Under Tetsuya's command, Haunter used a defensive combination of Night Shade and psychic power.
Haunter's entire body was instantly shrouded in a black veil. With the enhancement of psychic power, it became more solid, forming a very perfect oval-shaped black barrier.
'Using Night Shade with the assistance of psychic power…' He had already discovered a drawback before. That was to first use a frontal attacking move and then follow up with a high-altitude falling move, dispersing Haunter's psychic energy to achieve the effect of breaking the defense.
This drawback was gradually being eliminated as Haunter's psychic power continued to grow stronger. Of course, to completely get rid of this drawback, the only way was to continuously strengthen the psychic force. This was also a process that accumulated over time and could not be resolved instantly.
Moreover, the most critical point of using such a defensive move in battle was to block the first frontal attack. If one remained in a defensive state all the time, then what was there to fight? One might as well just forfeit directly.
Therefore, after blocking the first frontal attack, one had to prepare to counterattack. It was impossible to just stand there foolishly and let the opponent break through your defense. In this way, the so-called tactic of using a second attack to distract attention and take the opportunity to break the defense did not seem so important anymore.
What Tetsuya needed to find now was whether there was any attack that could break through Night Shade's defense in a single strike. That was the most fatal issue.
"Ditto, Freeze-Dry."
Tetsuya began the attack. Ditto had been with Piloswine day and night and was thoroughly familiar with its moves. Two streams of cold air were sprayed out. Although the freezing intensity of the cold air was far inferior to Piloswine's, thanks to Ditto's well-trained physical condition, its impact force was stronger than Piloswine's.
It could be seen that the momentum of the Freeze-Dry used by DittoSwine was even greater. As it struck the Night Shade barrier, a slight tremor appeared, and the energy was reduced by a layer.
"Powder Snow, then Icy Wind."
The effect was the same as before. If Piloswine used these two moves, due to the extreme freezing current of Freeze-Dry, its power would be stronger than the combination of Powder Snow and Icy Wind.
However, Ditto was different. Ditto relied on its outstanding physical power, and the impact force of using Powder Snow and Icy Wind was stronger, making its power instead greater than Freeze-Dry.
This was also one of the difficulties of using Ditto. After all, the physical conditions were different. Transform, to put it simply, still relied on Ditto's own condition. Although it could use the same moves, the energy contained within them could not be compared to that of the original Pokémon.
Just like when Ditto transformed into Piloswine, although it could use all of Piloswine's moves, it was completely impossible to reach the same level of Ice-type energy as Piloswine.
Therefore, Ditto could only seek other approaches. This was also why Tetsuya had been making Ditto continuously train its physical condition. Now, letting it fuse with Quick Powder was also to make it more flexible in battle to compensate for the gap in moves.
Tetsuya himself was not sure to what extent these efforts would be able to nurture this Ditto. However, it was still his main force at present and absolutely could not be neglected!
The facts also proved that at his current level, Ditto still maintained the highest win rate.
It could be seen that Ditto's Powder Snow and Icy Wind howled out, almost forming the momentum of a Blizzard. This time, the Night Shade barrier showed obvious distortion, and the degree of energy reduction was clearly greater than that of the previous Freeze-Dry.
Tetsuya nodded. Being able to block such two attacks was already more than sufficient for use in ordinary battles. After all, so-called defense was only a transitional process.
"Now, Icicle Crash."
Icicle Crash and Avalanche were both attacks that came from above. Changing the direction to see whether Haunter could handle it, and Icicle Crash was a hard-type smashing move. Once used, it was not simply a matter of reducing energy.
It could be seen that icicles from the air crashed down, three in a row stabbing toward Haunter.
Tetsuya carefully observed every aspect of the training. This was also the responsibility of a Trainer, to be good at discovering shortcomings and flaws during battle and training, and to provide better ways to deal with them.
The icicles penetrated about ten centimeters into Night Shade before stopping. It seemed that Haunter had held them in place. Then Haunter tilted them away, and the icicles fell to the ground.
Although everything seemed normal and Haunter had successfully defended against Icicle Crash, Tetsuya always felt that something was off, but he could not quite put his finger on it. This was probably just the sharp intuition developed from many years of battle experience.
These defensive moves had to strive for perfection. Unlike offensive moves, where a mistake would at most result in missing the target, defensive moves were different. Defense was used when one was already at a disadvantage, with the purpose of finding an opportunity to counterattack during defense. If the opponent seized a flaw, such damage could very likely be fatal.
"Try Avalanche, again!"
Now Tetsuya was also somewhat at a loss and did not know exactly where the problem lay. He could only take it step by step. If this kind of defensive method was not trained to near perfection, he would not feel at ease using it in battle.
Avalanche fell and struck Night Shade. The snowballs shattered, and although Night Shade trembled greatly and its energy was reduced significantly, it did not penetrate Night Shade.
Even such a powerful falling impact like Avalanche could be defended against in this way. This also could not deny the results of Haunter's special training. Without the powerful impact training at the glacier falls, it would have been impossible to withstand an attack like Avalanche.
With this, Tetsuya became even more unable to understand. Why did defending against Avalanche seem completely fine, while the earlier Icicle Crash had clearly penetrated into Night Shade before Haunter noticed and forcibly used psychic power to hold it back and throw it away?
This not only consumed more energy, but more importantly, his focus was dispersed, creating a major flaw. Yet when defending against Avalanche, it appeared to handle it with ease…
Both were falling-type moves, so what caused the difference? It could only be analyzed from the composition of the moves.
Once again, he had Ditto use Icicle Crash and Avalanche on the open ground.
Avalanche struck the ground, creating a pit, and the snowballs scattered. The icicles, however, remained intact as they were embedded in the ground. Imagining the ground as Haunter's Night Shade defense, Tetsuya seemed to realize something.
'Perhaps trying Icicle Spear would…-'
"Ditto, use Icicle Spear on Haunter!"
The Icicle Spear used by Ditto had even greater penetrating force than Piloswine's, but due to the limitation of the Ice-type energy within its body, it could only use two to three shots at a time.
Icicle Spear shot out like sharp Honedge with a piercing sound cutting through the air!
This time…