Odin didn't care anymore. The absolute breakdown of his reality, the imagery of Angel's throat being slit in total, cruel silence on the surface, had completely disintegrated his desire to play tactical games. He no longer gave a single fuck about hiding his greatest secret.
Standing flat on his feet, his palm still vibrating against the cold glass of the translucent planetary bubble, he loudly blurred out into the empty, stagnant air of the ghost town.
"System, use 4 CP to upgrade my Gold-Rank Poison Affinity to Platinum-Rank!"
[DING!]
[4 CP has been used!]
[Gold-Rank Poison Affinity has been Upgraded to Platinum-Rank Poison Affinity]
[Ding!]
[Achievement unlocked - Reach Platinum Rank in 1 Affinity Type!]
[1 CP Received]
[1 SP Received]
[Total CP - 5] [Total SP - 10]
[Platinum-Rank: Upgrades the effect of all previous Ranks. NEW effect: Blessing; it allows you bestow a blessing through physical touch, this blessing instantly turns any Bronze or Silver-Potential Pokémon from the same type of Affinity you possess into Gold-Potential with just a touch. (The Newly Gold-Potential will be at 121 Total IV, the bare minimum for Gold-Potential.) (Double IV gain has become Triple IV gain. Meaning it's now 3 for leveling and 15 for evolution.)]
Odin's lifeless black eyes didn't even blink at the wall of text fracturing across his retinas. His voice remained a flat, frozen monotone.
"System... I need 5 CP to upgrade to Diamond right?"
[Correct Host!]
"Then do it."
Lucy stood trembling directly behind him, her hands still clamped over her mouth, her eyes wide with a thick, suffocating confusion. Her wobbly legs barely held her weight inside her tight pencil skirt as she listened to him shout commands into the empty void.
"System?..." she whispered, her voice cracking with sheer bewilderment.
Even so, Lucy was currently far too terrified of Odin to even dream of questioning him at the moment. Odin did not look alright. The sheer, physical waves of dark killing intent bleeding off his frame were choking the oxygen out of her lungs. As she stared at his rigid back, she could only wonder in a spiral of dark anxiety if Odin would also react like that for her... if something horrible were to ever happen to her on a mission.
[Ding!]
[5 CP has been used!]
[Ding!]
[Platinum-Rank Poison Affinity has been upgraded to Diamond-Rank Poison Affinity]
[Achievement unlocked - Reach Diamond Rank with 1 Affinity Type]
[1 CP Received]
[1 SP Received]
[Total CP - 1] [Total SP - 11]
[Diamond-Rank: Upgrades the Effect of all previous Ranks. (Triple IV has become Quadruple IV Gain.) (Blessing can now instantly turn any Bronze, Silver or Gold-Potential Pokémon from the same type Of Affinity you possess Into Platinum-Potential with a single touch. The Newly Platinum-Potential will be at 151 Total IV, The bare minimum for Platinum-Potential.) New Effect: Effort Value; This unlocks the Pokémon's Hidden Potential and grants them A new way of growing stronger Through Effort Value (EV). They can now gain Specific EV through defeating Certain Pokémon. Unused IV points Can be Converted into EV. (1 IV = 4 EV). The Pokémon can Have 252 EV In all Stats. (Unlike the games where you can only have 510 Total EV, that you wisely have to Spread across your stats. Here you can technically have A total EV of 1512, so you can have 252 EV across all stats.)]
Odin's mind ran through the numbers with absolute, robotic precision. He wasn't done breaking the system scaling.
"System... use 1 SP... buy Double Exp Buff for Koffing."
[Ding!]
[Double Exp Buff Active! - Duration: 48:00:00]
"System, Use 1 SP and buy Double IV Buff for Koffing."
[Ding!]
[Double IV Buff Active, Duration - 48:00:00]
"Good..." Odin muttered, his lips barely moving as he stared through the glass at the surface world. "Let him slaughter... let him massacre everything... let him burn that entire fucking mountain down."
Just then, a sudden, agonizingly violent wave of heat detonated right behind his eyelids. Odin felt a quick, burning pain rip through his optical nerves, forcing his hands to violently snap up to his face. The cellular structure of his eyes began to forcefully change, rewriting his biology under the pressure of the Diamond-Rank integration. The skin around his sockets split, and his eyes completely transformed—his irises bleeding into a brilliant, glowing purple hue, centering around a pair of pitch-black, jagged, skull-shaped pupils.
Odin's eyes began actively bleeding as the cosmic change finalized in his skull.
Lucy witnessed Odin's horrifying scream as he violently writhed around in pure physical torment, both of his hands covering his face as thick, dark lines of crimson began to leak through his fingers.
