CH166 (780), Interesting, I Did Not Know That

I watched as Utopia analyzed the Cacnea Fossil and unfortunately came to the conclusion that it was not viable for Utopia's brand of restoration due to internal cracks within the fossilized Cacnea body that exceeded some safety levels determined by Utopia. That was rather unfortunate since this meant that this Canea could not be restored to its original state. The fossil was still viable for the standard resurrection process found by scientists, though that meant that the source Cacnea be affected the same way as any other fossil that got "resurrected" this way, which meant that its typing would be affected and possibly its looks as well.

Not that I could do that if I wanted to since I was missing the various rare and hard-to-access machines needed for the process. Not to mention that I was not interested in creating what amounted to a test tube baby of a proto Cacnea that would gain a rock typing, though that did not mean that the fossil was useless, which was why I was happy to see that Utopia was still raised from a D-class fossil to a C-class one. This little change raised the fossil's value by nearly twenty times, though I was not sure if I would want to sell it instead of simply keeping it stored away as a collectible for probable future use since Utopia was unable to replicate the fossil.

Well, actually that was not completely right, it could produce a copy but due to its own rules, the fossil would be a "true" fossil without any viable DNA residue that could be used for the scientific resurrection process. It was the same rule that prevented Utopia from replicating blood and organs that stopped Utopia from producing viable fossils, though given what my Observe had told me about the Cactus Fossils, I was sure that the "true"/unviable Cacnea Fossils could be used in the same fashion and that it would have a better effect than the Cactus Fossil.

Some would believe that collectors would still be interested in the fossil, but that was not true since without the viable DNA there was no way to prove the rock truly contained a fossilized Pokemon and that it was not just a precious stone with possible random "fossilized" bones that had been worked on to mimic a fossil. The material itself would no doubt still be valuable, just not as much as a fossil.

Not to mention that even the original would likely not be nearly as valuable as say a Dome or Helix Fossil of the same class and state of completeness due to the fact that, unlike Kabuto or Omanyte, Canea were not considered extinct or practically extinct as far as the alliance/humanity was concerned. In fact, there was an abundance of available Cacnea within alliance territory, and a fossil of such a Pokemon would be much lower in value since the number of interested parties would be limited.

Honestly, I could not help but feel a tad bit disappointed that I would not get to see what I expected to be a Proto-Cacnea, but there was nothing I could do about that, so I let it go and once I had made sure to properly store away the Cacnea Fossil, I turned to the Cofagrigus that had been silently waiting for me to pay attention to them while my attention was directed at the fossils/Utopia. I thanked them for bringing the fossils over, before handing out small bags with ghost pellets to the helpers and the Cofagrigus boss. I gave a much larger bag to the Cofagrigus which revealed the fact that there were a lot of fossils in the first place.

After I had done that the Cofagrigus thanked me profusely for the reward before returning to the ongoing search while the boss Cofagrigus made his way back to the side of his fellow platinum ghosts. I was honestly not sure if others were going to show up as I rekindled the conversation we had going before we were interrupted, but the next 15 minutes passed without any unexpected visitors.

After that, the Cofagrigus, Runerigus, and Golurk began to return in groups which signaled that they were done with their search. It took around 5 minutes for all the ghosts to arrive and report to their leaders. We watched them during that time without interfering, and once the last ghost had given their report, the 5 platinum ghosts stepped forward to share the result of the search.

It was unfortunate but Golurk reported that none of his subordinates managed to find anything that could possibly cause the periodic spawning of Sandygast. The two Cofagrigus and Runerigus confirmed that the same was true for their subordinates. They added that their subordinates did come across some little things they thought might interest me, but that they had chosen to finish the search first since they felt that their findings were minor.

I was naturally disappointed that the search had not turned up the result I had been expecting, and while I was curious about the other/minor things that had been spotted during the search, I suppressed that to focus on the more important matter. It just made no sense that there was nothing around this place that was causing the unusual Sandygast case. Either whatever was at work here was even better hidden than I thought seeing how it managed to elude the senses of a multitude of dark gold stage ghosts, or there was a problem with the search itself.

I was seriously hoping that it was the latter since the former would mean that I would have to make another attempt by sending out the platinum ghosts while hoping for the best. That examination would definitely take a lot longer since there were only 5 of them compared to the thousand-plus ghosts that had participated in the first search. Hence, I began to inquire how far exactly the ghosts had gone during their search.

