"You and Dragapult are getting more and more in sync; that growth didn't come easy."
He replied, "That's all thanks to Mr Mikoli's help."
Losing is losing.
Doesn't mean he and Dragapult came away with nothing—at the very least, Dragapult's stress tolerance had visibly shot up.
Their coordination had leveled up a lot too.
The proof was the increased accuracy and wider range when pinpointing positions while invisible.
Like how he clearly couldn't see what was going on underground, yet Baimu could still tell exactly where the Digging Steelix and Aggron were.
"I told you, no need to be so formal."
Mikoli clapped him on the back with a smile and said, "Even in private you're like this. You're really gonna make things awkward for me."
Compared to the middle-aged gentleman Adam, Mikoli wasn't hung up on formalities when dealing with people, and even encouraged a certain someone to relax a bit.
But maybe it was precisely because he owed the man so much.
Baimu found it hard to treat Mikoli the same way he treated Shanren, and could only fall back on the tone he used with Da Wu.
Didn't expect the other party to still think it was too stiff.
He could only let out two awkward laughs.
"Ha… ha…"
"Still, the fact you didn't obsess over having Dragapult win faster is really reassuring."
Mikoli said gently, "I thought you'd be impatient, and deliberately raised the overall level of the Pokémon you sent out, but it looks like you already understand that raising Pokémon is a long process."
So it was on purpose after all…
Baimu's mouth twitched. Ever since the former Champion heard he'd been raising Pokémon for not even a year, the man's battle attitude had subtly changed.
As if he didn't want Baimu walking down a certain wrong path, so he was secretly putting pressure on him.
No wonder whenever Liuqia mentioned her uncle, she always sounded a bit annoyed, yet full of undisguised admiration and longing.
If you didn't know better you'd think she was tsundere.
"Pressure is also motivation. I get that."
Baimu's only concern earlier had been Dragapult.
But since that guy was fine, then he was fine; the rest of his Pokémon were even less likely to have any issues.
After seeing the real gap between them and a Champion, basically every one of his Pokémon was holding back a surge of energy, ready to push their strength higher.
Even Corsola was putting in an extra ten minutes of training every day—
Whether voluntary or "voluntarily volunteered" aside.
"Sigh, it's good that Lord Baimu is so sharp, but as your mentor it does make me feel a bit lonely."
Mikoli suddenly sighed.
It was like he'd gotten his hands on a near-endgame account: the more he played, the more he realized there was nothing left for him to actually do—zero gaming experience.
Baimu didn't dare pick that up.
Mikoli then asked, "By the way, has Da Wu contacted you recently? I remember he said he was going on a business trip to Carlos?"
"No."
——
Things over in Carlos weren't at a standstill.
The latest report from Shanren said that Flop, who'd successfully infiltrated, had gathered a lot of evidence on the Flashing Flame Team's construction of a doomsday weapon.
And that they'd just completed an operation named "Z."
"Z"?
Isn't that Zygarde?
Once Baimu saw that message, he knew Z2 had most likely been captured by the Flashing Flame Team.
Ailan, who cared way too much about Chespin and Manon, had lost his basic judgment and helped the Flashing Flame Team use shady means to capture Zygarde in its fifty-percent form.
He couldn't even hear Zygarde's cries of pain.
And he never stopped to think—was human "prosperity" built on a Pokémon's suffering really what he'd wanted in the first place?
If Dr. Bratano ever found out, the man would at least give him two good slaps to wake him up.
Obviously.
Baimu couldn't be bothered with that guy's moral journey; he was more interested in that chubby scientist in the Flashing Flame Team.
If he remembered correctly, the guy was called Kuselloski. That guy had probably already started developing a system that could manipulate the minds of Zygarde and even humans.
He was a little surprised he could remember the full name, but he didn't dwell on it, just quietly going over the Flashing Flame Team's current progress.
He had messaged Da Wu, but it was like throwing a rock into the ocean.
If he hadn't already contacted Xijana, the Meteor People member in charge of watching the Giant Stone, who told him Da Wu was still by Fladari's side…
He would've almost thought the dignified Hoenn Champion had been caught by the Flashing Flame Team with some despicable trick.
And if the Flashing Flame Team had gotten this far, there's no way Da Wu—who'd been warned by him—hadn't discovered anything.
