He was twenty-one this year, one of Japan's outstanding young talents. He had once taken part in a friendly exchange match with Jing University, where he had been evaluated as only slightly inferior to Lin Xingchen and Xiao Muyi...
Back home, Aihara Take would have been a third-year university student, but he was a "wild-type" Trainer.
So-called wild-type Trainers did not attend school. After receiving their starter Pokémon, they chose to travel across countries around the world, challenge competitions in various places, and roam through major Spirit Realms.
Wild-type Trainers possessed far more real combat experience and underwent much harsher training than academy-trained Trainers. Their strength often surpassed others of the same level as well.
As a result, more and more Trainers had chosen the wild-type path in recent years.
However, the wild-type growth path also came with an extremely high mortality rate. Entering and leaving the Spirit Realms of different countries required official permits, traveling required money, and resources were consumed in enormous quantities...
You needed connections, money, and resources, and the mortality rate was high. Simply put, only desperate scions of wealthy families could afford to play the wild-type game.
Even people with conditions like Lin Xingchen and Xiao Muyi had obediently chosen the academy path. That said it all.
A wild-type Trainer like Ash. It really does promote growth more than the academy path... It should become mainstream in the future, but that will probably take at least several decades, Roy thought.
The reason was simple.
Only once access restrictions to the major Spirit Realms were lifted and the people became prosperous could the threshold for the wild-type path fall low enough for it to become mainstream.
The current threshold was simply too high.
If Roy defeated Aihara Take, he would advance into the quarterfinals.
His quarterfinal