I'm the Owner of the Pokémon Day Care In the World of Pokémon-Chapter 1433: The Enigmatic Haunted Mansion

However, by the time Yuga and the others arrived at the abandoned building, the group of people had already left, leaving behind only two underlings guarding the place.

Yuga easily subdued the two underlings and learned from them that their boss had already taken the others to the abandoned mansion where they had agreed to meet Ninetales, intending to set up a trap there in advance to ambush Lokko.

Yuga handed the two knocked-out underlings to the accompanying Natu and instructed it to deliver them to the police station, while he himself flew on Dragonite toward the abandoned mansion.

Yuga actually knew about that abandoned mansion. It had originally been built by a wealthy businessman who came to Verdanturf Town for recuperation, but later, strange things kept happening inside the mansion without any identifiable cause. Eventually, the businessman stopped visiting, and the mansion gradually fell into disuse.

That mansion was even older than Yuga himself, so Yuga had only heard about it from others. At one point, someone had proposed converting the mansion into a haunted house attraction for tourists visiting Verdanturf, but Mayor Ishida rejected the idea out of concern that something might actually go wrong.

Mayor Ishida had personally witnessed the strange events involving the mansion during the businessman’s stay, so he believed the stories and thus refused the haunted house proposal.

Yuga had heard about the mansion from Mayor Ishida during one of their conversations. Since Verdanturf Town was preparing to upgrade into Verdanturf City, Mayor Ishida was already planning to have the mansion demolished in the near future.

As they flew, a house covered in vines from walls to roof came into Yuga’s line of sight—that was the abandoned mansion the criminals had mentioned.

"Dragonite, that’s the one, hurry up!" Yuga urged Dragonite.

"Dragonite~!"

With a burst of speed, Dragonite reached the airspace above the abandoned mansion in the blink of an eye and, under Yuga’s command, slowly descended.

As soon as Yuga and Lokoko’s feet touched the ground, wails of agony echoed from inside the mansion.

Yuga looked at Lokoko and asked, "Is that the voice of those people?"

Lokko replied, "Sounds like it."

"Let’s go take a look."

Yuga stepped toward the mansion’s front door, thinking to himself: Seems like those haunted rumors about this place might not be entirely fake.

The front entrance of the mansion consisted of two iron doors, which had rusted and partially collapsed from years of neglect, now overgrown with green plants. The clearly cleared portions must have been cleaned up by the criminals.

Yuga thought for a moment and released his Vivillon.

Once Vivillon emerged, it saw the obstructing plants at the entrance and used Razor Wind to whip up blades of wind, blowing away both the plants and the iron doors.

Following the path cleared by Vivillon, Yuga entered the mansion’s courtyard. The place, long abandoned, was overgrown with all kinds of weeds and trees. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Yuga couldn’t help feeling that the place had a sinister, eerie atmosphere.

Yuga and Lokoko had barely taken a few steps when the mansion again echoed with more wails, even more miserable than before—whatever was happening inside was unknown.

Suddenly, a middle-aged woman with messy hair and disheveled clothes came running out. The moment she saw Yuga and Lokoko, she fainted on the spot.

"G-ghost... there’s a ghost..."

That was the last thing the woman said before losing consciousness.

A real ghost? Yuga didn’t believe it! It was definitely something pretending to be supernatural. In most cases like this, it was usually a Ghost-type Pokémon causing trouble.

Seeing the woman’s face, Lokoko said, "She’s one of the group who kidnapped Gwen and her parents."

"Looks like something really did go wrong inside!" Yuga responded.

Hearing Yuga’s words, Lokoko immediately became nervous. "Then let’s hurry in and check! Gwen and her parents are just ordinary people with no combat abilities. If something happened, they wouldn’t be able to save themselves."

"Alright!"

Yuga nodded and led Lokoko across the long path in the courtyard, arriving at the main entrance of the mansion.

The front door of the house had already disappeared. The interior of the mansion was dimly lit, which made the already eerie atmosphere of the place even more terrifying.

As soon as Yuga and Lokoko stepped inside, they saw vines hanging from the ceiling of the main hall, suspending a man and a Mightyena. Both the man and the Pokémon were unconscious.

"Vivillon, get them down!" Yuga instructed Vivillon.

The man was hanging upside down by his feet from the ceiling. If he stayed like that for too long, the blood would rush to his head. Yuga suspected that he might end up brain-damaged from the hanging.

"Vivillon~"

Vivillon responded with a cry and used Wind Blade to slice through the vines. As the man and Mightyena fell, it caught them with Psychic before they hit the ground.

