The holographic radar array left Malamar completely flabbergasted.
Malamar (Thinking): What under heaven is this sorcery? How can there be this many Alolan Ninetales occupying the same coordinate framework?
The bipedal cephalopod reacted instantly, all eight of its secondary tentacles swinging forward to discharge a synchronized volley of Shadow Balls. The dark spheres whistled through the freezing wind, slamming into the oncoming white foxes.
Yet the moment the impact finalized, the struck Ninetales merely dissolved into harmless flurries of blowing snow. A mere millisecond later, the ambient snow drifts coalesced once more, formatting fresh, lifelike copies that lunged toward Malamar with bared fangs.
"Dammit... it's a cascading illusion matrix!" Aaron growled, his composure fraying. "And every single duplicate is projecting an active kinetic threat vector!"
The Shadow Weaver found himself entirely unable to decode which white fox held the true biological core.
"Malamar, lock down the grid with Gravity!"
Malamar brought its two primary scythe-tentacles together, unleashing a heavy, pulsing ripple of pitch-black gravitational waves that warped the atmospheric friction across the arena.
Onefold weight.
Twofold weight.
Fivefold weight.
Within seconds, Malamar forced the localized gravitational index to line up at absolute tenfold density. The reinforced concrete floor groaned under the sheer compression, yet the lifelike snow duplicates continued to charge forward, leaping across the drifts to target Malamar as if completely unbothered by the atmospheric drag.
"How is this possible?! Why are these frozen replicas entirely immune to tenfold gravity structures?!"
Aaron was thoroughly dumbfounded by the field data; it was the first time in his career he had encountered an illusion matrix that disregarded basic physical laws.
"Ninetales, Ice Beam!"
A multi-directional array of freezing, ice-blue energy beams erupted from the snowbanks, converging on the cephalopod like a laser grid. Seeing the absolute zero trap closing in, Malamar executed an emergency Teleport, vanishing from its coordinates a split-second before the beams connected.
The ice-blue rays collided at the epicenter, instantly snapping into a colossal block of solid ice that crashed heavily onto the concrete.
"Direct a maximum Blizzard straight into the high airspace!"
Feng Che had no intention of allowing Malamar to exploit its blind teleportation windows. A widespread, high-volume saturation attack would inevitably catch the cephalopod the moment it rematerialized.
A violent, freezing maelstrom blanketed the entire stadium, reducing visibility to zero. Caught within the sudden atmospheric drop mid-teleport, Malamar rematerialized high above the arena, its limbs instantly stiffening from the flash-freeze.
"Tsk... this is infuriating! I can't launch a definitive counter if I can't locate the primary target!" Aaron spat, his aesthetic pride cracking under the pressure. "Malamar, format a maximum Shadow Ball!"
He intended to use a high-yield concussive blast to manually clear the entire environmental grid.
Responding to the command, Malamar focused its internal reserves, condensing a massive, two-meter-wide orb of concentrated dark energy above its cranial stalks. Pitch-black and violet static currents strobed violently across the surface of the floating sphere.
Harnessing the full length of its scythe-appendages, Malamar hurled the colossal Shadow Ball straight down into the center of the tundra.
The moment the dark sphere impacted the concrete, it detonated, transforming into a sweeping, multi-layered wave of black electrical friction that surged across every inch of the arena floor. The absolute kinetic feedback instantly ruptured the lingering snow duplicates, clearing the field.
"Ninetales, Dazzling Gleam!"
A blinding, incandescent flash of fairy energy erupted from a hidden coordinate. The overwhelming brilliance washed out the stadium, forcing Malamar to violently shield its compound eyes, yet it could still feel the intense, burning searing friction of the fairy alignment blistering its hide.
When the radiant glare finally receded, a yawning crater dominated the center of the field, the black residual currents completely expunged from the grid.
Standing near the edge of the fracture was the Alolan Ninetales, calmly and elegantly grooming its pristine white fur as if the explosive detonation had been nothing but a passing breeze.
"There you are! Malamar, bury it with Shadow Ball!" Aaron bellowed, seizing the visual confirmation.
A rapid-fire cascade of dark spheres rained down from the sky. Ninetales moved with flawless grace, its slender limbs blurring as it executed a fluid, rhythmic sequence of evasive maneuvers to drift through the bombardment.
The Shadow Balls detonated against the turf behind its heels, throwing up a continuous wall of pulverized rock and shrapnel.
Concurrently, a thick, pink iridescent mist began venting from Ninetales's paws, quickly locking down the field into a Misty Terrain.
"Ninetales, Moonblast!"
