before!
So... this was the method she'd been looking for to open that gate?
Defeat the three Titans and light up their corresponding symbols to enter the depths of this tower?
Cynthia's mind worked quite quickly, immediately making this judgment based on what she was seeing.
But at this moment, new questions began surfacing in her mind.
According to her understanding of the Titan Pokémon, the three Titans of the Hoenn region should be the Steel Titan, Ice Titan, and Rock Titan, but now the Steel Titan's position had been replaced by this Electric Titan called Regieleki.
It couldn't be that the Steel Titan was hidden behind this gate, could it?
Cynthia felt this was unlikely. According to the information she understood from mythology, the three legendary beasts should be of equal status.
Then an even more terrifying question emerged.
If opening that gate required defeating three legendary Pokémon, wouldn't what was hidden behind it be even more amazing than these three legendary Pokémon?
As Cynthia pondered this, the cutscene before her had ended, and among the viewers in the live stream, some smart ones had already figured it out.
[I get it now. To open that gate, you still need to take down two more terrifying Pokémon like this guy. Is this even humanly possible to design as a requirement?]
[If the lightning corresponds to this Regieleki, then the rock should correspond to the previous Regirock, right? But what does that ice represent?]
[Do you think there might be a legendary Pokémon even stronger than the three Titans behind that door?]
[I can answer that question above. Actually, behind the door is Nova, who got bored and decided to come out and play.]
[That's right, I think Nova is way stronger than these so-called Titans.]
[Need I say more? The Victory God isn't just a title.]
As the chat erupted in heated discussion, Cynthia also fell into deep thought.
She suddenly retrieved another memory fragment from the depths of her mind.
Many years ago, when she had gone to a museum in the Hoenn region to investigate some ancient archives about the three Titans, she seemed to have read some scattered content.
The author mentioned that although these three Titans were very powerful and encounters with them weren't uncommon, they never seemed to fight among themselves.
This was actually quite rare among legendary Pokémon. Normally, the more similar legendary Pokémon were in strength, the more likely they were to battle each other.
In this regard, they weren't different from wild Pokémon.
The author of that document theorized that although these three Titans had different types, they had remarkably similar body structures and should belong to the same species.
Moreover, he suspected that above these three Titans, there was another, more powerful being commanding them.
Cynthia naturally disagreed with the author's first point.
But the latter viewpoint caught her attention and made her think it had some merit.
Having studied legendary Pokémon for so many years, what Cynthia understood best wasn't actually the legendary Pokémon native to the Sinnoh region, but rather the three legendary birds of the Kanto region, because the documentation about them was the most extensive among all legendary Pokémon!
Although she had never seen them personally, she knew these three legendary birds served under an even more powerful legendary Pokémon.
Because someone had once witnessed a massive white figure passing through the clouds, with the three legendary birds following closely behind.
If that were the case, could these three Titans... be in a similar situation?
And if she reasoned this way, then what awaited her behind that gate...
Cynthia's gaze immediately sharpened.
It would probably be like that white legendary Pokémon, an existence that commanded all the Titans!
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