CH110 (724), Trying My Luck

"So there's a splinter of Hoopa's loop sealed here, and that's what is causing the appearance of the space gate?" I repeated/summed up since the truth was quite a bit different from what I had expected. "Yes," Dusknoir confirmed. "It takes around 100 to 120 years, but eventually some space elements released together with the spectral energy by the loop accumulates in the center of the seal resulting in the formation of the gate you've seen," Dusknoir followed up and I nodded slightly absentminded/distracted by a thought that popped into my mind.

Since there was a splinter of Hoopa's loop sealed here that was capable of affecting space and opening space portals/gates; Would Utopia's space and its own space portal upgrade if I somehow managed to place the splinter inside Utopia for a few moments? I was not going to lie, I would love it if I was suddenly able to use Utopia's portal to travel to any place I could think of/had an image of in my mind. Simply enter Utopia, think of our home in Hope Town, open the gate, exit Utopia, and *bam* I'm home. Once I want to return, simply repeat the process but this time simply think of the point I left to travel back there.

That would be way faster than any form of travel we could do ourselves for probably the next century or so; Not to mention much safer too since no one would be able to track or intercept me because interfering with Utopia was not possible, though to be honest, I was no longer as sure about the last one after hearing about Palkia offhandedly severing/blocking universal connections. No, I should not start thinking like that. 

Utopia was given to me by a power above any other power in existence, and I was not talking about the Angel but the one behind the Angel; Since I was told that no one outside of them would be able to mess with Utopia then that meant no one, including Palkia and even Arceus, could mess with Utopia. Anyway, back to my Space Gate fantasy. Theoretically, if Utopia truly gained that ability, using it to get back home was the simplest use. I could just as well use it to travel anywhere I wanted as long as I had an image of the place in mind, without the need to have been there myself.

That kinda reminded me of the portals used by Dr.Strange, but much less flashy and with a Utopia mid-step, though it would be quite a bit less demanding in return. Still, more important than that was the question of whether I would be able to use my memories of places from the anime/games as references to visit places like the Blastoise Island or the Dragonite Island of Terra if they existed. 

Actually, I had basically just gotten the confirmation that it was possible in this Universe to connect to the Pokemon Multiverse/Omniverse. Well, assuming that Palkia had only isolated the universal connection with the Ultra Beast Universe and not just cut off/isolated our universe from the rest of the Multiverse/Omniverse to avoid future annoyances. Let's just assume that he didn't do that for the next bit. According to Dusknoir's story, Hoopa demonstrated that his manipulation of space was advanced enough to close a tear leading to another universe, so would it be possible to theoretically open gates to those exact locations in their respective universes or at least a mirror universe?

If that were the case, I would absolutely love paying a visit to a Mystery Dungeon Universe, and a few others. Paying a visit to a universe with Ash and ensuring that he actually knew what he was doing and was actually prepared at the start of his journey was probably something any Pokemon fan wished to be able to do at least once. I was no different in that aspect, though I had to admit that I was rather interested in seeing the potential of some of Ash's Pokemon as well, especially Pikachu, Charizard, and Greninja.

Traveling to alternate timelines to maybe capture some of them could be interesting as well, even if I was not sure if it would be even worth it since I had no idea how different they would be due to them being from another universe. If for example, being from a game-based universe like Origin limited the Pokemon's strength/level ceiling to 100, I wouldn't be interested in any of them since they would be unable to go past the (low) gold stage. Well, that was a lie, I would still be very interested in getting a Mew and some of the other Legendaries, but if they were truly limited like that, then all they could ultimately do was serve as Mascots.

Not to mention their appearance might attract attention from their godly counterparts, though that could be easily avoided by keeping them inside Utopia, which would have probably reached a proper planetary size by then. Still, if that Pokeversal travel really became possible then I would first have to test what kind of impact moving from their universe to ours had on a Pokemon. I mean the Ultra Beasts did not seem to show any problems according to Dusknoir's story, aside from their aggression though that might have been simply how they were, but they might have been fine simply because their universe was on a similar level as ours.

I mean the Ultra Beastverse Palkia isolated had to be at least somewhat close to ours in level since Hoopa had mentioned deity class Guzzlord and Blacephalon attacking his space loop, so even if it was only weaker ones, their universe did have Pokemon that could match the deities on the lower end of our totem pole. The story made it abundantly clear that they did not have any being capable of matching the higher class Legendaries, much less Palkia since I doubted that they would have allowed Palkia to act as Palkia pleased if that had not been the case.

