The Spikemuth Gym Challenge went more smoothly than expected.
Almost everyone in town, along with the fans who had come for the concert, cheered for Piers. The band onstage played melodies familiar to him and his Pokémon without pause, but none of it brought him victory.
Of course.
That didn't mean Piers was weak. He could defeat Kabu without Dynamaxing and reach the Champion Cup semifinals. In another region, he would easily rank among the Elite Four.
The main thing was that, unlike Bea, he didn't adjust his Pokémon lineup to match his challengers. If a challenger had a certain number of Badges, he used the team he'd chosen for that number.
And although he specialized in raising Dark-type Pokémon, their advantage over a Psychic held true only in theory...
As everyone knew.
Psychics didn't care about theory. They cared about results.
As a physically oriented Psychic, it's only reasonable that I've studied Fighting-type moves too, right?
Right!
Hypno showed the depth of its experience in this Gym battle. It took down Skuntank with Focus Punch, then faced Bewear with Drain Punch. Bewear cycled through Obstruct, no Obstruct, then Obstruct again, but still couldn't finish Hypno off.
Instead, they knocked each other out.
When the two collided and wrestled for dominance, even the band was stunned, let alone the spectators. The drums stopped, the guitar and bass fell silent, and imaginary ellipses seemed to appear above every musician's head.
Baimu thought Piers looked conflicted.
Understandably so.
Even blurred into mosaic-like pixels, Hypno's fists were terrifying. Calling them the size of sandbags was no exaggeration.
With two of his main Pokémon down, Piers's remaining Scrafty and Malamar also fell to Slowking and Galarian Rapidash.
Galarian Rapidash had only recently joined the team, but its base strength far surpassed Galarian Slowbro's and