"Set them down here. We’ll move on," Yuga said, glancing around the main hall once more. Seeing nothing else unusual, he proceeded up the stairs to the second floor.

The staircase leading upward was also overgrown with chaotic vines, so Vivillon had to clear the way for Yuga from time to time.

But what Yuga didn’t notice was that after he, Lokoko, and Vivillon left the hall, the vines there began to twist and squirm in a strange way, slithering their way up the stairs.

On the staircase, Yuga discovered two more people. They were also members of the bandit gang and, like the previous two, were unconscious, wrapped tightly in vines like sticky rice dumplings.

Could it be a Grass-type Pokémon causing trouble, and not a Ghost-type? Seeing the tightly bound individuals, Yuga couldn’t help but wonder.

He checked them briefly. The two were merely unconscious and not in any danger, so he left them alone. However, Lokoko remained anxious about Gwen’s situation, as the last four people they encountered were all in poor condition.

As soon as Yuga, Lokoko, and Vivillon stepped onto the second floor, they were met with a chaotic scene like a dance of demons—countless green vines writhing endlessly in the air. Some of them slithered along the walls like snakes.

The vines were attacking a blonde, curly-haired woman. She and her Shiftry were desperately trying to fend off the vines. Although Shiftry was able to cut down the attacking vines with Leaf Blade, more would come swarming in to replace them, as if they were endless.

When the woman saw Yuga, her face lit up and she shouted loudly, "Help me!"

Lokoko leaned over and whispered into Yuga’s ear, "That woman is the leader of the bandits."

Yuga was surprised to hear this—he didn’t expect the head of the criminal group to be a woman, and a rather beautiful one at that.

The woman grew anxious when she saw that Yuga and Lokoko were not reacting. She called out again, "Please help me! I’ll be so grateful to you. I have money and treasures—whatever you want! As long as you save me, I’ll give you anything!"

She continued to tempt Yuga with promises, clearly not recognizing who he was.

Yuga remained unmoved. The woman’s eyes flickered with calculation. She began directing her Shiftry to both fight and inch closer to where Yuga and Lokoko were standing.

Clearly, she intended to use them as a human shield.

Sure enough, as the woman got closer to Yuga, the vines began to attack him indiscriminately as well.

"Ninetales~"

Lokoko opened her mouth and released a pillar of flame. The vines attacking Yuga and his group were instantly reduced to ashes.

However, in the very instant that large mass of vines turned to ash, Yuga and Lokoko both heard a strange, eerie wail.

Yuga thought in surprise: Have these vines gained sentience?

But he quickly dismissed the idea, because immediately afterward, a wave of Ghost-type energy radiated from the charred remains of the vines.

So it was a Ghost-type Pokémon causing the disturbance!

At first, when he saw the massive amount of vines, Yuga had assumed it was the work of a Grass-type Pokémon. Now, it was clear—it had to be a Ghost-type Pokémon.

It was probably because it had lived with Ghost-type Pokémon for too long that these vines had mutated, turning into a special kind of ghost vine. The Ghost-type Pokémon responsible for the disturbances was hiding inside the ghost vines, concealing its Ghost-type energy fluctuations so well that even Yuga, who possessed the abilities of a King of Ghost, had not noticed a thing.

The moment Lokoko made a move, the curly-haired woman also recognized its identity, and her expression immediately changed.

Lokoko was not as tall as Yuga, and just now, due to the vines blocking her view, the woman hadn’t recognized Lokoko . Now that a large number of vines had suddenly vanished, she naturally saw Lokoko’s full appearance clearly.

The curly-haired woman cursed her bad luck in her heart. She hadn’t expected that in trying to steal a chicken, she’d lose the rice used to lure it. Because of the vines, she hadn’t even had time to set the trap she had prepared for Lokoko, and all her subordinates had already been taken down.

Since the woman had tried to trick him, Yuga didn’t show any mercy. Vivillon sent out a powerful Psychic, slamming both her and her Shiftry harshly into the wall.

The strength gap between Shiftry and Vivillon was too great—even its type immunity was useless now.

The woman crashed into the wall and spat out a mouthful of blood, cursing Yuga in her heart for not knowing how to cherish beauty, actually using such a heavy hand on a woman as beautiful as her.

If Yuga had known what the curly-haired woman was thinking, he’d probably just say: "Sure, you’re pretty, but you’re a bit old—we’re not a match!"

After the woman was knocked back, countless vines surged toward her and Yuga again. Seeing this, she quickly climbed to her feet, trying to flee with her Shiftry, but the vines were faster. One vine grabbed her ankle and immediately hoisted her into the air.

