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When Lanlian leaned forward to look, of course she saw nothing at all.
She might have been an Elite Four Trainer, one of the League's strongest, but she was still human. She was not some rare psychic. How could she possibly see through dense treetops from hundreds of meters in the air and make out what was happening on the ground?
All she could see from where she was were vast stretches of connected branches and foliage.
Nothing stood out.
She brushed a strand of ice-blue hair back behind her ear, the movement having loosened it across her cheek as she bent down, and thought for a moment.
The Swanna she was riding now had been caught shortly after she turned eighteen. By now, it had been with her for five or six years.
Its battle strength was not on the same level as the true ace Pokémon on her team, but it was still one of her main battlers.
And for a main Pokémon belonging to an Elite Four Trainer, weak was the last word anyone would use.
So when Swanna made such an unusual move, Lanlian believed there had to be a reason for it. It was not acting without cause.
Unfortunately, since she was not psychic, she could not speak directly with her Pokémon through some mental link and fully understand what it meant.
Even with her extensive training experience and the deep bond she shared with her partners, there were limits to what an ordinary human body allowed.
Understanding a Pokémon's basic intent was already the upper limit.
Anything more detailed than that, even for an Elite Four Trainer like her, remained beyond reach.
Lanlian glanced back at the thick cloud of ash spreading closer behind them and quickly estimated the timing in her head.
"There should still be a few minutes left. I can go down and see what Swanna found, then leave after."
Having made up her mind, Lanlian reached out and lightly patted Swanna's snow-white back, signaling for it to descend.
There was no need for further communication.
Seeing that its Trainer had agreed, Swanna immediately began circling downward from the sky toward the clearing below.
"A Trainer..."
Kael murmured weakly as he watched the pale figure above draw closer and closer.
It felt like the situation had changed.
Maybe... maybe he was not necessarily going to die here after all.
The sudden appearance of an unfamiliar female Trainer gave Kael, trapped in the depths of despair, a faint spark of hope.
He had no idea why she was here or what her attitude toward him would be.
But no matter what, something had changed.
If she saved him, that would be best.
And if not, then at worst, he would simply return to the cycle space and begin again.
That was what Kael told himself.
But the severity of his injuries and the blood he had already lost were enough to threaten his life. And after so much time without proper emergency treatment, even Kael's hardened soul could not keep his consciousness from slipping.
His vision began to darken.
His mind blurred.
And finally, just before the figure above reached the ground, he blacked out completely.
In the instant before he fell into darkness, he thought he heard a woman's startled cry, along with the faint trace of a gentle fragrance passing by his nose.
As Swanna spiraled lower and lower, the scene on the ground became clearer and clearer in Lanlian's eyes.
"This is..."
"A Sobble?"
With the solid foundation of Pokémon knowledge she possessed, she recognized at a glance this rare Water-type Pokémon, seldom seen in the wild.
"Why is it here?"
"And those injuries..."
Pushing her questions aside without hesitation, Lanlian quickly leapt off Swanna's back. With a set of medical supplies already in hand, she ran straight toward Kael.
"He's still breathing."
A trace of relief flashed through her as she got to work with practiced efficiency, cleaning the wounds, disinfecting them, stopping the bleeding, wrapping bandages.
Once she had confirmed that his condition would not worsen any further in the short term, Lanlian carefully lifted Kael's light body into her arms.
She did not care in the slightest that his blood stained her white dress a vivid red.
Holding him close, she hurried back to Swanna and climbed on again.
She was no professional medic. The first-aid knowledge she had learned at the academy was enough for temporary emergency treatment, nothing more. If she really wanted to save Sobble's life, she would need to get him to a proper Pokémon Center.
Whatever had happened to him, for this little Sobble to end up in such terrible condition...
His willpower must have been extraordinary.
If it had been an ordinary Pokémon, it likely would have collapsed long ago.
Seated cross-legged on Swanna's back as they flew through the ash-filled sky, Lanlian lowered her head and studied the Sobble in her arms.
A trace of pity flickered through her clear blue eyes.
After all, she was still just a young woman in her early twenties.
In some areas, she had already risen to heights many people could never hope to touch in a lifetime. But age still placed limits on her, as did the relative lack of life experience compared with others at her level. Faced with sudden situations like this, she was not as composed or detached as older Trainers might be.
If a Trainer in their forties, fifties, or older had stumbled across the same scene, many of them might still have chosen to help.
But they would never have acted as decisively as Lanlian.
Nor would they have felt it so deeply.
In fact, for many veteran Trainers who had already witnessed countless cycles of birth, injury, and death across long years of travel, cold indifference and walking away would have been perfectly normal.
To them, nature already had its own cycle.
Interfering in it too much was pointless.
The world was vast, and every second, somewhere, another Pokémon was being driven to the brink of death for one reason or another. How could anyone possibly save them all?
Perhaps there was some logic in that hardened, almost fossilized worldview.
But for someone like Lanlian, someone only just past adolescence, it simply did not work.
Her actions were guided much more by emotion and personal instinct.
And there was more to it than that.
The reason Lanlian had chosen to help Kael without a moment's hesitation the instant she saw him was not just youthful softness.
First, she was a Water-type Elite Four Trainer.
She had loved Water-type Pokémon since childhood. From the age of eight onward, she had devoted herself to studying and raising them.
Compared with Pokémon of other types, she held a special affection for Water-types.
And in a place like the core of Molten Season Forest, where everything was fire, fire, and more fire, the sudden appearance of a completely out-of-place Sobble had only deepened that feeling inside her, laying the emotional groundwork for her decision to help.
Second, compared with men, most women were simply more inclined to respond emotionally.
Kael's current Sobble body had the classic proportions of a newborn Pokémon, a large head and a tiny body, giving him an especially cute, almost fragile look.
And when that was combined with the savage wounds covering his body, wounds so deep that bone was visible in places...
The effect on a young woman's sympathy was devastating.
His pity factor was through the roof.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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For early access to advanced chapters on P-atreon:
P-atreon/iamxeno
(Just remove the - hyphen to access normally)
Thank you so much for your support and for reading!