CH102 (716), Ceruledge

We had reached the sixth hour of this conflict. The casualties on both sides had continued to climb and all active combatants had started to show obvious signs of fatigue. While the situation was still under control with the defenders maintaining a slight advantage, I was starting to worry a bit about things going south some way now that everyone was tired.

Well, at least the boss battle was going very well. Roughly 15 minutes ago Dusknoir had managed to briefly push the ghost knight as well as the shield forme Aegislash away from the blade forme Aegisalsh and he used the chance to deliver a devastating blow to the lone Aegislash that actually caused its body to show prominent cracks. After that, Aegislash had been forced to stay back and act as an opportunistic long-range support since it could not risk staying close to Dusknoir in fear of being taken out.

That development caused the boss battle to tilt decisively in Dusknoir's favor, letting me release a breath of relief. It was now only a matter of time until Dusknoir won, so the defenders on the 12 battlefields only had to hold out for another hour or two before Dusknoir was freed up. Things were looking up for our side and observing the overall situation I could not help but once again consider whether I should act now or if I should continue watching.

There were now over 30 incapacitated ghost knights lying across the battlefields along with quite a few Chandelure/Lampent and Doublade/Aegislash. Not the mention that the number of ghost bodies spread across the chamber had risen to around two thousand, with around two-thirds belonging to the invading side, so the disappearance of one or two of those ghosts should generally go unnoticed.

I spent another 20 minutes watching the situation, assessing when to act and which ghosts would be the most appropriate target. I eventually chose a ghost knight whose body had been pushed to the outer part of battlefield no 4, which was to our left. I chose that one for two reasons. One, while Battlefield 4 was not one of the two closest battlefields to our current hiding place, that honor went to Battlefield 5 as well as 6, it was one of the two second closest battlefields together with Battlefield 7; Two, this particular ghost knight was also one of the best-positioned ones for us to act on while minimizing the risk of being discovered.

Anyway, after selecting the target, I told Hades/Gengar to get ready and move out at my signal. I was obviously not going to act myself. It was much safer for Hades to move through the shadows and approach the target before dragging the ghost knight into his shadow. His ghostly energy would stand out the least and even if anyone noticed him moving around, they were likely to disregard it as him retreating to recuperate or moving between battlefields since there were other Gengar involved in the battle that did that.

I was not worried about the ghost knight having recuperated enough to resist during the time since its defeat due to the way these battles went. None of these ghosts stopped fighting until they were taken down in a semi-permanent fashion, so even if a day passed by, much less just a few hours, they would be unable to do more than maybe twitch a finger.

Yet, another 3 minutes passed by with me waiting for the perfect opportunity. That opportunity came when the battle between the platinum stage Golurk subleader and the Chandelure it was facing heated up again. Seeing their clash force the "weaker" ghosts of both sides further away from the area we were aiming for, I told Hades to go ahead, and he gave a salute before sinking into the shadow of the stalagmite.

We had agreed to maintain silence on the telepathic channel for the duration of Hades' operation just to be on the safe side, so we had no way of knowing how things were going since we could not see him while Hades was moving through the shadows. Even our bond was only vaguely helpful in that regard since all I could feel was Hades' general direction and that he was fine.

I kept an eye on the ghost knight's body since I knew that Hades would likely act soon, and as I expected it took less than a minute before I noticed him making his move. I was happy to see that Hades was being careful in his actions. While Hades did not leave the shadows, I saw the knight slowly sinking into the ground/shadows. Well, slow in this case was relative since it took him around half a minute to store away the whole body. It was a nerve-wracking period regardless. 

Still, Hades acted smartly and first sank the ghost knight's head which caused the slight flickering to vanish, reducing the chance of someone's attention being attracted by the slight flickering. Honestly, that was the riskiest part of the whole operation since there was a chance for the disappearance of the light, no matter of flimsy it was, to attract someone's attention. That was also why Hades briefly stopped to see if anyone would react. 

However, once ten seconds passed without any reaction, he continued to drag down the rest of the ghost knight's body. It took another two minutes for Hades to return to our side after that, but eventually, the nerve-wracking wait was over and Hades rose out of my shadow while dragging along the unmoving body of the ghost knight. 

He gave me another salute before proudly stating over the telepathic channel that he had completed his mission. I thanked him before praising him for doing a good job which had him look both proud and a bit bashful.  I pat him on the head since I found his behavior rather endearing before shifting my focus to the ghost knight he brought along.

Taking a closer look at its body I had to once more admit that this ghost knight looked very cool. Armor design aside, I noted that the ghost knight seemed to be roughly my size at around 1.8 meters, which made sense I guess since it was practically a living armor of a humanoid design. In my opinion, this ghost was definitely in the top 5 of all Pokemon, at least look-wise. If the racial value (BS) of its species and its abilities were half as great as its looks, then this species had to be absolutely incredible.

Naturally, I was hoping to add one of them to my main team or at least the reserve team. Considering that the weakest invading ghost knights were at the gold stage, with the majority being at the dark gold stage, there was a good chance of one of them directly entering either the first-string or second-string team as long as their potential was good enough.

