The air in the Starlight Garden pocket dimension held the perfect, preserved silence of a held breath. Indra and Rias stood facing one another across their living kitchen, not in conflict, but in perfect, mirrored stillness. Before them, floating in the air between them, was a single, molten-gold feather. It pulsed with a gentle, cosmic heat and shed light in perfectly geometric patterns.
Rias: Her voice was a whisper that resonated through the garden's harmonic moss. "The IGO's Mythic Sighting Network just confirmed it. A Celestial Phoenix has entered its Rekindling Cycle in the upper strata of the Celestial Canopy. Its Capture Level is projecting at… 3500."
Indra: His Rinnegan eyes tracked the slow drift of the feather's shed light. "3500. Not a force of consumption like the Devourer. A being of perpetual renewal. Of cosmic rebirth. The pinnacle of life-energy in this world."
Rias: "They're not asking us to hunt it. The alert is a warning to all airborne traffic. An act of nature to be avoided." A slow, fierce smile touched her lips, the same smile she'd worn when they first decided to hunt the Devourer. "But we're not traffic."
Indra: He caught the feather as it drifted downward. It was weightless yet carried the gravity of an epoch. "A final test. Not for them. For us. To measure our sovereignty not against a void, but against the most concentrated expression of life this universe has forged." He closed his fingers around the feather. It did not burn; it warmed his soul. "Our last hunt."
Rias: She reached out, and he placed the feather in her palm. She hummed a single, clear note. The feather vibrated, singing back a complex chord of solar winds and stellar nurseries. "It sings of cycles. Of endless, beautiful returns. To hunt it… it feels less like a conquest. More like a… conversation with eternity."
Indra: "Then let us prepare for the conversation. We do not go as conquerors. We go as… respectful petitioners at the altar of life itself. We will ask for its measure. And we will offer ours in return."
There was no fanfare, no announcement. This was not for glory or for the IGO. This was a profoundly personal pilgrimage. They spent a day in focused, silent preparation. Indra did not craft traps or weapons. He meditated, stabilizing the unified template within him—the perfect synergy of Von Doom's sovereignty, Ōtsutsuki's legacy, and the Dragon Triad's authority. He practiced folding space with a gentle touch, bending time with reverence, not force.
Rias communed with the living wood of the garden and the sonic crystals. She did not compose songs of destruction, but of inquiry and admiration—complex harmonies that asked questions of growth and light. She wove a new outfit from her Starlight Silkworm cloak and Sani's gifted hair, a garment that would resonate with celestial frequencies.
At dawn, they stepped from their pocket dimension onto a floating island at the very edge of the Celestial Canopy, where the air was thin as thought and the sky was not blue, but a deep, star-strewn violet, even in daylight. The ambient energy here was a constant, gentle baptism of life-force.
[ Final Expedition Log: Entry 1. Target: Celestial Phoenix (Rekindling Phase). CL 3500. Objective: Measure Synchronization. Method: Respectful Engagement. ]
They didn't need to track it. They felt it. A pull, like a planetary tide, toward a specific point in the radiant emptiness above. They flew, not with brute speed, but by allowing the celestial currents to carry them. After hours, they saw it.
It was not a bird as understood by biology. It was a constellation given fluid form. Its body was woven from nebulae—swirls of ionized gas in gold, crimson, and ultraviolet. Its wings, when they swept, were less physical structures and more the visible expression of solar winds stretching across light-years. Its eyes were twin white dwarf stars, intense and ancient. It was perched on a nest of woven comets and asteroid debris, in the process of being consumed by its own eternal flame—the Rekindling. It wasn't dying. It was focusing, its immense life-energy collapsing into a seed of infinite potential before erupting anew.
The sight was humbling on a level the Devourer never was. The Devourer inspired terror. This inspired awe.
Indra: "Its energy signature… it's a closed loop. A perfect, self-sustaining cycle of death and rebirth. There is no 'weakness.' Only different phases of expression."
Rias: Tears of pure, empathetic joy tracked down her cheeks, evaporating into light. "Its song… it's the melody the universe sings to itself to keep existing. It's beautiful."
The Phoenix became aware of them. Not as threats, but as curiosities. A single, resonant thought brushed against their minds, not in words, but in pure emotional concepts.
[CURIOSITY. MINISCULE. YET… RESONANT. YOU CARRY THE SCENT OF THE VOID'S QUIETING. AND THE SONG OF NEW GROWTH. INTERESTING CONTRADICTION.]
Indra (projecting his will): "We come to learn. To measure ourselves against the cycle's peak."
[MEASURE? YOU WISH TO COUNT THE BEATS OF A HEART THAT IS THE HEART OF ALL THINGS? A FLEETING PASTIME. BUT… YOU MAY TRY.]
The Celestial Phoenix shifted. The Rekindling flames did not abate, but a fraction of its attention—a sliver of its consciousness—solidified into a radiant, semi-corporeal avatar before them. It was still the size of a small mountain, but now a form they could conceptually engage.
