A pad sat strapped to my shoulder, and a camera sat firmly attached to its top. A green light indicated that it was on and recording, but its presence wasn’t notable; Black Tower itself was already broadcasting everything that happened inside.

  This place needed to turn a profit, and simply catering to the competing trainers wasn’t enough. Much of Black Tower’s income came from streaming and selling recordings of battles as entertainment, and that meant Cee and so many others would be witnessing my entrance into the tower right now.

  The elevator I stood in rumbled, and I glanced up to where a black hemisphere sat on the ceiling. Within it, a full three-sixty degree camera pointed down.

  I sent it a grin. At least on these early floors, I had no reason to hide my confidence.

  “Liepard. We’ll be starting with you,” I said, taking out one Pokéball while depositing the rest of my team into a slot provided for storage. For now, I simply set my backpack onto the ground. “These first floors will be the easiest. Most trainers should be around the fifth Gym Badge level. Relative strength will jump as soon as we start climbing, so our goal should be to get past this section as fast as we can.”

  With a flash, Liepard appeared and pressed his paws forward to arch his back and stretch, but he also flicked an ear to the side to signal his slight annoyance. It was common for a trainer to send out their “weakest” Pokémon first, and after not quite matching everyone’s stats, he held his suspicions.

  However, my reasoning for choosing Liepard was entirely unrelated to that.

  “Speed,” I said, staring ahead at the elevator’s closed doors. “Liepard, we need to maximize our speed. Rotom doesn’t have the stamina to last, and Valiant only moves at their fastest within an immobile Electric Terrain. We only have until midnight to get as far as we can, so we need to rush through these first few floors, and for that, you’re our best team member by far.”

  The elevator’s movements finally stopped. A clunk echoed out to signal my team’s Pokéballs being sent forward to be retrieved later. Above the doors, a series of lights turned on to signal a countdown, and I crouched to prepare myself for a dash.

  “Think of this as a speedrun,” I said, getting ready to run. “We’re aiming to get to the end of the floor as fast as possible, so it’s our own little challenge. Sounds kind of fun, right?”

  To that, Liepard closed his eyes as he looked away, but that was not any form of dismissal. Rather, he joined me where I was crouching, and he gained a feline smile.

  The seconds counted down. The lights served as a timer. Right as the final “ding!” rang out, I had just enough time to speak a single comment before Liepard and I took off.

  “Watch this.”

  The doors pulled open, and we were gone. If we had been on dirt, we would have kicked up a cloud of dust. Our feet slammed onto the tiles of the first floor, and we zoomed straight through the dedicated “safe” area located right in front of the elevator.

  “On our left!” I shouted.

  Entering the first floor was almost jarring; it was like we had run right into the center of an office building. Tile floors defined the place, and the walls were all an off-white, broken up only by the occasional hallway, cubicle array, or series of potted plants.

  But, bursting into the first connected room, we already encountered an opponent: a trainer searching the floor, just like us. However, she was walking in idle exploration, and a stout Dragon-type followed at her side.

  “Huh? Ah, shoot—Fraxure, use Dragon Claw!”

  “Liepard, Hone Claws into Night Slash!”

  The Fraxure immediately jumped at where Liepard lunged, and its claws gleamed with the cruel, bluish-purple energy of the Dragon type. However, Liepard purposefully ducked to fall to his side, and he used the smoothness of the floor to slide right underneath the tusked Pokémon.

  The momentum carried him forward while he channeled a sharpening energy through his claws. Unfortunately for the Fraxure, a Night Slash carved into the Pokémon’s back before it could turn around. That one move, landing critically, saw it cry out in pain, and it then collapsed straight to the floor.

  “Fine, then!” came a shout from the Fraxure’s trainer. “Return, Fraxure! And now, Vanillish! Start by slowing that Liepard with an Icy Wind!”

  “Slash!” I called out for my own, simple command.

  Against the floating snowcone of a Pokémon, Liepard jumped straight at where his opponent hovered in the air. A claw of pure white energy tore through it, dividing the powder that coated the icy Pokémon’s head.

  A faint breeze rushed out from around the cone-shaped icicle, creating the barest layer of frost on Liepard’s fur. However, that one attack was all the Vanillish managed as the damage from Slash finally caught up to it, and the Pokémon fell with a clatter.

