Chapter 1155: Kaidou · Heart Eye

Chapter 1155 -1138: Kaidou · Heart Eye

Communication? Does it matter more than fighting?

For Yamato, communication is the most important, but for Kaidou, battle is fundamental.

Fortunately, this isn’t a literal universe, voices can still be transmitted, otherwise, Rayquaza would completely ignore Kaidou’s shouts.

In Kaidou’s eyes, battle is above all else, but Rayquaza doesn’t see it that way. To Rayquaza, that blue creature is less important than the meteors flying in the sky.

This place isn’t the universe but is similar to it, meteors often slide down from above, and to Rayquaza, every meteor is a mystery box.

These meteors are fragments from various celestial bodies in the universe, and due to the different stars, their compositions are quite different.

Plus, due to the different environments they’ve experienced, they could have undergone different temperatures of roasting or ice seals, making no meteor taste exactly the same.

The unique taste system allows Rayquaza to savor meteors. Some may be too salty due to high silicate content, while others may be too brittle due to excessive metal content.

The rare “glass meteor” is its favorite, with a special texture and taste that’s exquisite, but those meteors are very rare.

Kaidou’s interference just happens to cause a “glass meteor” to slide past and turn into ashes during friction.

A dangerous aura emanates from its yellow pupils as Rayquaza swiftly turns to face the dragon-shaped creature approaching from below.

[You’re the one the Creator mentioned? My first impression of you is poor.]

Rayquaza doesn’t speak, but an ethereal voice directly resounds in Kaidou’s mind. For Divine Beast Level Pokemon, telepathy is a basic ability, they all have the skill to transmit thoughts, but whether they use it depends entirely on their mood.

For Pokemon at this level, communication isn’t limited to one way. Telepathy, speaking aloud, or controlling a puppet to speak are all possible methods.

This communication is one-sided. If a Pokemon doesn’t wish to, humans cannot communicate with them without using some special items, like mysterious treasures.

“Heh heh heh, such things don’t matter, whether you like it or hate it, let’s fight, let’s have a battle without reservation!”

While flying, Kaidou suddenly smacked his chest and belly with his dragon claw. With the strike, blood dripped from the corner of Kaidou’s mouth, and correspondingly, power filled every cell in his body.

Among Pokemon’s abilities, many require sacrifices, but the balance of sacrifice is even, the more you give, the more you gain. Influenced by Belly Drum, Kaidou’s attacks have been boosted to the extreme.

Kaidou already had some understanding of Rayquaza’s strength, if he didn’t give his all against such a foe at the start, afterward he might not have a chance.

[Battle maniac, huh? You remind me of those two nuisances who disturb the peace.]

Rayquaza doesn’t back down, its duties include protecting the planet below, any creatures invading from the universe become its targets. Some small meteors can be ignored, as they won’t affect much if they fall.

If something is too weak, it can let it pass, that’s something Rayquaza can judge.

But if something is too strong, regardless of whether it can be defeated or not, Rayquaza will engage in battle with it, sometimes going overboard with protection.

Any big things entering Rayquaza’s living area will be attacked by it, like human-launched probes.

In the Pokemon world, Rayquaza is a very ancient Pokemon, existing even before humans were born. In those times, humans hadn’t invented rockets yet.

This behavior led to human rockets being unable to launch smoothly for a long time, no matter how perfectly designed the rocket, it would be dismantled if it encountered Rayquaza.

Until Pokemon from the universe appeared, as Rayquaza pursued them, it got closer to the ground and witnessed human technological advancements, which improved the situation.

Kaidou is considered a relatively big nuisance in Rayquaza’s understanding, much less trouble than Groudon and Kyogre, but those two couldn’t possibly reach this place, especially Groudon.

Watching Kaidou who shows no sign of stopping, Rayquaza also began a new action.

In an instant, the air currents in this space entered a chaotic state, and in this special space created by Arceus, the air currents surged, stirring up winds. Rayquaza rose with the wind, increasing its already considerable speed.

This is Rayquaza’s Tailwind, but for Kaidou, it’s simply a headwind.

