Battle Escalation

"Boom—"

The ground trembled incessantly the moment Gallade landed.

Cracks spread along erratic paths.

Water poured down without end, like a series of artificial waterfalls.

No one knew where the bottom of those pitch-black fissures led, and the sight was deeply unsettling.

"Nido!"

Even beneath the roar of the water, the pained cries remained exceptionally clear.

Nidoking and Nidoqueen burst out from the shallow layer underground in a rather bedraggled state.

Gallade's attacks had left quite a few scars on them.

Though there was a gap in strength between the two sides, the effects of type advantage had made up for some of the lost damage.

"Just as I thought."

A sharp glint flashed in Tetsuya's eyes. "They used the terrain to effectively stop the water from flooding back in."

It was much like the result caused by the earlier Earthquake.

All Nidoking had done was dig tunnel passages leading in two different directions at the same time.

One went straight down into the earth to divert the water.

The other was several meters beneath the ground nearby, meant for hiding.

While the surging water mostly rushed downward, only a tiny portion reached Nidoking and Nidoqueen.

If it had not needed to consider that digging too many holes in the shallow underground might cause a collapse and make things worse, Nidoking, which was responsible for Dig, could have avoided being affected entirely.

Of course.

This trick would not work everywhere.

After all.

Not every place was like Mt. Moon, where the underground was a tangled mess filled with natural tunnels stretching in every direction.

Nidoking only needed to connect a short section of tunnel it had dug itself with one that already existed underground.

After that, Mt. Moon's geographical features would naturally solve the problem for it.

Otherwise.

Even a