  And that one wasn’t even a crit, I thought to myself, smiling. But, uh... Yeah. We’re kind of overleveled for the first floor.

  As Liepard finished his pounce and returned to the ground, I looked to our opponent to wait for her third Pokémon, but all I was met with was a disappointed frown.

  “My third’s already fainted,” she grumbled.

  I sent her a nod before resuming my dash.

  “Thanks for the battle!” I shouted over my shoulder.

  Waving to her, I went on to return Liepard just to send him back out next to me. Behind us, that thin layer of frost drifted down, left behind from where it had once been stuck to his fur.

  In here, trainers were limited to teams of three. Even if someone had more than three Pokémon on them, they would only be allowed to battle with three Pokémon at most. All trainers present were roaming the floor to search for the hidden elevator up, but that process was made difficult due to the randomized entrance locations and how battles could start at any time.

  With Black Tower being a location where battles were mandatory, there was no sense in issuing any challenges—opposing trainers would just attack. Everyone was required to keep one Pokémon out with them for that reason, and anyone without a Pokémon nearby was assumed to have been defeated.

  Or, they were cheating, but Black Tower officials would actively call out such a trainer if that was ever the case.

  Soon, another Slash landed critically against a hovering Eelektrik. A Night Slash landed with enough effectiveness to carve through an otherwise defensive Boldore. Liepard made quick work of every trainer we encountered, and the surmounting victories were all added to our official “record” here. Each one grew the value of whatever “prize” we’d earn once this floor was cleared.

  Of course, due to the nature of Unova’s ongoing events and the constant presence of the cameras, if any of our opponents were competing in the World Coronation Series, we’d also earn a slight amount of ranking points on a win. However, since these battles were quite different from the usual, those earned points were drastically reduced. The overall gain was less than if we’d battled an official competitor on the streets, but in here, even a Normal Rank trainer was worth something.

  But probably not enough to gain even one placement.

  It took five battles for us to find the exit on this floor, as running through so determinedly let us stumble upon a thin, open path that almost seemed to be hiding behind a lone water cooler. Whoever had designed these early floors had really gone all in on the “office” theme, but Liepard and I were still able to slip through that discovered gap to enter the room that’d serve as the arena for this floor’s final “boss” trainer.

  “An opponent? Finally.” With a confident grin, the woman standing at the end of the hallway pushed back her hair. “It feels like I’ve been waiting all day—I really want to move up sooner rather than later.”

  I slowed as I approached our would-be opponent, finding her words curious.

  “Move up?” I repeated, walking closer. “Aren’t you the boss trainer?”

  To that, she nonchalantly waved a hand, looking unbothered by my question.

  “The real bosses aren’t until higher up,” came her answer. “Only the last floors have big, dedicated arenas. You still have to win a final fight before being allowed to take the elevator up, though. Apparently, it stops people from climbing without any battles. So I got here alone and had to wait for someone else to show, but now, we just need to beat you to be able to move on!”

  She sent us a grin, but unfortunately for her, Liepard was already stepping forward.

  “Sorry man,” I said, “but it’s Liepard and I that are going to make it to the next level.”

  We had a battle. I could tell that she specialized in the Flying Type. She immediately released a Tranquil, and she then followed that up with a green-plumaged Squawkabilly. However, she was using a team of birds against Liepard, and he would never lose to species that were essentially his prey.

  “Ugh.”

  Ultimately, she let out a groan as Liepard leaped into the air just to push off a wall. His claws dragged down the back of her final Pokémon, a Pidgeotto, and that bird was sent crashing back to the earth.

  “Great battle!” I said quickly. “And sorry about how one-sided it was. Just bad luck to run into us today.”

  “...Guess we’ll have to start again,” she said with a sigh. “At least we know where we need to go.”

  A floor’s shape was generally maintained all day, but Black Tower had been designed so that it could shuffle its layout around when it chose to do so at night.

  With this battle finished, however, the back wall of the room slid open. The doors to the next elevator were revealed, and Liepard and I dashed in to find a blue-hatted attendant already waiting for us to enter.

  “Congratulations on your victory!” she said, greeting us with a smile. “With your progress so far, I can return you to the rest area on the bottom level. Or, if you wish, you can keep going and proceed to the second floor.”

  “We’ll keep going,” I said.

  The attendant bowed her head.

  “Very well, then,” she replied. “Please, accept your prize for the first floor before moving on.”