"You can't," Dusknoir suddenly spoke up, breaking me out of my musing/fantasies. "It's impossible to miss what you're thinking," Dusknoir said amusedly after I focused back on him. "Still, the answer remains the same, you can't have it," Dusknoir followed up, sounding very resolute. However, even at the risk of irking Dusknoir, there was no way that I would give up without at least trying to persuade Dusknoir since I only needed the splinter for a moment to hopefully reproduce it. 

As for it being too high class for Utopia to copy, I was hoping that its rank would have degraded a bit during the 740 thousand-plus years since it broke off of Hoppa's loop. Even if it didn't, getting Dusknoir's permission would allow me to try again once I/Utopia was qualified.

"I don't want to take it away from here," I swiftly cleared up. "I just want to check it out for a bit, which I can do on-site. I may not look like it but I am a Professor after all," I followed up, and I even used the Professor card even if I was not sure if Dusknoir knew what a Professor was since he came from the Spirit World. I was banking on the fact that Dusknoir had shown at least a modicum of knowledge of the outside world, which indicated that he had learned some stuff about our world during the thousands of years he spent on our side.

"As for the seal triggering and shifting everything to the Spirit World, you said that happens when the seal points are broken. I don't believe that you as a Guardian don't have a way to open the seal at least partially. You have shown that you can operate it after all," I quickly followed up to take away one of the arguing points he could have used against me.

"I still don't agree to it," Dusknoir refuted, indirectly admitting that he could open the seal if he wanted to. "Why not? I can pay for the chance to study the item for a few hours if you want," I offered, but he did not seem interested in my offer. Dusknoir was probably not interested because he did not believe that I could offer anything of interest to him, but that was where he was wrong.

"I'm willing to offer you high-quality Millenial Tree Cores, Reaper Cloths, and Dusk Crystals for the chance to study the splinter for a while," I built up on my previous offer, and seeing his interest especially when I mentioned the Reaper Cloths I decided to go all in. "If you give me some time, I can gather a lot of Reaper Cloths and other spectral items," I tried to tempt Dusknoir. 

"High quality Reaper Cloths you say," Dusknoir repeated and I nodded. "I would have to lie if I said that I was not interested. Those are not easy to produce or procure after all," Dusknoir admitted. "The last one we managed to produce for one of our Dusclops ended up getting stolen, and we failed to find the culprit," he followed up, and I could not help but think about Phantump's Reaper Cloth, though I made sure to keep my reaction limited to my mind. Thankfully the others also showed no reaction or did not make the connection. Either way, I continued to tempt Dusknoir.

"Professors like me have quite a bit of influence, so I'm sure I can work with some Spiritualist lineages to get as many Reaper Cloths as possible," I honed in on the Reaper Cloth since that seemed to interest Dusknoir the most. I watched him as he thought about my offer.

"I literally can't just let you go through the seal without doing anything due to my duty as the Seal Guardian," Dusknoir finally said; "But if you don't want to face everyone, I can make a concession and allow you to challenge me to a one on one; Even then I'm obligated to give it my all, so I would recommend you to wait until you have someone capable of challenging me before attempting any challenges," Dusknoir proclaimed and I nodded since I could understand that his hands were bound and that him offering to face me on his own was already generous on its own.

Now, some might think what use his offer was if it required me to beat him anyway, but those people were overlooking one thing. Just because you could beat Dusknoir did not mean that you could get your hands on the loop splinter. The seal still had its safety feature after all, so getting the splinter without triggering the safety required Dusknoir's cooperation, and I would rather cooperate with Dusknoir than risk the shift bringing me to the headquarters of Hoopa's minions, or some other location surrounded by a bunch of potentially very strong ghosts. 

"That's fine with me," I replied aware of those facts, earning me a satisfied nod from Dusknoir. "Alright," he said warmly. "I'm putting up a challenge fee to avoid you simply trying your luck and as payment for my effort. You'll have to give me a single Reaper Cloth to initiate the challenge, but that's just for the challenge part. Even if you win, you will still have to hand over 30 Reaper Cloths, 20 Dusk Crystals, and 10 Millenial Tree Cores as payment for me to open the seal and allow you to study the piece for 6 hours," Dusknoir declared, showing that he had not forgotten about the other items I mentioned during my offer.

"Sure," I returned since the chance to copy the splinter was worth way more than what he asked for and I did not want to bother with haggling after having bragged about my capabilities just a few moments ago. "In that case, we have an accord," Dusknoir declared and I nodded. 

While Dusknoir was probably thinking that it would take decades if not centuries for me to get my Pokmeon to a level where it could challenge him, he was wrong. I just had to wait for Mothra to break through to the platinum stage and reach the conventional limit [All A's]. I was confident that Mothra could challenge and beat Dusknoir once that happened even if he managed to advance to the (mid) palladium stage by then.

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