Ash still had an S-class opportunity sitting unused, the Jade Orb.
The Jade Orb's value was comparable to the Silver Wing and Rainbow Feather, but it worked differently. If Ash found the Jade Orb and fully mastered its power, he could become Rayquaza's master without needing to fight it at all.
Not a partner, not a companion recognized through battle. A master, with Rayquaza in genuine submission. That relationship didn't exist with other Legendary Pokémon. Even earning the recognition of a top-tier Legendary meant fighting alongside it as equals, not commanding it from above.
And this wasn't any ordinary Rayquaza. Like Lugia, Rayquaza led a Clan. Mastering the Jade Orb meant mastering the King of the Rayquaza Clan, the strongest individual carrying the God Domain of the Sky.
The catch was that fully mastering the Jade Orb was closer to fantasy than plan. According to the big shots in the group, the power inside it wasn't something an ordinary person could handle, and using it at all was extremely difficult.
On top of that, mastering the Jade Orb required earning the King of Rayquaza's recognition first, which created an obvious problem. Mastering the Jade Orb was supposed to be how you gained control over the King of Rayquaza, but you couldn't master the Jade Orb without the King of Rayquaza's recognition first. If you already had the recognition, what was the Jade Orb for?
The practical process was simpler. After obtaining the Jade Orb, either use it to summon Rayquaza or follow the Orb's resonance to find Rayquaza on your own. Then, through a battle or a trial Rayquaza set, earn its recognition, and the Orb's power would open up from there.
The difference between summoning and finding mattered considerably. Finding Rayquaza and letting it assess you on its terms was the path that made capturing it realistic.
Summoning it with the Jade Orb skipped that trial entirely, and Rayquaza would know it had been skipped. The difficulty of the resulting battle would reflect that.
According to everyone in the group who had encountered Rayquaza, if there was any possible way to go find it rather than call it to you, that was always the right choice.
Summoning Rayquaza and fighting it at full power against its will was not a problem that Lugia alone could solve. It would take all three Space-Time Gods and Lugia together to have a realistic chance.
Ascender Ash: Wait, is Rayquaza really that far above the others? How does the gap get that large? Even at God Level Peak, with a God Domain, there's a ceiling. How does one Rayquaza require four Gods to match?"
It was a genuine question. God Level Peak was the highest tier in the world outside of Arceus. It was supposed to be an endpoint, not a spectrum.
Champion Ash: "Newbie, do you know why my Mewtwo was able to knock out a controlled Lugia with one hit and pull the dark power out cleanly?"
Ascender Ash: "Because Lugia was being controlled and its strength was compromised, and your Mewtwo is already an exceptionally strong God Level Peak existence, so the combination of those two factors made it possible?"
Ash wasn't entirely confident in that answer even as he gave it. He had been inside the fight, feeling it through Viridian Power.
Controlled Lugia had been almost unable to resist Mewtwo, that was clear. But even with the suppression, Lugia's resistance had been far more intense than the Legendary Birds', which meant the control had been costing it more.
With that internal struggle stacking on top of the type mismatch and the suppressed output, the result made sense without requiring Mewtwo to be categorically beyond God Level Peak.
Champion Ash: "You're wrong. At the very end, Charon burned all the dark power at once, which suppressed Lugia's own consciousness completely for a short window. Without that interference, and without using its God Domain, Lugia in that state was functionally at its natural strength. No degradation."
"Champion Ash: And in that state, when Lugia used Aeroblast, Mewtwo still broke through it with Fighting-type Close Combat. Flying type suppresses Fighting type. That was Lugia's own signature move. And Mewtwo went through it."
Ash sat with that. The controlled Lugia had returned to God Level Peak after Charon burned the reserve power. Without the God Domain, it was as close to a normal Lugia as the situation could produce. Mewtwo didn't have a God Domain either. On paper, they were standing in the same place.
So how had Mewtwo broken the signature move of a same-level opponent through a type disadvantage and dropped it in one hit?
Champion Ash: "Mega Evolution."
"Ascender Ash: Right. I forgot about that entirely. The Mega Evolution boost was still active, so Mewtwo was operating above that level even at God Level Peak. That's how it broke through."
He had subconsciously assumed that once something reached God Level Peak, Mega Evolution's contribution would shrink to the point of being marginal. That assumption had been wrong.
Champion Ash: "Don't underestimate Mega Evolution at this tier. The boost it provides doesn't stop mattering just because the base level is already the highest.
The reason Mewtwo handled two controlled Legendary Birds simultaneously wasn't only because they were suppressed. It was primarily because the Mega Evolution boost put Mewtwo in a different bracket than both of them.
Without that, even with their power compromised, subduing them that quickly wouldn't have been possible."
Champion Ash: "Using my Mewtwo as the reference point: under Mega Evolution, it already operates at what you could call Quasi-Creation Level power."
