While I was registering for a battle, I heard some good news right away. I had assumed that I would need to start from zero on my quest for 30 victories in a row since I had believed that the targeted training of my weaker Pokemon during my time at the Battle Club in Lilycove City had reset the counter. Granted, I had won those battles as well, but they had been against weaker foes and not Lords/Ladies, so I had thought that they would have broken the streak since the condition was to achieve 30 victories in a row against other Lords/Ladies.
However, it appeared that my streak had not been reset because I had not lost any battles. Apparently, the advancement conditions applied only to battles of one's own rank, which made sense since trying to initiate the Duke/Duchess challenge by accumulating either 30 wins in a row or 250 wins in total against lower-ranked trainers did not seem like something anyone would overlook. Well, at least that was the case as far as victories were concerned, so regardless of how many lower-ranked foes one beat, it would not affect the advancement counter.
A loss against anyone, on the other hand, would reset the advancement (in a row) counter straight away so going for lower-rank challenges still retained a modicum of risk; If one could call that a risk. Either way, thanks to that arrangement, I still retained the 18-victory streak I had built up in Lilycove City, so I only had to beat 12 more Lords or Ladies to initiate the Duke Challenge. Once that happened, it was only a matter of beating 2 out of the 5 Dukes/Duchesses I would be matched with and I would be promoted to Duke myself.
The second piece of good news was that the staff agreed to speed up my matching process as much as possible, though I was warned that it might still take a few minutes with the raised priority. I was fine with that since it still sounded much better than having to wait the 15, 20, or more minutes that I remembered having to occasionally wait before. It was a good thing that Ace-class trainers were not a rarity in Major Cities like Fallabor, or I could have been forced to wait at least that long if not longer for a match-up simply because of a lack of available options.
Less than 3 minutes after I sat down in the waiting area I heard an announcement asking Lord Satoshi to head to Battlefield No.2, so I happily stood up and made my way there. The battle was going to be 4-vs-4, but since the purpose of this was to let my Pokemon let out some steam, I was going to let each one continue until they had won the whole thing or got taken down. Lord/Lady rank trainers generally could have Pokemon ranging from the gold stage to the dark gold stage, so whether my Pokemon managed to achieve a 1-vs-4 victory or had to be switched out mostly depended on how strong the opponents were going to be.
I was honestly hoping that the trainers we got matched up with had Pokemon ranging from the (high) gold to (low) dark gold stage since those were the most appropriate adversaries for my golden Pokemon. Looking at the guy/Lord that was currently standing across from me, I was unable to discern anything distinct from his get-up that would hint at a certain specialization, so I decided to go with Optimus/Butterfree for our first battle. I let him out as soon as the referee gave the signal, and he ended up facing a Mightyena.
The activation of its Intimidation ability revealed that it was at the (high) gold stage as well, though that did not help it all that much against Optimus' chemical warfare. Lord Buzz and his Mightyena tried to resist as much as possible but not even three minutes had passed when Optimus' final Bug Buzz properly knocked the paralyzed, poisoned, and sleeping doggo out. Buzz followed up with a (high) gold Roselia, which was unexpected since not many would bother training one to this level without evolving it to Roserade.
Still, Buzz had obviously done so, and Roserade or not, I understood why he sent Roselia out. He was likely banking on the ineffectiveness of the chemical moves against it, in which Optimus had shown incredible proficiency. Unfortunately for them, Optimus was more than capable of battling without relying on his powder/chemical moves. He simply went on a direct offensive and used moves like Air Slash, Silver Wind, Psychic, and a final Hurricane to take Roselia down.
I could feel Buzz and the referee's surprise when Optimus used Hurricane since it was a move that Butterfree usually could not learn. However, we had Mothra/Butterfree who broke all conventional move rules, and Optimus had worked hard on learning Hurricane from her, making him another outlier Butterfree capable of doing so. Anyway, after Roselia went down, Lord Buzz sent out a Swalot which confused me a bit since Butterfree learning Safeguard was common knowledge as far as I knew, but then I realized that Swalot was not a bad choice against Optimus.
Not only was it immune to Optimus' chemical warfare thanks to its typing and the combination of Swalor's abilities, but it also proved really resilient especially after it had endured Optimus' attacks to set up a few Acid Armor, Amnesia, and Stockpiles. The Acid Armor and Amnesia provided a solid overall defense while the Stockpile added to that while also providing a basis to heal itself and deliver devastating strikes.
The powerful beams produced by Spit Up posed no real risk for Optimus who was able to evade them thanks to the Tailwind and Quiver Dance he set up while Swalot was busy with its own setup. Its elevated defense, general vitality, and Swallow on the other hand proved to be a nuisance since they allowed Swalot to endure a lot. Honestly, had it not been for Safeguard Swalot probably would have been able to grind Optimus down once it managed to poison him.
