I honestly felt bad for Eagun and his Pikachu after seeing this as time as always killed all things. "No need to look at us like that young man. Pikachu and I had our time in the sun and have no regrets that it's over. A lesson that I have long since come to know is that the thing about power is that you need to know when to let it go. The feeling of being nigh unstoppable is intoxicating but comes at a steep cost. The pinnacle of power requires time and suffering to reach before it starts slipping through your fingers while you are helpless to stop it."-

"Unless you want to end up old and all alone it's simply best to know when enough is enough and let someone else take the reins." Eagun said calmly with a knowing look. I wasn't all that surprised that the man likely saw through me easily as an ambitious person with a lofty goal. "Maybe one day that will be true but I have no intention to just let time win without a fight." I said honestly. "A pointless struggle young man, time's not a physical thing you can simply overpower." Eagun said with a sigh at my answer.-

This I had to disagree with him on as I knew for a fact that time was in fact a physical thing and I knew EXACTLY how to shackle it if I so chose. Cyrus of Team Galactic discovered the method by researching the old myths and legends so as someone who played the game in which he put this plan into action I also knew how it could be done. Craft the red chain from the lake guardians and you can bind the primal pokemon of time or space to your will.-

Unlike Cyrus however I would never take such an action as I know that at some point the other godly legendries would come after me if not Arceus itself. Platinum itself proved this as Giratina dragged Cyrus into the distortion world for his transgression and while not explicitly stated it was implied that he died there. There were better ways in my opinion to extend ones life as you could simply get cursed with immortality by a godly legendary and call it a day. I do mean cursed too and not blessed as humans weren't built to withstand eternity.-

The only reason I still sought it myself was because I was certain that so long as I had the system I could eventually evolve into an existence that WAS built to withstand eternity. The only real issue is that more likely than not I will end up like all the other godly beings in this world with a dispassionate gaze watching as it turned and history moved on with me being an ever present facet in the background. Perhaps that sounded like a fate worse than death but by that point it simply wouldn't matter.-

Not that I told any of this to Eagun however as it was best if no one besides I knew this stuff. Rather than argue I simply bid my farewell to the old champion and his wife politely before leaving. Eagun gave me his contact and said that if I ever needed any advice that he'd be happy to help since his old bones weren't good for much else these days. That just left me with Mt. Battle as my last stop on this tour of the region before I finished up my first part of this quest.-

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I had a sneaking suspicion that the next part of the chain quest would in fact be me heading into the forest but before I did that I needed to make some preparations. First and foremost I needed my entire team to be with me when I did as if my fears came true and I ended up in a different time I didn't leave one of them stranded for however long I was gone. If I was sent to the past then it would be a more manageable affair assuming it wasn't TOO far in the past.-

If I was sent to a future time however things would get screwy as I would need to be careful not to take anything back. If I left Gaia alone however there was a good chance she may even think I abandoned her which was not a possibility I wished to ever see become reality. The second thing I needed to take care of before heading into the forest was that I needed to pack a lot of rations. Food grown in these places filled with distorted time was recorded to have unpredictable shelf lives as one second it could be under ripe and the next rotting on the plant.-

This was due to the innate effects of the time energy on the plants grown there. It didn't work on anything taken from outside the forest though so rations were a very necessary thing to pack a lot of. Next I needed to pack a compass since the forest might shift in layout and density as I moved in unnoticeable ways which could easily lead me in circles but thankfully a compass was unaffected by these shifts since it worked off magnetism. Unless the forest had a large amount of magnetic interference north would always be north regardless of time.-

Finally I needed to let everyone know that I was going into the forest so they didn't freak out if I suddenly vanished from the face of the world. Admittedly that last one was going to be a bit trickier to do in a reasonable amount of time as it would take a few months to send messages to the people I knew in Hoenn if I didn't go through Rota first. The old aura kingdom had access to the pokenet and was technically bordering Orre as it was on the other side of the mountains.-

In theory it would only take Rune about three days of flying to get us to that place but the thing was that those mountains were an entirely untamed wild zone and there was no telling how the pokemon living there would take our passing through. Truth of the matter was there was even a good chance that we'd get attacked by champion level pokemon that were just defending their territory. Contrary to what the games would have you believe there was in fact more than just terrestrial pokemon living on mountains and whole flocks of flying type pokemon tended to roost in the high mountain cliffs.-

This meant the attacks we'd have to deal with wouldn't only be coming from the ground but also the sky we are in as well. Naturally the risk to reward ratio was less than optimal in this scenario and that just left me a single less risky but more time consuming travel path. Rather than go through the center of the mountains Rune would fly above the coast for about a week, obviously camping at night on the mountainous cliffs. This would take longer to arrive but would also be safer as well as the pokemon we'd need to deal with would likely ignore us anyways since they lived in the water and we did not.