“Kaen Daiko!”

Flames engulfed Kaidou’s body, in the blink of an eye, Kaidou transformed from a blue Cyan Dragon into a flame-blazing demon dragon. Wind helped the fire spread, and under Rayquaza’s influence, the flames on Kaidou’s body splashed everywhere, illuminating this slightly dim space.

Without using weapons, without entering Human-Beast Form, Kaidou charged directly at Rayquaza with his most primitive Beast Form base, seemingly using this similar form to engage in battle.

However, upon contact, the collision turned into a Protect barrier struggle. Both Rayquaza and Kaidou erected their own barriers during the attack.

Rayquaza’s claws are surrounded by different colored energy, alternating Dragon Claw and Steel Claw slashed towards Kaidou, though with only two arms, it unleashed a densely packed shadow of claws.

Under Rayquaza’s relentless assault, Kaidou’s Protect soon reached its limit, and at the moment his barrier shattered, an icy aura was exhaled from Rayquaza’s mouth.

Ice Type attacks are not friendly to Flying + Dragon-type Rayquaza, but this doesn’t stop it from using Ice Type attacks. Rayquaza’s skill set is very comprehensive, except for a very few attributes, it’s an all-around versatile expert.

[You seem to have forgotten the Creator’s words, and as a human, this shouldn’t be the form you’re specialized in.]

“Heh heh heh, of course, I remember his words. But if a problem can be solved by fighting, what’s the need for unnecessary talk? You and I are alike!”

[What are you saying? Deceit and trickery will not gain my approval.]

“I saw it before, your way of stopping them from fighting was also through battle, using stronger force to decide everything. That’s the status and rights of the strong.

Force decides everything, battle achieves goals, in this aspect, we’re no different.

So, let’s just fight!”

Kaidou’s probing ended, and brute strength in Beast Form couldn’t gain advantage over Rayquaza. After one clash, Kaidou’s body began to shrink, returning to Human-Beast Form.

The Three-stage Transformation of Zoans was originally for adapting to different combat environments. Since the Beast Form failed, naturally, another form must be tried.

…

After some time, Kaidou’s physical state began to decline, but his spirits grew, finding long-lost enjoyment.

[Human, your battle is just for the sake of battle.

I’m different. If those two guys would listen to me, I wouldn’t want to fight them.

I fight to resolve disputes, I can’t help but choose battle.

Now it seems, you’re as troublesome as they are.

I’m not satisfied and don’t agree with you, you should leave, as you’ve probably felt the gap between us.]

“Heh heh heh, the battle won’t end because of words like that. If you don’t want to fight, then you’d have to use force to end all this. Battle and force are the only ways to resolve the matter!”

Arceus didn’t expect that Kaidou actually had another thought. He not only wants Rayquaza to acknowledge him but also aims to skew Rayquaza’s logic.

Rayquaza’s battle is for balance and protection. Kaidou is obsessed with battle and believes that force means everything. It’s fundamentally two paths at a crossroads, but Kaidou tries to find a common intersection.

While saying he doesn’t want communication, he’s actually pursuing in three ways: verbal communication and attempts at force, while satisfying his desire to fight.

With a clear intent that, if you don’t make a move, don’t think you can drive me away, if you do, you must acknowledge the importance of force.

If this were a rule-bound competition arena, Kaidou’s open scheme would count as a success, but here, there are no rules.

[Sophistry is all it is, you’re much more cunning than you appear.]

“Thanks for the compliment, I just want to fight, come on, let me experience that strength! Daiitoku Thundering Hakken!”

[As you wish, you better stay put for a while.]

Rayquaza felt there was another nuisance added to its life. Apart from those two guys who fight at the drop of a hat, now there’s someone in the sky interfering.

[But without those two guys causing trouble, maybe it won’t be too bad…]

Thinking about those troublesome Groudon and Kyogre, Rayquaza’s mood seemed to lighten, and it promptly entered Mega Rayquaza’s form, planning to drive Kaidou out.

Just now it spotted a magnificent comet, breaking it should make some fine delicacies.

