It was a lot quieter without Ted, Lucas, and Kevin. It wasn’t necessarily bad, just different, and it took me a couple of days to get used to it.

  Time almost seemed to slow down as soon as they left. No longer was it a constant affair of getting up in the morning to leave town early enough to get on the road, or to head to the practice courts to practice new moves.

  We could get up a little bit later, and spend more of the day walking around and finding new little areas of interest for the day.

  I spent two days volunteering at one of the breeding farms, the owner willing to let me shadow her in exchange for Zetian helping produce some Honey.

  Then I spent another day at the local library, looking up old histories about the area around Solaceon Town and the ruins.

  That’s not to say I spent no time Training or practicing with my Pokémon; Battling and Training were great ways to get them to burn off a lot of their extra energy - quite literally in Kōjin’s case. But now it was something that I could do to relax and have fun with, instead of a chore we had to do in order to prepare for the next Gym.

  Still, there wasn’t much to do in Solaceon Town overall. It was a sleepy town, and most of the people who I saw were just going about their daily lives. Besides the Breeding ranches, there was really only one thing of interest in the town.

  The Solaceon Ruins.

  In the games, the Ruins had been… relatively disappointing, all things told. They were just a standard cave that you could catch Unown in, along with a translation puzzle for fun. It wasn’t even an actual challenge, just translating Unown letters to English.

  Here though? The Ruins were actually ruins, and a strange mix of a tourist trap and an active archaeological dig.

  They reminded me a lot of the Snowpoint Temple in terms of their architecture, and according to a plaque on one of the walls, the current theory is that both sites were built by the same culture; those people who were living in Hisui before the Galaxy Team arrived.

  Even the thought of the Galaxy Team, and their modern day incarnation as Team Galactic, made my stomach twist. I’d checked the computers once I’d gotten to Solaceon Town, and sure enough: the Galaxy Team headquarters in Veilstone City were officially closed.

  No timeline had been given if they would reopen their doors, and nothing had been mentioned in the news regarding Cyrus. He, and the rest of Team Galactic, had simply faded into the background.

  So I kept myself from thinking about the situation by exploring the Ruins. Snowpoint Temple had been mostly open to the public, on account of it having been continually looked after for centuries. The Solaceon Ruins, however, were basically falling apart, and archaeologists were still trying to figure out what the actual purpose of them were.

  Visitors were only allowed to explore the upper areas, while the lower levels were still being excavated by the various archaeologists.

  Or, rather, normal visitors were only allowed to explore the upper areas.

  /^\

  My footsteps echoed through the stone corridors as I walked down the ancient passageways, lantern held high.

  Venus padded silently next to me, almost invisible as her black fur blended into the darkness. It was only when some of the light shined down on her fur in-between steps that she appeared, the light reflecting off of the yellow circles.

  It was still a little unnerving at times, knowing she was there but unable to see her, but I’d mostly gotten used to it by now.

  According to the researchers who were still digging the bottom-most layers of the Ruins out, almost everybody who had set foot into the Solaceon Ruins had felt like something was watching them. The prevailing theory was that either one or more Ghost-type Pokémon had set up shop in the Ruins, and were thankfully non-hostile.

  The glimpses of movement in the corner of my eye weren’t the actions of a Ghost-type like everybody thought.

  There was an interesting blind spot that the researchers here had found themselves in. It was a common belief that a Ghost-type Pokémon inhabited the ruins, so all of their efforts were focused on that angle.

  But I knew the truth: the inhabitants of the Solaceon were Unown, and they were Psychic-types, not Ghost.

  It was the reason why none of the sensors they had brought in to look for Ghost-types worked - because they were looking for the wrong Type of Pokémon.

  When I had asked about Unown, the lead researcher had shrugged and simply said “It’s possible” before moving on.

  Unown weren’t actually unknown, after all. In fact, they were the basis for why everybody could speak mostly the same languages.

  After all, while in my world the Unown were based on the alphabet, here it was the other way around. The first people to start using written languages were inspired by the Unown, using their forms to base their letters off of.

  Seeing Unown Symbols - the first forms of the modern alphabet - on the walls of the Solaceon Ruins wasn’t that big of a deal, according to the archaeologists. It would be the same as seeing ancient Greek carved into a stone tablet in Athens.

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  I’d been allowed access to the Solaceon Ruins as a partial observer: While I was no longer an official Lab Trainer, the fact that I still worked for Professor Rowan and had his seal of approval had gone a long way in making the head researchers at the Ruins let me in.

  I wasn’t getting paid - that much had been made clear to me. But I was allowed to explore more of the Ruins than the general public, so long as I didn’t damage anything.

  Most of a week had been spent just poking around all the little nooks and crannies while I hoped to find a glimpse of an Unown. They were frightfully good at hiding, however, and the most I’d seen of one was a quick blur of motion out of the corner of my eye.

  Still, despite the lack of any discoveries, I couldn’t call the time spent here a waste. I was enjoying myself far too much for that to be the case.

  That being said…

  I sighed and looked down at my nearly-invisible companion.

  “We might have to call off the search soon.” I told Venus.