After listening to the details I saw nothing wrong with their method since each ghost had looked/searched through a certain area, methodically shifting through the sand while keeping an eye on their surroundings and sensing for any unusual spectral energy as I had requested. They did so until they reached a depth of about a hundred and fifty meters before they stopped. I agreed that their approach was a pretty good one, but it was a fact that I did not get the result I wanted, so I decided that we had to dig deeper.

Hence, I told Golurk and the others to expand the search depth to 5 kilometers just to be absolutely sure that whoever or whatever was responsible for whatever caused the Sandygast to spawn had not hidden it at an ultra depth just to prevent it from absolutely everyone or because it actually needed to be placed that deep. Who knew? Maybe that was actually a necessity and not just an attempt to hide the thing.

Still, since extending the search to include such a great depth would expand the volume of sand/desert that had to be checked exceptionally, I told them all to start from right beneath our feet and slowly move out from there. In fact, I instructed the ghosts to gather in groups of four and then had them go down with their backs to each other.

Each group would be responsible for a height of about 15 to 16 meters and they would all start from the same point beneath our feet at different depths and expand their search in a circling motion to ensure they did not miss anything. I told them to keep circling until they moved 2.5 kilometers from their starting position, which would mean that they would have covered the area in a 5-kilometer diameter. We had enough ghosts for there to be a group of searchers all the way down to the 5-kilometer depth boundary that I set, and as soon as I received the news that everyone was in position, I told Golurk to give the signal to start the search.

I was really hoping that they would find what I was looking for since I was not sure how long it would take them to finish the current search, though I was assuming that It would not take more than an hour or two at most since each individual group only had to do a single turn/search for the investigation as a whole to finish. Anyway, I spent the first 10 minutes silently waiting for any results and seeing me like that everyone else followed suit. However, after 10 minutes passed without any news my hope for a quick conclusion got laid to rest and I chose to tell Mothra/Butterfree and the other, who I could tell had gotten bored, that they could do whatever they wanted.

There was no need to stiffly wait for the report, and Mothra directly began to approach Golurk to speak about the Pokemon they had seen in the ghost dimension since the previous explanation/answer got cut off. Everyone's attention was drawn to Golurk, who began to list and describe the various Pokemon that they had seen during their life in the Ghost Dimension. The two Cofagrigus and Runerigus occasionally chimed in as well. They did not mention some of the well-known ghost types since according to them the Ghost Dimension was far bigger than Terra and they had stuck to the immediate area of their own little but also not-so-little corner.

They did however mention some ghost Pokemon that I had not expected to hear about that took me by surprise since I had not known of their existence. In some cases that was entirely true with them appearing to be unknown Pokemon species, and for others, they mentioned ghost variants of known species that I did not know about before. Golurk and the others mentioned that in most cases they only saw a single one of the Pokemon/ghosts they mentioned or a small group consisting of a handful of members at most.

Among the variants they mentioned were, if I interpreted their descriptions correctly, a duo of ghost variant Victreebel, a small group of ghost Paras with a single ghost Parasect, and I had to say that came as the least surprising among all mentions; They also mentioned coming across what seemed to be a ghost Chimecho, and a passing ghost Rapidash, which I would have really loved to see since I was sure that it looked even more impressive than what the description told me. These were variants I had never heard about before, though there were two I had known about that they also mentioned.

One was Basculegion, and the other was Cursola. I was admittedly more interested in the former since Basculegion were pretty strong as far as I knew from my canon knowledge and not as weird-looking as Cursola. They were relatively unknown to the alliance outside of old documents, but the alliance at least still knew that they existed, or existed at some point. Those variants aside, Golurk and Co also mentioned two more ghost species/lines aside from the Ceruledge line that I had not known of before.

One of the lines was a dog-like species with a single evolution, called Greavard, with its evolution being Houndstone. Frankly from their description, I thought that both ghost doggos looked pretty ugly, but it seemed that Houndstone were decently strong; Roughly at the same species level as Cofagrigus. The other line was a bit curious since the impression/image I got from Golurk's description was that of a tumbleweed. Apparently, the line was a two-parter as well, with the primary stage called Bramblin and the evolution called Brambleghast.

Unlike the Houndstone line, which were pure ghost types, the Brambleghast line were grass/ghost types, and Brambleghast as a species seemed to be around the same level as Cofagrigus as well, which was not bad, though I still had a hard time imagining a tumbleweed-looking Pokemon as strong; Granted, we already had a ghost anchor Pokemon, so a tumbleweed ghost was okay as well, I guess.

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