Rias: "It's giving us a fragment to interact with. A courtesy."
Indra: "Then we respond in kind. Not with our full might, but with our perfect harmony."
The hunt began. It was a dance of cosmic proportions.
The Phoenix-avatar moved. A single beat of its nebulae wing sent a wave of pure life-force so dense it crystallized the very space it passed through, creating razor-edged rainbows of solidified energy.
Indra didn't dodge. He raised a hand. "Space-Time Decree: The Unmoving Center." A sphere of absolute stillness manifested around them. The crystallizing wave hit it and flowed around the sphere's curvature, obeying the new local law that declared their space immutable. It was a defense of pure conceptual authority.
Rias sang. Not a destructive note, but a Song of Weaving. The crystallized life-energy shards that had flown past were caught in her harmonic field. With a sweep of her hand, she wove them into a glittering, living net of cosmic lattice, and sent it drifting back toward the Phoenix, not to ensnare, but to reflect its own beauty.
The Phoenix's starry eyes brightened with [AMUSEMENT.] It opened its beak and released a Chord of Solar Genesis—a sound that was the echo of a star's birth. The sound-wave didn't shatter matter; it sought to overwrite it, to transform whatever it touched into raw, chaotic stellar plasma.
Rias stepped forward, her Banshee Bat demon flaring behind her. "My turn. Ragnarök Symphony: Counterpoint of Creation." She didn't sing to destroy the sound. She sang alongside it, adding a harmonic line of ordered growth. Her Wood Goddess power infused the harmony. Where the Phoenix's chord would create chaotic plasma, Rias's counter-melody shaped that energy into a sudden, magnificent bloom of Solar Roses—flowers of living fire and light that pirouetted in the vacuum.
The Phoenix tilted its head. [YOU SING NOT TO SILENCE, BUT TO COLLABORATE. UNEXPECTED.]
It ceased its ranged attacks. It folded its wings and dove at them. Its passage now wasn't about energy projection, but conceptual imposition. It was trying to embrace them, to pull them into its own cycle of Rekindling—to make them a temporary part of its eternal flame.
This was the true test. Physical and spiritual assimilation.
Indra and Rias moved as one. Their synchronization was absolute.
Indra unleashed the Arceus Proto-Form, but not in its warrior aspect. He manifested it as the Guardian of the Self—a titanic, noble form of shifting constellations that placed itself between them and the Phoenix's embrace. Its hands did not strike; they framed the space, declaring: "Here, identity is sovereign."
Rias merged her power with the Susanoo. Her Sonic-Wood energy spiraled up through its form, turning its nebulae armor into Singing Bark, and its star-field cloak into a Reverberating Mantle. She wasn't just inside Indra's power; she was its harmonic soul.
The Phoenix's embrace met the stabilized, sovereign reality of the Dual Sovereigns' combined will.
REJECTION.
Not a violent explosion, but a silent, profound unmixing. Like oil refusing to blend with water. The Phoenix's flames slid off the Singing Arceus form. The cycle could not absorb what was fundamentally outside the cycle—a will that defined its own eternal narrative.
The Phoenix-avatar recoiled, not in pain, but in surprised recognition.
[YOU… DEFINE YOUR OWN LAWS OF EXISTENCE. YOU ARE NOT OF THE CYCLE. YOU ARE… OBSERVERS. ARCHITECTS. THIS IS A NEW THING.]
It retracted its avatar. The full, magnificent Celestial Phoenix, still deep in its Rekindling flames, focused both its white-dwarf eyes upon them. This was the moment. It would now respond not with a fraction, but with the core concept of its being: Renewal Through Annihilation.
It began to contract. The nebula body, the solar winds, the comet nest—all pulled inward toward the heart of its flame. It was preparing a Supernova Greeting—not to destroy, but to cleanse and rebirth everything in its vicinity, including them, into new, primordial energy.
This was the CL 3500 event. An unstoppable, beautiful reset.
Indra: Within the Susanoo, his voice was a calm universe. "It will not harm us. It will unmake us to remake us as part of itself. A transcendent absorption."
Rias: Her voice was the melody within the calm. "We must answer. Not with a bigger cage. With a better idea."
Indra: "Our perfect combo. Not to capture. To propose."
They nodded.
The Singing Arceus Susanoo raised its hands. Indra focused his 100% unified template.
"SPACE-TIME SYNTHESIS: THE ETERNAL MOMENT."
He didn't freeze time. He isolated a single, perfect moment—the moment of the Phoenix's contraction—and gave it infinite dimensional breadth. He created a pocket universe where that single second stretched into a placid, endless now. The Supernova Greeting was suspended, a breathtaking sculpture of imminent cosmic rebirth.
Within that frozen moment, Rias acted.
"WOOD-SONG-DESTRUCTION SYNTHESIS: THE DIALOGUE OF REALMS."
