"Your challenge on the first floor of the Trial Tower is about to begin. The defending Pokémon is at the early intermediate level. Ye Lan, please prepare yourself!"
"What? Early intermediate level?!"
Hearing the mechanical voice controlled by Rotom, Ye Lan's eye twitched. Even Serperior, who had been poised and ready for a proper fight, stiffened, anger flaring in its sharp eyes as though it had been made a fool of.
"No wonder even students outside the Battle Department can earn 0.5 credits as startup funds by challenging the Basic Trial Tower right after enrollment. So this is the level they're up against?!"
As the provincial Trainer League champion, with his strength improving far faster than that of his peers, Ye Lan was surrounded by people with exceptional talent in all sorts of fields.
After coming to Huaxia Academy, even an ordinary student he happened to run into in the Battle Department's area could have been the star of their high school. First-year students with advanced or even Professional level strength were everywhere.
With his standards raised so high, he had overlooked how quickly ordinary Trainers improved. An ordinary student whose main Pokémon reached the early to middle advanced level after this year's college entrance exam would already have ranked among its top performers.
As a facility intended to provide benefits to students, the Basic Trial Tower also had to account for the battling abilities of students in the Breeding Department and Research Department. In that light, placing an early intermediate-level Pokémon on the first floor seemed perfectly reasonable.
Yet even after Ye Lan had mentally prepared himself, he still struggled to keep his composure when a Poké Ball appeared out of thin air across the field. A flash of white light followed, revealing a fish Pokémon covered in red