  She gave us a pair of Super Potions. I took one and immediately applied it to Liepard. The other bottle was shoved into a jacket pocket just in case we needed it later.

  “The higher floors have more valuable rewards,” I said quietly to Liepard as the elevator started to rumble. “If we perform well, we can get stuff like vitamins. Honestly, that might be one of the reasons Cee wants us to climb. Vitamins can really boost the results of training if mixed into meals.”

  The attendant also gave us the chance to retrieve the rest of my team’s Pokéballs and change who I was bringing, but I turned the offer down. For now, it was better to stick with just Liepard, especially since I wanted to continue rushing through these lowest, “easiest” floors.

  Overall, floor one took us a total of twenty-five minutes, a decent but not unexpected pace. After that, floor two took us a total of thirty minutes, but we slowed all the way to forty-five minutes just to reach the boss trainer on floor three.

  We only found the final room when Liepard ran past a certain door and realized that the men’s bathroom didn’t stink.

  “Taunt!” I shouted, and Liepard goaded a Watchog into not being able to rely on Hypnosis. At this point, after so many battles, my Pokémon no longer had the energy to take out his opponents in one hit, and he was forced to fall onto his back to avoid the Watchog’s buck teeth glowing for a Hyper Fang.

  Doing so let Liepard use all four of his claws, and it was messy, but it worked. When this last opponent finally fell, it took him several long moments to gather the energy just to stand back up.

  “Alright,” I breathed, stepping into the elevator once the match was over. “How are you feeling, Liepard?”

  He looked up at me. Before now, I’d rarely ever seen him pant from exhaustion.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You’re incredible. That was a lot of running and battling. But because of you, that’s three floors finished already, and we can start taking things a bit slower from here. Go ahead and rest up—you deserve it.”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  To declare his victory, Liepard let out one last meow before being brought back into his Pokéball.

  Now, I had to make a choice.

  With how much time had passed already, I could better understand why Cee had said this tower would take Cynthia a full week to climb. Even with the strength of her team, she didn’t seem like someone who’d rush, and these floors were so big that even just finding the elevator was a task and a half.

  “We have about four and a half hours to go,” I mumbled to myself. “And trainers are starting to have the equivalent of six-Badge teams. If we want to keep up the pace...”

  Metang came out next. He didn’t quite have the speed I was looking for. There was no magnetic field for him to slide around within like he had done inside the Giant Chasm, but what Metang did have going for him was his aggressive use of his stamina.

  The trainers we faced absolutely did not expect his one-Pokémon blitz, especially when he purposefully took damage just to get close. Most trainers here were trying to pace themselves to be in good condition for their exit fight, so burning through healing supplies just to win meant Metang’s strategy took most people by surprise.

  Of course, the consequence was that we were tapped out of healing items by the end of the floor, and Metang was left completely exhausted as he floated after me into the elevator.

  But his efforts meant we had managed a faster fourth floor.

  It only took us forty minutes instead of the third floor’s forty-five.

  “Fifth floor, next,” I said. “And, we still have just under four hours left. Cee, I hope you’re still watching. We aren’t stopping just yet.”

  After Metang came Valiant, as I wanted to use my strongest Pokémon to better gauge the rate of the opposing trainers’ growth. With their help, the fifth and sixth floors went by quickly, and I could see that the trainers here were already reaching the strength of having seven Gym badges.

  The increasing level of power quickly meant that focusing on speed was no longer an option, and the floors of the tower were purposefully designed to be a maze-like series of open rooms and hallways that prevented the use of stealth. I also just flat-out didn’t have the stamina to run for six hours straight, so exploration became focused less on running and more focused on careful searching and the battles that happened along the way.

  Clear times remained at around forty-five minutes to an hour, but that was just because Valiant’s strength let us move quickly. We still exceeded the level of the trainers we faced, but with Cee’s limitation of only one Pokémon at a time, I couldn’t exactly rotate through my team members to make sure everyone could rest between the fights.

  The constant onslaught of opponents meant the difference in strength slowly became less important. And, the further up we went, the more that gap would shrink.

  We were already reaching the limits of our current pace, but Valiant was currently my strongest. Thanks to them, we reached the end of the sixth floor with two hours left until midnight.

  Then, I had to think hard about what I wanted to do next. Leaning against the elevator wall, I paused for a good few minutes, munching on a granola bar that served as a very late dinner.

