After waiting for less than five minutes, Julian was scrolling through TikTok when Magearna came over and told him the challenger had arrived.
"Alright, time to loosen up a bit."
Julian stretched lazily, took a few steps forward, then suddenly stopped and said, "Magearna, do you want to battle?"
"Mage?"
Magearna pointed at itself, as if asking whether he really meant it.
"Mm."
Julian nodded.
"Mage!"
Magearna agreed excitedly and immediately followed behind him.
Although it wasn't adept at battling and was part of the support staff, fighting once in a while wasn't a bad thing.
Besides, it had never really fought in an official match before—just the occasional combat tips from its teacher Slowking, but with no actual battle experience.
Despite being the head housekeeper and looking like it held a purely administrative role, Slowking was actually quite strong. It just simply hadn't fought much.
With Magearna in tow, Julian quickly arrived at the battle arena.
The Gym staff and representatives from the Trainers Association were already there.
For National-Level Gym challenges, the Trainers Association always sent people to record the matches.
The recordings served many purposes—such as being used as instructional videos, or checking whether the Gym Leader was throwing the match too obviously.
If the Gym Leader went too easy and let the challenger win, the challenge would be invalidated, and the Gym Leader would face certain penalties.
Today's Gym challenge was Julian's first in several years, so the association took it very seriously and had sent highly professional recording personnel.
"Where's the challenger?"
Julian asked the gym staff beside him.
Upon arriving, he hadn't seen the challenger, even though they had just told him the challenger was already here.
"Went to the restroom," the staff member immediately replied.
Julian nodded and joked, "They aren't so nervous that they had to run to the bathroom, are they?"
These people were all old-timers at the Gym, many having started back in John's generation, so Julian was very familiar with them.
Moreover, Gym jobs could be inherited, and many had taken over from their parents.
One could say the gym staff were practically like retainers of the Walker family, serving the Walker household for generations.
Such people existed not only in the Walker family but in many other prominent families as well.
After all, serving a single family for generations naturally bred a level of loyalty far higher than that of most people.
Soon, someone emerged from the direction of the restroom.
When Julian saw who it was, he said in surprise, "Pierce? What are you doing here?"
The trainer challenging the Gym was none other than one of Julian's few good friends, Pierce.
Julian strode up to him quickly and thumped him on the shoulder with his palm, saying with some excitement, "Why would you come challenge my gym? Isn't this just asking for a beating?"
Pierce had originally been very happy to see Julian, but after hearing the latter half of that sentence, he didn't seem quite as happy anymore.
"Don't tell me you didn't even know the challenger was me?"
From Julian's reaction, it seemed he hadn't even bothered to check who was coming.
"I was just too lazy to look at the profile. But since it's you, then there's even less reason for me to look," Julian shrugged.
"Bast**d, what's that supposed to mean?"
Pierce laughed and cursed.
"You still haven't said why you came to challenge my gym. Has the military suddenly gotten so idle?" Julian asked.
Pierce was one of the military's key talents. He barely had any free time of his own, let alone time to challenge Gyms.
Besides, why would he challenge Gyms in the first place?
If it was just to gain battle experience, there was absolutely no need to challenge Gyms—the military was the best place to gain combat experience.
And Julian certainly didn't believe that Pierce needed Gym challenges to improve his combat skills.
The number of battles Pierce had experienced absolutely exceeded his own.
In terms of sheer combat experience, this guy was probably even more seasoned than he was.
To be honest, Julian couldn't really claim to have an extraordinary amount of battle experience himself. Most of his wins came from simply overpowering his opponents with raw strength.
When both sides were evenly matched, a trainer's experience could indeed influence the outcome of a battle.
But when there was a large gap in strength, even if the weaker side had significantly more experience and could slightly increase their chances of winning, the stronger side would still prevail most of the time.
In Pokémon battles, differences in strength generally mattered more than differences in experience.
"It was a trial mission assigned to me by the military—to challenge seventeen gyms," Pierce explained.
"Seventeen?"
Julian was momentarily confused, then asked instinctively, "Shouldn't it be eighteen?"
"They excluded your Gym."
Pierce rolled his eyes and said irritably, "The military assigned me a training mission, not a mission to get beaten up. Challenging your Gym would basically be delivering myself to the slaughter."
"Mm-mhm, so why did you end up coming anyway?" Julian asked.
Pierce explained, "I've already challenged the seventeen Gyms. Leaving your Gym unchallenged just felt incomplete. Plus, we haven't seen each other in a long time, so this was a good chance to meet up."
Julian nodded. It really had been a few years since they'd last met.
It wasn't that they couldn't see each other—it was just that he stayed holed up at home all day, too lazy to go out, and he never really felt the urge to either.
"So you beat all seventeen of the previous gyms?"
"Isn't that obvious?"
Pierce said, exasperated, feeling once again that Julian was looking down on him.
If it weren't for Julian, then he, Ember, Asher, and Rowan would be the top-tier geniuses. But now, with Julian around, the very word "genius" had been redefined because of his existence.
Nowadays, if someone claimed to be a genius, others would immediately say, "Oh, you're a genius? Are you as much of a genius as Champion Walker?" And hearing that, the person would instantly fall into despair.
Julian's existence had completely overshadowed every genius in the world.
If they could at least barely see his back as he moved ahead, that would be one thing. But the reality was that even if Julian stood still in front of them, they still couldn't catch up.
That was the most despairing and infuriating part of it all.
"Impressive."
Hearing Pierce's reply, Julian gave him a thumbs-up.
National-level Gyms varied in strength, but as long as it was a National-level Gym, the Gym Leader would at least be at peak of the Elite tier.
Meaning the baseline was peak Elite, then on to early, mid, late-stage Pseudo-Champion, and finally peak Pseudo-Champion.
As far as Julian knew, the peak Pseudo-Champion Gym Leader was from the Drake family's Dragon-type Gym, and the leader was the current Dragon Elite, Victor.
"You even beat Elite Victor?" Julian asked.
A few years ago, Pierce had only been a early-stage Pseudo-Champion. Had he already reached peak Pseudo-Champion tier in just a few years?
That rate of growth would be absurdly fast.
"No." Pierce shook his head and explained, "Elite Victor wasn't there at the time. I beat the acting Gym Leader, whose strength was at mid-stage Pseudo-Champion level."
At his age, if he could actually defeat Victor, he'd definitely be Julian the Second, and the military would be treating him like a national treasure, offering him the finest food and drink.
*****
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