Chapter 236

Chapter 236: Chapter 236

A moment later, the sound of rapid breathing reached their ears.

Snivy, Glameow, and Hattrem turned toward the noise, only to discover Mike, Gengar, and Beedrill sitting together with their heads raised and mouths open, repeatedly breathing out clouds of cold mist.

The three female Pokémon stared at them for a moment before simultaneously turning away.

They had absolutely no intention of acknowledging this embarrassing trio!

Just then, Froslass returned carrying a wooden basin filled with ice water.

Presumably, according to the illusion she had prepared, Mike was supposed to see a basin of pleasantly warm water.

"Fross~"

She gave another gentle cry while presenting the basin.

Mike blinked at the freezing water, considered the situation for a moment, and promptly pushed Gengar forward.

Unfortunately, Gengar had been thinking along exactly the same lines.

He was just reaching out to shove Beedrill toward the basin when Mike’s hand struck him from behind.

Splash!

Gengar landed directly in the ice water.

His face went blank with shock.

∑(〇?〇)!!!

Before he could complain, the freezing cold penetrated his entire body.

He began shivering like the full-health carrot being tapped in Carrot Fantasy, his round body involuntarily squeezing into a thinner shape before expanding back to its usual plump proportions.

Seeing that her plan had succeeded, Froslass immediately waved one of her long sleeves.

The water froze solid around Gengar.

In an instant, he was trapped inside a thick block of ice with only his head sticking out.

"Froslass, you...!"

Mike stared at the frozen Gengar, pointing toward their hostess with an expression of apparent disbelief.

Froslass’s formerly gentle expression vanished.

Her eyes became ice-cold as she pointed toward Gengar and spoke in a threatening voice.

"Fross—!"

[From now on, you’ll do exactly as I say. If you cooperate, I’ll release him. Otherwise, I’ll kill him.]

Her words echoed through the cave.

Mike didn’t react, neither did the Pokémon beside him.

Froslass stared at them in confusion, and when Mike actually began laughing, a flicker of disbelief crossed her eyes.

She hurriedly gathered a Shadow Ball in her hand, hoping the additional threat would convince him to take her seriously.

Mike smiled at her.

"Froslass, why don’t you take a look behind you?"

She instinctively turned around.

An enormous, round purple face was grinning directly at her.

Before Froslass could process what she was seeing, a chubby hand pressed toward her face with a swirling Shadow Ball gathered in its palm.

BOOM!

The explosion hurled Froslass backward, smashing her deep into the ice-covered stone wall.

She struggled out of the shattered ice with injuries covering her body, her eyes immediately locking onto Mike.

Unfortunately, before she could launch another attack, a terrifying surge of psychic power slammed into her.

Froslass was blasted backward once more and embedded in the wall again.

She struggled desperately to pull herself free, but the two attacks had left her so badly injured that she barely had any strength remaining.

Mike stood up from his frozen stool and rubbed his numb backside before picking Glameow up from the ice seat beside him.

With Beedrill and Snivy accompanying him, he walked toward Froslass and studied her curiously.

"Can I ask why you decided to attack us? We’re just travelers passing through the mountain. Is this area your territory or something?"

Froslass weakly raised her head.

She looked at Mike, then at Gengar and the other Pokémon gathered around him.

By now, she understood that they had seen through her tricks long ago.

Everything they had done inside the cave had apparently been nothing more than a way of playing along with her deception.

Despair flickered through her eyes.

Mike noticed it immediately.

"If there’s a reason behind all this, why don’t you tell me?" he asked in a gentler voice. "Maybe I can help."

"Fross..."

[Snorunt... went missing... was taken away. I wanted to capture you and use you to force Gengar and the others to help me search for Snorunt, but you discovered my plan...]

"Snorunt? Is Snorunt your child?"

Froslass didn’t answer.

She simply lowered her head.

Mike looked at her for a moment before sighing.

"Hattrem, could you help me get her down?"

Hattrem immediately used her psychic power to carefully pull Froslass free from the stone wall.

After giving her some basic treatment for her injuries, Mike crouched beside her again.

"If you need help in the future, just ask someone directly. You don’t need to go through all these tricks. Something like what happened today could easily end in a serious accident."

Froslass looked up at him.

Suddenly, anger flashed through her eyes.

"FROSS!"

[A human! It was a human who took Snorunt away! He lied to me!]

Her voice became shrill with fury, and snowflakes immediately began swirling through the cave as she summoned another burst of freezing wind.

Mike promptly placed his palm against the top of her head, interrupting her attempt to call forth another snowstorm.

Her head felt remarkably like a smooth block of ice, cold and slippery beneath his hand.

Froslass looked up at him in confusion.

"Don’t worry. I’ll help you find Snorunt."

"Fross?"

She sounded genuinely puzzled.

