Corviknight's razor-sharp beak jabbed smoothly into the translucent barrier. With a sharp, crystalline shatter, the milky-white Protect shield fractured into countless glowing shards that scattered uselessly through the atmosphere.
Sensing its barrier collapse, Magnezone immediately countered. The interlocking rings plating its chassis and its massive master gears rotated at a frantic cadence, acting as whirring buzzsaws to lock Corviknight in a brutal close-quarters struggle.
Under the extreme friction of the collision, the metallic rings and gears ground down under severe operational wear, yet Corviknight's Drill Peck successfully pierced straight through the dense defense line to impact Magnezone's central hull.
Magnezone's massive frame plummeted from the high ceiling like a heavy bomber crashing to earth.
The armored titan impacted the basin floor with a resounding structural thud, sending a thick column of smoke and dust mushrooming into the air.
By the hour the dust rings fully dissolved, Corviknight was calmly grounded across the floor, meticulously preening its steel feathers with its beak. Scattered in pieces around its talons lay the thoroughly fractured, disconnected chassis of Magnezone.
"Incredible... Magnezone actually took an absolute, definitive loss right here?!" Ghetsis spat venomously from his seat, his face contorted with pure irritation.
"Magnezone's core reserves sustained an exceptional taxation across the previous exchanges. Feng Che simply mapped the precise millisecond my partner's kinetic output hit absolute exhaustion," N remarked, completely unbothered by the tactical setback. He prioritized the intellectual thrill of high-tier mechanical execution far above superficial wins or losses.
"Return, Magnezone. Your performance parameters were exceptionally beautiful."
N retracted his fallen partner into its capsule, while Feng Che concurrently recalled his Corviknight.
"You truly deserve your reputation as the supreme sovereign of the Unova region. Your battle metrics leave me entirely vindicated," N acknowledged, nodding his head toward the youth in genuine professional admiration.
"Now—allow me to introduce my tertiary asset."
Both Trainers synchronized their release motions to hurl their next Poké Balls into the clearing. The partner materializing before Feng Che's coordinates was an exceptionally massive Arcanine, while Feng Che countered by deploying his seasoned Ninetales.
Arcanine stood as a majestic, canine-like Pokémon of gargantuan proportions. A thick, billowing mantle of flaxen fur crested its head and completely obscured its facial margins. Its intense eyes burned a deep shade of amber, its primary hide marked by a striking pattern of tiger-like black and orange stripes. Flanking its powerful limbs were dense ruffles of decorative running fur, trailing into a long, elegant tail.
When establishing a high-velocity sprint, its physical vessel appeared to seamlessly co-mingle with the wind, radiating a peerless, regal majesty.
This particular Arcanine's physical volume was colossally massive, and deep within its flaxen mane, faint ripples of brilliant, iridescent energy continuously pulsed across the air.
[Feng Che, my tracking sensors are flagging the absolute energy signature of Entei within this Arcanine's core,] Mewtwo reported telepathically. Having anchored its vessel alongside Ho-Oh's Legendary beasts for a significant duration in the past, it was deeply familiar with the distinct parameters of the Three Legendary Beasts.
[This structural layout tracks perfectly. Team Plasma has spent decades systematically harvesting and sequencing rare genetic assets from across the global order.]
[N's Arcanine has undeniably been injected with highly stable, synthesized Entei gene cells, permitting its pathways to smoothly channel a Legendary deity's authority.]
[I calculate this Arcanine commands a secondary, hidden combat morphology,] Feng Che responded via the psychic bridge.
He showed near-zero anxiety regarding the threat Arcanine posed to his Ninetales. His Ninetales was an exceptionally refined, high-tier asset in its own right.
"Arcanine, use Flamethrower!"
Arcanine unhinged its jaws, expelling a towering column of concentrated fire across the arena floor.
Ninetales remained entirely fluid, casually spreading its nine elegant tails to catch the incoming Flamethrower. The flowing tails wove an intricate cage that securely wrapped and contained the fire stream, before a sharp flick of its plumage violently dispersed the technique into thousands of harmless, fading sparks.
Stepping forward with elegant, measured strides, Ninetales gave a gentle sway of its magnificent tails. Instantly, thousands of eerie purple embers materialized out of thin air to surround the target. It had effortlessly mapped a full-field Will-O-Wisp matrix.
"A Will-O-Wisp array... An exceptional application. Standard Ninetales lack the baseline parameters to manifest a field of this quality, meaning your partner has successfully inherited an ancestral legacy line," N analyzed, thoroughly intrigued.
"Your administrative control over your roster is superb. However, I am eager to see whether your Ninetales's legacy parameters can override my Arcanine's siphoned divinity."
"Arcanine, clear the perimeter with Fire Blast!"
N snapped his fingers with a sharp crack. Thousands of ambient thermal sparks rapidly condensed across Arcanine's frame before it expelled a massive, one-meter-wide orb of pure fire from its maw.
The white-hot Fire Blast violently expanded across the upper airspace, reshaping itself into the colossal kanji for "fire" as it slammed into the Will-O-Wisp matrix. The exact millisecond the individual techniques collided, the eerie embers were aggressively swallowed by the Fire Blast payload.
