The quest also told me how many plates were in this particular part of the underground which caused me to frown slightly. Right now I had seven of the seventeen plates which meant that ten were unaccounted for. These two made nine accounted for but the problem was that I will have roughly covered sixty percent of the entire regions underground once I am done with this part and eight plates will be unfound. It was possible that the last eight were in the remaining forty percent of the underground but I had this sneaking suspicion that one or two of them were sitting in someone's private collection.-
The reason for this thought was that the remaining forty percent of the underground that I won't have covered yet falls under the parts of Sinnoh that were most popular for miners. Beneath Mt. Coronet and along the western coast specifically. In this area the factors that determine the popularity of the underground were perfect. This meant that there was a good chance that a plate or two from there had been found and added to someone's collection. My worry was that the plates were in the collections of one of the Stones which would be a very big issue for me.-
While I was on pretty good terms with both stones I wasn't delusional enough to think they would casually hand over something as rare as a plate without a fuss. They were rock hounds and loved their collections dearly so trying to get them to part with any part of it will take serious finesse. I didn't think it would be with either of them however as there was one little detail about the plates that was rather interesting, they couldn't leave Sinnoh.-
Not permanently at least. See for some reason or another the plates simply have no recorded instance outside of Sinnoh. I wasn't sure why exactly but I had a theory on the subject that I felt explained it well. The plates being fragments of Arceus's power meant that they were sort of geo locked to a certain area around Mt. Coronet that if they left caused them to rubber band back within. It made sense to a degree if the plates were created by Arceus and someone else for a specific purpose that they weren't allowed to scatter across the globe.-
Whatever the case was I still knew I was going to have to track down the last plates after I completed my tour of the underground. For now though I could content myself with collecting treasures in this part for my new quest. This part of the underground was pretty popular so I was quickly discovered and reported to the league but since this time I was actually grabbing the normal treasures here they were sure why I was actually here. I didn't settle for the average or sub average treasures though and only dug into a wall if i saw a top grade treasure waiting within. This was something that was quickly figured out and capitalized on by the people down here with me.-
Some of them got very good at reading my face when I searched for treasures and spotting the moments when I'd find good but not great treasures and move on. They'd then rush over to the area my gaze had been at that time and start digging in hopes of being the lucky one who got whatever the treasure was. Since none of these people dared to try and snatch the treasures I actually chose to dig up I ignored them during the next month that I spent going between my camp on the surface and the underground.-
"Three beings whose power can hold both time and space fixed."- Blank plate
"The rules of time and space change within the opposite world."- Toxic plate
These were the inscriptions of the Blank and Toxic plates that I found in this month long period. I found the Toxic plate first and played off it's lack of importance in front of those following me even though it was worth more than every other treasure I had dug up until then. -
I did the same with the Blank plate and even stayed a bit longer after getting it to dig up some more treasures just to further distance the importance of the finds from what the league was trying to understand. As a result the league was still clueless as to why I was spending so much time in the underground and not in the wild training my pokemon. That said the actions of my pokemon across the region as they trained themselves painted a picture that had some people in the league concerned.-
Specifically that my pokemon were showing champion levels of power on an almost consistent basis. The analysts of the battles they had with the few wild or roaming champion pokemon in the region suggested that even if they weren't truly champion level they were at most a mere step below it. The reason this was concerning was that I had only been a trainer for a bit over two and a half years if they included my training before my debut at Mt. Gray in Hoenn. If I truly hit champion level right now that meant I held the record for the shortest recorded time someone took to reach that height.-
Add on my lack of strong ties to the league and ruthless approach to criminals and some were concerned that I was becoming incontrollable. Not in that they lacked authority over me so much as if I for some reason decided to go against them they couldn't stop me. One had to remember that I was a wandering trainer and not bound to any one region very tightly. Unless the league was willing to have another champion level trainer shadow my every move I could create an absurd amount of destruction and then vanish.-
Was it likely based on my personality and history? Not at all. That didn't mean impossible however and that mere possibility bothered some members of the league considerably. This led to a rather unfortunate issue where the league was looking for a way to bind me to a single region somehow and didn't think offering me a position as a gym leader or elite four was going to work. How I knew about this was that Cynthia called to complain about it as she was particularly involved as the champion of Sinnoh.