"Look, I know you originally wanted to kidnap me so you could threaten Gengar and the others into doing what you wanted," Mike explained. "But I also understand that you weren’t doing this out of simple malice. You were desperate, and you weren’t originally trying to hurt us for the sake of hurting us."

He gave her a reassuring smile.

"And since someone needs help, I figure it’s only right that I lend a hand. That’s what a photographer like me ought to do, isn’t it?"

Froslass stared into his sincere eyes without saying anything.

Mike let her collect herself for a moment before asking, "Can you tell me when Snorunt was taken?"

"Fross—"

[The day before yesterday.]

"Two days ago, huh? That’s already a fair amount of time."

Mike rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"But don’t worry. If someone came all the way up Mount Coronet specifically to capture Snorunt, there’s a good chance they weren’t planning to leave with just one Pokémon. Whether it was a single person or an organized group, they would probably try to capture more Pokémon before leaving."

He glanced toward the snowy mountain outside.

"In that case, there’s a pretty good chance Snorunt is still somewhere on this mountain."

Having made his preliminary assessment, Mike stood and turned toward Gengar and Beedrill.

"I’ll leave the aerial search to you two. Fly around and see if you can find anything unusual, while Snivy, Hattrem, and I search on the ground."

"GAR!"

[Leave it to me and Beedrill!]

Beedrill nodded firmly.

Mike was about to head out when another thought occurred to him.

He freed one hand, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the Rotom Phone.

"It’s freezing, roto..."

Rotom’s miserable voice came from the device, which even gave a small, distinctly humanlike hop in Mike’s hand, as though protesting being removed from its warm hiding place.

"Quit pretending you’re dying. Go with Gengar and Beedrill and help them look for signs of Snorunt."

Rotom immediately floated upright.

"Understood, roto! Mission accepted! I guarantee I’ll get the job done, roto!"

With that, Rotom followed Gengar and Beedrill out of the cave.

Mike gathered Snivy and Hattrem and headed outside with Glameow still tucked against his chest.

Once they were back on the mountainside, he looked up at Gengar and Beedrill beginning their aerial search, then chose a different direction so that their groups could cover more ground.

Unfortunately, the blizzard was still raging.

The wind drove snow through the air so thickly that Mike could barely see anything beyond the trail immediately in front of him.

Searching for a small Pokémon under conditions like these was going to be painfully difficult.

Froslass noticed the problem.

She floated upward and released a long, piercing cry that rang across the mountainside.

Almost immediately, the storm began weakening.

The howling wind gradually faded, the falling snow became lighter, and before long the blizzard had subsided altogether.

Mike stared at her in astonishment.

’Holy shit! Froslass is that powerful?!’

If they hadn’t been in the middle of searching for Snorunt, he would have immediately taken out his camera and started filming.

Being able to influence such a large area of the mountain’s weather was exactly the sort of extraordinary Pokémon behavior he loved capturing on video.

Perhaps sensing his surprise, Froslass descended and explained herself.

"Fross—"

[I was the one who brought the blizzard here. I didn’t want them to be able to leave.]

Mike blinked.

’So she was responsible for the storm all along?’

Now that he knew the reason, he had to admit that her approach made perfect sense.

By creating a violent blizzard over the mountain, Froslass could make it much harder for the people who had taken Snorunt to find their way out.

If they were Pokémon Hunters or anyone else trying to escape with captured Pokémon, the storm might keep them trapped on Mount Coronet long enough for her to find them.

It was a surprisingly effective strategy.

Mike gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

"That’s pretty impressive, Froslass!"

Froslass seemed taken aback by the unexpected praise.

A faint blush appeared on her face, and she quickly turned away before floating off in the opposite direction.

Seeing that she intended to search another area, Mike turned as well and continued carefully examining the snow with Snivy and Hattrem.

With the blizzard finally gone, the weather became much clearer.

Even Glameow, who had spent most of the journey refusing to leave Mike’s warm arms, decided that the conditions were now bearable enough for her to participate.

She jumped down from his embrace and joined the search, moving carefully through the snow while keeping an eye out for anything unusual.

...

High above the mountainside, Beedrill and Gengar flew over to the Rotom Phone.

Rotom had apparently been busy calculating the most likely location of the missing Snorunt.

"Based on the location where Snorunt was captured, the estimated distance an adult human could travel on foot, and the distribution of ecologically rich areas across Mount Coronet, the probability that our target is in that region is 81.99 percent, roto!"

A section of the mountain appeared on the phone’s screen.

Gengar and Beedrill exchanged a glance before immediately flying toward the area Rotom had identified.

...

Elsewhere on the mountainside, a nearby bush suddenly rustled.

A small orange figure emerged from between the snow-covered branches.

After carefully examining the surrounding area, the little Pokémon set off toward a particular destination on its short, stubby legs.

With that pointed, triangular shape, it looked remarkably like a tiny rice dumpling waddling through the snow.

---

Please throw some power stones, we rank 21 now ??