After parting ways with Misty, Xia You and Ash headed up the stairs, continuing toward the top of the Petal Tower.
By now, Xia You had already seen the pattern: Xiaomei wanted to battle someone on every floor. It was the classic routine of leaving one person behind at each stage, and she was doing it for no other reason than to amuse herself!
Or, to put it another way, a little girl had been lonely for too long and wanted someone to play with, and her way of playing was to have Pokémon battles with them!
This also showed that, under the influence of the Unown and Entei's encouragement, Xiaomei had become both willful and somewhat unrestrained!
Tap, tap... tap, tap...
Footsteps and heavy breathing echoed continuously up the stairs.
Below them, Misty and Xiaomei had already begun fighting. Explosions from the battle rang out incessantly as Misty's Starmie tangled with the Pokémon Xiaomei had conjured up. As Xia You and Ash passed out of that space, the sea and sky soon vanished, and the scenery before them changed back into that network of crystals.
They ran upward through the network for another few minutes, until they were panting and their legs felt weak, before finally reaching the top of the Petal Tower.
By then, both of them were exhausted and drenched in sweat. It was not that they lacked stamina, but that this place was simply too high!
Perhaps because space had been distorted, the distance they had covered definitely exceeded the Crystal Tower's original height!
By a rough estimate, they had spent at least a dozen minutes running up the stairs from the very bottom, yet from outside, the Crystal Tower was not even a hundred meters tall!
It seemed that whether it was the crystals, the