The Palossand was a massive, sandy-orange fortress variant, divided into three distinct segments: the primary central chassis flanked by two shifting sand-claws.
Embedded across its upper jaw and battlements were distinct, light-pink and sea-blue limestone blocks, framing a cavernous maw that tunneled straight through to its back walls. Resting dead-center above its crown was a pristine, crimson shovel driven into its crest.
Whenever a Palossand initialized displacement to track down fresh prey across the dunes, the crimson shovel would begin spinning violently. Advanced tracking reports hypothesized that this shovel functioned as a biological radar node.
The species harbored a pathological obsession with siphoning the vital lifeforce of living beings, routinely drawing smaller Pokémon into its chassis to drain their energy banks. By triggering a localized Sand Tomb vortex, it could swallow an asset whole within seconds.
Right at that exact millisecond, the guardian Palossand violently erupted.
Unifying their spatial frequencies, several wild variants deployed a continuous, apocalyptic Sandstorm that blanketed the coastal shelf.
Palossand (Territorial Hivemind): Human contamination logs registered... No warm-blooded traveler is permitted to breach the coordinates of the Altar of the Sunne.
As if their central processors had been completely overridden by ancient security parameters, the sand titans writhed and surged forward, stacking themselves layer-by-layer over the sand like a rising tidal wave of liquid stone to compress Naganadel's trajectory.
The individual Palossand began fluidly merging their atomic structures, transforming into a single, gargantuan Totem Palossand.
"What under heaven is driving this morphological deviancy? Since when do independent Palossand command the variable parameters to merge their mass?" Feng Che muttered, his brow furrowing beneath his visor as his tracking terminal threw errors.
Sensing the sudden, violent activation of the altar's automated defenses, the surrounding wild Ultra Beasts scattered in panic, rapidly vacating the airspace.
WHOOSH!
A high-velocity, white-hot firebomb shot out from the dust cloud, cutting a direct trajectory toward Naganadel's flank. The dragon-wasp violently fanned its massive wings, executing a tight aerodynamic bank to let the projectile blast harmlessly past its armor plates.
The entity that authorized the strike was a specialized Ultra Beast—Blacephalon.
The creature commanded an extraordinarily bizarre, jester-like physical profile. Its multi-colored eyes were positioned on opposite ends of its spherical head, framed by two large, glowing pink and blue hexagonal star-crests. A dense lattice of interlocking pink and blue micro-dots mapped its skull, bridging the optical sensors down the center line.
Blacephalon's head was composed of a volatile, highly compressed matrix of exotic fireworks and chemical sparks; data records confirmed it could manually detach its own skull or detonate its mass at will without sustaining structural cell damage. The star-patterns on its flanks functioned as its primary emotional indicators, altering the smoky hues of its crown to flash varying expressions based on its combat loops.
Dozens of independent Blacephalon suddenly materialized, anchoring their frames directly along the battlements of the giant Totem Palossand.
With synchronized, theatrical bows, they smoothly detached their own glowing heads, launching the spinning skulls straight down the channel as the spheres unchained towering columns of roaring plasma. By rapidly spinning their detached crowns, they could unchain maximum-yield Flame Wheel and Fire Blast matrixes to incinerate the airspace.
"A dual Ghost-type vanguard initiating an offensive cascade..."
"Naganadel, crush their cohesion—Dragon Pulse!"
Naganadel took a deep, structural breath, condensing a massive sphere of golden draconic plasma before unleashing a magnificent beam straight down the center line of the Totem Palossand's chest.
The golden energy ray slammed relentlessly into the sand fortress, triggering a spectacular explosion that sent thousands of heavy stones and loose mineral grains raining down across the grid.
A massive, gaping hole was manually bored clean through the center axis of the giant Palossand. Yet, before the structural damage could destabilize its center of gravity, the surrounding river of loose, shifting sand across its hide violently surged, fluidly filling and patching the wound within milliseconds.
The kinetic weight of Naganadel's strike had thoroughly infuriated the colossus.
Palossand (Internal Commotion): Impudent wasp... to think an outside dragon commands enough raw kinetic torque to crack my primary battlements.
Witness the uncompromised weight of the shifting trenches.
