I've seen and learned to deal with a lot in my time traveling dimensions, but the existence of magic as a force in the world was something that would always baffle me. What was it really? How did it work? Where did it come from? I'd seen it in other worlds I'd traveled to, if only briefly. Did it work the same regardless of the world? Or was magic unique to each universe? If the former, how come my world had never discovered it?

Thoughts like these tend to keep me up at night, so I try to block them out. Gotta be well rested to battle legendarys, especially the ones we'll be up against. Our next target: Hild. With her magic she could jam my gear with almost no trouble at all.

When I told this to the group, they seemed to think I was high. "Are you out of your skull? Hild?!" The oh-so-regal Elf Queen questioned, her normally soothing voice gone shrill. I held up my hands defensively, "Honestly, do you really think I'd try to go after something like Hild without a plan? Come on now, you know me better than that."

That calmed them down, at least enough for me to explain. I'd become a bit of an icon in the relic and item trade, both black market and normal. Slaying bounty pokegirls every other weekend resulted in me finding all kinds of neat shit to sell and trade. Not to mention selling and trading the items I bought and reverse engineered from world prime tech.

As a result, I'd built up quite an appearance, and certain people in the markets started to know me by name (I'd been trying to avoid that, but hey, it turned out to be helpful). I'd even been invited to one or two been experiment fairs at Silph Co., where a bunch of scientists and magic users all gather up in he building to show off their science and magic and try to win over investors or sell their wares.

I'd the first one, as we'd been battling Lugiass at the time, but had gone to the last one a few nights ago, and traded away a necklace of Ludcard fangs, a suit of Leviathan armor, and $30,000 (well, the equivalent to said amount in this world's currency) for a brand new gizmo, one that was a combination of tech and magic.

"It's just a proto-type, but I tested it out. It's just what we need." I explained, displaying the sleek, metal object. It resembled a pole-arm, but the metal was stained an ashy gray. "What's it do?" Snowy asked. I grinned, "I was hoping you'd ask."

It seemed every mission was going to be a all hands on deck at this point, and all the 'girls were present in their pokeballs; save for Chesh. I used Anubust to track down Hild's location, an area in the mountains west of Viridian City, and teleported with Chesh.

The moment we got within a mile we felt the force of magic in the area. I recalled Chesh to her ball so she wouldn't be too affected by it, and kept going on foot. It only took ten minutes to reach the home of Hilt; a hut made of magic imbued stone. Knowing Hild could likely already sense us, I sent out the girls and we surrounded the hut as Hild stepped out, eyeing us all the way one might look at a bug on their windshield.

"Your the human looking for the one holding them here yeah?" Hild's voice was shockingly un-threatening, sounding more bored than anything. I nodded, taking out the devise. This made her laugh, "Oh you intend to stop me with that yeah? Silly humans with their machines, thinking science could ever trump magic. Go ahead, give it your best shot."

I smirked, "Don't be so quick to badmouth science, you were born from it after all." I said, activating the dampener. Immediately, all machinery and magic powers in a three mile radius, including that of Hild, stopped working; the dampener creating a zone of dead energy. Money well spent.

Hilt tried to cast her magic at us, but it did nothing. Chesh read her mind, finding that Hild wasn't responsible and didn't know who was. Another to mark off the list.

Honestly, I would've been willing to just leave it at that, teleport away with the dampener and leave Hild in peace, but she just had to try and attack without magic. Deathless or not, getting attacked from all sides from almost every different element has to hurt like a bitch.

Anubust gasped when she returned to her normal body, reverting out of the Book Of Life form. "Wha...what is this?" She questioned me. "You've earned a bit of leave." I said.

She eyed me curiously, "Your...your letting me go?" "Oh hell no," I said, "Your still too useful to give up, and if I take that nifty little collar off, you'll probably kill us all out of spite. But it isn't right to leave you in book form either."

Anubust narrowed her eyes at me, "If you expect to get a taming out of me human, you've got quite another thing coming."

I shook my head, "You can use your free time however you like, though I will have to be around for it to make sure you don't wonder off and try taking the collar off. You've got the rest of the night, and if you don't mind sharing a room with Chesh so she can keep an eye on you, you can even stay out of book form afterwards. So, how do you wanna spend your night?"

I was not expecting the goddess of death to want to go dancing and drinking in a club in Celadon city, but an hour and a half later (it took some time to work out a suitable disguise for her) Anubust was boozed out of her skull and cutting a rug on the dance floor. I guess if you get a day outside prison you dink until you puke, a rule that applies to even legendarys. Go figure.