Inside the Black River Gym training room.
A spiky-haired young man was training hard alongside several Pokémon in a Gravity environment.
Outside the Gravity zone, a middle-aged man with an equally bristly, steel-needle-like spiky haircut stood with his arms crossed, asking curiously.
"Xiao Qi, what's gotten into you? You've been training all morning. I've never seen you work this hard before. Why are you suddenly so fired up?"
"Uncle, don't worry about me. I just want to work harder before the school team tryouts!"
The spiky-haired young man, Qu Qi, wiped the sweat from his forehead and shouted.
It wasn't that Mu Yun, a prospective freshman, had scared him. He just felt that there was always someone stronger out there, and he couldn't afford to slack off.
"Fine, but take it easy. I don't want to wake up one morning and see Xiao Ning standing at my bedside with a dark face."
Qu Hecheng shrugged and complained.
Qu Ning was clearly his niece, yet for some reason, whenever she put on a dark expression, he felt a little intimidated.
"Beep beep! Gym Leader Qu, a new challenger is in position. Please proceed to the main battle arena immediately!"
Just then, an electronic notification sounded through the room.
"Hey, Xiao Qi, a challenger's here. Want to go watch? Pokémon battles aren't something you can master through hard training alone. You need to watch more battles to gain experience. What do you say?"
Hearing that, Qu Qi, who was bent over and gasping for breath, glanced at Weavile and the others, whose Stamina was running low, before finally nodding.
Rome wasn't built in a day. There was no rushing this.
"Uncle, you go ahead. I'll take a shower and come over."
"Alright, hurry up."
Meanwhile, inside the main battle arena.
"So