However, since it couldn't do that, Swalot was the one that got ground down by Optimus instead, though it took him nearly 12 minutes to do so which was nearly double the time it took him to beat both Mightyena and Roselia. Still, the feat took a lot out of Optimus, so when Buzz released a (low) dark gold stage Glalie Optimus was too tired to take it down as well. He fought Glalie for close to 3 minutes before he finally fell to a Blizzard.
I decided to add AlphaBro from the reserve to the mix and let him tie up the battle in Optimus' stead. The appearance of a Slowbro of his size shocked Buzz, though he quickly regained his cool when AlphaBro's (high) gold stage was revealed. They tried to set up Hail again, and while AlphaBro did not know Sunny Day as Optimus did, he still knew Rain Dance, so he used that to prevent Hail from taking effect. Their insistence on Hail had me suspect that Glalie had Ice Body, so I had no plans to allow that.
AlphaBro and Glalie fought for a while, with Alpha predominantly using psychic moves, though he had to limit it to brief psychic strikes since psychic holds did not work for long because Glalie disrupted them using Crunch. He still managed to finish the battle in less than 8 minutes, which brought our total battle time to something between 28 and 29 minutes. I returned to the waiting area after completing the after-battle courtesy, and it did not even take 4 minutes since the end of my last battle before I got called up again.
This time around I opened the battle with Prime/Beedrill while Lady Bloom, who I was facing, sent out a (mid) gold stage Bellossom. Prime and I took that little flower dancer very seriously, so even though Prime had the substage advantage, he went all out from the very start. Yet, despite that, we had no way to interrupt the Sunny Day it set up, which doubled its speed. Things would have been easier if Bellossom had not sped up, but Prime did not let that stop him and simply worked on raising his speed to catch up.
Bellossom managed to drag things out with Synthesis, but it eventually fell under the double onslaught of poison and Prime's attacks. Prime then went on to take down the (high) gold Delcatty that followed, before he fell to the (low) dark gold Froslass that Bloom sent out as her third Pokemon. Still, he did not do so before leaving his mark. It was a poisoned and somewhat hurt Froslass that got to battle AlphaBro, who then proceeded to finish what Prime began.
It was just unfortunate that he fell victim to the Destiny Bond that Froslass set up at the very last moment, so I actually had to send out a third Pokemon. I went with Hades/Gengar while Lady Bloom's final Pokemon ended up being a (low) dark gold stage Vileplume. A slight stage advantage was naturally not enough to stump Hades. He ran/levitated circles around Vileplume, diving into shadows and jumping out randomly to close in or to attack from a blindspot. Unlike Bloom, I was not surprised to see Vileplume fall beneath Hades' feet.
What was a bit startling was the realization that this battle had taken less time than the previous one even though I had been forced to use one more Pokemon. Nonetheless, if we added the previous waiting times, we still came pretty close to an hour since my arrival at the Battle Club. It was an hour and a minute actually if we added the time it took for my title to be called up for the third time. I led the third battle with Hades since he had not fallen during the last one, and he actually managed to solo Lady Rias' team on his own.
Granted all the Pokemon she used were at the (high) gold stage, but it was still a great battle record. In fact, I decided to shelve him after that to give the others a chance as well since I felt that 5 Pokemon fights were enough for today. Kun/Azuraid got to lead the next battle, and he managed to replicate Hades' feat. He ended up taking out Lord Koman's entire team, which included a (low) dark gold stage Crawdaunt. Since he had participated in the Gym Battle as well, I chose to retire him after that.
Heck, the only reason I let him have a go considering his Gym Battle participation was that I thought that it might help him push to complete his limit-breaking phase, which was also why he got to take part in the Gym Challenge in the first place. Anyway, the fifth battle was left to Melinda/Mienshao who managed to take down a (high) gold Linoone, a (high) gold Banette before falling to a (low) dark gold Manectric, though she managed to force that electric doggo to the brink before she fell, making it easy prey for Ali/Gallade.
Ali then dealt with the (high) gold Sableye that was sent out last. All he had to do was dodge the ghost moves while (counter-) attacking with Fairy Blade. Things would have gone faster if Sableye had not started going underground after being cut a few times. Still, Ali successfully took Sabeye down eventually, and since he had taken part in the Gym Challenge as well, I chose to retire him just like I had done with Kun.
Thus, the sixth Lord was left to Gwen/Gardevoir, who actually managed to beat all 4 of Kyle's Pokemon on her own, which included a (low) dark gold stage Absol that he sent out as his second Pokemon. After that victory, I went to the reception to temporarily withdraw my application since it was nearly 2 p.m. and I wanted to enter Utopia for lunch.
Everyone was pretty hyped during lunch, with those who had yet to fight looking forward to their battle, and those who had already fought being chattered up about their battles.
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