"Four lemonade bottles, four trail mix bags, a water purifier, a bag of dried noodles, and a pack of wet wipes. That all adds up to… 2400 poke!" the cashier spoke. "Would you like to donate 150 poke to the Pokemon Persistence and Freedom Foundation?"
"Thanks, but I don't think we can afford to be donating any money right now, sorry," Pannen replied, handing the coins over. "We need to be rationing our money right now."
"That's alright. Have a great day."
"Thank you."
The four grabbed the purchased supplies and put it into their bags. Afterwards, they began walking out of the general store.
"We've wasted a lot of time in Kiritown now," Leah spoke.
"I know, we're heading out of this town now without making any more stops," Pannen responded.
"We're not going to be catching up with Aika at this pace. She already had a head start on us by some hours, and now that's amplified even further," Leah continued to berate. "Do you even have a plan for how we're going to get caught up with her?"
"Well…" Pannen thought, looking up to the sky as her voice trailed off. "Because the four of us are together, we can all be encouraging each other to keep moving and go faster because of that. With that, we'll be able to catch up with her."
Ishmael smiled. "I can keep playing some music! That should get us some more encouragement," he pulled out his flute again.
Leah rolled her eyes. "Well, I suppose there is some merit to that… but please wait until we leave the town before you start."
They continued walking out of the town, walking side-by-side. Leah began taking her map out to check where they were going. As they walked out of town, Pannen began looking backwards, then to the side, then backwards again.
"...Huh, no one is telling us 'goodbye' as we leave," Pannen said.
"I mean, we are just travelers," Elijah replied.
"We're more than that, we're heroes. We went through the endeavor of getting them a new tree to make a totem out of, when we didn't have to do that. I don't know, I was just expecting a little more fanfare," Pannen said.
"We put things back to the way they used to be. Not even that, since they're still the ones going through the trouble of carving it. We shouldn't be expecting fame and celebration just for that."
"I guess that makes sense… but still, we're heroes. We need to keep going, and the fanfare will come later," she said, determined.
"We'll get our prestige in due time, let's just wait until after we get Aika back for that," Leah said.
Ishmael put his lips on his flute and began playing another song as the group continued their journey, finally leaving their first stop to continue onwards.
They continued forward for hours more, staying on the cleared roads. The land was bare, not many landmarks to make note of. The weather was perfectly clear, and the wind was a tolerable breeze.
Leah frequently checked at the map, each time hoping that she had misread the map the previous time and they were actually closer to the next map then she'd thought, and each time she found she was right the last time. She signed.
"It's unfortunate that this continent doesn't have as much civilization as the other continents. It takes longer for us to get from town-to-town," Leah mentioned.
"The road sure is long, but we have to keep going," Pannen responded.
"Do the other continents have more towns?" Elijah asked.
"A lot more, actually. They have much more history with civilization being built for a longer period of time. So naturally they'll have more towns and cities than we do," Leah explained.
"Wait, is this continent… newer than the other ones?" Ishmael asked.
"The land itself? No. It's just that its colonization has been a more recent thing," Leah began speaking. "A lot of the Stone Continent's history had lots of smaller tribes, and not really any big cities. Some pokemon from the west came to this continent and began building larger places, starting with Port Rosiose. Same pokemon that Ichiro and Kiri were remembered for fighting off.
Please keep in mind I'm dumbing down things a lot for you, but that's the general gist of it. Land is old, towns are mostly new."
"Smaller tribes? Is that what we saw in that mystery dungeon?"
"Not quite. I'm talking about pokemon that just don't have developed civilization, not ones completely wild. They had their camps, leadership, and rudimentary laws."
"Ones just as intelligent as us?" Elijah asked.
"Well I wouldn't quite say that either," Leah responded.
"Why not?" Elijah asked.
"Just think about it. We have education, we have books, and they didn't. Us in the modern day are so much more advanced than the people from the past and we know so many things that they never learned."
"Well, they were able to survive without any civilization," Elijah said.
"They were hillbillies. We're a lot more intelligent than they were, and we should be proud of that," Leah said.