  “Maybe Rotom?” I mumbled to myself, speaking audibly so that Cee could pick up my thoughts through his camera. “It’d be a risk, but we could try blitzing it again.”

  According to Cee’s testing, Rotom possessed the greatest amount of power on my team, but his lack of stamina made me worried.

  I expected seventh-floor trainers to be firmly within the bounds of having seven badges, and that meant everyone we faced would be about equivalent to Dianne.

  “That’s too much for Rotom. He can’t last that long,” I said, rubbing my chin. “I could send out Liepard again, and I know he might be able to do it, but it’s just...”

  Today was all about gathering a baseline, and our progress had been great so far. We had even earned access to a special rest area floor located just past the fifth floor. Apparently, the higher a trainer climbed, the better the facilities they could access. Given that, I had the option of retiring here, but I couldn’t stop like this.

  The footage being recorded here would be used by Cee to figure out how to best help my team.

  There were still two Pokémon with me yet to appear, but only one of them stood to gain the most improvements.

  “...Yeah. This is a risk, but it’ll help us more in the long term if we’re successful,” I mumbled to myself, continuing to speak out loud so that Cee’s camera could hear my plan.

  Pushing off the wall, I came to a decision, and I turned back to look at the attendant in the room.

  “If it’s possible, I’d like to change out my Pokémon once more.”

  From there, I stepped out of the elevator and onto the seventh floor. In the distance, I could hear the faint sounds of battles taking place, but I didn’t leave the initial safe area just yet. Instead, I stayed in the small room where battles wouldn’t be allowed, and I released the one Pokémon that would be challenging the seventh floor at my side.

  Golurk.

  “Let’s do this, buddy,” I said to that lumbering Pokémon.

  And, we ended up losing the very first fight.

  Golurk’s first opponent was a Gigalith, and a Gigalith was a sturdy, fully-evolved Pokémon made entirely of rock and crystal. Against it, Golurk tried to stomp forward, but the Gigalith reared back on its legs just to slam down and shake the entire room with a Bulldoze.

  That sudden jerk stopped Golurk right in their tracks.

  “Grab and throw!” I yelled. The sooner we got the Gigalith off the ground, the better.

  Pretty quickly, Golurk was able to recover, but as my Pokémon got closer, the Gigalith just opened its rocky jaws. Within, large shards of stone formed and were launched out. Each one stabbed into Golurk’s chest, seemingly doing nothing—but that “lack of damage” was only on the surface.

  Although they didn’t react, Golurk took the full damage. And, with their easy-to-predict movement, they strode right into that Stone Edge attack.

  Golurk took that onslaught right until they were close enough to lift their arms.

  And then, Golurk simply fell. They were far too damaged to keep going on.

  “And now, we restart,” I said, frustrated at myself, returning my single Pokémon and being required to head back to that entrance room. In there, I had the option to retire or change my team, but I refused, choosing instead to take some time and sit, applying some of our more recently earned medicines to remove the stone shards and give Golurk a second wind.

  We pushed into the seventh floor again.

  A Ground-type like Golurk might have had the advantage over a Poison-type, but a Pokémon’s poison was based more on the energy behind their moves rather than any physical substance. Once again, Golurk almost seemed to be immune due to their artificial nature, but when a Seviper lunged to latch onto their shoulder and pumped their body full of poison, Golurk could only keep standing until a sudden lurch, and for the second time tonight, they fell, defeated.

  “Alright,” I said, pacing back and forth after healing Golurk and giving them time to rest in the safe entrance again. “We could try pushing out for a third time, but I’m already sensing a pattern. I don’t want to send you into a battle that we’d just lose again. From what I’ve seen, I know you’re strong enough to win, so that means all of these losses so far have been on me.”

  My plan for battling with Golurk was to command them much like the rest of the team: with raw offense, Golurk was capable of unleashing powerful moves that could overwhelm basically any foe. However, unlike everyone else, Golurk was actually pretty slow. That heavy construct Pokémon needed to reach their opponent before attack, and even then, much like how Valiant had done so back at the Strange House, it was pretty trivial to avoid Golurk’s slow and obvious attacks.

  Really, the strategy of just lumbering forward and throwing out basic punches was never going to work against experienced trainers.

  When it came to leading Golurk, I needed to think about this differently.

