Chapter 1084: Miracle Beneath the Ice

After making a turn and another bend, Yuga walked into a vast space filled with lifelike ice sculptures standing all around. These sculptures were so vivid, not because of some expert carving, but because each one encased an ice-blue Pokémon, frozen solid within.

Some of these Pokémon appeared to be in mid-run, others looked terrified, some were sprawled on the ground, and others had expressions of despair... they had all been frozen alive.

Yuga marveled as he approached one of the ice sculptures, touching it as he muttered to himself, "So many Amaura and Aurorus frozen in ice!"

The Pokémon inside the sculptures were all Amaura and its evolved form, Aurorus. Yuga guessed that this must have been an entire tribe, all frozen solid in ice during some sudden catastrophe.

Amaura and Aurorus lived over a hundred million years ago in ancient times and had long been extinct. It was only thanks to fossil resurrection machines that these species could be seen again today.

Nowadays, the few Amaura and Aurorus in trainers' hands were all resurrected from fossils. However, the Amaura and Aurorus before Yuga were not fossils; they were real Amaura and Aurorus, with their delicate scales, the iridescent membranes on their heads and necks, and the crystalline gems on their sides—everything was perfectly preserved.

This was nothing short of a miracle!

But what shocked Yuga even more was that the system informed him that all these sculptures emitted strong life signals.

In other words, these Amaura and Aurorus were still alive, merely in a state of deep sleep!

Prompted by the system, Yuga activated his Insight. As expected, he could see a miraculous glow on every Amaura and Aurorus. If they had died in the ice, his Insight would not have reacted.

Yuga was overjoyed—this was a treasure trove handed to him!

But he couldn't understand why the potential of these Amaura and Aurorus was so abnormally high—they were all high-quality Pokémon. Yuga counted and found that there were over fifty Amaura and Aurorus combined. It wasn't a large tribe, but considering they were all high-quality Pokémon, it was a different story.

Especially the two largest Aurorus leading the group; they must have been the leaders of the tribe before being frozen. Their potential was almost at the blue level, with a blue halo just outside the green potential ring, indicating they were just one step away from blue potential.

Yuga carefully counted again—there were thirty-three Aurorus and twenty-four Amaura. Among them, only the two leader Aurorus had blue potential, and one Amaura had blue potential. The rest had green potential.

"System, this seems fishy! The potential of this tribe is excessively high. Am I in some sort of trouble?"

Although this could solve his mission, the sudden influx of benefits made Yuga uneasy.

After a long pause, the system finally responded, "Host, don't worry. The potential of these Amaura and Aurorus is the result of environmental conditions."

As it turned out, after the system's investigation, it discovered that Yuga was in a spot where the Earth's energy veins of the Endless Snowfield converged. This was also why so many massive Never-Melt Ice crystals had formed here.

Over millions of years, countless cold energies from the Earth's veins converged here, turning it into a unique treasure trove. After being frozen here, the Amaura and Aurorus unconsciously absorbed the essence of the ice-type energy to survive.

Over time, the ice encasing the Amaura and Aurorus was gradually infiltrated by the gathered ice-type energy, turning into pure ice energy crystals.

After millions of years of evolution, the potential of the Amaura and Aurorus was gradually altered by the ice energy crystals surrounding them, leading to the current situation Yuga was witnessing.

If it were any other species instead of Amaura and Aurorus, who could feed on cold air, Yuga would be looking at a bunch of mummified remains instead!

It could be imagined that the original potential of these Amaura and Aurorus was not particularly high—only the two leaders might have had decent potential. Otherwise, after so many years of infiltration, their potential wouldn't have changed as little as it did.

Being wrapped in ice energy essence for millions of years was no trivial matter.

After hearing the system's explanation, Yuga suddenly understood. Although he didn't know why the Earth's energy vein convergence point of this snowfield was at the edge of the mountain, it didn't stop him from realizing he'd struck gold!

Looking at these ice sculptures, Yuga didn't know whether to consider these Amaura and Aurorus lucky or unfortunate.

Either way, Yuga decided to take all these Amaura and Aurorus with him.

