After hiding the exit of the Secret Realm, the five didn’t leave imdiately. Instead, they chose to explore the surroundings. Those two trainers had actually already explored this area earlier.
Continuing to explore didn’t hold much aning at this point.
The only reason they chose to do so was to better understand the environnt around the exit, so that when they exited the realm later, they could accurately draw out the location of the gate.
This task didn’t actually require them to do much themselves—Julian simply had tagross, with its supercomputer-like brain, morize everything within a ten-kiloter radius of the exit.
As long as it had ti to roam around the entire Top-tier Secret Realm, tagross could rember everything within it. Even if you asked it to find a specific blade of grass, it could locate it for you.
With four supercomputers inside it, tagross possessed terrifying computational and mory abilities—tasks like this were just casual work for it.
With its massive brain capacity, tagross could store all the knowledge in the world, and even then, it wouldn’t co close to filling up its “mory.”
In fact, so of the top laboratories used tagross as living supercomputers—their calculation power far exceeded any artificial computer and never produced errors.
There weren’t any powerful Pokémon near the Secret Realm exit—not even pseudo-Elite level ones—which surprised the group.
After all, the environnt here was quite good, with abundant food. It should’ve been pri territory for a territorial Pokémon to claim.
But strangely, none were present. It was quite an unusual sight.
From inside its Pokéball, Kartana shared that this area had originally been occupied by an early-stage Elite Incineroar. But a few days ago, it happened to pass by, saw it as a worthy opponent, and ended up cutting it down.
"Let’s head to that snow mountain today,” Pierce said, pointing at a distant snow-covered peak.
The other four nodded.
They hadn’t even explored a fraction of the forest they were currently in—less than one percent, even—so why shift targets?
The main reason was that the forest was simply too vast, and it housed the largest number of wild Pokémon. While the number of valuable items might also be high, actually finding them would be extrely difficult.
The snow mountain was a different story. In environnts with single types like that, the odds of rare treasures appearing were actually even higher than in the massive forest.
Plus, in places like the snow mountain—dominated by ice and snow—the treasures found would mostly be related to Ice or Water types.
And the Pokémon living in such single-type environnts tended to also have relatively uniform typings, unlike forests, where type variety could be overwhelming.
The snow mountain was quite far from Julian and the others. Even with the speed of their Pokémon, it still took nearly two hours of flying.
Along the way, tagross recorded everything visible below.
“This is actually an island?”
They were already close to the snow mountain, and below them, aside from the forest, the edge of the forest t the sea. Looking out further, they could vaguely make out three black shapes on the other side of the ocean.
“Counting the island we’re currently on, could this Secret Realm be made up of four islands separated by sea?” Ember guessed, a bit surprised.
“Probably five.”
Julian pointed to a small island located at the center of the sea, right between the four larger islands. Although it wasn’t very big, it was clearly a separate landmass.
It also wasn’t too far from their current location.
“This Top-tier Secret Realm is really huge,” Ember said in awe.
The island they were on had already been roughly estimated by tagross to be about 50,000 square kiloters—about the size of half a province.
Adding the other three large islands and the smaller central one, plus the surrounding ocean, the total area could easily match that of three or four provinces combined.
“That’s nothing. The smallest Top-tier Secret Realm already span over 200,000 square kiloters—larger than many countries,” Pierce explained.
Even so of the massive Advanced-level Secret Realms exceeded the area of entire nations.
Because of that, so small but powerful countries, driven by ambitions of expansion, had tried to turn their dostic Secret Realms into new human territories.
This idea was especially common in the early days when Secret Realms first started appearing—many nations tried to do exactly that.
After all, occupying a Secret Realm was basically a way to indirectly expand their national territory.
But the result was that once the number of humans within a Secret Realm exceeded ten thousand, the realm would imdiately collapse, and everything inside—Pokémon and humans alike—would vanish without a trace.
This rule applied to all Secret Realms: beginner, interdiate, advanced, top-tier, and even ancient ruins. As long as the human population inside exceeded ten thousand, the realm or ruin would disappear.
That outco deeply disappointed many small yet militarily strong nations.
“Julian, why did you stop?”
Pierce asked, noticing that Julian had suddenly paused. By now, they were quite close to the snow mountain, and the temperature had already dropped noticeably.
“You guys go ahead to the snow mountain. I want to check sothing out,” Julian said.
He had already confird that this Top-tier Secret Realm was modeled after the Alola region—with the four islands, and the presence of Alolan-form Pokémon like Exeggutor and Golem.
That small island located in the center of the four must be Aether Paradise.
So naturally, he wanted to go take a look.
Pierce frowned. “You’re going alone?”
It was clear he was worried about Julian’s safety.
A Top-tier Secret Realm is full of danger, and with trainers from other countries also inside, acting alone could easily lead to being isolated and helpless.
“You must know there’s sothing good over there and just don’t want us to get it too, that’s why you want to go alone,” Ember said with a pout.
Julian was indeed thinking exactly that.
But if they wanted to co along, he wouldn’t stop them.
And since the island had already been discovered, Pierce and the others would go there eventually anyway.
Besides, he really didn’t have a solid reason to split off from the group right now.
“You can co with if you want,” Julian said calmly.
There were probably valuable things in Aether Paradise, but whether they could actually get any was another matter.
“Hmph, I’m not going with you. I’m listening to the captain,” Ember huffed.
Just then, Rowan suddenly said, “I want to go to the snow mountain.”
As an Ice-type trainer, the snow mountain obviously suited him more.
This was the first ti a disagreent had surfaced within the team.
In truth, they could’ve just gone to the snow mountain first, then visited Aether Paradise later.
But Julian clearly wanted to go to Aether Paradise first. His attitude showed that even if they didn’t go, he’d go alone anyway.
As the team captain, Pierce hesitated for a mont.
“I’ll go by myself. You four head to the snow mountain first,” Julian said.
Now that he’d discovered a more promising location, there was no way he’d still go to the snow mountain, and with other countries’ trainers also inside the Secret Realm, he couldn’t risk letting them reach Aether Paradise first.
*****
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