The Miracle Beneath the Solid Ice

After making a turn and taking a corner, Yuga walked into a vast space filled with lifelike ice sculptures.

The reason these ice sculptures were so vivid was not due to the skill of the sculptor, but because each sculpture encased a Pokémon entirely frozen in ice, all in a brilliant icy blue hue.

Some of these Pokémon appeared to be running wildly, some looked terrified, some were lying on the ground, and some wore expressions of utter despair… They were all living beings that had been frozen in time.

Yuga marveled as he approached one of the ice sculptures, touching it with his hand and murmuring to himself, "I can't believe there are so many Amaura and Aurorus, trapped in ice!"

The Pokémon encased in ice were all Amaura and Aurorus. Yuga speculated that this must have originally been an entire tribe, but due to a sudden disaster, the entire tribe had been encased in solid ice.

Amaura and Aurorus had lived over a hundred million years ago, long extinct. It was only due to the invention of fossil revival machines that these two species were able to reemerge into the world.

Now, the few Amaura and Aurorus in the hands of certain trainers were all brought back to life through fossils, but the ones in front of Yuga were not fossils; they were the genuine Amaura and Aurorus. Their delicate scales, the dazzling irises on their heads and necks, and the glimmering gems on their sides were all vividly apparent.

This was simply miraculous!

However, what surprised Yuga even more was the system telling him that all these ice sculptures were emanating strong life forces.

In other words, these Amaura and Aurorus were all still alive, just trapped in a deep slumber!

At the system's prompting, Yuga activated his Insight ability. Sure enough, he could see incredible radiance surrounding each Amaura and Aurorus. If these creatures had long since died in the ice, his Insight would not have reacted at all.

Yuga was instantly ecstatic; wasn't this an opportunity laid out before him?

However, he was puzzled as to why all these Amaura and Aurorus had such extraordinarily high potential—they were all high-potential Pokémon. Yuga counted and found that the total number of Amaura and Aurorus exceeded fifty. While this was not a large clan, if they were all high-potential Pokémon, it would be an entirely different matter.

Especially the two largest Aurorus at the forefront of the group; before being encased in ice, they must have been the leaders of the entire clan. Their potential was nearly at the Indigo level, with the blue aura surrounding them almost reaching a Indigo halo, just a step away from Indigo potential.

Yuga counted again meticulously and found that there were thirty-three Aurorus and twenty-four Amaura in total. Among them, the two leading Aurorus had blue potential, while one Amaura also possessed blue potential; the rest had green potential.

"System, this doesn't seem right! The potential of this clan is excessively high; did I stumble upon something?"

Although this would resolve his mission, the sudden influx of benefits made Yuga feel uneasy.

After a long while, the system finally spoke up.

[ Host, don't worry. The potential of these Amaura and Aurorus is a result of the environment's influence. ]

It turned out that after a thorough investigation, the system discovered that Yuga was currently situated at the convergence point of the entire Endless Snowfield's earth veins, which is why so many giant blocks of non-melting ice had formed here.

For millions of years, countless cold currents from the earth's veins had converged here, turning this place into a unique treasure land. Once the Amaura and Aurorus were encased in ice, they instinctively absorbed the pure ice energy from their surroundings to survive.

As time passed, the solid ice enveloping the Amaura and Aurorus gradually became infused with the accumulated ice energy, transforming into pure crystalline forms of ice energy.

After billions of years of evolution, the potential of the Amaura and Aurorus was gradually altered by the ice energy crystals surrounding them, ultimately resulting in the situation Yuga observed now.

It was also fortunate that the Pokémon encased in ice were Amaura and Aurorus, both of which could feed on cold energy. If any other Pokémon had been here, what Yuga would see would be mere corpses!

One could imagine that the potential of these Amaura and Aurorus was not originally very high; the only exception would be the two leaders. Otherwise, after so many years of energy infusion, their potential wouldn't have changed so little.

Being enveloped in ice energy for over a hundred million years was no small matter.

After hearing the system's explanation, Yuga suddenly understood. Although he didn't know why this particular location where the earth veins converged was on the edge of the snow mountain, that didn't prevent him from realizing that he had indeed stumbled upon a great fortune!

Looking at the ice sculptures in front of him, Yuga was momentarily at a loss, not knowing whether to consider these Amaura and Aurorus lucky or unfortunate.

Regardless, Yuga decided to take the Amaura and Aurorus with him.

