CH181 (795), Desert Exploration (2)

The Houndour naturally did not just leave me alone while I did my rudimentary search of the keep. They attempted to attack me even though I tried to tell them that I was not planning to challenge them and that I would be gone once I was done, but they didn't want to listen, which earned all of them an ass-whooping. Seeing how I had been forced to beat them up, I decided that I might as well go and check their status sheets to see if any of them had good potential. Reality revealed that this pack was bereft of talented members.

The pack-leading Houndoom and its deputy were the only ones with deep yellow potential, so I let them lounge around the ground while I finished checking the ruins. I honestly expected more since the Gligar had mentioned that the ruins had given them an adverse feeling, but all I could say was that the surface area proved to be pretty disappointing. I was not sure if it was the Houndour that caused them to feel that way, but with the example of the first ruin spot I had kind of hoped to stumble on another interesting find.

Still, after scouring the smaller building remains as well as the surface of the keep's ruins, all I could hope was that the cellar of the keep would be more interesting. I had noted the stairs leading to the basement while I was looking for anything of interest, so once we were done with the surface, we naturally also chose to check that out. As we went down the stairs and began to explore the hallway, I noted that the basement seemed to be remarkably intact.

Oh, there were some mounds of sand here and there where a bit of sand managed to sicker down, but the walls and the ceiling had managed to remain relatively intact, preventing the basement from getting buried in sand. We obviously had to arrange some lighting of our own once we left the stairs behind us since there was no light down here aside from a few trickles of light that did not help much, and even that vanished once we entered the first room we found. If not for our globe of light, we would have been blind, but thanks to it we were able to see the rotten furniture inside the room in all its glory.

There was not much to see honestly since all I could spot was two rotting but still somewhat intact barrels along with three that had broken apart. A broken desk and chair, as well as a cupboard, and a medium-sized compartment beneath the broken desktop, which I noticed was broken as well after Mothra/Butterfree moved the desktop pieces that were on it. We naturally still checked it out but all we saw was dust, mold, and some half rotten pieces of fabric. There was nothing of value there, which was disappointing but not unexpected.

Hades/Gengar flew towards the barrels and phased/flew straight through them before giving a dissatisfied shake of his head. He complained that all they contained was mold as well as rot, which I could have told him beforehand seeing their state. There was no way that anything stored in there could have remained unspoiled seeing how the barrels were no longer sealed. Still, I kept quiet and just pointed to the closet which was the only thing left that had not been checked to divert his attention, and it worked like a charm.

I decided to keep the feelings of anticipation and amusement I could feel coming from there to myself as I watched Hades float over to the closet. He threw the door open and did a startled backflip in the air when something rushed out with a loud shout. I had to stop Seb/Nidoking, and Gaia/Nidoqueen when they instinctively tried to blast the prankster as a reaction to the shout and its rush. Only me, Mothra, and the Misdreavus in question seemed to find the situation amusing at first, but Hades began to cackle up once he had calmed down and the Nido-duo just smiled before giving me a reproachful look, telling me that I should have warned them if I had noticed the Misdreavus before it came out of the closet.

I would have done that if I had felt any maliciousness, but I didn't so I let it play out. The duo did not bother arguing and just shrugged before laughing at the Misdreavus' startled cries as it tried to get out of Hades' grip as he held it by its shoulders while he shook it. Misdreavus asked Hades to let it go and that it was just a harmless prank, but Hades just threw me a look, and I considered telling him to let it run away before I remembered the entry of Misflumane. I was interested in that one and wanted to see if I could use some of the stuff I read in its Paldean PokeDex entry as well as the research of Professor Sada to stimulate the conditions for Misdreavus' evolution to Misflumane.

Hence, I used my Observe on it, and when I saw that she had yellow potential I decided to ball her. I was fine with lowering my standards a bit for the sake of research. Misdreavus tried to intercept the GhostBall, but Hades stopped her from stopping the ball, so she got hit in the head with it. After being sucked into the GhostBall Misdreavus attempted to break out, causing the ball to shake vigorously. Just as I pulled out a second GhostBall, sure that Misdreavus would be breaking out of the first one at any moment, the ball actually stopped shaking, and the capture process succeeded. Taken off guard by the sudden successful capture I stared at the GhostBall for a moment, causing Mothra and Hades to chuckle.