Yet, the spectral fire matrix successfully siphoned and neutralized a significant fraction of the Fire Blast's kinetic velocity, the purple embers bleeding into the white-hot core until the entire Fire Blast shifted into an eerie, deep-violet hue. By the hour the technique dropped beside Ninetales's coordinates, it dissolved into harmless wisps of smoke that vanished entirely.
Incredible... This Ninetales actually leveraged its Will-O-Wisp array to systematically corrode and convert my Fire Blast parameters, refashioning my own thermal energy to supplement its defenses, N thought, his mind rapidly generating structural models of the exchange.
What on earth just transpired? Why did a maximum-output Fire Blast violently fizzle out and extinguish without dealing a single shred of trauma? Feng Lu thought, his expression rich with acute shock. The sheer quality of the Pokémon commanded by his biological son was completely off his analytical charts.
Yuan Jia... if your eyes could look upon the staggering heights our son has climbed, your heart would overflow with absolute pride, Feng Lu murmured internally, his chest tightening with emotion.
"Arcanine, use Extreme Speed into Flare Blitz!"
Arcanine's physical silhouette instantly vanished from its coordinates. Saturated under the high-velocity sprint, Feng Che's psychic vision caught only a colossal, roaring comet of pure flame violently detonating through the remnants of the Will-O-Wisp field.
A highly optimized combination combining Extreme Speed and Flare Blitz. If N hadn't had the misfortune of tracking my coordinates across this campaign, his tactical prowess would have effortlessly guaranteed his ascension as the next regional Champion, Feng Che calculated smoothly.
However, I have zero intention of anchoring my presence within Unova's administrative offices for long; the vast expanse of the global order remains my definitive destination.
It would be vastly more efficient to condition and install a highly dependable proxy to inherit the regional throne under my hand.
As long as I systematically scrub Team Plasma's criminal branding from N's public profile, his peerless intellect and combat parameters render him the absolute finest candidate to step up as the permanent Champion.
Having quickly mapped out his macro-strategy, Feng Che handed down his next command. "Ninetales, use Iron Tail!"
Ninetales's nine flowing tails concurrently shifted into a sleek, shimmering silver-grey sheen. With a sharp crack of air, it whipped the hyper-tensile plumage downward to smash dead-center into the oncoming fire comet.
The kinetic comet was violently fractured into separate columns of scattered fire, yet Feng Che's psychic senses instantly flagged an anomaly—the Iron Tail had failed to register a physical impact against Arcanine's hull.
Right at that exact millisecond, Arcanine's true vessel flashed into existence directly behind Ninetales's blind spot. Baring its razor-sharp claws, it swiped ruthlessly downward to render the fox's flank.
"Hmph. Ninetales, maintain Iron Tail!"
Ninetales flawlessly reversed its momentum, its nine metallic tails pivoting concurrently to sweep its rear hemisphere. Following a succession of sharp, resounding clangs, the entirety of the silver blades smashed directly into Arcanine's frame.
Yet, the massive beast instantly dissolved into an illusionary afterimage, vanishing into nothingness.
A mere proxy clone... Its execution parameters under Extreme Speed are remarkably fast, Feng Che thought, surprised to find Ninetales had overextended against a mere decoy.
Where was the true vessel anchoring its parameters?
Feng Che swept his gaze across the crushed battlefield, instantly spotting a freshly opened subterranean tunnel marking the bedrock.
"I see... At the critical millisecond of the collision, Arcanine executed Dig to burrow beneath the earth, leaving an afterimage to anchor our counter. Ninetales, watch your feet! Rock the foundations with Earthquake!"
Ninetales steeled its stance to drive its metallic Iron Tails ruthlessly into the stone floor. Yet, a fraction of a second before the impact could ground, a massive dark silhouette violently erupted from the bedrock directly beneath its belly.
The shadow unhinged its jaws, driving a high-lethal Fire Fang straight into Ninetales's exposed tails.
"I have been tracking your exit vectors since the very inception of that dive."
Ninetales's downward cleave fluidly adjusted mid-transit, shifting from a direct vertical strike into a brutal, diagonal sweeping lash that caught the emerging beast dead-center.
Subjected to the massive kinetic trauma, Arcanine was violently propelled backward, its frame skidding across the arena.
Yet, as a highly seasoned veteran of high-tier campaigns, Arcanine effortlessly realigned its center of mass mid-air. Snapping its sharp claws downward, it dug deep into the pulverized stone to forcefully anchor its momentum, leaving four jagged grooves scarred into the bedrock.
"Phenomenal execution, Arcanine! Superb recovery! Now—discharge an absolute, maximum-output Flamethrower!" N roared.
The Flamethrower erupted from Arcanine's throat, the intense thermal mass weaving together to manifest a gargantuan, snarling fire dragon that roared across space to incinerate Ninetales.
Ninetales extended its powerful limbs, initiating a series of seamless, exceptionally elegant evasive loops to fluidly dodge the descending inferno.