The pink-purple mist slowly dispersed.
After the two Pokémon's fierce exchanges and the Explosion that had torn through the ground, Misty Terrain had finally run its course.
Unfortunately, Ash and Sirfetch'd hadn't gotten the result they wanted.
Even many spectators, far from the heart of the battle, felt a strange sense of near despair.
Losing a one-on-one semifinal was disheartening, but the pressure of this was no less crushing.
Hydreigon still refused to fall. Dracovish, Gengar, and Sirfetch'd had fought it in turn and given everything they had, yet its endurance seemed almost bottomless.
Ash asked quietly, "Can you keep going, Sirfetch'd?"
"Gah!"
Sirfetch'd rallied and pulled its Leek Sword from the ground.
It was covered in dust and near the limit of its strength, but its eyes still shone. It raised its sword with fighting spirit and strode forward.
It was like Don Quixote preparing to charge a monstrous windmill.
The stiffness that followed Meteor Assault seemed to have had little effect on it. It looked ready to launch another fierce attack at any moment.
But when it and Ash looked across the field, what they saw came as no surprise.
"Hydreigon has used Roost again!"
The commentator's cry rang over the stadium. Many spectators broke into a cold sweat.
Seriously?
It was still going to fight?
Before, the spectators' impression of Baimu had been that he switched Pokémon too often. Now it had become—did he not have a switch button?
Of course, no one objected to Baimu keeping his Pokémon in. Plenty of trainers around the world rarely switched. They were simply stunned that Hydreigon was still fighting after battle upon battle.
He had gone from one extreme to the other in a reversal no one had expected.
On the field,
Ash had no intention of letting Hydreigon