New Trainers Fear Pride Most!

Because the Pseudo-Elite Four Tournament continued to gain momentum, the number of people coming to challenge the Dark Night Gym just to catch a glimpse of Sato grew at an almost explosive rate.

Seeing that so many people had come just to meet him, and in order not to let the Dark Night Gym's reputation collapse, Sato postponed his next trip and decided to diligently do what a Gym Leader was actually supposed to do.

He accepted every Trainer's challenge!

But the gap in strength was simply too great, and Zoroark and the others could not gain much from bullying weaklings.

Sato could only temporarily have Honchkrow and Houndoom call over four of their companions from the Dark Night Forest: Murkrow, Honchkrow, Houndour, and Houndoom.

Together with Drapion, Pikachu, and Zweilous, who had yet to break through to the Pseudo-Elite Four Level, Sato could barely manage by rotating them through battles.

But even so, not many people were able to obtain a Gym Badge from Sato.

Most of them had not defeated Sato either. It was merely because they had performed exceptionally well in battle and shared a strong bond with their Pokémon that Sato selectively awarded them badges.

Otherwise, no matter how excited the rest were or how badly they wanted to see Sato, his ironclad impartiality would have scared them off.

Of course, this instead allowed quite a few talented New Trainers to defeat the Murkrow-and-Houndour combination in the simplest 2V2 matches and truly "win" their badges.

For these children, Sato took responsibility for teaching them and deliberately kept them in the stands to watch several more matches where Drapion instantly crushed its opponents.

Only after their faces had turned pale, their steps unsteady, and cold sweat had broken out as they stood there at a loss did