  She looked up at me and meowed, her white teeth suddenly appearing in the dark.

  “I know! But there’s still a lot more of the world to see, and we’ve already spent a while here. I wouldn’t mind seeing Celestic Town soon.”

  Venus huffed.

  “Tell me about it.” I carefully shook the oil lantern, feeling how much fuel was left in the reservoir, and sighed.

  “Alright, we should probably turn around now. Starting to run a little low.”

  Was it a bit silly to use an oil lantern when modern flashlights were available?

  Perhaps.

  The average flashlight was so dim as to be almost useless though. Back in the Grand Underground, we’d been forced to use them because they were all we had, but the oil lanterns the researchers used here were actually brighter.

  I was going to have to pick up one of my own once I left the ruins. It’d be a gift from Arceus if I never had to go into a dark place again.

  And despite my very best wishes to stay out of the Underground, I had the feeling that I would be returning, if for no other reason than the Rangers or Professor Rowan asking me to investigate something.

  Rowan had warned me that the problem with knowing a bunch of stuff about Hisui and the Grand Underground meant that if anybody had a question I was one of the people they would come to. After all, aside from Ted and Lucas, I was one of the three people who had spent the most time in the Grand Underground.

  I was practically an expert, and what a vaguely horrifying thing to think about that was.

  My feet came to a stop, and Venus continued walking for a step before realizing I had stopped, and turned back to me with a questioning yowl.

  “Yeah…” I said distractedly, looking around at the nearly identical walls. “Do you know where we are?”

  I’d been so busy thinking about everything else that I hadn’t been paying attention to my surroundings, and the more I looked around, the less I recognized any of the wall carvings.

  This wasn’t a part of the Ruins I’d been in before.

  Swearing under my breath, I set the oil lantern on the ground, and reached into my pocket.

  “It should be around here somewhere…” I muttered.

  The other researchers had given me a map of what they’d explored, so hopefully if I could find a landmark I could-

  Venus hissed, and I looked up just in time to see the air ripple. I stumbled with a yelp, but the blow - whatever it had been - hadn’t been aimed at me.

  The lantern I’d placed on the ground shattered, glass and oil spilling across the stone floors.

  “Venus!” I shouted. “Get back!”

  She jumped, and I hurled myself away.

  The problem with oil lamps was that if they broke, the flame could ignite the spilled oil.

  If that happened, in this tight of an environment…

  I closed my eyes, and waited for the heat to overwhelm me.

  But it never came.

  Slowly, making sure I was still alive, I opened my eyes to find…

  Nothing.

  There was no fire, no burning oil, just… darkness.

  Venus yowled again, and her rings began glowing, casting a very faint light. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to see the shattered oil lantern, the wick thankfully extinguished before it could set things ablaze.

  Unsteadily I got to my feet, and carefully brushed off the shards of glass that had latched onto my pants.

  “Well.” I sighed, feeling my body ache from where I’d fallen on the ground. “That was… anticlimactic.”

  I could feel Venus’ look, even if I couldn’t see it.

  Fumbling around in my bag, I pulled out my flashlight, turning it on and grimacing at how dim the light was.

  Moving the beam around, I cursed as I looked at the walls. Both sides of the corridor were virtually indistinguishable, and I’d gotten turned around when I had to throw myself to the ground. I had no idea which way I had come from.

  Not again.

  /^\

  It only took me a couple of moments to change from my “casually exploring a ruin” outfit into my “lost in a dark cave” outfit.

  Which was a little depressing to think that I even had a “lost in a dark cave outfit,” but over the numerous times I’d found myself in a cave, I’d learned quite a few lessons. The two outfits were mostly the same: my sturdy hiking boots, a good pair of pants, and a loose T-shirt that was easy to move around in. But on top of the shirt I threw on a jacket I had picked up before entering the ruins. It was actually quite similar to Roark’s mining jacket, silver with large stripes of hi-vis material to catch the light and make me more obvious to rescuers, should the need arise.

  I grabbed my new hard-hat helmet, and buckled it in place.

  Then I summoned Jira to my side, and knelt down to her level.

  “Alright Jira.” I said, catching her attention. “We’re lost in a cave. Do you think you could guide us out?”

  She leaned her head back, and sniffed the air. I was banking on the fact that Larvitar instinctually knew their way up to the surface; after all, they had to get out of the caves in which they were born.

  It took a couple of minutes of her going one way, sniffing, then turning around and tasting the air in the opposite direction, but she eventually settled on a direction.

  “Good girl.” I said, and she preened. “Lead the way!”

  Venus padded along beside us, a nearly invisible guardian.

  “Oh! Wait a second!”

  I fished around in my pack until I came up with a stick of chalk. Leaning over, I made an arrow on the wall, pointing in the direction we’re going.

  “Just in case we get turned around! Okay, let’s go!”

  /^\

  The three figures moved down the hallway, disappearing into the darkness.

  A small shape emerged out of the wall, its lone eye staring in unblinking concentration. Once it was satisfied they were sufficiently far away, it turned its gaze to the small mark that had been inscribed on the wall.

  And with a small burst of psychic power erased it.