novelraw Chapter 125: The Underground Temple
Chapter 125: The Underground Temple
Chapter 125: The Underground Temple
On the other side, Natsume had already ventured deep into the forest.
"What exactly is that Diglett trying to do?"
He felt puzzled.
Digletts had a habit of planting Berries and enriching the soil with their droppings.
Natsume knew this well.
Yet along the way, every Berry planted by this Diglett had been bitten almost in half.
Some seeds were completely split.
Such Berries couldn't sprout.
No wonder the other Digletts said this one had a peculiar nature.
Deeper into the forest, the muddy paths became fewer.
Eventually, Natsume's footsteps pressed on dense cobblestones.
Along the large trees, torches hung at intervals.
Curious, Natsume quickened his pace.
At the end of the path stood a stone temple, covered in green vines.
Outside the temple were two statues.
They were weathered by time, giving them an abstract appearance.
Natsume approached the more intact statue.
Its stone texture was cracked like scales, and its tail curled like a question mark in the wind-eroded ripples, though its spine stubbornly retained a mythic curve.
Looking closely, Natsume recognized from its posture and long tail that it was a statue of Mew.
Was this the ancestral land of the Laramie Ranch?
He remembered that last night, after the old chief's oath, a group of Lalami had carried ritual items into the forest.
"In that case, this must be the god of Abundance and Hunting."
Natsume shifted his gaze to the other statue with growing interest.
Unfortunately, this statue seemed older than the Mew statue.
Most of it had eroded, covered in moss.
The only distinguishable feature was its tail, ending in a spike resembling a Beedrill's stinger.
Natsume searched his memory, but couldn't think of any Legendary Pokémon with such a thick, long stinger.
"Forget it, let's find the Diglett first," he muttered.
Many deities worshiped by ranchs weren't necessarily Legendary Pokémon.
Some ranchs even worshiped Rapidash or Volcarona.
Perhaps this was simply a Beedrill statue.
Natsume pulled out a flashlight, instantly lighting the temple as bright as day.
With his psychic power, he scanned everything inside, both physically and mentally.
Inside the temple, under a stone niche, wrinkled Orange Berry seeds lay, a bronze incense burner held half-burned sticks.
Footprints cluttered the green bricks, and faded coins were embedded in the grooves of the offering table.
Apart from that, Natsume found nothing else.
"Strange…"
He muttered, noting that the Diglett's droppings had clearly disappeared here.
Suddenly, his expression darkened.
Through his senses, he felt a large space beneath the temple.
"What is this?"
Using psychic powers, he tried to investigate but couldn't get close, as if something blocked the way.
His curiosity piqued, Natsume exited the temple and scanned the surroundings psychically.
Somewhere, there had to be an entrance to this underground space.
He searched for a long time, until a dull pain pulsed in his brain, yet he still hadn't located the entrance.
He even tried instant teleportation but couldn't pinpoint a landing spot.
"You can't just dig a huge hole in the ancestral grounds."
Natsume pulled out an iron shovel.
So he decided to dig a small hole.
The moment the iron shovel struck the ground, Natsume seemed to recall something and instinctively looked up at the Mew statue by the temple entrance.
He approached the statue, scanning it with his psychic powers, but found nothing unusual.
"How can the tail still be intact?" Natsume squinted at Mew's slender tail.
Normally, such a part would be the weakest, breaking first from weathering.
Yet here, the tail of the Mew statue was perfectly preserved.
It defied all logic.
Even the Beedrill statue next door, reduced to just its rear, would make one cry in comparison.
Natsume reached out, touching Mew's tail and gently tried to bend it.
Crack!
The tail let out a crisp sound, and Natsume's footing gave way as he fell.
The tail snapped back, and the small patch of cobblestone beneath him bounced into place.
Everything around him was silent, as if nothing had happened.
Shh~
A faint blue glow flickered in Natsume's eyes.
As he fell rapidly, he quickly stabilized his body.
Clang—
He switched on a high-powered flashlight, instantly illuminating the once-dark space like daylight.
Natsume found himself in a narrow passage, surrounded by basalt.
Passing through a winding basalt corridor, the air became dry and harsh, stinging his throat.
"So dry in here?" Natsume muttered.
Suddenly, the space ahead opened up, the flashlight flooding the entire chamber.
Before him stood an even larger temple.
The twenty-meter-high main hall was supported by eight honeycomb-shaped stone pillars, each etched with ancient bas-reliefs of Beedrill swarming around a pink glow.
"Beedrill, really?"
Natsume paused, guessing this was left by the early ancestors of the Laramie Ranch.
He moved closer, noticing that the tips of the Beedrill stingers had all been removed, leaving hollow, black, honeycomb-like cavities, as if the eyes had been eaten away.
"This must be very old, even older than the temple above," he murmured.
Inspecting the honeycomb structure inside one cavity, he lightly touched a nearby stone pillar, pulling off a large piece revealing the same honeycomb pattern inside.
At the central altar, Mew's serpentine stone carving hung from the ceiling, its tail coiled in a spiral.
The left paw of the statue was broken, revealing the honeycomb interior.
Natsume found some suspicious alloy fragments inside.
Twelve bronze lamp pillars circled the space, and the nearest lamp still contained a small cigarette butt.
He picked it up, and perhaps due to the dryness, it crumbled to dust with a light pinch.
On the charred wall of the lamp, half a Snorlax energy bar wrapper was stuck.
All these discoveries told Natsume that Giovanni had long since sent people to remove anything valuable from this temple.
Still, the temple itself held significant historical value.
"Tch, such a shame to hide this underground," Natsume muttered, shaking his head. He wasn't in a hurry to find the Diglett and began exploring the temple instead.
Perhaps he could still stumble upon something left behind.
He ignored the massive Mew statue and headed straight toward the Beedrill group statue.
Anything related to Mew had surely been taken by Giovanni, but the Beedrill might still have something left.
Before the largest Beedrill statue, Natsume paused, his researcher's instincts alert.
The Beedrill's crown had been deliberately carved into the shape of a crown for some unknown reason.
Most importantly, in front of the statue was a stone pedestal.
On the pedestal was a semicircular recess—whatever had been there had already been removed.
Natsume examined the recess thoughtfully.
After a moment, he pulled out a Pokéball and placed it into the recess.
It fit perfectly.
You can read more (around 100+ free chapters) of Natsume's adventure ad-free at [https://ravenarchives.com/book/pokemon-who-let-him-leave-pallet-town]. Bulk uploads is a mess here, so updates here might be irregular.