"...Alright," Elijah still thought that something seemed wrong about what Leah was saying, but he didn't find cause to argue with Leah further.
"Hmm… oh yeah, I've heard of this stuff before," Ishmael chirped up. "My dad comes from this continent and my mom comes from another. Or- well- like her great grandfather came from another continent and moved here."
"That makes sense, considering their backgrounds and such," Leah said.
The road took them into a forest. The lilac bushes were in bloom around them and the foliage of leaves surrounded them. They looked around them more frequently to ensure that everything was safe. In the fields they often chatted amongst themselves to pass the time, but in the woods they became much more quiet.
Eventually, the silence was pierced when Leah spoke up.
"Heads up guys, this map says that this road can lead to a mystery dungeon. We should keep our eyes out to make sure that doesn't happen," the espurr said.
"Wait, how can we look out for that?" Elijah asked.
"Keep an eye out for the trees. If they look random and natural, we're good. If you think you see repeating patterns, back out," Leah explained.
"Aight then," Ishmael said.
"Simple enough, we'll just have to be careful and go slower," Pannen said. "...Wait a second, why would this road steer so close to a mystery dungeon?"
"I think this mystery dungeon is a much newer one, so the road was made first," Leah explained. "I'm unsure on the exact mechanisms behind it, but new mystery dungeons form and old ones become inert regularly. That must've happened here."
"Do you know how new this one apparently is?" Pannen asked.
"I think it's fairly new? My map doesn't provide an exact date but the warning it gives is worded in a way that leads me to believe it's more recent."
Pannen looked down the road, falling silent as a bad feeling creeped down on her. "...The book of maps that Aika took was an older book," she said. "She might not have been warned about the mystery dungeon on her map when she went through here."
Elijah, Leah, and Ishmael's eyes widened as they realized what Pannen was implying. "Aika is pretty preceptive, maybe she would've noticed the dungeon and avoided going in?" Elijah proposed.
"We can't take any risks, we've got to head into the dungeon. Aika could be in there," Pannen commanded. "Come on, we can't waste anymore time."
Pannen picked up her pace, walking much faster without doing a complete sprint to avoid exhausting herself. Her increased speed forced the other three to pick up pace as well.
As Pannen ventured deeper and deeper into the forest, she kept her eyes peeled and focused on the trees. After a few minutes of keen looking, she saw something that was off: three trees beside one another that looked to have an identical arrangement of branches. She followed down that back, venturing into the mystery dungeon.
Like with the mystery dungeon at Kiritown, there was no threshold they passed which made everything suddenly feel different. The change in atmosphere was subtle, intensifying ever so slightly with every step they took. Pannen slowed down her pace, staying perceptive of her surroundings.
"A-are you sure this is the right idea?" Elijah asked Pannen.
"If there's a chance that Aika is in here, then we must take it," Pannen replied.
As they continued deeper, two yungoos revealed themselves to the group. Just by looking in their eyes, they could tell they were pokemon of the dungeon. As Elijah flinched back, Pannen clenched her paws and focused her eyes into a resolute expression. "We'll have to fight our way through here," she said.
Pannen began running forward, and the two yungoos did the same. Pannen leapt into the air and came down on the left yungoos with a tail attack, then quickly dodged a bite attack from the right yungoos. Pannen bashed the right yungoos with her paws just as Ishmael arrived to fully knock both of them out.
After making sure they were down for the count, Pannen continued walking forward. "Leah, do you have any estimates on how large this mystery dungeon is?" Pannen asked the espurr.
"I don't have much information to go off of, but I'd guess a few kilometers squared," she said.
"Could you define 'a few'?"
"About one to six?" she said.
"Alright…" Pannen let that sink amount sink in. It was vaster than she would've wanted. "Come, we need to continue onwards."
Pannen, Elijah, Ishmael, and Leah continued through the dungeon. They didn't sneak through the place, they all but ransacked the location. From pathway to pathway, from clearing to clearing.
Two pokemon was enough that Pannen could've handled it herself. Three pokemon at once wasn't any challenge for the group either. Four pokemon at once was when battles started getting more tense. Elijah was always hesitant to make attacks himself as he wanted to stay as far away from threats as possible, he struggled to bring himself to help even when Pannen, Ishmael, and Leah were in danger of getting hurt.