The sand giant flexed its mass, accelerating the sandstorm until a blinding wall of abrasive dust completely choked the visibility indices.
"Come forth, Greninja! Alolan Ninetales!"
To cleanly liquidate a specialized Ground/Ghost asset of Palossand's caliber, the advanced water-and-ice matrixes commanded by Greninja and Alolan Ninetales yielded the absolute highest statistical return on investment.
"Greninja, authorize immediate climate override—Rain Dance!"
"Ninetales, condense your absolute maximum threshold of absolute-zero energy. Await my execution command to deploy Ice Beam!"
A rich, deep-blue elemental aura erupted from Greninja's chest, its neural processors tracking and collecting the ambient water vapor suspended across the local atmosphere.
A few seconds later, the abrasive sandstorm was forcefully suppressed as a heavy, torrential rain began cascading down over the canyon.
The exact millisecond the rainwater hit the Totem Palossand's chassis, its hyper-porous sand composition automatically absorbed the fluid. Its physical mass expanded at a preposterous velocity, the heavy water logged within its sand grains causing its movements to slow down to an absolute crawl.
Concurrently, because the Blacephalon were pure Fire-type assets, their internal engines harbored a pathological, biological hatred toward high-volume moisture. The moment the rain hit their skin, they broke alignment, abandoning their positions on the sand fortress to retreat into the dry rock fissures.
"Now, Ninetales! Discharge—maximum-potency Ice Beam!"
A magnificent, absolute-zero beam of brilliant ice-blue energy shot across the gap, wrapping perfectly around the water-logged sand giant.
The Totem Palossand froze instantly, its motor functions entirely gridlocked as the moisture trapped within its sand grains converted into solid, high-density ice. Within fractions of a second, the mountain-sized fortress was transformed into a static, helpless Glacial Monolith.
"A gargantuan material scale introduces a severe structural flaw—it guarantees a 100% hit-rate accuracy for high-velocity arts."
"When confronting an amorphous, reality-warping entity lacking a solid cellular core, utilizing freezing ice matrixes to permanently lock down their molecular cohesion remains the ultimate solution."
Feng Che adjusted his visor, tracking a sequence of high-velocity heat signatures directly above his head. The hidden Blacephalon were spinning their detached skulls with frantic torque, the intense thermal heat of their fire columns vaporizing the cascading rain into thick walls of white steam.
Yet, the dense steam layer merely provided Greninja with a massive volume of recycled moisture, allowing its Rain Dance routine to compound and expand its radius across the entire sector.
Unable to parry the severe moisture density, the remaining jesters dissolved their forms, completely vanishing from the local airspace.
"Excellent. The troublesome Blacephalon vanguard has successfully decoupled from the field. Our vector to breach the interior of the Altar of the Sunne is completely clear."
Feng Che smoothly clicked his luxury capsules to recall his active roster. Leveraging a precise telekinetic displacement wave extended from Mewtwo's core, his physical frame bypassed the outer heavy stone gates, Teleporting straight into the primary central corridors of the ancient shrine.
The Maze of the Skies
The Altar of the Sunne was designed as a colossal, subterranean megalithic ruin. The exact millisecond Feng Che's boots hit the stone floors of the primary entrance vault, dozens of ancient iron torches lining the walls unfire-ignited spontaneously, their flames dancing without a trace of wind.
The flickering amber light illuminated the intricate, hand-carved astronomical murals decorating the cyclopean stonework.
"A magnificent architectural masterpiece engineered by the ancients... Yet, why did the guardian Palossand harbor such a pathological mandate to deny humanity access to these vaults? Does this sector anchor a secondary, hidden variable?" Feng Che pondered silently, his boots stepping lightly across the flagstones.
The primary transit corridor was locked in an absolute, deathly silence. However, a fraction of a second later, a sharp, high-temperature thermal wave exploded from the shadows directly behind his spine.
Without a single millisecond of hesitation, Feng Che authorized his reflexes, executing an instantaneous Teleport to displace his coordinates fifty meters down the line.
BOOM!
A catastrophic, high-velocity detonation ripped through his previous location, throwing up an immense cloud of choking charcoal soot that filled the corridor.