"Odin! What's wrong?!" Lucy shrieked in total panic, her wobbly legs giving out entirely as she dropped to her knees on the dark teal cobblestones. "Talk to me! You're scaring me... please... what's going on with you?! You're bleeding from your eyes! Oh no! Odin... please be okay! What is happening to you?!"
Soon, the agonizing pain stopped. Odin's hands slowly fell away from his face, revealing his fully mutated eyes. The glowing purple irises and the jagged black skull pupils stared straight ahead, completely emotionless, while thick tracks of fresh blood formed on his pale cheeks, slowly dripping down his jawline.
"Odin... your eyes... oh my god... your eyes," Lucy whimpered in sheer panic and paralyzing fear, her body shivering violently as she stared at the demonic skull marks in his sockets.
Odin ignored her completely. He turned his head toward Arbok, his gaze still entirely cold, lifeless, and empty of any human warmth.
He walked directly towards Arbok, his heavy leather combat boots clicking rhythmically against the stone. Without even looking down at Lucy, he reached out, wrapped his powerful fingers around her wrist, and forcefully pulled her along with him.
"Ah! Odin, stop! You're hurting me!" Lucy yelled out in pain, her wobbly legs dragging awkwardly across the stone as his iron grip forced her upward. "I'm sorry! Odin, please, I'm sorry!" She pleaded frantically, completely terrified of the unhinged monster he had just become.
Odin ignored her cries entirely, dragging her forward like a ragdoll until they reached the massive purple serpent. With a cold, rough shove, he threw Lucy straight at Arbok's coiled body. Arbok's predatory reflexes snapped online instantly; she caught her master softly against her scales, her massive hood flaring to its absolute limit as she unleashed a violent, bone-chilling hiss right into Odin's face. Her slitted yellow eyes flashed with venomous anger, as if saying—Lucy is my master, why the fuck are you hurting my master?!
Odin didn't give a single fuck about the serpent's rage. He casually confronted the hissing Arbok, walking right into her striking radius, and simply placed his bare, pale palm flat against her smooth scales.
"Bless," Odin coldly murmured.
The mechanical trigger exploded through his hand. Instantly, Arbok's internal system parameters shattered. Her baseline Gold-Potential vanished, her natural talent ceiling violently being forced upward past the limits of her potential until her IV pool slammed directly into the Platinum-Potential bracket. She broke through right then and there, her core restructuring in a single millisecond.
Odin took a few quiet steps back, his bloody, skull-pupil face completely blank as he stared at the snake and the woman, fully expecting what would happen next.
And just as he expected, the reality-shattering evolution began.
Arbok's entire massive frame began to violently glow with a mysterious, ethereal, and translucent light. The sheer purity of the radiance enveloped her scales, and because Lucy was still making direct physical contact with her Pokémon, her body was also instantly bathed in that same blinding, celestial light.
This blinding light—this cosmic phenomenon—carried an ancient name across the regions: The Light of Arceus.
It was a divine manifestation that only occurred when a Pokémon successfully broke through its biological barriers into Platinum-Potential or Diamond-Potential. And soon, the blinding light faded away, the entire process concluding as quickly as it had arrived.
Odin stared at them, his voice a flat, mechanical, and completely soulless monotone as he congratulated the trembling duo.
"Arbok is now a Platinum-Potential Pokémon," Odin stated coldly, his dead purple skull eyes locked onto the snake. "Now, as long as you are smart and don't make dumb decisions, you are destined to not die a dog's death out there in the world."
He turned his expressionless face slightly toward Lucy. "And that light... it's called the Light of Arceus. Though I know you already know of this phenomenon from the organization's classified files, this is the true, cosmic name of this light. Be sure to always bathe in it... just like now. You are now more intuned with your Arbok... with the Poison types under your command. Arbok should grow quicker now. She should level up faster than any standard Pokémon.. even more than other so called geniuses, i presume."
"Odin..." Lucy choked out, her voice trembling with a mixture of awe, confusion, and deep psychological terror as she held her glowing serpent.
Odin ignored anything else she wanted to say. He completely cut her off, turning his back on her as he slowly looked up past the contorted wood-paneled houses, his dead skull eyes staring straight into the swirling purple sky of the void. His jaw tightened, his killing intent leaking out so violently that even the mysterious being felt it through the void.
"How long are you planning on stalking me?" Odin barked out into the empty abyss, his voice echoing flatly against the floating islands.
He narrowed his glowing purple eyes, his teeth grinding together as he challenged the ancient, god-level presence looming over the dimension. "You showed me all that on purpose. Congratulations... you successfully pissed me off!"
The entire Distortion World seemed to buckle under an unspoken weight as the spatial architecture slowly shifted.
Odin's face contorted, a jagged, completely unhinged smile cutting across his blood-stained features. "Let me see that ugly face of yours," he murmured, his tone ringing flat against the void.
