Chapter Ninety-One: The Second Week of the Competition

For several days in a row, training brought clear progress to Ralts’s Teleport. The time needed to prepare before each jump, which had been a little over three seconds at first, was now down to around two seconds, and when she was in especially good form, she could even slip below two.

But from that point on, further practice brought only the faintest returns.

He asked Li Yaowen for advice, and the answer was much the same as what he had expected: with Ralts’s current level of psychic power, it could not yet be called a true bottleneck, but any improvement from here would only grow harder and harder.

For the time being, though, it was enough.

In the blink of an eye, the weekend competition arrived again, with the same venue and the same schedule as before.

When they arrived at the association hall, it was far less crowded. Starting this week, each group had only sixteen people left, for a total of forty-eight students.

Tang Yi’s opponent was Lu Renbing, whose partner was a Nidoran girl with a pair of purple ears and a long horn rising from her short, dark-violet hair.

Lu Renbing seemed somewhat worried, in a rather poor mood. Nidoran, by contrast, was cheerful and outgoing; she came over on her own to greet Tang Yi and the others, and chatted warmly with Ralts, saying one thing after another just to make conversation. That immediately put Tang Yi on guard.

Though she had obvious feminine traits, Nidoran felt more like a tomboy, so Tang Yi, a little petty as he was, used the excuse of preparing for the match to lead Ralts away.

Ralts let herself be tugged along behind her trainer, half willing, half resigned, and murmured helplessly, "She and I are the same kind of fairy girl."

Ralts was no longer the little child she had once been. Thanks to the all-knowing internet, she had picked up a vague understanding of certain things, and more or less guessed why Tang Yi had suddenly looked a little displeased.

Tang Yi curled his lip. "Being female doesn’t make it okay either."

Ralts blinked. "Is it because of lilies?"

Tang Yi froze at once. "You know about lilies?"

"I don’t know. I saw people talking about it. It’s a kind of flower, isn’t it?" The girl grew alert. Hmph, she couldn’t let anything slip, or this guy would mess with her computer again.

Tang Yi didn’t think much of it. "Yeah, right, lilies are a kind of flower. Anyway, let’s focus on the match and absolutely not let the opponent confuse us."

As for the match itself, it was actually rather uneventful.

Tang Yi showed no mercy, immediately having Ralts use Teleport to disrupt Nidoran’s judgment.

But from the very start, Nidoran demonstrated excellent combat skill. Because of the unique muscles in her large purple ears, she could rotate them freely, and they were extremely sensitive.

By sensing the turbulent currents in the air caused by each teleport, Nidoran was actually able to make a rough guess at where Ralts would appear each time. That did surprise Tang Yi a little.

However, Poison-type attacks were naturally suppressed by the Psychic type.

Although Nidoran could roughly judge the direction of the teleports, she was helpless against Confusion. Once suppressed, she could not use the poisonous needles on her head to target Ralts at all.

After being controlled by Confusion twice in a row, Nidoran lost the ability to fight.

The match quickly came to an end. Lu Renbing and Tang Yi shook hands, and with a sigh he said, "Not really an unexpected result. I’ve just had terrible luck, ah!"

Although Ralts’s Fairy typing was also disadvantaged against Poison, by comparison, the direct long-range suppression of Confusion was a much better way to counter a purely Poison-type Nidoran.

Lu Renbing really had rotten luck.

Still, luck is part of strength too.

Tang Yi had been knocked out for two rounds already; it was about time he got to be on the winning side for once.

In this round, Jiang Hai from the same school was also eliminated. His Pikachu ran into a Geodude, and the type advantage left him with few options. After a fierce battle, he ultimately suffered a regrettable defeat.

The competition week had back-to-back matches, and there was almost no time to prepare for the next day’s contest.

He went home to rest, intending to look up information on the next opponent online. But Gu Qingyue had already sent him a message, telling him that the forum had begun restricting posting levels, and also sending him a complete list of the partner Pokémon for all remaining opponents.

By now, the group stage had narrowed to eight students in each group. Even though photography and video recording were forbidden in the arena, in this age of the internet, there was no such thing as a sealed wall.

Soon enough, some bored people had sorted out the entire remaining list for the selection tournament and made it public.

Fine. At least he no longer had to spend so much effort scavenging intelligence everywhere each time.

Tang Yi didn’t really mind. In fact, it made things easier. His next opponent’s partner Pokémon was Bellsprout, which was also a rather tricky matchup, since the two sides’ types countered each other.

In the world of fairy girls, this kind of type disadvantage was etched into their very genes and manifested physically; when struck by an attack of a type they were weak against, they would endure far more intense pain.

The truly powerful fairy girls often trained themselves to resist their fear of the types that countered them, doing their best to reduce the physiological reaction. But in a low-level bracket like this, almost no one had the ability to undergo such training, and the effect of type advantage was genuinely enormous.

On Sunday, the day of the match, Tang Yi saw Bellsprout’s trainer at the venue: a rather striking girl who had even put on a bit of light makeup, despite the fact that there would be no spectators at all.

The girl was very open and generous. The moment she saw Ralts, her eyes lit up and she came over to strike up a conversation.

Before the match, Tang Yi talked with her for quite a while. Mostly, after meeting Ralts, the girl kept praising how adorable she was and saying Tang Yi must have raised her very well.

Since you’re praising her so much, then we’re friends, aren’t we?

Tang Yi was quite enthusiastic and chatted with her for several minutes about training experience, and the two of them seemed to get along very well.

Just as he was beginning to enjoy the conversation, Ralts suddenly grabbed his arm and dragged him away with a fierce expression.

Once they were a little distance off, the girl wore a stern face and complained in a low voice, "She was insulting me, and you were still talking to her!" Hmph. Unhappy!

"Huh?" Tang Yi was a bit puzzled. Which line was insulting? Had he missed something?

"She said I was cute!"

"Uh, that’s a compliment."

"No! Calling someone cute means they’re not pretty. She was saying I’m ugly!"

"Uh, I don’t think that was what she meant. Maybe you’re overthinking it." Tang Yi was dumbfounded; he really didn’t understand girls’ little thoughts.

"I don’t care! You’re not allowed to talk to her anymore!"

"Okay, okay, I won’t."

The match was about to begin anyway, so Tang Yi simply followed Ralts’s lead and added, "How dare she call my Ralts ugly? Heh. We’ll teach them a lesson in a moment!"

"Mm!" Ralts’s fighting spirit rose instantly, and she clearly was not treating that as a joke.

Tang Yi glanced at the Bellsprout girl, who was preparing to take the field, and suddenly felt a little sympathy for her.