  “This is a test for me just as much as it’s a test for you,” I said, stopping where I paced so I could better look at Golurk. “And if I’m not doing well as is, then I need to figure out a way to adapt. So, Golurk, how about this: let’s see all of your moves—and I really do mean all of your moves.”

  Most of the time, I ignored my Pokémon’s weaker attacks.

  For Golurk, a lot of what they demonstrated weren’t moves but just different ways to deliver mundane punches. They were applications of raw strength that lacked the energy that’d make them truly damaging against a tough foe. However, Golurk was still capable of a few more powerful techniques—actual moves worth being called for in battle. Not many of them, to be honest, but enough to work as puzzle pieces that’d let me put together new ideas.

  Golurk knew Shadow Punch, a move that’d make their fists overwhelming and unavoidable.

  They knew Iron Defense, a move that could enhance and support their body’s innate sturdiness.

  Magnitude, a consequence of Ground-type energy washing out to shake the earth whenever Golurk stomped their feet.

  And finally, Heavy Slam, but that attack existed through technicality alone. Golurk could use the move by enhancing themself with the Steel-type energy of Iron Defense and then kind of just... letting themself fall onto their opponent to deal damage via weight.

  “But you also have your weaker moves,” I said, watching Golurk’s ongoing demonstration. “The ones we both tend to not think about. The simple ones you probably picked up as a Golett.”

  Pound. Astonish. Defense Curl. Mud-Slap.

  Golurk demonstrated all of those as well, but most of them wouldn't be much help.

  I’d already seen Pound used accidentally when Golurk showed off their mundane punches. Technically, it could be used to turn Golurk’s most basic attack into something more usable, but Pound itself hardly carried any damaging energy. I supposed that we could have maybe used it as a baseline to figure out a higher-power move like Mega Punch, but that was too much of a development to have time for right now.

  Also, Astonish was useless—that brief flinch caused by a flash of Ghost-type energy was nothing Golurk could take advantage of with their low speed. Similarly, Defense Curl was worse than worthless; it was actively detrimental. Iron Defense was better in all regards, as using Defense Curl required Golurk to sit down and wrap their limbs around their body, turning them into a sitting duck only capable of sustaining slightly more damage than before.

  “But Mud-Slap, however...” I said, watching Golurk demonstrate that attack. “Can you walk and use it at the same time?”

  Slowly, Golurk turned to look at me with their unblinking eyes. From what I had to guess, they had never tried that combination before, but for these battles, they would give it a shot.

  “Next opponent, then,” I said.

  Before too long, we were already out of the safe room and back to the main floor, facing off against a grinning trainer who was also trying to clear the floor.

  “Durant!” the young boy shouted. “Lean into your Hustle! Knock down that Golurk with your Iron Head!”

  Durant was just an ant with a metal carapace, but an ant could be incredibly intimidating when it came up to a person’s knees and possessed mandibles strong enough to carve through steel. When it scurried across the tile floor to rush where Golurk was standing, it did so with an incredible force behind its movements. Its ability, Hustle, greatly increased the power of all of its physical attacks in exchange for slightly lower accuracy.

  Yet, that was exactly what we needed. Somehow, we had stumbled upon the perfect opponent for us to test out my and Golurk’s new idea.

  “Get close. Use Mud-Slap!” I ordered. “Aim for the eyes! And don’t worry about dealing damage.”

  Beginning to walk forward to meet the ant in battle, Golurk brought up an arm to point their open palm forward. There, from the clay that made up their body, Ground-type energy was used to send globs of mud splattering out. Most of that splatter just ended up hitting the floor, but just as I wanted, several globs splashed across the Durant’s large, red eyes.

  “You’re on target!” our opponent yelled, unperturbed by the move as he guided his Pokémon through its blindness. “Keep going!”

  “Same to you, Golurk,” I said as well. “Just keep going forward.”

  As I watched the battle, I quickly found myself clenching my hands.

  Soon, the two Pokémon met in the center. And honestly, neither of them was that fast. Even with the mud from Mud-Slap blocking its eyes, the Durant found where Golurk stood. I winced as it slammed into my Pokémon’s shin, but the Iron Head hadn’t been aimed well enough to cause a flinch, and Golurk was easily able to stabilize.

  Then, they brought one arm back.

  “Shadow Punch,” I said quietly.