Shiftry tried to save its Trainer, but there were too many vines—its two fists were no match for the countless "arms." In no time, it too was entangled, its limbs bound tightly, leaving it completely immobilized.

The vines binding the woman and her Shiftry continued to tighten, and the powerful force of the constriction made both of them groan in pain.

It was this kind of sound that Yuga and the others had heard from outside earlier.

The vines attacking Yuga’s group were shredded into pieces by Vivillon’s Hurricane, and Yuga took the opportunity to say to Lokoko, "Try to see if you can find the Ghost-type Pokémon hiding in the shadows!"

Lokoko was skilled in illusions, so its spiritual power cultivation was quite advanced. Yuga thought it shouldn’t be a problem for it to find a hidden Pokémon.

"Okay!"

Lokoko responded and its eyes shimmered with light as a powerful wave of mental energy spread out. In no time, it covered the entire villa.

However, things didn’t go as expected. Lokoko scanned left and right repeatedly, but just couldn’t find any Ghost-type Pokémon. In fact, aside from them and the bandits, there weren’t any other living beings in the house at all.

It couldn’t even find any trace of Gwen’s family.

"I didn’t find anything," Lokoko said to Yuga after searching several rounds. At this point, it was deeply worried about the missing Gwen family.

Yuga was stunned when he heard this. Even a Master level Pokémon like Lokoko couldn’t locate the target? No wonder the villa had had strange occurrences for so many years, yet no one had ever figured out the reason!

Thinking this, Yuga summoned Gengar and Mismagius. Using Ghost-types to find Ghost-types should be a bit easier, right?

As soon as Gengar and Mismagius appeared, they vanished before Yuga’s eyes and began flitting through the villa.

After a while, Yuga and Lokoko suddenly heard a series of wails echoing through the villa, identical to the cries they had heard earlier when the vines were burned.

The howling continued—it was piercing and shrill, as if countless ghosts were screaming right beside their ears. Yuga couldn’t help but cover his ears, as the source of the howls had even mixed in the move Grudge.

The wailing lasted nearly ten minutes. Then, in Yuga’s field of vision, glowing green orbs suddenly began to appear—each one drifting out from the remnants of those vines.

The moment the green light orbs left the vines, all the writhing vines went still, as if they had suddenly lost their life. The curly-haired woman and the Shiftry that had been suspended in midair fell to the ground with a loud "thud," making a dull sound—it was definitely not a light fall.

The woman let out a groan, but both she and the Shiftry had already lost consciousness.

After the green light orbs left the vines, they scattered in all directions like headless flies, while letting out a series of strange cries that were very similar to the previous wailing sounds.

At this moment, Gengar and Mismagius appeared. One used Shadow Ball, the other used Mystical Fire, and both attacked the green light orbs at the same time.

Under the combined assault of Gengar and Mismagius, the green orbs scattered in a panic, flying around in the air, somewhat like fireflies.

Looking at these green light orbs, Yuga was very puzzled as to what kind of hidden Pokémon they really were.

In fact, Gengar and Mismagius hadn’t truly attacked those green light orbs; they were just trying to scare them, hoping that the true body behind the orbs would reveal itself.

Finally, when the orbs had been forced into a corner, a distorted shadow slowly emerged from the wall. The moment the light orbs saw the shadow, they instantly flew toward it like baby swallows returning to the nest, each one embedding itself into the shadow. A complete Pokémon finally appeared.

...

[ Spiritomb (level dropping) ]

Type: Ghost, Dark

Ability: Infiltrator

Gender: Female

Potential: Indigo

Level: 71

Moves: Curse, Pursuit, Grudge, Confuse Ray, Shadow Sneak, Hypnosis, Dream Eater, Ominous Wind, Trick, Dark Pulse, Psychic, Shadow Ball, Double Team, Will-O-Wisp, Uproar, Pain Split, Nightmare, Shock Wave.

...

Seeing this Pokémon, Yuga suddenly understood—so it was Spiritomb!

Those green orbs were actually Spiritomb’s souls. Spiritomb had possessed the vines through its souls, which was how it was able to manipulate them.

Legend has it that Spiritomb is formed from the gathering of 108 souls. What the actual truth is, Yuga wasn’t entirely sure, but Spiritomb indeed possessed the ability to split its soul.

The vines had mutated because of prolonged exposure to Ghost-type Pokémon and had been tainted with Ghost-type energy, taking on some Ghost-type characteristics. Otherwise, Spiritomb wouldn’t have been able to control them so freely.

As soon as Spiritomb’s true body emerged, it bared its fangs and claws at Yuga, trying to scare him. But when Gengar and Mismagius appeared on either side of it, Spiritomb was immediately frightened and curled up into a tight ball.