Xia You and Cheryl spared no praise.
"Of course it was amazing!" Cheryl smiled gently. "The whole battle flowed like moving clouds and flowing water; absolutely no one is your opponent."
"Hehe." Dawn smiled happily, then looked at Xia You. "I feel like I've also slightly grasped that feeling of how you sweep through Gyms without a single rival!"
Hearing her say this, Xia You smiled and nodded, gently reminding, "You'll get used to it slowly. But once you truly become a top Coordinator, perhaps you'll start missing the times when you used to need to strive and struggle with all your might, just like I did before."
"Isn't that still a long way off!" Dawn was very optimistic about this.
As Dawn successfully won her own Ribbon Medal, this meant the group's goals in Nacrene City were now all achieved.
At this point, it was just barely two or three o'clock in the afternoon. Seeing that the hour was still early and after asking Dawn and receiving her affirmative reply, the group didn't continue to stay in Nacrene City, but instead returned to the Pokémon Center to retrieve their luggage, tidied up a bit, and set off to continue heading east.
Come to think of it, it was quite a coincidence.
Xia You's next destination was precisely the Striaton Gym further east, and the venue for the next Pokémon Contest happened to be in Striaton City as well.
However, wanting to reach Striaton City still meant walking a very long stretch of road.
Leaving Nacrene City, outside lay a country road.
The road conditions here were quite complex; for instance, the stretch just outside the city was relatively flat, with quiet forests on both sides, but the further east they went, the scarcer the forests became, replaced instead by