Pokémon from Galar

"Enough with the small talk, can I see your Pokémon first? That way I can formulate a plan more quickly."

The burly man gave her a very reliable look, which reassured Mary even more. So she took the Ultimate Ball and threw Kyon out.

"It's this one, Kyon, scientific name is Nicholas, rock and poison attribute."

"Hmm... It's a Pokémon I don't know anything about... I've seen it in videos before, so I should be strong enough to learn it."

With just one glance, the man's imposing aura vanished. He scratched his head and gave a slightly embarrassed laugh.

"Oh... can I still teach it?"

"It's possible, since the moves themselves are the same. However, it might take a little more time. Does Marie have any free time lately?"

"Yes, or rather, I originally planned to learn this move before the knockout stage."

"Alright! Let's not delay, Pang Yan! Wake up and get to work!"

The man turned his head and roared at the corner of the wall. Pang Yan, who had been lying motionless, raised his head slightly, glanced at Mary and Ah Xu, and slowly got up and walked over.

"You've already got the TM, right? Let your Pokémon use it once first, and then Gigantamax and I will explain it to you. Although Meteor Beam looks like an evolution of Power Gem, it's actually quite different in many ways. You need to pay attention to that."

As the man spoke, he walked to the control panel on the wall next to him and operated it. A large screen descended from the ceiling, next to which was a matching reading machine.

The tutorial officially began only after Kyon had thoroughly reviewed the contents of the TM.

"First, I'll demonstrate this move for you. Have your Pokémon carefully sense how the energy flows. Golem, let's go!"

After manipulating the panel again, another wall was removed, incorporating the adjacent room. The coach pointed to the lone target on the other side and gave his instructions.

"..."

Pang Yanguai was probably used to teaching, and strange energy slowly gathered up. The energy fluctuations were clear and stable, and even Mary could sense a part of it.

This process lasted about a minute, giving ample time for observation. Then, the air seemed to freeze, and what first appeared was just a point of light, which rapidly expanded into an energy sphere nearly one meter in diameter.

A torrent of scorching energy erupted, blazing brightly and engulfing the target in an instant before slamming into the wall behind it.

With a deafening roar, Mary even had to grab Kyon's tentacles to regain her balance. When the light faded, only an unrecognizable wreck remained at the location of the target, but the wall behind it seemed to be undamaged.

"This room is specially designed. It won't be damaged unless it's activated at full power, and no one outside will notice anything. As for the target, it's made of a common composite material with moderate energy tolerance."

"Very impressive."

Mary nodded in satisfaction. The power seemed to be more than 120, which was worth the expensive price.

Chapter 380 Independent Practice

The coach was more responsible than expected. After learning that Mary really wanted to learn the special move as soon as possible, the first lesson lasted for four hours straight, until the sun set, before he voluntarily stopped the class.

"Alright, that's enough for today. Your Pokémon looks pretty tired too. Let's continue tomorrow."

"Okay, I understand. Thank you very much."

Mary herself had an expression of unfinished business. Because she could merge with Kyon, she could understand most of the details of the Meteor Beam after personally using those special moves, and could even simulate them in her mind.

If it weren't for keeping her trump card a secret, Mary would have even wanted to merge with Kyon and, under the coach's guidance, further accelerate her learning process.

After saying goodbye to the coach, Mari took Mugentana and returned to Yuri's house.

"Welcome back. It's taking longer than I expected; it's already getting dark."

Yuri pushed open the door, welcoming the two people in while complaining.

"Sorry, I'll try my best to learn it quickly."

"...No, it's not you, it's Kyon who should try to learn it quickly."

Yuri stared at Mary bending down to change her shoes and couldn't help but mutter a complaint.

"Isn't it all the same? I was planning to practice with Kyon for a while later."

Will it be very late?

Standing up, Mary stepped aside to let Mugenta enter the house first, then said with a smile:

"No, the fusion time is only half an hour, we'll be back soon."

"Oh, then I'll wait for you to come back to sleep."

"You can go to sleep first. What are your plans for tomorrow?"

The two of them went into the inner room together. There were still two dishes left on the table, indicating that Yuri's family had already eaten dinner.

"Actually, I could have eaten out and come back, so I wouldn't have had to go through all this trouble."

"That won't do! I'll go heat it up for you."

Mari walked to the opposite side of Mugentana, stopped Yuri who wanted to take the food to the kitchen to reheat it, and said with a smile:

"I'll take care of it. You go wash up first, don't be tempted to eat another serving."

"Okay, then I'll go and prepare dinner for Kyon while I'm at it."

Yuri didn't insist, and withdrew her outstretched hand, but still went into the kitchen. Mari's other Pokémon were all at home training, so only Kyon hadn't eaten dinner yet.

"...Okay, thank you for your help."

Seeing that she couldn't refuse, Mary had no choice but to obediently accept Yuri's kindness.

……

That evening, after resting for about two hours, Mary checked the time and then took Kyon and Chiu out the door, flying towards the open wilderness.

They found a Dynamax den and entered it. Marnie and Kyon merged into one after a long time. However, since today was for practicing special moves, Marnie deliberately prevented Kyon from completely relinquishing control of his body.

"How are you feeling, Kyon?"

"Oh... (It's alright.)"

The strange feeling of having control over two consciousnesses simultaneously was quite subtle, but after getting used to it, Mary floated into the air and began training with the meteor beam.