A heavy, suffocating pressure slammed into their minds as an ancient presence saturated the air. Then, a voice echoed directly inside Odin's skull. It wasn't a standard psychic communication; it was a telepathic message that felt deeply rugged, ancient, and hollow, carrying a masculine weight that mirrored the sheer mass of the dimension.
"Follow the path. Come to the edge."
Odin didn't say a single word. He turned on his heel, reached down, and forcefully grabbed Lucy by the wrist once again, pulling her forward.
This time, Lucy didn't fight him off or complain about his grip. She complied silently, her heart hammering against her ribs as she looked up at his mutated features. She could see the lingering tracks of fresh blood staining his pale cheeks, and despite the absolute terror suffocating her chest, her intuition told her that he was hurting badly beneath that frozen mask.
Instead of letting him drag her along like a piece of dead cargo, she squeezed his hand, shifting her grip until her fingers were tightly intertwined with his. She used her other hand to firmly cling to his forearm, anchoring herself to his side as they stepped off the clearing.
"Odin... please, talk to me," Lucy pleaded softly, her voice trembling in the quiet space.
"What's there to talk about?" Odin replied, his voice a flat, mechanical monotone.
"We're going to meet my stalker," Odin stated simply, his gaze locked straight ahead.
"What?!" Lucy gasped, her grip tightening on his arm in sudden panic.
"Let's see." Odin said flatly.
They began walking deeper into the fractured landscape, and the gravity of the dimension immediately took total control of their path. The environment began violently morphing around their boots. The dark cobblestone roads twisted, broke apart, and drifted sideways through the violet fog. With every few steps, the gravitational current would launch their bodies sideways or propel them upwards, catching them on floating patches of stone that flew out from the dark abyss to construct a unique, linear bridge directly beneath their feet. The broken physics of the town were actively guiding them forward.
Eventually, the moving path solidified, depositing the entire squad at the absolute edge of the distorted ghost town.
They stood over a sheer drop, staring down into an utter, pitch-black abyss that seemed to swallow the light from the flickering street lamps. For a long, tense moment, nothing moved.
Then, two colossal, glowing red eyes violently ignited within the dark void, staring straight back up into Odin's face.
A heavy, primal terror filled the air as a massive, legendary entity began slowly clawing its way out of the pitch-black abyss. Slowly and methodically, its form materialized through the violet fog. Six massive, shadowy black tendrils tipped with razor-sharp red spikes billowed like tattered wings behind its grey-scaled, serpentine torso. Symmetrical golden horns curved around its crown, matching the thick golden spikes jutting out from its underbelly as it hovered effortlessly over the endless liquid sky, locking its omnipotent gaze directly onto the Team Rocket squad.
The colossal, serpentine entity floated flawlessly out of the dark void, its massive grey-scaled form casting an oppressive, suffocating weight over the edge of the floating platform. As it hovered directly above the Team Rocket squad, its glowing red eyes locked onto them, Odin's internal system interface violently detonated across his retinas once again.
The standard blue grid lines shattered, completely overtaken by a frantic, blinding cascade of flashing error reports that jammed his vision.
[Ding!]
[ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR]
[Ding!]
[.....]
[?????]
[???]
[??]
[ERROR]
[Ding!]
[Giratina - Level ???]
[Divine-Potential]
[SS - Rank]
Odin stared straight into those colossal red eyes, his expression remaining completely frozen, flat, and hollow. The fresh blood tracks still stained his pale cheeks, but his voice carried the absolute zero density of a clinical executioner.
"So that's what you are..." Odin said, his tone an icy, emotionless monotone. "Gira...tina."
The system interface flickered one final time beneath the weight of the cosmic god's presence, updating his token balances with a crisp electronic chime.
[Ding!]
[Achievement unlocked - Meet a legendary Pokemon]
[2 CP Received]
[2 SP Received]
[Total of 3 CP] [Total of 11 SP]
Lucy stood paralyzed at his side, her fingers still tightly intertwined with his as her breath caught in her throat. She couldn't see the flashing system screens, but the sheer, primitive dread radiating from the leviathan above them made her entire body shiver. Rocky anchored his heavy granite arms deep into the cobblestones to secure the egg incubator, while Arbok dropped her hood slightly, completely overwhelmed by the crushing aura of a literal deity.
Then, the monster spoke.
This time, it wasn't a private, hidden echo restricted to Odin's skull. A massive, deep, and rugged telepathic shockwave violently erupted through the local air, vibrating through the stone paths and echoing clearly inside everyone's minds. It was a voice that sounded like grinding tectonic plates, carrying a boundless, ancient gravity.
"Human... you don't belong here... you're not from this world."