There was only one reason why the latter hadn't moved—
The evidence chain was incomplete.
As the side of "justice," they couldn't take Fladari down with just speculation; without solid, detailed evidence, even if they knew his plan, they couldn't make a move.
On the flip side, acting rashly would only alert the enemy and make it impossible to crush him in one go.
"Guess Mr. Da Wu is racking his brains too…"
Baimu believed Da Wu was agonizing over how to handle Fladari; the more you understood the man's true nature, the clearer it became that prison time wouldn't grind down his ambition.
Looking across the games, manga, and anime.
Fladari's endings never involved any "turning over a new leaf."
In the games he disappears in the light of the ultimate weapon; in the manga he collapses under the rubble created by Zygarde's power over the land; in the anime he vanishes together with the destroyed Giant Stone.
The blank space between the lines can basically be summed up with the word "death."
Best case, he gets sent to keep Ghetsis company. In the anime, once that guy was caught by the pretty boy, there's no way he got anything less than life without parole.
As for right now.
Baimu was weighing whether he should go to Carlos, and what he could do once he got there.
Charging in like a headless fly was out of the question.
It would waste his time and might even cause trouble for Da Wu and the others.
Force Fladari to act ahead of schedule?
The lion-man clearly intended to wait until the Lumiose Conference opened and all of Carlos's civilians had gathered in Lumiose City before making his move—easier to mow them down in one go.
Which implied the Flashing Flame Team already could've acted sooner.
If that's the case, they might as well borrow the power of that Z1 "Squishy" at Youx Lijia's side and launch a massive Rush on Lysandre Labs. Best case, they could rescue Z2; worst case, they could at least force the Flashing Flame Team to prematurely activate their control over Z2…
Hiss!
Why did he feel like a villain now?
Lysandre Labs was basically right outside Lumiose City; Da Wu and the others could hop on a helicopter and be there in no time.
If they accidentally triggered the Legendary Giant Stone, wouldn't that still mean "mass casualties"?
Baimu thought back to his original reason for messing with Fladari—
To prevent the Flashing Flame Team from causing large-scale destruction in Lumiose City and harming those innocent civilians and Pokémon.
But the more he thought about it this way—
The more he actually wanted to go to Carlos himself, with the goal of rescuing Z2 from the Flashing Flame Team's claws and preventing the Giant Stone from rampaging.
Speaking of which.
Baimu remembered that he'd needed a reason to go to Carlos…
Ah!
"The Super Evolution Wave!"
He remembered the movie "Volcanion and the Mechanized Puppet Magearna."
In it, there was a device that used cutting-edge mystical science to force Pokémon to Super Evolve without Key Stones and Super Stones and without any bond between Pokémon and Trainer.
The Ore Region wasn't like the Alola Region, Galar Region, or Padia Region with their own unique gimmicks, nor was it as rich as those other regions.
If he could refine that Super Evolution Wave so it no longer caused Pokémon pain, he could use it in Ore's Gym Battles.
It could become the defining feature of Gym Battles in the Ore Region.
As for whether, by the time of the Alola arc, Key Stones and Super Stones had become so common that every Hall Master had one—allowing Xiaogang and Xiaoxia to have theirs—who knew.
In any case, it beat having nothing.
"Hmm… wonder how far Ash Ketchum and the others have gotten in their journey. The movie plot probably hasn't started yet."
Baimu searched for news related to the Azoth Kingdom. In the story, the villains made the kingdom's entire castle wall take flight—an incident that big would definitely hit the news.
The fact that nothing came up meant it hadn't happened yet.
"Hopefully it'll be after the end of the training."
Baimu glanced at the calendar; there were still nine days left until Adam's lessons ended.
He pulled the Lucky Scale out of his pocket. "Come on, show me some magic~"
Judging from past experience, it wasn't hard to guess that making this thing "work" came at a price, but he still hoped he could make it in time for that movie's events.
Then he suddenly remembered: that movie didn't just have the Super Evolution Wave, it also had an altered-color Gengar.
The key point was that this altered-color Gengar had zero bond with the villain; once it saw the device releasing the Super Evolution Wave get destroyed and Jarvis taken down, it simply bailed.
Without a shred of hesitation.
A traitor like that… uh, no, a Pokémon that "abandons darkness for light" really needs some proper education!