Hades levitated the ball into his hands and floated over to pat me on the shoulder before he settled the GhostBall in my hand with a laugh. I just sighed before I gave him a smile, following which I released the Misdreavus to ask some questions. My first question was why she abruptly stopped struggling when she seemed to be so intent on escaping at first. Misdreavus giggled at my question and shook her head in amusement before admitting that she gave up trying to break out when she, in the midst of her struggle, realized that she would most likely have no way to escape us even if she managed to break free from the PokeBall.

That was true and I had no rebuttal to her startlingly factual assessment of the situation, so I went ahead and posed the next question. I wanted to know if more ghosts were hanging out around the basement, and if that was the case what kind. I also asked her to show me around, though I honestly did not expect her to have to do much of that since a basement of a keep like this could only be so big. Misdreavus ended up surprising me with her answers. According to her, there were dozens of ghosts roaming the 3 basement floors, which was two more floors than I expected.

That wasn't all either since apparently, the basement floors were bigger than the keep itself, which was kinda questionable since that would open the possibility of someone actually digging their way inside the keep from the outside if they knew what they were doing, though that was obviously no longer a concern seeing how the place was in ruins anyway. Still, it was why I had not considered the possibility, but I certainly welcomed the chance to explore the floors and possibly capture some more ghosts.

Misdreavus mentioned that the ghosts haunting this place were made up of more of her kind, a few Shuppet and Banette, some Gastly and Haunter, a few Sableye, and some Duskull led by a Dusclops. When I asked her why I saw none of those while exploring the surface, she told me that they stuck to the basement floors during the day and only left for the surface during the night, though even then most preferred staying underground since they did not get along that well with the Houndour. I could not understand why the Houndour were allowed to remain if that was the case. She had said that there was a Dusclops and some Banette among the ghosts staying here, and I was pretty sure that any of those could deal with the pack even if it was led by a Houndoom.

Misdreavus nodded at that before shaking her head. She then explained that those big shots were not interested in going up and thus did not bother getting rid of the pack. They apparently thought that keeping the pack in exchange for keeping other Pokemon that might want to move into the basement out of the ruins was a good trade. It was a smart approach, and I had to tilt my hat at their lazy but clever neighbor policy.

Anyway, after getting my answers, I had Misdreavus show us around, and whenever we came across a ghost, I had either Mothra or Hades prevent it from escaping so that I could check it out. Even the Banette and the Duskull could not escape the prescribed appraisal, though I let them go when I saw their substandard potential. Whether it be at the bronze and silver stage, to me neither deep orange nor light yellow potential were acceptable in any way or fashion, especially not for a Pokemon that had already evolved.

At the end of my ghost hunt/basement exploration, I ended up capturing only 6 more ghosts out of the 100 plus that we found, and that was with me lowering the standard for the Misdreavus. Out of those 6 captures, 2 were of Misdreavus with yellow potential; 1 was a Shuppet with light green potential, 1 was a green potential Gastly, and the final 2 captures were of Duskull with deep yellow and light green potential. Honestly, it was not a bad haul at all, so I was pretty satisfied with the way this little visit to the ruins went.

The only thing I thought was unfortunate was that none of the new additions helped Utopia unlock/deduce a new ghost-nurturing matrix, though the chance of that happening had been incredibly slim in the first place. Either way, I spent the evening in Utopia and only left once we had cleaned up after breakfast the next morning. Back in the desert, we left the ruins and made our way toward our next target, which was the second small oasis mentioned by the Gligar. The distance was a bit much, and it took us 3 days to make it there.

Thankfully, the journey there was not too boring since I was able to distract myself with my sand surfing as well as the wild Pokemon we came across once in a while. Unsurprisingly, I ended up capturing some of those wild Pokemon even if the Pokemon themselves were a bit unexpected. I caught two Numel with deep yellow potential, a Cubone with light green potential, a Drilbur with green potential as well as one with deep yellow potential, and finally the most unexpected capture of them all, a Skamory with yellow potential that flew by above our heads.

It released a screech as it passed above us which caught our attention, and seeing how hard it was to come across wild Skarmory, I decided to have Mothra take that bird down so that I could check its potential. When I saw that it had yellow potential I chose to capture it due to its rarity lowering my criteria a bit. Luckily, Skamory's potential ended up getting raised to light green by Utopia, so it still managed to make the regular cut anyway. Still, these new additions were not the best news of those three days. No, that honor went to Eggy/Vendrak/Salandit, who managed to finally reach the regular limit this morning, meaning that he was officially starting his limit-breaking phase.

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