75: Chapter 75 The Demon King's Gluttony, Kikuko is Digested in Reverse

When Agatha raised her second blade, it was as if someone had slammed a coffin lid onto Saffron City.

Streetlights went out one after another.

Advertising screens turned into gray-white static.

Faces emerged on the outer walls of the Silph Co. Building. They pressed against the glass, peering inside, their lips moving, but their voices were choked in their throats.

Sabrina stood at the entrance of the command room, her face pale.

She knew Agatha was going all out.

The first blade was about silence, intending to drag Lynn to death in his dreams.

The second blade no longer cared about decorum.

Agatha wanted to drag the entire building into the ghost mist, using the fear that had just accumulated in the city to crush Lynn to death.

That was the cruelty of the old Elite.

She dared to expand the battlefield.

Ghosts are like fish returning to water in places filled with fear.

Lynn leaned against the table, the gap in his shadow still unpatched. That sluggishness made all his defenses a fraction slower.

Gengar was also injured.

It had swallowed most of Old Gengar, but having been burned by grave ash, purple-black mist leaked from the edges of its body.

Agatha's cane struck the ground.

"Hundred Ghost Night Coffin."

Black shadows emerged from the sewers, old cables, hospital morgues, abandoned warehouses, and the old underground levels of Silph Co. beneath Saffron City.

Some had only half a face left.

Some had only a hand.

Some looked like a clump of flattened black smoke.

They were pulled by Agatha outside the building, piling higher and higher until they finally fused into a massive black coffin.

The coffin lid pressed down toward the Silph Co. Building.

Sabrina raised her hand, and blue light rushed outside the building.

A psychic barrier expanded.

The black coffin didn't collide with force.

It stuck to the blue light like a piece of wet, rotting rag, seeping inward inch by inch.

Sabrina groaned, blood dripping from the tip of her nose.

"I can't hold on much longer."

Lynn looked at Gengar.

"Can you eat it?"

Gengar grinned, its smile ugly.

"Too big."

"A whole city of ghosts could burst me."

"Then eat the master first."

Gengar's smile paused for a moment, then stretched even wider.

Agatha heard this and sneered.

"Do you think I would place myself within your reach?"

Of course, she was hidden deep.

The true tether of the black coffin was hidden within the remaining half of Old Gengar's shadow core. As long as that shadow core remained, the coffin lid would continue to press down.

Just as Gengar was about to charge, Old Gengar's remnant shadow stuck itself right in front of it.

The remaining half of Old Gengar's body was ragged, yet even more ferocious.

It pressed one hand over Gengar's mouth and plunged the other directly into Gengar's chest.

When ghosts fight ghosts, the most vicious thing is to stir the insides.

Gengar's body stiffened.

Old Gengar began to tear at the black shadow it had just compressed.

Agatha raised her cane, and the black coffin sank further.

Sabrina knelt on one knee, large cracks appearing in the blue light.

Porygon-Z tried to restore the building's circuits, but its projection flickered under the assault of the black mist.

Lynn watched Gengar being held down and suddenly spoke.

"Don't struggle."

"Let it in."

Old Gengar's arm was already embedded in Gengar's chest.

Agatha's expression changed abruptly.

"Retreat!"

It was too late.

Gengar's chest split open on its own.

A larger mouth was hidden within the fissure.

Old Gengar's arm sank in, unable to pull back out.

Gengar smiled.

"Caught you."

It had been taking hits the whole time.

Being held down.

Having its shadow stripped.

Being forced to regurgitate by grave ash.

Being lectured by Old Gengar as if it were a child.

But it had been learning.

Learning how Old Gengar compressed shadows.

Learning how Agatha tethered the coffin.

Learning how grave ash forced out impurities.

Now, it had let Old Gengar stick its hand into its stomach on its own.

And then, it shut the door.

Old Gengar's remnant shadow struggled violently.

The mouth in Gengar's chest bit down on it, beginning to drag it inside bit by bit.

This time it was very slow.

Grave ash was spat out.

Old curses were chewed to pieces.

Residue of fear was compressed to the outer layer.

The truly useful shadow core was stuffed deep into its body.

The speed at which the black coffin pressed down slowed immediately.

Agatha's face turned ashen.

She raised her cane and actually used her own shadow to patch the black coffin.

"I shall do it myself."

She burned half her life force into the ghost mist.

The black coffin sank again.

A corner of Sabrina's barrier exploded, and the glass on three floors shattered simultaneously.

The crowd sheltering downstairs screamed and pushed toward the stairwells.

Lynn raised his mechanical gauntlet and pressed the switch on his wrist.

The emergency lights on every floor of the building lit up red.

"Everyone get down."

The broadcast voice echoed throughout the building.

"Cover your ears, close your eyes, and don't look out the windows."

This was all the protection he could give the ordinary people.

Then, he turned to Gengar.

"Eat her."

Gengar bit into Agatha's shadow.

Agatha's body jolted.

This time, it was her turn to be dragged.

She had lived a lifetime using shadows to kill and ghost mist to hide blades. Today, her own shadow had become a rope in someone else's mouth.

Gengar first tore at her assassination techniques.

Then it bit through her ghost mist tethers.

