Chapter 67: Steel-Rock Cavern

"Black and white uniforms... with shield-like emblems on them? That doesn't sound like any organization native to the Japan region."

N lowered his head, mulling it over with a calm expression. He sifted through his memories, searching for any information that matched the description, but came up entirely empty. A curious brow twitched upward.

A place like Steel-Rock Cavern was bound to be teeming with Steel-, Rock-, and Ground-type Pokémon. For N, who didn't have any Pokémon of those types on his current team, the location held a massive appeal.

His original plan had been to venture into Steel-Rock Cavern to test the waters and see if he could catch a Steel- or Ground-type Pokémon that caught his eye, before continuing through to the neighboring city of Raiyo.

Who could have guessed that Kajiki would go out of his way to tell him to steer clear of the entire area?

Yet, the more Kajiki insisted he stay away, the more N felt compelled to go take a look.

As he stood there lost in thought, a petite figure brushed past him. A delicate scent of lavender wafted from her dark blue hair, momentarily drawing N's attention away from his musings.

Is she another Trainer here to challenge the Aoshin Gym?

Regardless, it had nothing to do with him anymore. N had just made up his mind: he was going to investigate the interior of Steel-Rock Cavern and use the opportunity to train his Pokémon.

Of course, before doing anything else, he needed to make sure Vulpix fully recovered from its injuries.

…

"Hold on a moment! Steel-Rock Cavern up ahead is highly unstable. There have been continuous explosions inside lately, so unauthorized personnel are strictly prohibited from approaching."

Near the outskirts of Aoshin City, Officer Jenny was turning back anyone attempting to enter Steel-Rock Cavern. N had anticipated this, so he had already taken a long detour around the main path.

As long as Officer Jenny didn't have guards posted at every single crevice, N had a thousand ways to slip past the perimeter and reach the cave entrance undetected.

True to its name, Steel-Rock Cavern was filled with massive rock formations and rich iron ore deposits; it had once been celebrated as a prosperous mining site.

Now, however, due to various instances of human vandalism, the interior was marred by unsightly scars and structural damage.

"Zorua, I'll be relying on you for the next leg of the journey."

N pulled out a black-and-gold Ultra Ball, releasing Zorua. In a pitch-black cave like this, neither Vulpix nor Sylveon was particularly well-suited for point duty.

But for a Zorua, a master of blending into the shadows, the dark caverns provided a natural home field advantage.

He kept Kajiki's warning close to heart; one had to maintain absolute vigilance at all times and in all places.

Hum...

A faint, sapphire glow emanated from N's eyes as he gradually expanded his psychic perception. He began mapping out the cave's internal layout, while keeping an eye out for any sign of that mysterious organization with the shield emblems.

However, the moment he deployed his psychic abilities, he realized the sensory waves he was emitting were being actively blocked.

Some sort of specialized interference was shielding the deeper recesses of the cave, severely hindering his attempt to scout ahead.

My perception is being jammed?

N's wariness spiked. His psychic sensing capability radiated outward much like a broadcast signal, but if it was being obstructed...

It meant either a Psychic-type Pokémon had detected his energy and was actively counteracting it with its own psychic power, or a specialized electronic device capable of scrambling signals was at work.

Whatever the root cause, it confirmed that something highly unusual was happening deep within the cavern.

"Zorua, brace yourself for battle."

"Zua!"

Zorua dropped its initially relaxed demeanor, its expression morphing into one of cold severity. The moment N's safety was on the line, it would discard all playfulness and elevate its guard to the absolute maximum.

Right now, Zorua might not be the strongest member of the team, but it was indisputably the most dependable.

As the team's reliable vanguard, it possessed the grit to turn the tide of battle in any crisis, and it pushed itself the hardest during their daily training sessions.

In truth, Zorua could have channeled its evolutionary energy to evolve a while ago, but N was intentionally holding off to fully unlock its current potential, letting it accumulate as much power as possible.

Reaching the Quasi-Elite Four tier would be the absolute perfect window for its evolution.

Once it broke through to the Quasi-Elite Four rank, Zorua's superlative latent talent would undoubtedly allow it to emulate Sylveon, leaping an entire power tier upon evolving.

In N's estimation, it was highly probable that it would break straight into the Elite Four tier.

Only when that came to pass would N truly possess a baseline means of self-defense against nefarious syndicates like Team Rocket.

"Zorua, wait..."

N's footsteps abruptly ground to a halt. He had felt a lingering sense of strangeness since stepping into Steel-Rock Cavern; despite being a wild cave system, they had barely encountered any wild Pokémon. It completely defied natural logic.

It was only when his right boot stepped onto a particularly massive boulder beneath them that he pinpointed the source of the anomaly.

"...There's a draft. It's hollow underneath."

N pressed his ear against the stone surface. Leveraging his superhumanly acute hearing, he mapped out the open space on the other side.

It had clearly been sealed off deliberately to evade public scrutiny, but whoever designed it hadn't accounted for someone detecting it purely by ear.

Since they had used a literal stone wall as a barrier, the creators must have left a mechanism to grant themselves entry. Sure enough, N quickly located an irregularly shaped rock along the right wall.

He gave it an experimental nudge and found that it indeed rotated.

Clack, clack, clack...

The hidden passage groaned open. It was a testament to Steel-Rock Cavern's nature; the interior branched out like an intricate labyrinth. While this particular opening might have been formed naturally, it had been artificially concealed.

"..."

N and Zorua exchanged a silent glance before stepping together into the deeper, uncharted sub-levels of the cavern.

The environment here was a stark departure from the upper tunnels.

Ordinarily, the deepest recesses of a cavern should have been entirely devoid of light. If N didn't possess an extraordinary vision that was practically equivalent to night vision, he wouldn't have been able to discern a thing.

Yet, this subterranean depths boasted a jarring, artificial brightness, illuminated by a continuous string of harsh, buzzing electric lamps hooked up along the walls.

N cast a sweeping glance over his surroundings. Along this single winding corridor alone, there were no fewer than six or seven light fixtures. Every so often, he could spot several Zubat and Golbat clinging weakly to the ceiling, alongside numerous Sandshrew collapsed unconscious along the wayside...

The wild Pokémon nesting within the cavern looked thoroughly spent, their bodies deeply weakened.

An artificial lighting setup of this scale drastically disrupted the natural ecological balance of the cave Pokémon. The Pokémon League would never sanction such an operation!

Therefore, the culprits operating behind closed doors were almost certainly the members of the shield-emblem organization Kajiki had warned him about.