Anyway, after checking out its body, I went ahead and also checked out its status sheet under the curious eyes of my Pokemon.

'Species: Ceruledge

Gender: Male

Type: Fire, Ghost

Potential: Deep Green

Stage: Dark Gold-Stage (Low)

(Genetic) Modifiers: None

Abilities: Flash Fire, Weak Armor

Talents: None

Affinities: Fire, Ghost'

Well, I now knew the species name of the ghost knight, and Ceruledge did not sound bad at all. I had already known that it was at the dark gold stage, but the specifics had been a bit iffy due to the chaos during the battle that it fell in. It was a bit unfortunate that his potential was only deep green, but it was impressive enough that Ceruledge had reached the (low) dark gold stage with his potential.

Combining those two factors, it was not hard for me to conclude that Ceruledge was rather old. Yet, regardless of how old he was and how long he had trained to reach his current prowess, it was a fact that Ceruledge was closing in on the (high) dark gold limit set by his deep green potential. I was naturally going to capture him even if I was not satisfied with his potential, so Ceruledge would undergo the Utopia treatment, which would push that limit back for now. 

Still, even if we added Utopia's optimization and an optimal limit-breaking bonus to this Ceruledge, the best we could achieve appeared to be deep blue potential at the platinum stage and light purple at the palladium stage; Honestly, I was not sure if the latter was possible since it depended on whether there were any additional potential reductions.

Yet, even if everything went perfectly Ceruledge would end up having a "mere" light purple potential at Stage 7, and while that was no doubt a great thing for a vast majority of the Pokemon on Terra, the same was not true for our team. I honestly did not want to add a Pokemon to my team that stood no chance at attaining at least light aurora potential during its lifetime, and I frankly saw no way at all for Ceruledge to attain light aurora potential in any way, at least not in any way that I knew of, but as I said, I would capture Ceruledge regardless.

This simply meant that we would have to try our luck again. Hopefully, the next one would have better potential. As long as a dark gold stage Ceruledge had deep blue potential or blue potential for a gold stage one, I would be willing to add it to the reserve team. If even that failed. I could only hope that the next Ceruledge would be a female since I would then be able to breed myself a better Ceruledge or whatever the prevolution was called.

I did not doubt that Ceruledge was an evolution, though it could be a stand-alone species as well I guess. There was an easy way to answer this, which was to check my library to see if there were any entries in Ceruledge there. I could definitely do so now that I knew its name and its existence. Still, before that, I went ahead and checked the species details of Ceruledge by expanding the species section.

I saw that Ceruledge had 525 RV/BS which was a bit less than I had expected/hoped for, though it was still a pretty good number ensuring Ceruledge's position as a top-class species. From its parameter value distribution, it was clear that Ceruledge was a melee-focused ghost, with good special defense and decent speed as well as defense stats. Ceruledge's abilities were not bad and did fit its specialization, though I would have personally preferred it if Weak Armor had been replaced by something less "self-harming" like Clear Body or Sharpness.

Anyway, after reading through the description I took out a GhostBall and balled Ceruledge. I then put the ball away before sharing what I had found out with the others over the telepathic channel. After that, I once again began to monitor the situation on the battlefield since I was still hoping to get another Ceruledge. While I observed the ongoing war I had my second thought stream access my super library and search up Ceruledge.  

Interestingly enough I found materials on Ceruledge. That proved that some humans had to have at some point met Ceruledge somewhere, and I saw some keywords that pointed to that direction, but I chose to leave that for later and rather focus on information about Ceruledge as a species. I learned that the gender ratio of Ceruledge was balanced, which meant that there was a good chance that half of the beaten Ceruledge were female, which was good to know in case I had to breed them on my own.

In that vein, I also confirmed that Ceruledge was in fact an evolved Pokemon. Ceruledge apparently evolved from a Pokemon called Charcadet which appeared to be a pure fire type and not a ghost type. Moreover, Charcadet's evolution to Ceruledge seems to be trigger-based, requiring something called a Malicious Armor. Not only that but a further look into Charcadet revealed that it had two evolution paths with both being trigger-dependent.

The other evolution of Charcadet was called Armarouge and required something called Auspicious Armor. Unlike Ceruledge, Armarouge was a Fire/Psychic type. It was interesting that the two armor names were practically opposites, but I guess seeing how they led to two very different evolutions and considering the typing of the two species, I could understand what the person naming the items thought while naming them.

Still, while I was quite happy to have found information on not just one new species but three of them, I could not help but be a bit troubled by the information I found. The fact that Charcadet needed a Malicious Armor to evolve to Ceruledge meant that I would need one of those even if I ended up breeding myself some Charcadet. The problem was that I had never heard of Malicious Armor or Auspicious Armor before this, so I would either have to see if I could stumble upon one somewhere, find an alternative for it, or hope that it would not come down to me having to breed myself a Ceruledge with good potential.

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