At Pannen's lead, they kept continuing onwards, only taking the occasional break to catch their breath and getting their bearings.
They got deeper and deeper into the mystery dungeon. As they did, the strange details of their surroundings became more evident. The duplicate trees became more prevalent and harder to ignore, even the patterns on the ground seemed to repeat. But the noises surrounding them also intensified, there were more enemies around them. Pannen found herself getting more nervous- desperate to find her lost sister. Against her better judgment she began calling out, screaming "Aika!" into the dungeon's pathways, echoing.
The battles intensified beyond just fights against four at a time. Not before too long, they would get into a fight against five forest pokemon at once. Under duress, Elijah was forced to participate as well with his own weak attacks. They couldn't get through fights that large unscathed anymore.
The place did not relent. Later, they would have to fight against six at a time, getting hurt more than just mere scratches before they could succeed. Later, they'd have to fight seven at a time, enough to give the feelings of dread and make them wonder if they couldn't make it; enough to trigger deeper instincts.
Eventually, they found themselves in another clearing. By then, they had already spent the better part of an hour in that place. Aika or any sign of her was still nowhere in sight, and they were getting tired. They breathed deeply with their paws on their knees.
Even still, the forest did not relent. As they collected themselves, they heard the sound of more feet and snarling. They all looked up to see numerous dungeon pokemon approaching. The plants obscured how many, but it was surely at least a dozen. And unlike the four of them, they weren't burdened by exhaustion. Pannen, Elijah, Ishmael, and Leah got into battle positions again, but they could tell the situation was dire.
"Pannen, if we get out of this, I swear I'm going to kill you for dragging us all into this," Leah said, stepping back as the dungeon pokemon slowly advanced.
Pannen's eyes quickly darted around, trying to figure out some plan to get them out of there. It was then when she noticed something: the identical trees did not appear to be as prevalent as they were a few minutes ago, and other details of the environment seemed more natural as well. They weren't in the dungeon's center anymore, they had gone so far that they were approaching the edge of the dungeon again. She quickly looked behind her. The paths didn't look like they'd lead to dead ends; they widened instead of narrowed.
"Dungeons should have multiple exits, right?" Pannen asked Leah.
"We haven't changed our elevation, so there should be other pathways out," Leah said.
"Alright. We're going to have to sprint out of here," Pannen said, double-checking behind her again.
"Wait! I can't run as fast as you three can," Leah complained. "You can't just leave me to die here! You're going to need me for this journey."
The espurr's legs were rather short, and she couldn't dash on all-fours like the minccino could. Pannen could see what the problem was.
Pannen looked at Ishmael, who had longer legs and was pretty fit. "Ishmael, do you think you're strong enough to carry Leah while you run?"
"Mhm!" Ishmael responded.
"I am NOT going to do that!" Leah complained.
Just then, the dungeon pokemon began sprinting forward at them, at an attacking speed.
"We've got to go NOW!" Pannen said.
Ishmael quickly picked the espurr and began running away, Pannen and Elijah began sprinting away on all-fours as well. The mienfoo put the espurr on his back with her legs on his shoulders, which he held onto with his paws as he ran.
They ran and they continued to run, the dungeon pokemon giving chase. Every thought of exhaustion vanished from them as they summoned up the energy they needed to run away.
Bullet seeds and other projectiles were fired at them as they continued to dash away. Leah uncurled her espurr ears and used telekinesis to deflect the attacks, able to focus as she herself was not running. An aipom even leapt out from between the trees at them, but Leah was quick enough psychically push it back before it could make contact with them.
While the path was wide, it wasn't without obstacles. Pannen, Elijah, and Ishmael had to round corners, leap over fallen branches, and duck under living branches as the pokemon behind them continued chasing after. The distorted details of a mystery dungeon became less and less apparent as they ran forward, but the resident pokemon still chased after them.