However, he didn't plan to release them from the ice immediately. It would be safer to transport them back as they were and deal with it later.

With his plan in mind, Yuga began releasing his partners to start digging out the ice blocks.

But to Yuga's surprise, the ice blocks were indestructible. Even Absol's Psycho Cut only left a few gouges without completely shattering the ice.

This posed a real challenge for Yuga. Using brute force was clearly not an option; accidentally harming the Amaura and Aurorus inside would be disastrous.

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

It was clear these ice blocks were truly the essence of condensed ice-type energy!

In the end, it was Kartana that resolved Yuga's dilemma—Yuga hadn't expected its arm blades to be so sharp.

Just as Yuga was wondering how to separate the ice blocks encasing the Amaura and Aurorus from the ground, Kartana used its Leaf Blade skill and lightly slashed the base of an ice block. With a loud "boom," an ice sculpture fell to the ground.

Kartana's ability to cut through the ice wasn't due to its power surpassing Absol's; it relied on sharpness, not strength!

With Kartana's help, Yuga easily stored all the ice sculptures in his system backpack.

After dealing with the Amaura and Aurorus ice sculptures, Yuga took another walk around the space. Finding nothing else of value, he and Sneasel were led by Gengar and Mismagius back to the ice cave where the Beartic stored their eggs.

Looking at the ground covered with Pokémon eggs, Yuga carefully selected some of the ones with high potential—two with green potential and over ten with yellow potential. Although he already had a group of highly potential Amaura and Aurorus, there's no such thing as having too many good things.

However, Yuga didn't "wipe them out." He didn't take all the eggs with green potential and didn't even touch the only one with blue potential. After all, he had the revitalizing potion. Once the ten-plus yellow-potential eggs hatch, there's a chance that a few green-potential Pokémon might be born.

While Yuga was stealing the eggs, Sneasel was busy helping him. This vengeful creature wished Yuga could wipe out the entire future generations of the Pokémon there.

Seeing Sneasel's green-eyed look, Yuga even suspected that this little creature was thinking about how to eat these eggs. There are indeed records of hungry Sneasel stealing and eating others' eggs in the wild.

After everything was packed up, Yuga noticed that the two Beartic guarding the ice cave entrance were still sound asleep. He and Sneasel quietly sneaked out of the Beartic's territory without a trace.

After leaving the snow mountain, Yuga released Absol. He and Sneasel rode on Absol, galloping all the way back. Once they returned to the Sather Plateau, Yuga took a deep breath and suddenly felt that the plateau wasn't as cold as he had thought.

After coming down from the snow mountain, Yuga saw that it was getting late and realized there was no way he could leave the Sather Plateau today. So, he spent another night on the plateau and set out to leave early the next morning.

Two days later, Yuga returned to Snowbelle City, this time with a new companion—Sneasel.

Originally, Sneasel was worried that Yuga wouldn't take it along when he left, but it clearly overthought. After spending a few days together, Yuga felt that Sneasel was pretty good and had already planned to take it with him.

However, as they passed through the Frost Cavern, they coincidentally encountered Sneasel's kin, who were still stealing others' food, just at a different time—daytime instead of nighttime.

They were quite surprised to see Sneasel still following Yuga and living a pretty good life at that. Compared to when Yuga first caught it, Sneasel's condition had improved significantly after a few days of good feeding.

For a moment, Sneasel's kin were somewhat envious of the captured Sneasel.

Yuga didn't interfere with the Sneasel tribe's behavior of stealing others' food, as it was their means of survival in the wild. If the Beartic could seize their territory, they could certainly steal others' food. It's all about survival of the fittest!

Seeing that Sneasel was living well, its kin gave up on rescuing it entirely.

Before leaving, Sneasel begged Yuga to leave some food for its kin, as a final gesture of their bond. Yuga didn't refuse and bought a bunch of Berries from the system's Trainer Shop to give to the Sneasel tribe. Although Sneasel wasn't a high-potential Pokémon, Yuga wouldn't be stingy with it now that he had taken it in.