Those jesters managed to slip past our security sweep... They're actively tracking my silhouette from the shadow layers, Feng Che calculated.
A rain of heavy stone debris cascaded down from the fractured ceiling blocks. Feng Che looked up, his custom visor mapping the spatial paths—the entire structural layout of the Altar of the Sunne functioned as a massive, multi-layered Geometric Labyrinth.
"Mewtwo, can your sovereign processing loops execute a full psychokinetic mapping scan to decode the layout of this maze?" Feng Che requested telepathically.
"Negative, Feng Che. The interior of this monolith is heavily woven with a primordial, localized Psychic distortion field that successfully parries my computational tracking. Forcing a direct mental breakthrough would require me to unchain a baseline power output that would systematically collapse the structural integrity of these mountain walls." Mewtwo replied, shaking its head.
"If the mechanical pathing fails... we rely on absolute destiny. Come forth, Togekiss!"
Feng Che unclipped a luxury capsule, deploying his pristine white fairy-wasp. This was his undisputed Sovereign of Fortune—an asset capable of routinely utilizing Metronome to unchain the absolute defining mythic signatures of the Hoenn deities through sheer, uncompromised luck.
"Togekiss, my house requires your specialized emotional affinity. Rely entirely on your baseline instinctual luck to isolate the definitive transit vector leading straight into the absolute center core of this altar." Feng Che spoke warmly, lightly smoothing its sleek plumage.
Togekiss tilted its elegant head, its tricolor crest cresting softly before it selected a random, unlit corridor that felt psychologically comfortable, gracefully drifting down the path.
Throughout their subsequent advance through the dark tunnels, Togekiss's absolute luck functioned flawlessly, guiding Feng Che's boots to cleanly bypass dozens of ancient, pressure-activated mechanical traps and poison-dart vaults without registering a single error.
The Blacephalon tracking their silhouette from the trailing shadows, however, commanded zero fortune variables.
They continuously stepped directly into the ancient defensive trigger plates, their fragile frames routinely compressed and locked down by heavy stone deadfalls and automated containment grids engineered by the builders.
As Feng Che breached the deep threshold leading into the ultimate central vault line, the visual landscape underwent a drastic transformation—hundreds of independent, glowing Minior were floating serenely across the subterranean airspace.
MINIORRock / FlyingEcosystem Niche: Stratospheric Mineral Absorber
Minior are originally birthed deep within the high stratospheric blocks, sustaining their internal engines by continuously siphoning and absorbing ambient cosmic dust particles suspended across the upper air.
Data streams indicate that once their mineral outer shell accumulates a critical mass of dust, their structural mass spikes, forcing their bodies to plunge down a terminal trajectory to impact the planet's surface like meteorites.
Should their heavy, protective outer shell be compromised or shattered during combat, their baseline weight drops significantly, allowing their exposed core to execute hyper-velocity, priority offensive maneuvers.
However, once a Minior sheds its shield armor, its internal energy core cannot sustain structural cohesion for an extended duration across the material plane. If a trainer fails to immediately secure the core within a standard Poké Ball stasis field, the elemental mass will completely dissolve and scatter into the wind.
The core pigment of a Minior alters dynamically based on the specific mineral components of the cosmic dust its shell siphoned during its stratospheric cycle, displaying a delicate, beautiful pastel palette that makes them highly prized across premium collector networks.
According to historical records compiled by the elite research branches, Minior functioned as a primary, high-order nutrient source for the Sky Lord, Rayquaza.
Every single Minior Feng Che logged floating across this deep central gallery had already completely shed their heavy, protective mineral armor plates.
Under standard planetary conditions, a Minior's outer shell was heavily composed of raw Star-Iron—a premium cosmic mineral that underwent extreme thermal friction during atmospheric entry to refine into high-value Meteorite Alloy.
Feng Che had archived data indicating that across the ancient tracks of Hoenn's Meteor Falls, immense colonies of Minior had historically anchored their lifecycles to feed the dragon lords.
"The dense concentration of exposed Minior cores provides definitive mathematical confirmation..." Feng Che murmured, his visor tracking the immense spike in local energy metrics.
"Our station has officially breached the absolute central nexus of the Altar of the Sunne."