Chapter 151. Ancient Jigglypuff, Alakazam, Gengar
The letters on the golden spoon were tiny and densely packed.
To the naked eye, one might even mistake them for some kind of engraved fish-scale pattern.
Under Eve's expectant gaze, Natsume wrote the characters down one by one.
Even though a magnifying glass could only barely make out the shapes of the letters, once suffused with Natsume's telekinesis, the characters were no different from normal size.
The more he traced, the more astonished Natsume felt.
Every single character was minuscule, and on such a small spoon, thousands of characters had actually been inscribed.
Most crucially, each character was remarkably clear, with no smudging or running together.
How was this accomplished under such primitive conditions in ancient times?
Even as a Psychic like himself, without modern instruments, it would be difficult to reproduce a spoon like this.
After finishing the roughly three thousand characters on it, Natsume rubbed his sore wrist.
What greeted him was an even more eager look from Eve.
"Natsume, I also have two more items!"
As she spoke, Eve brought over two more glass cases, inside which were a black sphere and a bronze bell.
Without exception, both instruments were covered with dense inscriptions.
Ancient Gengar, and ancient Jigglypuff?
Natsume blinked, then realized something: the system hadn't issued a task.
Why not?
Shouldn't the system be going ding-ding-ding right now like Brock spotting a Nurse Joy?
"Um… Natsume, is this too much to ask…?"
Eve looked at Natsume a little apologetically.
After all, it was a lot of work.
Just that golden spoon alone had taken Natsume nearly five hours to copy.
It was already dark out.
"It's fine.
You can pay me."
Before Natsume could name a lion's share, a card was already in his hand.
"Natsume, this is all my savings.
Please!"
Eve pressed her palms together and looked at Natsume full of hope.
Natsume didn't check how much was on the card, only stared at Eve in surprise.
No wonder she'd chosen a major so unpopular people joked about jumping off a building if they were assigned to it.
You could tell she truly loved this.
Glancing at the high-hanging moon outside, Natsume shifted his gaze back to the three instruments.
The lack of a task likely meant he had already completed something similar before.
For example, the giant Tentacruel and the giant Dragonite were the same principle, and the system hadn't triggered a task for those either.
Could it be that when the second Eternatus fell into the Kanto region, it happened way, way back in the ancient period?
Natsume reasonably guessed that when it fell, it may have irradiated a group of Pokémon and made them gigantic.
In the end, they were sealed away by ancient wisdom.
Although Natsume wasn't interested in studying these characters themselves, he was very interested in that "wisdom of the ancients."
What was the principle behind these Poké Ball–like instruments?
Most crucially, how were the inscriptions on them carved?
While Natsume quietly traced the ancient characters, Honora and Eve began to chat.
"Ms.
Eve, do ancient civilizations really exist?"
Honora held a book recording various speculations about ancient civilizations.
"Well, this is actually my teacher's book."
Eve smiled and took the book from Honora's hands.
After flipping two pages, she said, a little troubled:
"Mm, how should I put it?"
"This is only a reasonable hypothesis.
Whether ancient civilization truly existed, none of us knows, but—"
Eve's tone suddenly shifted:
"Ancient Pokémon definitely exist."
Eve spoke with absolute certainty.
"One of my teachers personally witnessed it.
He once released an ancient Pokémon at a ruin."
"It was a Baltoy, but its size was bigger than a Claydol!"
"And legend says the appearance of ancient Pokémon brings calamity, yet a giant bathed in radiance will take them away."
Eve spoke mysteriously.
"A giant of light?" Natsume raised his head, puzzled.
"Not light—golden lightning, like the arcs that jump inside a light bulb.
That's how my teacher described it," Eve corrected.
"Oh, let me guess—was it shaped like a llama?" Natsume said casually.
"No." Eve shook her head seriously.
"It was a humanoid Pokémon with only one leg.
Very big—huge.
A gigantic hand would extend from its chest and grab that giant Baltoy away."
Eve answered in earnest.
"Which teacher are you talking about?" Natsume asked suddenly.
"He passed away the year before last…" Eve's voice grew low.
"Where is your teacher's grave?" Natsume persisted.
"Why are you asking that?" Eve was confused.
"We could dig him up and place him in the Pokémon Tower.
He might come back to li—mmph!"
Before Natsume could finish, Honora smiled and covered his mouth.
"Ha ha, what Natsume means is that the Pokémon Tower has excellent feng shui, so the departed can rest in peace."
She gave Eve an apologetic smile, then set both hands atop Natsume's head, pinning him firmly against her chest.
"All right, all right, Natsume.
I'll rub your shoulders.
You keep tracing."
Honora swiftly defused a diplomatic incident.
Time ticked by, and Natsume enlarged the text from the black sphere and the bronze bell onto paper stroke by stroke.
To save time, Natsume even used telekinesis to control two pens at once, tracing the characters from two instruments simultaneously.
If not for the mental focus needed to keep the combinations of characters from getting mixed up, he might have finished long ago with a thousand pens at once.
Night deepened, and the cries of Rattata occasionally sounded from outside.
Eve, slumped over the table, had already fallen fast asleep.
"Done."
Natsume moved his head, and the flushed Honora snapped back to her senses.
"Natsume, did you finish all the tracings?"
"No.
The inscriptions on the bronze bell are more numerous." Natsume spoke, then paused mid-sentence.
Only then did he belatedly rub the back of his head.
"Strange.
Why does the back of my head ache a bit?"
Natsume felt as if he had slept on a rock and it had left a sore spot.
Honora pouted, a little angry.
With Eve asleep, Natsume didn't wake her, but set the glass case sealing the ancient Gengar and the spoon on another table.
Returning to his seat, Natsume continued tracing the bronze bell.
Natsume had no idea what the conditions were for releasing an ancient Pokémon.
But once Eve deciphered the meanings of these inscriptions tomorrow, perhaps they would find some clues.
The next day.
Inside the tent, in front of a computer.
"Well?
Did you find a method to release the ancient Pokémon?"
Natsume's voice sounded from behind Eve.
Eve turned her head in puzzlement.
She was very curious how Natsume had known the three instruments were sealing ancient Pokémon.
She herself had only just deciphered the inscriptions and learned that they sealed three ancient Pokémon.
"They are indeed three ancient Pokémon, but—"
Eve hesitated, then stood up and turned the monitor so Natsume and Honora could see.
The screen was split—on one side was the enlarged image of Natsume's tracings, the ancient text from the bronze bell.
On the other side was a document where Eve had entered her translation.
Natsume looked on with interest; in a sense, these were words left by ancestors to their descendants.
The first sentence:
"We went through all this trouble to seal these terrifying Pokémon—surely you're not thinking of letting them out?"
"Mm." Natsume was speechless.
He felt this ancestor who left the message had a touch of his own style.
"Is there any hint at all about how to release the ancient Pokémon?"
Natsume, still unwilling to give up, pressed on.
Eve didn't speak, only scrolled the mouse wheel.
The one hundred and forty-eighth sentence:
"You didn't read all of this, did you?
If we wrote down how to release these terrifying Pokémon here, why would we bother sealing them?"
Natsume: "…"
"Um… for now, the useful information I have is that the three instruments respectively seal an ancient Jigglypuff, Gengar, and Alakazam."
Eve waved her hand and continued:
"In short, that's what the text on the bronze bell says.
The other two might record different information."
"Give me half a day, and I'll have it tonight."
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