However, he did not plan to free the encased Amaura and Aurorus just yet; instead, he decided to bring the entire ice blocks containing them back and deal with it later when he was safer.

Having made up his mind, Yuga began releasing his partners to dig out the ice blocks.

However, to Yuga's surprise, he found that he couldn't damage those ice blocks. Even Absol's Night Slash only left a few dents in the ice; it didn't shatter completely.

This posed a challenge for Yuga—brute force clearly wouldn't work, and if he accidentally harmed the Amaura and Aurorus inside, that would be disastrous.

Charizard also tried to use fire to melt the ice blocks, but they barely reacted at all. Moreover, the ice energy here was so dense that Charizard couldn't even exert its full power.

One could only say that these ice blocks were truly the crystallization of concentrated ice energy!

Ultimately, the one who helped Yuga solve his problem was his Kartana. He hadn't expected its blade to be so sharp.

Just as Yuga pondered how to separate the ice blocks encasing the Amaura and Aurorus from the ground of this space, the Kartana made a gentle swipe with its Leaf Blade at the bottom of the ice block. With a loud "boom," one ice sculpture toppled to the ground.

Kartana was able to slice through the ice blocks not because its power surpassed that of Absol and the others, but because it relied on sharpness, not brute strength!

With Kartana's assistance, Yuga easily packed all the ice sculptures into his system backpack.

After handling the ice sculptures of Amaura and Aurorus, Yuga took another look around this space. Finding nothing else of interest, he followed Sneasel, guided by Gengar and Mismagius, back through the circular hole to the ice cave where Beartic kept their Pokémon eggs.

Seeing the ground covered with Pokémon eggs, Yuga selected a few with high potential: two green potential and over ten yellow potential. Even though he had already obtained a group of high-potential Amaura and Aurorus, no one would ever complain about having too many good things.

However, Yuga didn't "wipe them all out"; he didn't take all the green potential eggs, and he also left the only blue quality one untouched. After all, he had Innovation Potion. Who knows, the ten or so yellow potential eggs might hatch into a few green potential Pokémon!

While Yuga was stealing the eggs, Sneasel was being quite helpful, this resentful little guy practically wishing Yuga would catch every single descendant of theirs.

Seeing the green light in its eyes, Yuga even suspected that this little creature was plotting how to eat these eggs. There were indeed records of hungry Sneasel stealing and eating others' eggs in the wild.

Once everything was tidied up, Yuga noticed that the two Beartic that was guarding the entrance of the ice cave were still fast asleep, allowing him and Sneasel to sneak out of the Beartic' territory unnoticed.

After leaving the snowy mountains, Yuga released Absol. He and Sneasel rode Absol as they galloped away. Once back on the Santalune Plateau, Yuga took a deep breath and suddenly felt that it wasn't so cold there after all.

After coming out from the snowy mountains, Yuga saw that it was getting late, knowing that it would be impossible to leave the Santalune Plateau that day. He spent another night on the plateau, setting off the next morning.

Two days later, Yuga returned to Snowbreeze Town, this time accompanied by Sneasel.

Initially, Sneasel had been worried that Yuga would leave it behind, but clearly, it had worried for nothing. After spending these past few days together, Yuga found Sneasel quite pleasant and had already planned to take it along.

However, when they passed by the Frost Cavern, they coincidentally encountered a group of Sneasel from the same family. They were once again stealing food from others, but this time it was during the day instead of at night.

They were very surprised to see Sneasel following Yuga, and it looked like Sneasel was living quite well. Compared to when it was first captured by Yuga, Sneasel's state of mind had improved significantly after a few days of feeding.

For a moment, the Sneasel family even felt a bit envious of Sneasel for being captured.

Yuga did not interfere with the Nyaura group's act of stealing food from Sneasel, as it was their means of survival in the wild. The Beartic could steal their territory, so they could certainly take others' food. It all boiled down to survival of the fittest!

Seeing that Sneasel was living well, the Sneasel group completely abandoned any thoughts of rescuing it.

Before leaving, Sneasel pleaded with Yuga to leave some food for its family, as a way to conclude their final bond. Yuga didn't refuse and bought a bunch of berries from the system's Trainer Shop to give to the Sneasel group. Although Sneasel wasn't a high-potential Pokémon, since Yuga had taken it under his wing, he wouldn't be stingy with it.