  Like I had seen before, Golurk’s attack carried a certain inevitability to it. The ghostly energy infused into that single fist seemed to wield the weight of the universe itself.

  Durant was almost attracted to it in return—but it was more like Golurk’s fist attracted the life energy of Durant, instead.

  Shadow Punch was a move that could never miss, but that wasn’t a necessity here. The mud covering the Durant’s eyes meant it never thought to dodge, and Golurk’s arm fully extended, utterly consuming the Pokémon with their fist.

  When Golurk finally pulled their attack back, the Durant lay there with its legs splayed out and with the mud slightly pushed back to reveal the daze of a fainted Pokémon.

  “Good,” I said to my newest team member. “We’ll keep up that strategy.”

  Using Mud-Slap, of all things, worked again against our opponent’s Whirlipede, but it did not work against the boy’s Scyther, whose Flying-type made it immune to the Ground-type move.

  However, that just meant we needed to rely on a different technique:

  Iron Defense.

  Golurk brought up their arms to reinforce themself with that defensive energy, and the Scyther was unable to land any meaningful moves. Once it drew back, one more Shadow Punch was thrown forward, and the Scyther could not stop the attack before Golurk crushed their opponent once more.

  “Thank you for the battle!” I shouted to the other trainer.

  I genuinely meant it; it had been incredibly informative.

  “...Ugh. Yeah. I guess,” the kid grumbled. “Mom’s gonna be angry that I stayed out this late.”

  We couldn’t move on right away; Golurk was far too injured to get into another battle after that fight. The only reason they had lasted through three opponents was because of their use of Iron Defense right at the end. Without it, the amassing damage would have been too much, and they would have fallen before securing that final knock-out.

  I looked at them while they stood in place, resting. I had to manage our healing supplies carefully; we only had so much of them left.

  “You’re not able to battle like anyone else on the team,” I said to Golurk, carefully spraying them with a Hyper Potion I had received as a reward. “We can’t have you rushing your attacks and failing to get close. You’re all about offensive power—which I love—but we actually need to work to find openings for your singular, battle-ending attacks.”

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell how a Pokémon like Golurk could work in a double battle, but to climb, I just needed to focus on making sure we could get through these single battles together. Yet again, I was learning another reason why the Master Rank was even further away than I had first thought, but I was never going to give up, and I knew the same was true for my team.

  My Pokémon couldn’t be the only ones to benefit from this training; I needed to learn how to be a better trainer as well.

  With Golurk, our path through the floor became slow and methodical. I had no Pokémon out that could make the search easy, and a building like this wasn’t somewhere I could use my drones to cover a greater amount of ground. However, just because we didn’t move quickly didn’t mean we made no progress. After each fight, we had to rest, and with that, I made another new discovery:

  Apparently, people liked to talk?

  Not every meeting had to end once a battle was concluded, and people were willing to exchange information about what they had learned. There were areas of the floor in which trainers had searched unsuccessfully, and there were other areas in which they had fought another trainer, lost, and then later found that person had disappeared.

  Although everyone here was everyone else’s opponent, we were all trying to reach the higher floors together. There was no sense in hiding information; we were opponents, but our real opponent was Black Tower itself.

  And then, before I had even realized it, we had somehow made our way to the end after only four very close battles—and two more defeats. Following a few hints I had learned, the entrance to the final boss room was located within a simple office meeting room. There, a lowered screen used to support a projector hid an entrance that led to the floor’s final area.

  Golurk and I squeezed in, and Golurk had taken a lot of damage to get here. Healing items could help with injuries, but lost energy could only be recovered with a proper rest.

  I wanted to sleep. It was almost midnight. But I knew that climbing seven floors in one day would be an incredible success in a building with fifty of them.

  Walking past that screen, we entered an empty room large enough to support a decent battle. I couldn’t say that the featureless area was big enough to equal an official field, but it had enough space for a quick-and-easy match.

  “Huh? Oh, wow,” came a voice from the other side of the room. “I didn’t expect to face anyone I recognized today.”

  “Do I know you?” I asked, confused.

  The guy standing across from us, waiting in front of the wall containing the elevator, had tanned skin and white hair turning dark at its roots. His eyes were sharp and full of confidence, and as he grinned at me, I realized that I also recognized him.

  We’d never interacted, but I had made Geeta a promise, and I had memorized this trainer’s face back in Undella Town when I had witnessed how well his Escavalier could fight.