[Heart Eye!]

…

Outside, Yamato sat helplessly by the Holy Spring, throwing a condensed ice block into the water for skipping.

A strong fighting spirit doesn’t contradict trying and failing. Due to excessive excitement causing skill imbalance, she even failed faster.

“Father, why hasn’t Dad come out yet? Hasn’t he directly succeeded?”

More terrifying than entering the shore at the same time as her dad is failing herself while her dad succeeded.

[Yamato, you’ve become too lax. What have you been doing all these years? It seems you need a bit of help, Thundering Hakken!]

She could almost predict the consequences of such actions, and what Kaidou would do, she could guess almost verbatim, a unique Future Sight.

This reality brought some warmth to Yamato. Not long after, a flash of green light streaked across the sky, and then Kaidou directly fell out of it. Seeing Kaidou injured, Yamato also felt emotions of joy surging in her heart.

“Nice work… *cough cough*, I mean, what a pity, it looked like Pops was just a tiny bit away from succeeding.”

Looking at Kaidou lying on the ground nearby, Yamato instinctively blurted out her true feelings.

If Arceus hadn’t been right next to her, Yamato would’ve been jumping for joy on the spot, but she quickly noticed a problem: Kaidou was injured on the physical level.

No matter how badly she got hurt in the Unova Dragon World, it would only result in mental fatigue—sleep a bit more and she’d be fine again—and she had never once had her actual body get injured.

“Foster Father, is it different for my father?”

“Mm. Over there what’s being tempered is your spirit; your father is fighting in a far more real way, and the damage he takes gets fed back to his body. There’s just a near-death safeguard slapped on top.”

Yamato’s situation is virtual reality: even with 100% pain simulation turned on, it’s still fake. Kaidou, on the other hand, is the unlucky player trapped inside the virtual reality; if something goes wrong in there, then he himself will have problems too.

“I see…. Oh right, Foster Father, I suddenly remembered I’ve got stuff to do, see you later.”

Yamato suddenly thought of something even scarier. For Kaidou, failure and success didn’t make much difference—if he ran into her, she always ended up unlucky. To avoid future risk, she once again chose to bolt.

Theoretically, Kaidou shouldn’t be coming after her right after getting beaten up, so she still had time to run.

Yamato moved fast, directly jumping off the edge of the Holy Mountain, using the momentum from her run-up to go into free fall, then forming a membrane of wings out of lightning and ice, starting a wingsuit flight.

Not long after she left, Kaidou, who’d fallen down, also climbed back up.

“Rayquaza’s not exactly fond of you. Looks like you picked a really wrong time and node.”

“Wugogogo, as long as I can fight, that’s enough. There are fewer and fewer who can fight now.”

“Heh. Don’t come bother me again before you beat that kid.”

“You call that a kid…..”

A creature that can fly at high speed through the starry sky and snack on meteors is just a kid in Arceus’s mouth—but considering the reason Rayquaza shows up and what Arceus is himself, that line isn’t really wrong.

Kaido had also noticed another intention of Arceus: now that there’s Rayquaza, he seemingly no longer has any excuse to go find Arceus to temper himself.

“That’s fine too. Fighting it, I did pick up a bit of technique. I’ll digest it first. If it’s too frequent, it’d be bad if I piss it off.”

Kaido wasn’t afraid of Rayquaza going all out; he was afraid of Rayquaza losing its temper and just quitting on him. With Rayquaza’s speed, if it doesn’t feel like fighting and simply chooses to avoid battle, Kaidou has absolutely no way to do anything.

He needed to find a suitable frequency: not so often that Rayquaza chooses to avoid battle, but still enough for him to get his fights in.

Fresh off the end of a battle, Kaidou thus started a new round of thinking. It was something that consumed mental energy, and coupled with the previous fight making him very pumped up, whenever he ran into that situation, Kaidou really wanted a drink.

Normally when he drank he still kept some sense of measure, but at times like this Kaidou didn’t control himself at all, and it didn’t take long before he entered a drunken state—which meant Kaidou had entered his random mode.

