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At the same time, Basculin's crimson eyes remained locked on Kael. Seeing him take that heavy strike head-on and come away with little more than a glancing injury, a flicker of surprise flashed through its gaze.
For all its wild, brutish appearance, Basculin was no mindless thug.
Any Pokémon that could become the ruler of a lake this large, even in the relatively safe environment of a marine park, had to have something going for it.
The rest of its kin, the ones consumed by greed and driven by nothing but biting and devouring, had long since died off.
Only an individual like this one, fierce and savage but still sharp enough to know when to press and when to pull back, could survive in nature and rise to dominate an entire wetland.
Its opponent was strong.
Basculin knew that perfectly well.
But that did not mean it would back down.
A Pokémon that had already climbed this high within the park still possessed the most basic things of all.
Pride.
Confidence.
Unless it faced an enemy so overwhelming that resistance was pointless, it would never willingly retreat.
Besides, judging by the strength Kael had shown earlier, it was still unclear who would emerge victorious.
Splash!
Water surged violently behind Basculin as its wide tail, armored in rough dark-green scales, lashed once.
Its sleek body shot straight toward Kael.
Through years of fighting, it had learned one thing well.
In a battle where it already held the initiative, even the slightest hesitation could give the enemy the chance to recover and seize the flow of the fight.
It had to keep pressing forward.
It had to batter the enemy down with an unbroken storm of attacks, force them into passivity, strip away any chance to fight back, and create the opening that would end the battle.
But what Basculin had failed to account for was simple.
If it could think of that.
Then Kael, with the combat instincts and experience forged over multiple lives, had naturally thought of it long before.
His slender arms moved lightly through the water, and at once, countless currents began spiraling around his body like invisible whirlpools.
The precision of his control over Water-type energy was obvious.
The instant Basculin touched that unseen vortex, it felt as though countless threads had wrapped themselves around it, and the speed of its forward rush suddenly dropped.
Kael did not stop moving.
His feet pushed hard against the water as though stepping off some invisible platform, and his small body drifted sideways into the darker depths where the light barely reached.
The hardships he had endured these past days had not been wasted.
Besides the obvious rewards in experience, the camouflage skill he had been forced to rely on again and again for survival had advanced by leaps and bounds.
Its transparency now was on an entirely different level from when he had first entered this world.
Basculin's focus wavered for only an instant under the drag of the turbulent current.
And by the time it looked again, Kael's figure had already melted completely into the darkness.
Gone.
If some strong observer had been watching from outside, they would have noticed a thin, delicate film of shimmering water spread across Kael's now fully transparent skin.
That film allows him to move at high speed underwater while making a sound barely at all, thereby reducing the disturbance of the current to almost nothing.
This was one of the advanced applications of Aqua Ring Kael had figured out during this time.
It allowed him, while in a liquid environment, to minimize the noise and disruption caused by movement.
At first glance, it might not have seemed all that impressive.
But in certain battles, it was devastating.
Like now.
At this moment, Kael was like an assassin moving through water and shadow.
Patient.
Calm.
Silently waiting for the moment Basculin's growing frustration and panic exposed a fatal weakness.
Because in a fight where both sides were roughly equal in physical ability, Kael had been through this kind of thing too many times to count.
There was a simple phrase for how to handle it.
Play to your strengths.
Avoid theirs.
Basculin had more raw force and a stronger burst of power than he did.
So Kael refused to engage it head-on, denying it any chance to use that advantage.
At the same time, he himself clearly held the edge in mobility and agility.
Then that was where he would press the attack.
Using a skirmishing style built around hit-and-run movement, and taking full advantage of the absurd agility granted by Deoxys's cosmic DNA, he would strike from the flanks and tear Basculin apart piece by piece.
Meanwhile, Basculin, having lost sight of Sobble entirely, was beginning to grow agitated.
In the life it had lived here, a life that looked grand and dramatic on the surface but was in truth hollow, boring, and constantly watched by human eyes, it had never encountered an enemy like this.
Something that could simply vanish.
At a moment like this, its limited intelligence could offer no real strategy.
All it could do was rely on instinct.
It searched with the crudest tool it had, its eyes, trying desperately to catch any sign of movement in the water around it.
But against Kael's precise control of the currents, such a crude method had no chance of working.
Kael needed only the faintest flick of an arm.
And with the subtle shift of the water, Basculin was reduced to a blind beast crashing wildly through the dark, wasting more and more of its precious stamina.
Gradually, the violent battle lust that had filled Basculin's heart began to erode under one failed charge after another.
What replaced it was fear.
Then panic.
Szzzzzt.
Almost as if it had snapped, Basculin began wildly venting the Water-type energy it had built up inside its body, blasting it outward in every direction in the hope of forcing its hidden enemy into view.
But what met it was still only darkness.
Stillness.
The faint movement of lake water whispers past.
It almost felt as though Sobble had already escaped under the cover of the gloom and was no longer there at all.
A ridiculous thought flashed through Basculin's mind.
Had this all been pointless?
Had its opponent already fled?
No.
That was impossible.
It remembered clearly the fierce battle intent blazing in Sobble's eyes when the two had faced each other in the water.
A Pokémon willing to run would never have looked like that.
Then where was it?
Wrapped in the blackness of the silent lake, Basculin looked around and felt as though some huge unseen mouth were slowly closing around it.
Deep in the murky dark, Kael drifted naturally with the current, his transparent body hidden completely in shadow as he slipped into the blind spot behind Basculin's side.
Watching the enemy's helpless back, a faint smile appeared on his face.
Then, in the next instant.
Cold killing intent erupted.
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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)
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