She didn't attack the suspended fire. She grew a single tree within the Eternal Moment. A tree whose roots were Destruction (unmaking the old), whose trunk was Sonic Resonance (carrying meaning), and whose branches and leaves were Wood Goddess Creation (birthing the new). It was a tree that represented not life, but transition.
She grew this tree around the suspended supernova. The roots gently tapped into the annihilative energy. The trunk hummed, translating its purpose. The branches then bloomed with new, unique celestial fruits—neither Phoenix nor Sovereign, but something novel, born from the conversation between their powers.
The tree, with the frozen supernova as its heart, was offered back to the Phoenix.
The message was clear, written in the language of cosmic power: We acknowledge your cycle. We offer an alternative: not absorption, but collaboration. A shared creation from your moment of transformation.
The Celestial Phoenix stared. The entire Gourmet World seemed to hold its breath.
Slowly, the great being relaxed. The contraction reversed. The Rekindling flames settled into a calm, steady blaze. The Supernova Greeting was gently dismissed.
[CAPTURE.] The thought-voice held a tone of profound, gentle wonder. [YOU HAVE CAPTURED THE CONCEPT OF MY REBIRTH. NOT IN A CAGE. IN A SONG. IN A LAW. YOU HAVE MADE A NEW MEMORY FOR ME.]
It extended one nebulae wing-tip, the size of a continent, toward them. At its very end, a single, new feather condensed. This feather was different. It was not just gold and fire. It was shot through with the colors of Indra's spacetime and the harmonic patterns of Rias's song. It was a fused relic.
[TAKE THIS. IT IS THE SEED OF OUR DIALOGUE. YOU HAVE NOT CONQUERED ME. YOU HAVE… ENLIGHTENED ME. A NEW POSSIBILITY EXISTS BECAUSE OF YOU.]
The feather drifted to them. As Indra took it, a final, overwhelming surge of energy flowed into them both. Not aggressive, but gift-wrapped.
[ Alert: Celestial Acknowledgment Received. ]
[ Template Evolution Detected. ]
[ Pokémon Creation Triad Template (100%) undergoing… expansion. ]
[ Integrating 'Concept of Sovereign Renewal' into unified matrix. ]
[ New Template Fragment Unlocked: 'Arceus' (True Creator) – Synchronization: 5%. ]
[ Capability Unlocked: 'Genesis Seed' – Can implant a stabilized law of existence into areas of total conceptual nullity. Scale: Minor. ]
The power was staggering in its potential, humble in its current form. They weren't creators. But they had taken the first, impossible step from being sovereigns over existing laws to planting the seeds of new ones.
Indra (bowing deeply): "Thank you for the conversation."
Rias (curtsying, her song one of pure gratitude): "Thank you for the lesson."
The Phoenix gave a final, melodic cry that vibrated through the fabric of the Gourmet World—a cry that was now subtly different, containing a new, hopeful note. Then, it completed its Rekindling in a burst of light that felt like a benediction, not a cataclysm. When the light faded, it was gone, departed to another layer of reality.
They were alone in the silent, star-dusted canopy.
[ Final Expedition Log: Entry Closed. Status: Success. Capture: Conceptual/Diplomatic. ]
[ Discoveries #1101-1120: Logged. ]
[ #1101: 'Dialogue Feather' – Fused Sovereign-Phoenix relic. Properties: Unknown, resonates with potential. ]
[ #1105: 'The Nesting Grounds of the Celestial Phoenix' – Coordinates logged. Area saturated with 'Post-Dialogue Energy,' fostering hybrid celestial-botanical lifeforms. Designated as a Sovereign Sanctuary, off-limits to all hunting. ]
[ #1118: 'Suspended Supernova Crystal' – A shard of the frozen moment, naturally formed. Contains latent rebirth energy, stable due to spacetime laws. ]
They returned to their Starlight Garden, the Dialogue Feather glowing softly on their central table. They had gone to measure themselves against the pinnacle of life. They had not captured it. They had, through perfect synchronization and a combo that blended Space, Time, Wood, Sound, and Destruction into a single proposition of peace, earned its respect and a fragment of its creator-essence.
Rias: She looked at the Arceus 5% notification in her mind's eye. "A creator template… even a fragment. It's not about power over things. It's about the authority to… propose a new thing into existence."
Indra: He held the feather, feeling the dizzying potential within its 5% synchronization. "We are no longer just hunters, or kings, or even sovereigns. We are… authors. With the barest penstroke of that authority." He looked at her, the love in his eyes deeper than any cosmic void. "And our greatest co-creation awaits us at home."
The Last Hunt was over. They had hunted not for meat, not for glory, not even for a trophy. They had hunted for understanding, and had returned with a seed of something infinitely more precious: the quiet, terrifying, wonderful responsibility of a creator's potential. The Gourmet World had given them its final and greatest lesson. They were ready, now, for absolutely anything.
End of Chapter – 70.