The battle with Kieran ended quickly, but its impact extended far beyond Kieran himself.
Throughout the rest of the afternoon, several more challengers arrived at the Sunshine Gym.
Thanks to the "open-source" nature of the quiz answers, students had finally discovered a way to significantly increase their chances of passing the Sunshine Gym:
We unite!
In short, it seemed these students had shifted from individual efforts to pooling their collective resources to solve Aiden's quiz questions.
While answering all five questions alone was indeed challenging, with the help of Rotom Phones and teamwork, the difficulty of cracking them was greatly reduced.
As a result, an unsuspecting Aiden soon noticed something—
As time went on, the students arriving to challenge him seemed to be progressively improving, even preemptively countering his tactics.
In fact, the second challenger was already prepared, even bringing a Choice Band to "fight poison with poison," hoping to lock Sableye into a single move as well.
Even if it didn't lock, they could still overpower it with brute force.
However…
Young people are still too inexperienced!
Aside from status moves, Sableye had plenty of other tricks up its sleeve, and in Aiden's hands, it would naturally be used to its fullest potential.
First up—Fling!
When he saw the opponent send out Granbull, Aiden immediately had an idea and decisively used Fling to toss his Choice Scarf.
Having planned for this scenario, Aiden knew how to prevent his opponents from breaking his strategy.
Once the Choice Scarf was thrown, the opponent realized in horror—
So is Sableye without its lockdown tactics actually its true form???
First, it used Will-O-Wisp to limit Granbull's offensive output, then employed Disable to recreate the same lockdown tactic as before…
As expected, the second challenger crumbled without much resistance.
By the time the third challenger arrived, they had evolved their strategy yet again.
This Trainer used Xatu with the Magic Bounce Ability, which genuinely caught Aiden's attention.
But…
Isn't your Xatu doubly weak to Sableye's two core types?
While Sableye's combat power was admittedly average, wasn't Xatu's durability also rather mediocre?
Thus, under the onslaught of Sableye's Knock Off and Shadow Claw, the third challenger also fell quickly.
For some reason, Aiden suddenly felt like he had become the final boss of a dungeon, repeatedly being challenged by players trying to memorize his moves.
However, their efforts weren't entirely in vain.
It wasn't until the fifth challenger that someone finally brought something that made Aiden sit up and take notice.
A Venomoth with the Wonder Skin Ability!
Just how obscure was the Wonder Skin Ability?
Even Aiden was momentarily stunned when he saw it, only snapping out of it after slapping his thigh in realization.
This Ability halved the accuracy of status moves targeting it.
As everyone knew, in the Pokémon world, an 80% accuracy move was essentially 0%, and halving it to 50% made those status moves very easy to dodge.
Faced with this, Sableye, which relied on status moves, was instantly rendered useless.
Moreover, this Trainer even used the safest option—Toxic—to slowly wear down Sableye…
[Impressive! This guy must be considered an inner disciple, right?]
[Look at Teacher Azure's expression—he's practically drooling over this kid. He's really found a gem, hahaha!]
[Proof that true prodigies can even impress Teacher Azure!]
And unsurprisingly, this "clever little rascal" became the first person to earn the Sunshine Gym badge.
Before leaving, Aiden couldn't help but ask for his name.
The response was:
"Teacher Azure, my name is Atticus."
Upon hearing this name, Aiden froze for a moment.
It wasn't because he thought of a certain racing god, but…
Atticus?
Isn't that the name of the Boss of Team Star's Navi Squad's Base?
Aiden found it hard to reconcile the handsome, gentle, and antique-vibed young man before him with the quirky-dressed, half-masked, cosplay-ninja-like chuuni guy from his memories.
But clearly, before joining Team Star, Atticus had been just an ordinary student.
His appearance served as a reminder to Aiden—
The five squad leaders of Team Star might look vastly different from what he remembered.
After all, under his influence, perhaps the absurd "Operation Starfall" wouldn't even happen…
If students had the time to improve themselves daily and further challenge gyms, who would have the energy to bully others?
…
The afternoon passed quickly, and soon it was time for the Sunshine Gym to close.
Though gym challenges had paused for the day, the students earnestly researching how to pass the Sunshine Gym didn't slack off.
On the school forum, countless discussions about "how to break through Sableye's overwhelming number of status moves" quietly emerged, numbering in the hundreds.
Starting with Kieran's challenge, they had iterated through multiple strategies throughout the day, some of which had even been tested in real battles.
Unfortunately, every time they thought they were about to break through, Teacher Azure would suddenly pull out a new trick.
[Now we're not even thinking about how to deal with the lockdown tactics anymore. After that strategy was cracked, Teacher Azure didn't even bring the Choice Scarf afterward!]
[Is there any Pokémon faster than Sableye with Prankster? If we can one-shot it, wouldn't that solve everything?]
[What are you thinking? Sableye has almost no weaknesses. The only counter is Fairy-type, but none of them are fast enough…]
[Hiss—looks like brute-forcing isn't working.]
[Wait? I just remembered! Didn't Teacher Aiden once say… all support Pokémon fear Taunt!]
[I get the logic, but how do you make a Taunt user faster than Sableye with Prankster?]
[True, that's a problem…]
[Wait… since Teacher Azure uses Sableye with Prankster, can't we use Pokémon with Prankster to counter it?]
[Holy crap, genius!]
And so, over the course of a single night, Naranja Academy's forum exploded with thousands of posts, ultimately reaching a conclusion:
Fight poison with poison!
Use Prankster to defeat Prankster!
There weren't many Pokémon with this Ability, but there were enough.
When these students started putting their minds to it, they suddenly realized their understanding of Pokémon had skyrocketed several levels!
They were even studying Abilities now—weren't they prime championship material?
If Aiden had checked the campus network, his expression would've been priceless.
You guys always find new ways to surprise me.jpg
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