An Elite-Four-class Psychic may also be called a Master-class Psychic; that is the upper tier of fighting strength already.
Vance had not looked for it either — that he should be given the maiden's ghost's gift just then, break through just then, and come into the Master-class rank of psychic power, with real fighting strength to stand beside an Elite-Four-class Pokémon.
He had thought it would be one of his Pokémon that entered Elite-Four-class first. Instead he had got there before them.
"Whooo, whooo—"
With the power around him absorbed, the place fell quiet again, and the violent ripples of energy off Vance slowly settled.
Over there, the maiden's ghost had already scattered away and the statue had lost something of its spirit, and the ground was opening in fine cracks, as though it had gone short of water.
This strange piece of country had suffered some sort of damage now that the maiden's ghost was gone.
And there was still the Gastly, its head tipped back, its eyes lost.
The girl was really gone. What about itself, then?
Did it still need to go out and look for a way to draw her stay out longer? It seemed not. She had already gone.
What was it to do with itself, then?
Her going left the Gastly, which had lived the same way for a thousand years, briefly at a loss.
"Gastly."
Hearing someone beside it calling, the Gastly came to itself and looked towards the voice. It was Vance.
"Hiss-heh. You've broken through."
"Mm, I have. She's gone, and that's that. You can go and look for a life of your own now."
Vance nodded, looking off in the direction the maiden's ghost had vanished.
To tell the truth, Vance was surprised that she had taken his advice. What he had urged on her had only been what came to him at the moment, and she had taken it to heart.
Still, it was for the best. Into the cycle of rebirth to look for the man she loved, rather than waiting here alone with no end of it in sight.
Even the man she loved would not have wished this on her.
"Hiss-heh. My old friend's gone, and just now I don't know what to do with myself. I can't evolve either. I'm lost."
the Gastly said blankly.
"Let me have a look and see what the matter is. Before she went she asked me to look you over."
"Go on, then."
The Gastly opened itself up and let Vance examine it.
Perhaps because of what the girl had said, or perhaps because it felt Vance had no reason to do it harm.
"Fortunately for you I'm not a small-minded man."
Vance said it with a small laugh, and brought out the Viridian Power to search through the Gastly's body, calling up the system as well to look it over with him.
"Ancient power. One of the primordial powers of the source. It holds power beyond conceiving; an exceedingly long life is one of its effects..."
That was what the system gave him after its analysis.
"Primordial power."
Vance narrowed his eyes. Primordial power — that put him in mind of the giant Dragonite at Bill's Lighthouse. That one seemed to be in the same case.
Only the form it took there was rather different.
He had his analysis, but for the moment Vance still could not solve the thing. This primordial power was of far too high an order; driving the Viridian Power at it would not clear it away.
Or perhaps his Viridian Power was simply too weak as it stood.
And in all the knowledge Vance had there was no record of primordial power. What he did know came from the Pokémon anime he had watched in his previous life.
It did not amount to a system.
Which is to say, this was off the syllabus.
"Well? Is there anything to be done?"
The Gastly looked over, wanting to ask whether there was any way out of it.
If there were, so much the better. It would keep its long life and be able to evolve as well, like other Pokémon — and there was the other thing, breaking past the limit it stood at now.
An energy level of 80. It had sat there several hundred years, and for all that it wanted to break through, it could not.
As though something were holding it down. This might have to do with the strange power in it, the Gastly guessed.
"Do you want to try? It's the first time I've seen anything like this. I can't answer for it."
Vance thought a few moments and answered.
"All right."
The Gastly agreed at once. It was a hope, after all.
With its consent Vance set to work, spending the Battle Points he had saved to exchange a great deal of material out of the system, then trying it piece by piece.
Some to be used outside, some to be taken inside. When he had run through it Vance watched the Gastly to see whether anything had changed.
"Hic— it's a bit cool."
The Gastly hiccuped and reported what it felt.
"No effect, then."
Vance went on turning the pages of a book he had exchanged out of the system. He had been through it several times over and had still solved nothing.
"That power of yours and your life energy have run into one thing. In a manner of speaking you can't even be called a Gastly any more."
"Then is there still anything to be done?"
"Let's try again."
Since coming to the Pokémon world, this was the first problem Vance had met that he could not solve.
The trouble was that this power came back to a primordial power, and that lies outside the range of Pokémon research as it now stands.
It was not like Slaking's case, nor Zoroark's. Those two had also run into trouble at the root of life, but the powers involved were simple enough; with the Viridian Power and a quantity of materials they could be cured, and out of the misfortune had even come away with a few new means of fighting.
To deal with the Gastly's problem, as Vance saw it, there were two directions. One was to draw the power out of the body — with the power gone, none of these problems would exist.
The other was to neutralise it, to set something from outside against this primordial power and have the two become one.
As the Gastly was now, the power could not be drawn out. Its life would certainly be affected by it; it might not survive at all. Besides, there was no means of drawing it out — ordinary instruments could do nothing of the kind.
As for neutralising it with something from outside, the effect was slight, next to nothing.
The Viridian Power, which had never once failed him and had uses beyond counting, did little here, and the same went for all the materials and treasures he spent.
It came to a sort of "beat them if you can, and if you can't, join them."
At present he could neither beat it nor join it.
"With what I can do now, I can't solve this of yours in any short time."
After many more attempts Vance stopped, and said it with a sigh.
He had thought his store of knowledge a large one; here he was with nothing left to try.
For this one he would need some time yet to hunt up material and look for a way.
Beyond that, he would have to wait until his Viridian Power broke through and see whether that could deal with the thing.
At present he could not.
"Hiss-heh. I understand."
The Gastly's voice was low. So it could not be solved after all.
"Look — I can't now, but that doesn't mean I never will. Let me go back and turn it over and see whether I can. Give me some time."
Vance added it. He was not going to break his word to anyone.
"This time next year. The same day, the same place. Perhaps I'll have something by then."
He named a time. A year might be enough.
"Is there anything else besides that?"
the Gastly asked.
"You might go and have a look at a certain place. There may be something there."
"Where?"
"Follow Bill's Lighthouse out to the deep sea. They say there is an ancient Dragonite there that carries a primordial power in it, perhaps the same as yours."
Vance offered it as a suggestion. It might serve.
"Bill's Lighthouse. Right, I'll go and try my luck there. If it comes to nothing, I'll wait for you here next year."
The Gastly made up its mind there and then. It would go and see.
If it could be done, so much the better; if not, it was only a year either way, and a year was nothing to it.