Icicles fell from the sky one after another. In an instant, seven or eight Delibird were smashed beneath the falling icicles.
Wild Delibird did not have many usable moves. The only moves they could learn themselves were Present and Drill Peck.
Moreover, the move Present truly depended on luck. Sometimes it would even help the opponent recover stamina/vitality, which naturally increased their own danger. Therefore, Delibird could only remain at the bottom of the food chain, flapping their wings and fleeing in all directions.
At this moment, Piloswine had just evolved and absorbed the cold aura of Eternal Ice. It felt as if it possessed endless power, eager to release it!
A single Icicle Crash created the momentum of a collapsing snow mountain… a small mountain.
Dense icicles smashed down from the sky. Piloswine could now easily control the direction and position of Icicle Crash. The Delibird that flapped into the air were almost all struck down by the icicles. Only a very few managed to seize the gaps in Icicle Crash and escape.
When the Hail stopped drifting and the icicles ceased falling, the entire valley was covered with a thick layer of ice. Dozens of Delibird had been crushed to death beneath the ice. Some had blank expressions, some were terrified, some were filled with despair...
In an instant, the atmosphere of death shrouded the entire valley…
Their deaths were merely to witness Piloswine's growth!
◓---
Unbeknownst to him, the Delibird Tetsuya had killed were helping the mysterious Pokémon buried beneath the rocks…
---◓
Tetsuya recalled Piloswine and Ditto, then climbed up from the position of the nylon rope.
By the time he returned to the top of the canyon, it was already dusk. Tetsuya untied the rope and threw it directly into the valley before returning to the cabin.
He had remained in the valley all along and had not eaten lunch. Tetsuya took out Pokéfood for Piloswine. As for Ditto's food, five bottles of milk had already been fixed as the maximum.
However, Piloswine's appetite this time completely exceeded Tetsuya's expectations!
It ate more than twice as much as Swinub had, and it licked the remaining half piece of Everfrozen Ice for a much longer time.
It seemed that for now he could only afford to raise this one Pokémon. With insufficient food, there would be malnutrition. The training intensity would not keep up, and potential would gradually dissipate as the Pokémon aged. Therefore, even a Pokémon with tremendous potential, if it did not meet a worthy Trainer and receive the highest quality raising, would still be wasted.
Pryce's guide only recorded up to the Piloswine form, because even Pryce himself had never raised a Mamoswine.
Now Tetsuya's Piloswine had evolved through stimulation. In fact, it had not yet reached the proper level for evolution. Therefore, the most important thing now was to solidify its fundamentals and then enrich its battle experience.
Tomorrow he needed to continue physical training. First, to allow Piloswine to better adapt to its current body. Second, to train a physique that matched what was recorded in Pryce's guide for Piloswine.
---◓---
He sent Piloswine to the cave at glacier falls. This time, when Piloswine used Freeze-Dry, even glacier falls experienced a temporary freezing at its base.
During the following week, the glacier falls became Piloswine's main training ground, because all training was conducted under maintained Hail conditions. To avoid being affected, Ditto and Haunter moved to the forest near the cabin for special training.
After three days of training, the food for Piloswine inside the cabin had run out. This had been the week's supply of food prepared by Sheila…
Helpless, he could only pay out of his own pocket. Once again, he replenished a cabin full of food and Piloswine's supplements. Based on this appetite, even with the salary of an official pupil of Ecruteak Gym, one month's wages would only be enough to raise one Piloswine and one Ditto.
For the entire week, Piloswine occupied the whole of glacier falls. Tetsuya also devoted all his energy to Piloswine. He even moved Piloswine and its food into the cave at glacier falls, and he himself moved in to live in the same cave as Piloswine.
After a continuous week of physical training beneath the falls, Piloswine finally adapted to this body, but it still had not reached the physical level recorded in Pryce's guide for when Swinub met the conditions for evolution. The most important thing was that his coordination with Piloswine had become even more tacit.
---◓---
Sheila finally returned. On this day, she came directly to glacier falls. Tetsuya was training Piloswine's move usage.
"W-What? Tetsuya, your Swinub has already evolved!?" Sheila ran over and asked.
"Oh… yes."
Sheila appeared somewhat anxious and paced in place before asking, "That's not right! Pryce should have given you an Everstone. How could you have let Swinub evolve!?"
"Oh… I forgot to put it on," Tetsuya said lightly.
"Ahhhh...!" Sheila let out a long sigh and said, "I remember Pryce once told me that Swinub must not evolve, otherwise it would lose the Snow Warning Ability… Although I'm not clear about the specific details, letting Swinub evolve now must have exceeded Pryce's plan."
"It didn't. Pryce told me that he had already improved Swinub's trainig method. As long as it completely absorbs the Everfrozen Ice, it can evolve into Piloswine, and it will also have sufficient Ice-type energy to maintain Hail weather."
Tetsuya could only say this. After all, one-third of the Everfrozen Ice had not yet been absorbed. If he did not explain it this way, the flaw would be too obvious.
"Ohhh. So that's how it is…"
Sheila clicked her tongue and continued, "I remember Pryce's Swinub took three months to lick and consume one piece of Everfrozen Ice! I didn't expect yours to completely absorb it in just over a month. It seems Pryce really put a lot of effort into raising this Swinub, huh."
"Uh, t-thanks to Elite Four Pryce!"
Tetsuya responded somewhat timidly. However, he genuinely admired Pryce from the bottom of his heart!
Pryce had been someone without any background, relying entirely on his own struggle to reach his current position.
In his previous life, he had not known much about Pryce. Now, from Sheila's words, he learned that Pryce's road to success had indeed involved hardships dozens of times greater than those of ordinary people. Alone, with only a Swinub by his side, he had dared to go to the bitter cold lands of the pole, mining rare items such as Never-Melt Ice, Everfrozen Ice, and Eternal Ice.
After earning some money, he gained the capital to raise Pokémon. Later, he expanded further, becoming a group that mined Never-Melt Ice on par with the Lorelei family, traveling to the pole for decades before encountering his current strongest main force, Delibird. After that, he developed his own Ice-type training philosophy and became the undisputed number one Elite Four in the Johto Region.
If not for his overly rigid personality and his determination to reform the entire League, he might already have been Champion.
Pryce had secured his position as an Elite Four member from scratch. Even without that extraordinarily powerful Delibird, he could stand his ground against any Elite Four member.
Thinking about how in his previous life he had struggled for half his life without attaining the Elite Four Position, he truly was far inferior to Pryce…
In fact, this had a great deal to do with the fact that in his previous life he had been a transmigrator.