A minute into the chase, the group came onto a wide stream of water perpendicular to them. Pannen climbed onto a boulder nearby and used the extra height to leap over the stream, and Elijah did the same. But Ishmael did not have the speed of a minccino, and he was weighed down by the weight of an espurr. He could tell that he couldn't make the same jump that Pannen and Elijah did. With limited choices, Ishmael continued running forward, hoping the water would not slow him down completely. He kept his head forward, anticipating the moment he would have to begin wading through the water.
And yet, that moment did not come. He felt the ground become wet, but he didn't feel himself entering the water, even as he continued forward.
Ishmael peered downwards. The stream was around him, yet with every step he took, the water seemed to move out of the way to give him a clear footing. Behind him, he could hear the water rushing back into place to fill in the unnatural pockets of air. This continued until he left the stream completely, his ankles remaining dry.
Getting back onto dry land, Ishmael glanced behind him. The horde of pokemon behind him were having to wade through the waters and were getting slowed down by it. Yet, Ishmael still couldn't feel any water on his ankles. Pannen and Elijah were still sprinting forward and not looking back, and Leah was too preoccupied using psychic moves to protect them both to notice. There were a lot of things in the world that Ishmael did not understand, but that was something he couldn't even begin to find an explanation for.
Regardless, he was not in the clear yet. Ishmael had to keep running forward while carrying Leah with him, the pokemon were still after them.
They continued running forward, now with added distance between them. In the distance, they could see golden sunlight. It wasn't like the unusual illumination of mystery dungeons, it was the natural light of the sun in all of its radiance. However, the way to it inclined upwards. Exhaustion was already beginning to take hold of them, and the dungeon pokemon were getting out of the stream. They just needed to clear that final distance.
Just then, they heard great rumbling in the trees above them. A large samurott jumped down into the pathway, right between the group of four and the dungeon pokemon. He wasn't one of the dungeon pokemon.
Pannen, Elijah, and Ishmael stopped for a moment to look back at him. The samurott was focused on the horde of dungeon pokemon. They began advancing towards him, but the samurott drew one of his scalchop swords and made a wide horizontal slash, perfectly horizontal without even being half-a-degree off. The attack was a wondrous spectacle, creating a perfect arc of deep blue water that cleanly cut through the horde.
After the initial attack, he quickly rearranged his position and continued the momentum to perform a downwards slash on those which remained, this second attack hit the ground at the same time the water droplets of the first attack reached the ground. Only one dungeon pokemon remained after this, which he quickly disposed of with a diagonal third attack. The water residue left in the air from the three aquatic slashes left a faintly visible rainbow where the dungeon pokemon once stood.
Once each of the dungeon pokemon were defeated, the samurott turned around to face the four. "You looked like you needed some help there," he said to them.
They were each stunned for a moment, not quite sure how to respond. Ishmael's stance loosened, and that gave Leah room to hop down from being on him. Pannen was the first who managed to say something.
"That was totally amazing!" Pannen proclaimed. "Who are you?"
The samurott softly smiled to himself. "I live beside these woods and protect the town close by. I sensed some things were going on in this mystery dungeon, so I stepped to intervene. Seems that you lot managed to create quite the situation for yourself.
Come, I'll lead you out of here."
The samurott walked past them towards the dungeon's exit, the four began following him.
"You dealt with those pokemon super well!" Pannen said, still impressed.
"Why thank you," he softly smiled again. He didn't seem surprised by the comment, like it was something he had heard many times before.
"You just made one swipe with your weapon and you immediately took out a ton of them!" Pannen continued to talk, starstruck.
"Yeah, that was really impressive!" Elijah said.
"Well, I have many years of experience and have been on more than my fair share of journeys. It wasn't any problem."
"And it was also cool how you moved the water of that stream out of the way from all the way back there," Ishmael said.
The samurott looked puzzled at that statement. "Right…" he said.
"Hey, we didn't need your help. We were close to the exit as is, we could've gotten out without you," Leah said.
Samurott softly chuckled to himself. "Well, better safe than sorry," he said simply.
They stepped out of the mystery dungeon together, and out of the forest as hole. Near them was a home made from reinforced wood that rested just outside of the mystery dungeon. The building overlooked a town in the valley below them. The samurott brought them to the edge of the hill to see the town in its full glory.