Yuga was wealthy, so he left quite a few berries for the Sneasel group. The Frost Cavern was freezing cold, and food would last there as long as they rationed it; those berries would be enough for them for a while.

Yuga actually quite liked Pokémon like Sneasel, but unfortunately, this group of Sneasel lacked potential and strength. He wasn't running a charity, so he could only turn a blind eye to them.

Yuga didn't stay long in Snowbreeze Town; he headed straight back to Lumiose City. He needed to inform Kalos League in advance that he was returning to Hoenn, after all, he had come to Kalos Region on official business.

In Lumiose City, Yuga met Diantha, who expressed her gratitude on behalf of the Kalos League for Yuga's help this time.

Of course, Yuga wasn't doing this for free; the League would automatically record his contributions to his account, and Kalos League would also express their gratitude to him separately.

However, Diantha didn't specify how they would thank him, only telling Yuga, "You'll find out when the time comes." Yuga, upon hearing this, didn't dwell on it, as it was something that would happen anyway.

Before leaving Kalos Region, Yuga originally intended to say goodbye to Clemont, but after the Lysandre Labs incident, he returned to Coumarine City to continue his research on the Sunflora power generator. It was said that they had reached a critical moment, so Yuga could only bid farewell to him over the phone.

However, Yuga did visit Bonnie at her home once. The little girl was very happy to see Yuga and even cried when they said goodbye.

Yuga was sent back to Hoenn by a flight device specially arranged by Kalos League. He experienced what it meant to receive VIP treatment, being delivered directly to his doorstep with such excellent service!

Upon returning to Verdanturf Town, Yuga felt an immense sense of relief. After all the time spent outside, he truly felt that home was the best.

The first thing Yuga did after getting home was to release the ice sculptures of Amaura and Aurorus on the Ecopark. Because only by officially capturing the Pokémon encased in ice sculptures could he consider his system task completed, allowing him to open a new sub-Ecpark for housing ice-type Pokémon.

Yuga assigned the task of cutting the ice blocks to Kartana. Compared to before, this time the cutting had to be more meticulous to avoid harming Amaura and Aurorus inside.

Fortunately, after practicing swordsmanship with the Aegislash for so long, Kartana had become increasingly skilled. Under its careful refinement, the ice blocks gradually shattered, and the first Aurorus finally awakened.

The first one Yuga woke up was one of the two leaders of the Aurorus tribe. By capturing the leader first, the difficulty of capturing the remaining ones would be significantly reduced.

Amaura and Aurorus had not possessed particularly outstanding potential before they were frozen, so their original levels were relatively low, including the two leaders.

After awakening, the level of the first Aurorus had not changed much compared to before; the absorption of so much ice essence, without any training, could not be used to level up, and most of it was likely spent on improving its potential.

"Aurorus?"

The newly awakened Aurorus was very confused. During the years of being frozen, its consciousness had been in a deep slumber, and its memory was stuck at the moment the cold wave struck.

"Hello, Aurorus!" Yuga greeted it in a friendly manner.

"Au...Aurorus!!!"

However, upon seeing Yuga, the Aurorus was so frightened that it kept retreating, its strong legs stomping on the ground with loud thuds.

Both Amaura and Aurorus are extremely gentle creatures. Despite the Aurorus's imposing size, it is particularly shy, so Yuga wasn't surprised at its reaction at all.

"Don't be afraid; I won't hurt you. I'm the one who rescued you from being frozen. Do you remember being encased in solid ice?" Yuga tried to speak in a gentle tone, attempting to soothe Aurorus's emotions.

Yuga's words successfully evoked Aurorus's buried memories: Yes, that cold wave had come too suddenly, and it and its kin had lost consciousness before they could react.

After Yuga's diligent explanation, Aurorus quickly understood its situation. Upon realizing that Yuga was its savior and could also rescue its other kin, Aurorus lowered its guard, making Yuga's capturing process incredibly smooth.

Clearing the ice blocks encasing Aurorus and Amaura was quite time-consuming. During the clearing process, the first two leaders of Aurorus that awakened anxiously circled around Yuga, leaving several deep pits on the ground from their stomping.

These two leaders were a couple; being young and newly appointed as leaders, they were very responsible and concerned about the safety of their tribe.

Yuga was busy the entire day before he managed to awaken all Amaura and Aurorus. Because of their overly gentle nature, the capturing went smoothly, and he was notified that his system task was complete.