Finally, it dragged out the piece of black core that bound her to Old Gengar's remnant shadow.

Agatha coughed up blood, her grip on her cane slipping.

"Lynn..."

"Lance is harder to kill than I am."

"That's even better."

Agatha stared at him.

"You will turn Kanto into a ghost city."

Lynn shook his head.

"A ghost city is too dirty."

"What I want is for the living to work for me, and the dead to block blades for me."

Gengar laughed out loud.

Sabrina closed her eyes.

Agatha also laughed.

This time, the mockery was finally gone from her smile.

"Madman."

"Mhm."

Lynn raised his hand.

Gengar took the final bite.

It did not swallow indiscriminately.

The useful assassination experience, shadow-hiding techniques, and Ghost-type suppression methods were compressed into its body.

The rotting old oaths, self-destruction curses, and the resentment of dragging others to death with it were spat onto the ground and scattered with a stomp.

Agatha's color faded little by little.

She did not kneel.

She stood as she was consumed by the Ghost King.

At the final moment, she looked at Sabrina.

"Don't let him consume you too."

Sabrina did not answer.

Agatha looked at Lynn.

"I shall wait for you below."

Lynn said, "Get in line."

Agatha's shadow snapped.

The black coffin shattered.

The lights of Saffron City lit up one by one.

Gengar hovered in mid-air, its body darker and heavier.

It didn't laugh; it was like someone who had just finished a table of hard bones, keeping its mouth closed to slowly digest.

Sabrina whispered, "Agatha is dead."

Lynn looked at the faded body on the ground.

"She was eaten."

The next day, the Saffron City announcement wrote only one sentence: [Old League Elite Agatha, assassination failed.]

The method of death was left blank.

Some fears become cheap if written too explicitly.

Letting people know that even the oldest ghost had been eaten was enough.

Downstairs, the sheltering crowd lay on the ground, hearing the sound of the coffin lid scraping overhead.

A child wanted to cry, but was forcefully silenced by their mother.

A worker nearby stuffed their credit tag into their collar and looked up to see black water seeping from the ceiling.

The black water dripped onto the floor, turning into a tiny ghost hand that clawed toward the child's shoe tip.

A guard rushed over and shot through the ghost hand.

The bullet scattered into ash, but the ghost hand kept crawling.

The next moment, Lynn's voice came over the broadcast.

"Everyone close your eyes."

"Even if you hear crawling, don't move."

"Whoever runs around dies first."

It was brutal.

And very effective.

The screaming was suppressed, and the crowd lay low in rows.

The black water ghost hand lost its target and could only claw randomly on the ground.

This bought Sabrina a little time.

She compressed her remaining psychic power into three blue nails, pinning down the weight-bearing shadows on the east, west, and south sides of the building.

When the black coffin sank further, the building groaned piercingly but held firm.

In the command room, Porygon-Z turned on every light it could.

Red lights, white lights, and warning lights shone toward the outside of the building in layers.

Ordinary light couldn't hurt Agatha, but it could expose the thin threads hiding within the ghost mist.

Lynn saw those threads.

He raised his hand, and his mechanical gauntlet sprayed a row of silver needles.

The silver needles pinned into the wall, pulling out a dozen black threads.

"There."

Gengar pounced along the black threads.

It bit down on the ends of the threads, grinding away with its teeth bit by bit.

Every time one was ground through, the black coffin outside the building shook.

Agatha's face turned a shade paler.

Agatha tried to retract the threads, but Lynn locked all the silver needles in reverse.

She was finally dragged into place by her own ultimate move.

The old Elite's ruthlessness had become the rope that bound her.

After Agatha was held in place, the first crack appeared in the black coffin outside the building.

It wasn't just ghost shadows that fell from the crack, but also many old scenes.

Someone signing a false confession in a League interrogation room.

Someone being dragged into an incinerator at night.

Someone kneeling before Agatha, clutching a Poké Ball and begging for mercy.

Those scenes fell to the ground, still trying to crawl back under Agatha's feet.

Gengar opened its mouth and inhaled, sucking away the usable fear and spitting the old cries that weighed down its appetite into a corner.

Sabrina felt a chill in her heart as she watched.

This was no longer a normal battle.

Lynn was teaching a ghost how to curate history, how to dismantle an enemy's life into food, toxic waste, and weapons.

Agatha also understood.

She looked up at Lynn, a trace of exhaustion appearing in her eyes for the first time.

"You are more suited to raising ghosts than the League."

Lynn replied calmly.

"The League fears ghosts will bite back, so they put chains on them."

"I give them enemies."

Hearing this, Gengar laughed so hard that the teeth marks all over the building shook.

After the black coffin shattered, many black claw marks were left on the outer walls of the building.

Those marks couldn't be wiped away immediately, as if they had hung a new scar on Saffron City.

The crowd downstairs looked up one by one.

No one dared to speak loudly, only watching as the lights came back on one by one.

A child asked their mother: "Is that old woman gone?"

The mother hugged them tight, her voice trembling.

"She's gone."

But she knew in her heart that it wasn't just Agatha who had left tonight.

The last shred of awe that Saffron City originally held for the League had also shattered along with her.