It wasn't as large as Kiritown, but it had close to a hundred buildings and encompassed an entire valley. It was bright and clean, like nothing was wrong at all. It would've taken them a day to fully explore themselves. To their left was a pale blue, two-story tall house. "Welcome to Barretville," he said.
"Do you protect this town?" Leah asked.
"That's what I'm doing at the moment, at least. I've been here and there, all over," he said.
"Thanks again for the help," Pannen said, now having her emotions be calmed down again. "We're on a journey to look for my sister who went away. Did you see her go through that mystery dungeon the other day?"
"Another minccino?" Samurott asked.
"Yes. Her name is Aika."
"I can't say anyone like that has come through here recently, besides you yourself," he said.
"How can you be so sure?" Pannen asked.
"When you spend long enough next to them, it isn't hard to notice when the pokemon from a mystery dungeon start behaving in an unusual way. Not quite hearing, it's… something else," he told them. "I noticed that when a whole crowd of them gathered together to start chasing you down. I can say with certainty that nothing of the sort happened yesterday."
The phrase "unusual way" was much too vague for Pannen's liking. "If someone sneaked in and slipped out without causing too much trouble, that's not something you'd notice, right?"
"Correct."
Pannen thought to herself for a moment, grim thoughts overtaking her. She quickly shifted those worries away. "There's no way Aika would've gone down without a serious fight. If he didn't notice anything, then she didn't get hurt in that mystery dungeon," she said aloud.
"I could search through the whole place myself if you would like. You four can rest in this town in the meantime, it's safe for you here," he walked down a path that led to the rest of the buildings, the four followed him.
"I would like that, thanks. But I'm certain she's elsewhere, she must've gone around or gotten out safely," Pannen said.
"You've got your own sense with mystery dungeons? You've been going through them for a long time, haven't you?" Leah asked Samurott.
"More than you could even imagine," he said. His tone of voice was impossible to completely ascertain. It wasn't quite one of pride, it sounded more akin to disappointment or regret. "I've noticed it seems you've got a emblemed scarf. Are you from an exploration guild?"
"I am a proud member of Nidoking's guild from the town of Eastflame," the espurr put a paw on her chest. "While I haven't been a member for long, I am still determined to rise the ranks."
"Aye, I wish you luck there. How about you three?"
"This is my brother, Ishmael and Leah are my friends," Pannen answered the question. "We're all working together to find Aika, we left the night after she left, so we're chasing after him. We're heroes,"
"Glad to hear, and I wish you the best of luck." he said.
"Some of my grandparents are samurott too!" Ishmael said, still starstruck by him.
"Really now?" Samurott asked.
"Yeah!" Ishmael confirmed. "But you look different from them. Your fur is a whole lot brighter, you have a straighter horn, and your shell sword looks totally different."
"Well, I'm not exactly from around here," he said. "But come now, there are a few places in this town where you can rest for the night. I can guide you, if you need."
Pannen turned her head to the pale blue house. "Is that your home?" she asked.
"It is," Samurott confirmed. "Gives me easy access to the mystery dungeon and a wonderful view of the town."
"Do you live alone?" Pannen asked.
"I do."
"That's a fairly large house to live alone in. Don't you have anyone you could live with?" Leah asked.
"Not anymore, no," he admitted.
"Not anymore? Did something happen?" Pannen asked.
"Well…" the samurott looked off in the distance, towards nothing in particular. There was a substantial delay before his next words, "Let's just say that it's better to do what is right than to do what is loyal, if you're forced to choose between them," he finally said.
The four stood silent, not exactly sure how to respond to that. "...Well thank you for helping us back in that dungeon. I have a sister who I'm loyal to, and I'm doing the right thing by looking to get her back," Pannen said.
"Right," the samurott looked back towards them. "I wish you the best of luck on your journey."
They gave their final thanks to the samurott and waved goodbye. Afterwards, Pannen, Elijah, Leah, and Ishmael descended down into the town to look for a place to rest.
End of chapter 9.