In the afternoon, while Kyon was practicing, Mari asked many very detailed questions and even listened to a lot of Pang Yan's explanations. If we're just talking about understanding the moves, Mari is probably better than Kyon's little brain that can't find its way around.

So for the first time, Mary took the lead. Since it was the first simulation, Mary worked very slowly and communicated with Kyon in real time about the energy points and steps that felt out of place.

"Ah~ (We need to control the energy flow more smoothly here~)"

Kyon's voice suddenly rang out, and the energy flow, which had almost malfunctioned, was stabilized again thanks to Kyon's intervention.

"As expected, I still can't compare to you, Kyon, in this aspect."

While Mary's energy control was no match for Kyon's, her overall technique was more stable. During the daytime, she had failed to successfully charge up her power once, but with the combined efforts of the two of them, she successfully drew upon a large amount of 'cosmic power'.

The preparation phase of the move had come to its final stage, and Mary took a deep breath.

"This is the final stage, Kyon. You're in charge here!"

"Yay~ (Okay~)"

The final burst of energy requires careful control of its direction; otherwise, it can easily fail to launch and become a self-destructing bomb.

call out--

The air froze for a moment, then a dazzling beam of energy erupted, stirring up the energy in the Dynamax Den and causing an explosion comparable to a Dynamax move.

The light barrier in front of her blocked out all the energy turbulence, but Mary couldn't help but laugh.

"It actually worked..."

Although the execution speed was frighteningly slow, it was still countless times better than the constant failures during the day. More importantly, both Mary and Kyon had the personal experience of successfully executing the move, which allowed Kyon to understand why he couldn't complete the special move on his own.

As for Mary, it was simply exhilarating, incredibly exhilarating. The joy of personally unleashing such a powerful attack was unimaginable. This fueled her passion for training.

"Keep going, keep going~ This time it's Kyon's turn to take the lead."

As Mary spoke, she proactively loosened her control, letting Kyon take over most of the positions. After all, the original intention at this stage was to help Kyon learn faster. Mary's current role was essentially to give Kyon an external brain.

After bombarding them relentlessly for half an hour, Mary and Kyon couldn't continue. They hadn't felt it during the day because they hadn't succeeded yet.

Now that each meteor beam attack was unleashing considerable power, Kyon could only manage ten shots before he was unable to continue.

Reluctantly exiting the combined state, Kyon, looking utterly exhausted, hung himself on Mary's head, letting his tentacles sway in the wind.

"You've worked hard, go back to the ball and rest first."

"Ah~ (Let me hang here and get some fresh air~)"

Kyon placed two tentacles on Mary's chest, as if holding her head, like a semi-transparent hat.

"That works too."

Mary simply raised her hand, grabbed the two tentacles dangling from her chest, and left the giant nest.

Standing halfway up the mountain, looking down at the town of Hualang, still lit up with lights, and further away at the dark, misty forest, the scenery here is quite nice. The mountains behind the misty forest are not high, and if you climb to the top of the mountain here, you should be able to see the sea in the distance.

The night air was a bit chilly, and after watching for a while, Mary felt a little cold. She called out to Little Chick, rubbed his head as he nuzzled her, then rolled over and climbed onto her soft back. Mary patted Little Chick's neck.

"Let's go."

"Gah—! (Alright!)"

Chapter 381 Champions Cup Knockout Stage

Time flew by unnoticed. After receiving the guests from Alola, Marie and Yuri quickly threw themselves into intensive training, awaiting the start of the knockout stage.

As the elimination rounds approached, the gym challenges themselves were coming to an end, and the number of challenges for each gym was dwindling. Consequently, the attention on the four people who broke through the gym challenges this year, such as Mary, became exceptionally high.

Among these, the relationship between Mari and Yuri is the most intriguing. Numerous eyewitness accounts, along with a large number of photos of Mari posted by Yuri herself, have already sent many die-hard fans who enjoy shipping these two characters into a frenzy.

Even when the two were focused on training and rarely appeared in public, they still managed to find ways to show affection, completely following the pattern of turning friends into best friends, best friends into lovers, and lovers into marriage.

I don't know about other things, but Mary seemed quite happy when she secretly shipped her own CP (couple pairing) on ​​her alternate account online. She even occasionally posted things on the tag during training breaks, having a lot of fun with self-produced and self-consumed content.

The annual dojo challenge begins in March and ends at the end of September, followed by the elimination rounds and the final championship challenge from mid-October to mid-November.

With the gym challenge now over, several participants have registered, and the list of those advancing to the knockout stage and their battle order have been announced.

What's surprising is that only nine gym leaders participated in this elimination round, with the Fairy-type gym leader absent for unknown reasons.

While everyone was discussing it, the Fairy-type Gym Leader, or rather the former Gym Leader Popura, officially announced on the official platform that she was stepping down as Gym Leader and the candidate for the next Gym Leader.

Peter.

The announcement of this news sparked considerable discussion in Galar, not for any other reason than that Peter was also one of the favorites this year, but was disqualified and withdrew from the challenge midway through for some reason, although the league deliberately suppressed the news.

But Peter's actions that day were blatant, and his unexplained withdrawal from the challenge made people connect him to the new ruins incident a few months ago.

Therefore, many people have reservations about the new owner of the Dance Town Arena and are waiting until next year.