  “Wait, you’re the Escavalier guy!” I said, pointing at him.

  “And you’re the soap-opera guy!” he said, pointing in return.

  “I have literally never appeared on a T.V. show.”

  “Sure, but I listened to that entire conversation you had with the weird masked guy, and it was dramatic enough to have basically been a soap opera,” the other trainer said.

  He smiled at me in good humor, but I didn’t feel amused. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d have probably been more friendly, but it was nearing midnight, and we were still in Black Tower.

  The other trainer was already tossing his Pokéball up and down.

  “So, we’re to face off to see which of us gets to the eighth floor today,” he said idly. “You and your Golurk, I take it?”

  “Yup. Golurk’s the only Pokémon with me.”

  “Huh.” He looked me up and down, humming for a few seconds. “That’s not really fair then, is it? I still have all of my three, so how about this—as a thanks for being so entertaining back then, how about I forfeit if you manage to win against just one member of my team? We’re not really in a rush.”

  I blinked, almost wanting to question his decision, but I was absolutely not going to look this gift horse in the mouth.

  “Got it. I agree. No take-backs!” I said quickly. I wanted to jump into battle before this trainer could even think of changing his mind.

  At my fast response, he laughed.

  “Perfect!” he said. “But it’s too bad for you—I won’t be needing any other Pokémon. I can afford to give you that offer for a reason: come on out, Sandslash!”

  A sky blue Pokéball sailed forward—a Dive Ball—and then a Pokémon with hardened, icy spikes on its back appeared on the empty battlefield.

  This was no Ground-type, nor was it a species native to Unova or Kanto. The trainer here had released something only ever naturally found in Alola.

  “An Ice-type,” I mumbled.

  I understood the trainer’s confidence: Golurk’s Ground-type would make them extremely susceptible to an Alolan Sandslash’s Ice-type moves. And, if commanded correctly, a Sandslash could be agile. Even if it wasn’t the fastest Pokémon around, it could easily outmaneuver a sluggish Golurk.

  But even though this trainer had given us a “fair” challenge that he had the full expectation of winning, he had made two crucial mistakes:

  First, an Alolan Sandslash also possessed the Steel-type, making it vulnerable to a Golurk’s Ground-type moves in return.

  And second,

  “You first!” the other trainer shouted.

  Without even realizing it, he had screwed himself over. By letting us move first, he had sealed his Pokémon’s fate.

  Pokémon mentioned in this chapter:

  Fraxure

  Nick’s Team:

  Current Placement: Great Rank

  (Note: Low-level moves have been omitted.)

  Iron Valiant (Valiant) (Fairy / Fighting type, Genderless, Serious Nature, +-n/a)

  Abilities: Quark Drive

  Moves: Fury Cutter, Feint, Dazzling Gleam, Psycho Cut, Night Slash, Close Combat, Shadow Claw, Electric Terrain

  Rotom (Electric / Variable type, Genderless (Male), Quirky Nature, +-n/a)

  Available Forms*: Default (Ghost type), Fan (Flying type), Wash (Water type), Mow (Grass type)

  Abilities: Levitate

  Moves: Charge, Thunder Wave, Discharge, Shadow Ball, Thunderbolt, Thunder, Electric Terrain, Variable*

  Variable Form Moves*: Air Slash (Fan), Hydro Pump (Wash), Leaf Storm (Mow)

  Liepard (Dark type, Male, Naughty Nature, +Atk/-SpD)

  Abilities: Limber, Prankster

  Moves: Assist, Snarl, Fake Out, Bite, Torment, Hone Claws, Slash, Taunt, Night Slash, Shadow Claw, Psycho Cut, Encore, Foul Play

  (Steel / Psychic type, Genderless (Male), Adamant Nature, +Atk/-SpA)

  Pokéball: Ultra Ball

  Abilities: Clear Body

  Moves: Take Down, Metal Claw, Confusion, Zen Headbutt, Magnet Rise, Iron Head

  (Ground / Ghost type, Genderless, Brave Nature, +Atk/-Spe)

  Pokéball: Ultra Ball

  Abilities: Klutz

  Moves: Pound, Astonish, Defense Curl, Mud-Slap, Shadow Punch, Iron Defense, Magnitude, Heavy Slam

  enormous thank you to everyone reading! Your support keeps this story going.