Yuga had money, so he left quite a bit of food for the Sneasel tribe. The Frost Cavern was cold, so the food could be preserved for a while. If they rationed it, those Berries would last them a good amount of time.

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

Yuga didn't stay long in Snowbelle City and soon returned to Lumiose City. He had to inform the Kalos League before returning to Hoenn since he had come to Kalos on official business.

In Lumiose City, Yuga met with Champion Diantha, who represented the Kalos League in thanking Yuga for his assistance.

Of course, Yuga didn't help for free this time. The merits would automatically be recorded in his account by the League, and the Kalos League also expressed their gratitude separately.

However, Diantha didn't say exactly how they would express their gratitude, only telling Yuga, "You'll know when the time comes." Yuga didn't dwell on it. What was his wouldn't run away.

Before leaving Kalos, Yuga originally wanted to say goodbye to Clemont, but after the Flare Lab incident, he had returned to Coumarine City to continue his research on the Sunflora generator. It was said to be a critical time, so Yuga could only say goodbye to him over the phone.

However, Yuga did visit Bonnie at their home. The little girl was thrilled to see Yuga and even cried when they parted.

The Kalos League specially sent Yuga back to Hoenn by aircraft, giving him a taste of VIP treatment. They even dropped him off right at his doorstep—the service was top-notch!

After returning to Verdanturf Town, Yuga felt incredibly relaxed. After all, after being out and about for so long, there's no place like home.

The first thing Yuga did after returning home was to go to the Ecological Garden to release the Amaura and Aurorus from their ice sculptures. Only by officially capturing the Pokémon inside could his system task be considered complete, allowing him to unlock a new sub-garden for Ice-type Pokémon.

Yuga entrusted the task of cutting the ice blocks to Kartana. Compared to before, this time, the work required more precision to avoid harming the Amaura and Aurorus inside the ice.

Fortunately, Kartana had been honing its swordsmanship under Aegislash for a long time and had become increasingly skilled. Under its careful work, the ice blocks gradually broke apart, and the first Aurorus finally awoke.

The first to wake was one of the leaders of the Aurorus tribe. Once the leader was captured, the rest would be easier to handle.

These Amaura and Aurorus weren't very high-level before being frozen, so their original levels weren't high, including the two leaders.

The first Aurorus to awaken didn't have much change in level compared to before. Although it had absorbed a lot of Ice-type energy, the lack of training meant it couldn't use it to level up and likely used it to improve its potential.

"Aurorus?"

The newly awakened Aurorus was very confused. During the years it had been frozen, its consciousness remained dormant, with its memory stuck at the moment the cold wave hit.

"Hello there, Aurorus!" Yuga greeted warmly.

"Aurorus!!!" But the Aurorus, upon seeing Yuga, was so frightened that it kept retreating, its thick legs stomping the ground loudly.

Amaura and Aurorus are extremely gentle Pokémon. Despite Aurorus's large size, it is very shy, so Yuga wasn't surprised by its reaction.

"Don't be afraid; I won't hurt you. I'm the one who rescued you from the ice. You were all frozen in the ice before—do you remember?" Yuga tried to speak gently, hoping to calm Aurorus down.

Yuga's words successfully stirred Aurorus's deeply buried memories: Yes, the cold wave came too suddenly, and before it and its tribe could react, they lost consciousness.

After Yuga's detailed explanation, Aurorus quickly understood its situation. Upon learning that Yuga was its savior and could also rescue the rest of its tribe, Aurorus lowered its guard, making Yuga's capture process incredibly smooth.

Clearing away the ice blocks encasing the Amaura and Aurorus was a time-consuming task. While Kartana worked on the ice blocks, the two leader Aurorus, who had woken up first, anxiously circled Yuga, stamping several deep pits into the ground.

This pair of leader Aurorus was a young couple who had just taken up their leadership roles, so they were very responsible and concerned for their tribe's safety.

Yuga worked hard the entire day to awaken all the Amaura and Aurorus. Due to their gentle nature, Yuga easily captured them all, and his system notified him that the task was complete.

(End of the Chapter)