The fox's hide flared with blinding silver energy as a spectacular, radiant moon rose smoothly beneath the stadium roof. The intense silver glare burned Malamar's vision, the ambient fairy friction causing its outer skin to break out into a matrix of painful blisters.
"Malamar, clear the feedback with Recover!"
The cephalopod gritted its jaws against the burning heat, channeling its internal cellular reserves to trigger a Recover. A matrix of golden light-points surged through its nervous system, cooling its tissue blocks and systematically dissolving the blisters across its hide.
"Now, break its alignment with Swagger!"
Malamar unleashed a shifting, multi-colored optical frequency from its luminescent patterns. The chaotic light struck Ninetales squarely, plunging the fox into a state of severe mental confusion. Yet, instead of thrashing mindlessly, the white fox automatically entered the fluid, rhythmic choreography of a Swords Dance.
"Malamar, capitalize on the multiplier! Foul Play!" Aaron ordered, a vicious smirk returning to his lips.
Foul Play was a specialized dark-type art that mathematically derived its final damage output from the opponent's active physical attack stat—the higher the target's attack, the more catastrophic the final kinetic blow.
"I had Malamar apply a maximum Swagger to your Ninetales, which artificially spiked its baseline attack metrics to the absolute ceiling," Aaron explained with immense arrogance. "And then your confused asset chose that exact window to execute a Swords Dance, pushing its physical attack output to absolute MAX thresholds. I'm afraid your pristine beauty is about to be retired from the field."
A concentrated beam of jet-black dark energy erupted from Malamar's mouth-parts, striking Ninetales squarely in the chest.
CRACK!
The impact was thunderous, yet the moment the dark beam pierced the target's chest, the white fox shattered into a spray of frozen crystals.
"Another duplicate?! Where under heaven is it hiding all these decoys?!"
Aaron's psychological framework officially shattered, his tactical sanity fracturing under the continuous deception.
"Ninetales, finalize it with Ice Beam!"
Right at that exact split-second of cognitive dissonance, the topsoil right beneath Malamar's hovering tentacles ruptured. The true Alolan Ninetales burst from the subterranean pocket. Taking absolute advantage of the cephalopod's frozen reaction window, it unleashed a maximum-potency Ice Beam at point-blank range.
The absolute-zero beam enveloped Malamar instantly, flash-freezing its bipedal frame into a solid, heavy block of ice that crashed heavily onto the ruined concrete below.
"Flawless execution, Ninetales. Conclude the gate with Dazzling Gleam!"
A definitive, blinding burst of fairy energy shattered the frozen capsule, and as the radiant light faded, Malamar lay flat on the turf, completely incapacitated.
The Unseen Chronicle
Up in the VIP gallery, Julie leaned over the console, her brow furrowed in absolute bewilderment. "Chief Sky, I'm thoroughly confused by the environmental logs. How did Ninetales manage to anchor its primary coordinate matrix deep underground? I monitored the spatial tracking feeds throughout the initialization phase, and it never registered the execution of a standard Dig matrix."
"The boy's Ninetales executed an exceptionally high-order tactical loop," Chief Sky explained, a look of profound appreciation coloring his voice as he stroked his white goatee. "The exact millisecond it activated the Snow Warning matrix, it used the visual distortion of the heavy flurries to manually dig into the sub-soil, concealing its core location."
"It then deployed a high-density Substitute to remain on the surface, using that decoy to direct the movement of its lesser snow-clones. While Aaron was burning his stamina trying to decode the surface duplicates, Ninetales's true body was resting comfortably inside the subterranean pocket, utilizing Rest to systematically erase its attrition metrics and top off its stamina."
"The mechanical execution required absolute precision. A single computational error or a minor delay in the Substitute transition would have left the core vulnerable, costing him the entire match. It was a masterclass in risk management."
The Formless Paradigm
"For my final gatekeeper... you will face this!" Aaron snarled, his theatrical composure thoroughly gone as he recalled his fallen cephalopod, violently tossing his anchor capsule onto the field to deploy an elite Absol.
"Return, Ninetales. Rest easy," Feng Che murmured, clicking his luxury ball to secure his vanguard.
He ran his fingers down his belt, pausing before selecting a standard, unadorned Poké Ball. With a smooth flick of his wrist, he deployed his next asset onto the concrete.
The capsule opened, releasing a small, formless blob of purple, elastic gelatin onto the field.
It was a Ditto.
This marked the absolute first time in Feng Che's career that he had chosen to expose the existence of his Ditto before the high-level proctors and the executive surveillance of the World League.