No one knows where Kaidou in that state will appear, nor what will happen.

…

Boom!

The ground was blasted into a big crater, and Kaidou rubbed his head as he crawled out of it.

“Hic…. Took my eyes off it and drank too much again. Was flying, then just fell… wugogogo, I really am an idiot, huh… heehee.. hic..”

You could tell Kaidou hadn’t sobered up completely; strange noises came out of his mouth from time to time, and his hands were moving in very weird ways.

Behind him, a figure was sneaking away on tiptoe. Being noticed by a drunk Kaidou didn’t mean anything good, but Kaidou was drunk, not blackout drunk; compared to when he’s sober, his vigilance was actually even higher in that state.

“Queen… hic… where do you think you’re going?”

Reaching out and grabbing a braid, Kaidou yanked the other man back toward him.

“Big Bro Kaidou, I… I was gonna go get you more booze. You probably haven’t drunk to your fill yet, right?”

Right now Queen was feeling a bit of regret about leaving his hair that long, but then he thought about it and realized it didn’t make a difference. Kaidou had already dropped right in front of him—whether he had long hair or was bald didn’t change a thing.

This was Wano Kuni’s laboratory; for Kaidou to drop precisely in front of him, there was no way he’d believe it was an accident.

“Oh? Got good liquor in your lab? But I’ve already had enough this time… hic…. Queen, let’s have a little practice.”

“Uh… Big Bro Kaidou, personally I think Miss Yamato is a much more suitable partner. I’ll go find her right now!”

“No need. That girl is soaking in the women’s bath in the hot springs.”

After jumping off the mountain, Yamato had gone straight to the hot springs. Relaxing was one reason; avoiding danger, that was also a great spot.

You can’t use that trick all the time, but once in a while it really works miracles—at the very least, it successfully pushed back Kaidou’s move and forced him to pick target number two.

Soon, strange noises echoed from outside the lab, and right then a card slipped from Hawkins’s hand onto the ground.

“As expected, some things just can’t be dodged.”

Picking up his Tarot Card, Hawkins lightly wiped the dust off it. Staring at the pattern on the card, Hawkins looked toward where Queen was, and in those dead-fish eyes, a trace of sympathy seemed to appear.

Someone whose fate is this bumpy is rare to see in a lifetime.

…

“Ara ara, does this kind of thing happen a lot? The people around here aren’t reacting at all.”

Kuzan was dressed just like a vacationing young guy, sunglasses pushed up on his forehead, a sun hat on his head, a parasol slung over his shoulder. The camel behind him was hugging two oversized folding chairs, with a huge picnic backpack strapped on its back.

The commotion Kaidou and Queen had kicked up wasn’t small; even from far off you could see the dust clouds over there. Yet the nearby residents acted like they hadn’t seen a thing, just going on with their usual daily lives.

The only impact was that a little girl failed to hold onto the Swablu balloon in her hand, but before her tears could fall, Kuzan had already used his height advantage to grab the balloon and help tie a slip knot around her wrist.

“It probably happens every few months or so. But…. running into you here really is unexpected, Admiral Aokiji.”

A voice came from behind Kuzan, answering his question, but without much respect in it.

“That’s all in the past. At most I’m a former Admiral now. But aren’t you the same? A member of the World Government’s CP9 defected here too. This place really is a big old mixed bag.”

The one answering Kuzan was Who’s-Who. CP9’s attitude toward the Navy had always been like that: to them, the Navy is just a subordinate force of the World Government. Even though an Admiral represents the Navy’s highest combat power, they don’t have the authority to directly order CP9 around.

Strength would make them rein in that arrogance, but it wouldn’t make them much more respectful. In fact, if someone came bearing a World Government order, their attitude would get even more arrogant.

It’s just different now. Whether CP9 or Admiral, both are things of the past.

The place they were in was Wano Kuni, the heartland under Hundred Beasts’ control, and all their former identities had become history. Who’s-Who had even become Kuzan’s senior.

It’s just that Who’s-Who had always been out on missions, so this was the first time he’d met Kuzan face to face.