Ascender Ash: "Quasi-Creation Level?"
Champion Ash: "After God Level comes Creation. If God Level is a tier that exists because of the concept of Legendary Pokémon, then Creation is a tier that exists because of Arceus.
The Creator God Arceus is the only existence across all parallel worlds that has ever reached Creation Level."
Ascender Ash: "The only one across all parallel worlds? So none of you big shots have a single Pokémon that's reached Creation Level?"
Aura Hero Ash: "That's correct. In every parallel world without exception, no Creation Level Pokémon exists outside of Arceus. Not Legendary Pokémon, not ordinary Pokémon, not anything we've raised. None of us have gotten there."
Evolutionist Ash: "The reason Arceus is invincible isn't just the plates on its body that grant immunity to every attribute. It's also the level itself. The gap between Creation Level and God Level is no different from the gap between God Level and ordinary Pokémon. Even if Arceus removed every plate, no Pokémon that hasn't reached Creation Level could defeat it."
Arceus was the rumored origin of the Pokémon world. The Gods of Time, Space, and the Distortion World had been made by it directly. Everything else, Pokémon and humans alike, had emerged through the natural cycles of the world Arceus built, which meant everything was indirectly its creation as well.
The Chat Group itself was something none of them fully understood, its origin unknown, its nature closer to a concept than a system.
But across every parallel world it connected, one fact held constant. No Pokémon had ever reached the same level as the Creator God Arceus. Even Champion Ash and the others who stood at the very top of their worlds had not gotten there.
An Arceus with its plates active was simply beyond reach. It could ignore every attribute and back that immunity with its own raw strength.
Without the plates, there might be a path, but only for a Pokémon that could first stand at the same level. Strategy couldn't bridge that gap. The level difference made everything else irrelevant before it started.
Champion Ash: "The term Quasi-Creation Level actually came from Arceus itself. I once brought Mewtwo to challenge Arceus. The result was a complete defeat, six against one, no contest.
But during that encounter, Arceus identified two Pokémon in my hands that could potentially reach Creation Level. One of them was Mega Evolved Mewtwo."
Champion Ash: "After reaching God Level Peak, every step further is extraordinarily difficult. But Mega Evolution lets a Pokémon experience what the next level feels like in advance.
That preview effect on growth is more significant than it sounds. The difference between a God Level Peak Pokémon with Mega Evolution and one without it is genuinely substantial."
Champion Ash: "Which is also why Rayquaza, who can also Mega Evolve, possesses power that far exceeds other Gods. After Mega Evolution, Rayquaza's level very likely reaches Quasi-Creation Level as well."
That was where Mega Evolution separated itself from other power systems. It didn't just produce a stronger form. It pushed the ceiling of what level a Pokémon could access at all. Compared to Gigantamax or Z-Moves, Mega Evolution operated on a fundamentally different scale, and that difference only became more visible the higher a Pokémon's base level was.
Ash hadn't fully appreciated how deep that system ran until now. The ease with which Mewtwo had handled Lugia during the fight made more sense in this context. Mega Evolution hadn't just boosted Mewtwo. It had placed Mewtwo in a different tier from everything it was fighting.
And above God Level Peak, there was Creation Level. The true ceiling of this world, reached only by Arceus, dreamed of by every Pokémon that existed, and achieved by none of them.
Legendary Ash: "So with all that in mind, newbie, when you find the Jade Orb, the right choice is to follow it and go to Rayquaza yourself. Do not use it to call Rayquaza to you. The situations are completely different."
Legendary Ash: "If you summon Rayquaza, you get a full-power Mega Rayquaza. If you find it on its own terms, you get a Rayquaza that hasn't Mega Evolved and is holding back somewhat. You understand the difference now, right?"
He understood completely. The difference was Quasi-Creation Level versus something that hadn't reached God Level Peak in the conventional sense. Lugia could hold its own against the latter. Against the former, Lugia arriving to help would change nothing.
Ascender Ash: "Understood. If I find the Jade Orb, I'm going to it, not calling it to me."
There would be situations where calling for help was unavoidable, and if that moment came, he would deal with it. But there was no reason to create harder problems for himself when an easier path existed.
Ascender Ash: One more thing. Champion Ash mentioned Arceus identified two Pokémon in your hands that could reach Creation Level. Besides Mewtwo, who is the other one? Is it Rayquaza?"
It was the natural guess. Rayquaza could Mega Evolve. It could reach Quasi-Creation Level. If any Pokémon outside Mewtwo was going to be flagged by Arceus as having that potential, Rayquaza seemed like the obvious candidate.
Champion Ash: "I haven't captured Rayquaza. The other Pokémon Arceus mentioned is Pikachu."
Ascender Ash: "???"