Chapter 173: CH42 (172), Final Round (1)
The battles for fourth place happened first. The 3 losers of the previous round had to fight against each other once and the one with the better battle record would become fourth. The same would happen with the winner trio to determine who would get first place.
The first fight happened between Bianca Bianchi my opponent of the previous round and Pierre Durant the other guy from our academy who lost against Erza.
Bianca used Mudsdale and Pidgeot, while Pierre used his Gallade and Pidgeot. Both Pidgeot fought an aerial battle against each other while Gallade and Mudsdale fought each other.
Each battle happened between Pokemon of roughly the same strength, so theoretically their battles should be pretty even, and it was even true for the one between the two Pidgeot. However, in the battle between Gallade and Mudsdale, Gallade had a visible superiority.
The battle between the two trainers on the other hand was even as well. Pierre with his Falchion was able to keep up with Bianca and her twin daggers. I, and most likely those with high prowess, noticed that Bianca had a slight advantage, but it was not enough to make a difference.
The battle went on like that for nearly three minutes, which in such battles was not a short time, at least not for those who were not used to it. We could see Pierre and Bianca tiring but they managed to keep their stalemate.
At least it was like that before Gallade managed to knock out Mudsdale. Their fight had been going in its favor from the beginning and Gallade succeeded in knocking out Mudsdale after delivering a final Psycho Cut at Mudsdale's head.
Gallade ignored Pidgeot's battle and teleported behind Bianca, positioning itself so that Pierre could see it. After that, it used Psychic to momentarily freeze Bianca, which Pierre used to point his Falchion at her throat.
He was declared the winner and the Pidgeot stopped their battle as well after they noticed that the fight was over. The two recalled their Pokemon, and the referee announced a 5-minute break for them to heal their Pokemon and rest.
Once the 5 minutes were over it was declared that Bianca would fight against her fellow academy member Eric Ericson. Bianca once more called out her Mudsdale and Pidgeot, which told me that she had no one else strong enough to replace one of them.
Otherwise, I believed that she would have changed her roster as a surprise. Eric on the other hand used his (mid) silver-stage Gogoat and his (low) silver-stage Corviknight. Honestly, while the stage of their respective Pokemon was equal, type-wise Eric's Pokemon had a pretty big advantage.
So, when I saw Bianca with her twin daggers and two Pokemon standing across Eric with his ax and two Pokemon, I already guessed that Eric would win as long as he was not much worse than Bianca in direct combat.
As soon as the referee announced the start of the battle Eric and his Pokemon sprang into action. Eric ran at Bianca, while his Gogoat targeted Mudsdale, and his Corviknight flew at Pidgeot.
Eric was actually the last one on his side to reach his target. He swung his ax at her as soon as she was inside his reach, forcing her to dodge. He followed his first swing with a few more, trying to build up his momentum and suppress her to keep her from fighting back.
Everyone could see that Eric had a strength advantage and that his weapon was kind of suppressing Bianca's daggers. Nonetheless, she was more agile than him and used her speed advantage to dodge everything, while deflecting everything she couldn't.
However, every time she tried to deflect an attack of Eric she risked being hit. The probability of that happening was increasing because I noticed that the force behind Eric's attacks was hurting her hand each time she managed to deflect an attack.
On the aerial front, Pidgeot had a hard time hurting Corviknight who had no such problem, so Corviknight had the advantage. As for the battle between the land mounts, Mudsdale was barely holding on, and it looked like Gogoat would beat it within the next minute or so.
Seeing that she was losing Bianca did something risky, during another one of Eric's swings she put the strength of her whole body into deflecting his attack.
She succeeded in making Eric stumble a few steps to the right and made use of that time to attack him. She managed to slash his side with her left dagger but failed to slash at Eric's throat with her right dagger because Eric managed to block it using his right arm.
While that meant that his right arm was out of commission for the rest of the battle since he was not allowed to use it anymore, that did not matter anymore, because he used her proximity due to her "failed" attempt at finishing him to swing his ax at her.
Due to her attack, she was unable to block or dodge the attack and the ax landed on her chest, which if it had been a real ax instead of a wooden one would have split open her chest.
The referee declared Eric the winner, and their Pokemon stopped fighting as well. Gogoat looked a bit frustrated to me, which was probably because it was about to finish its opponent but couldn't do so before the fight was declared over.
Now, one could argue that Eric had a bit of an advantage during the fight because Bianca was forced to fight him after only having rested for 5 minutes after her previous fight, but that would apply to Eric as well, during the next battle.
Furthermore, the teachers told us that the breaks were kept that long to stimulate a situation where they were forced to fight back-to-back battles with little breaks in between, which does happen more often than not in the wild.
Here the cost of losing was losing a reward, while it was losing one's life in the wild, so they told us to suck it up and quit whining. The last bit obviously came from Mr. Koetsuji.
Anyway, once the battle ended there was another 5-minute break, after which Eric had to battle against Pierre. The winner would get fourth place, so it was the final battle for the losing group.
Eric had his Gogoat and Corviknight, while Pierre had his Gallade and Pidgeot beside him. Stage-wise, they were equal, but mobility-wise Gallade had an advantage over Gogoat, while Corviknight had an advantage over Pidgeot, due to Pidgeot's attacks being not effective against it.
This time around Eric has a small round shield in his off-hand aside from his ax. It seemed he decided to use it after having to block Bianca's last strike with his arm. Unbelievable, to think that they were actually able to learn from past battles. Who would have thought?
Jokes aside, Pierre seemed to have decided to get a dagger for his off-hand aside from his Falchion. I was not sure if that was a good idea since dual-wielding would actually hamper his battle prowess if he was not trained in it.
Not to mention that using weapons of different lengths and types was a bit harder to do than regular dual wielding. Still, it was his choice and I hoped he knew what he was doing. Losing would not be a problem, since he made it until here but losing due to something stupid like that would probably trigger Mr. Koetsuji.
Anyway, the referee gave the starting signal and everyone found someone to fight. The Pokemon battles went as expected, and if Pierre could hold out long enough for his Gallade to reinforce him as he did against Bianca, then Pierre would win.
If he got beaten before that he would lose. Well, there was the chance that he would manage to beat Eric but looking at their exchanges right now that did not look likely. It seemed he was at a slight disadvantage.
Eric was going with his aggressive method while occasionally blocking any of Pierre's counterattacks, that he couldn't dodge or block with his ax, with his shield.
Meanwhile, Pierre was either dodging or deflecting all of Eric's attacks. He occasionally returned an attack of his own if he found an opening. He did this using his Falchion.
The off-hand dagger was actually only used twice until now, and even that was not fluid, showing that he was not as proficient with it as he should be to effectively use it during this battle.
They exchanged a few more blows when it happened. Pierre thought he saw an opening and tried to use his dagger to target it, but Eric easily blocked the stab.
Not only that, no, after stopping the momentum of Pierre's attack, he also grabbed the offending arm and pulled Pierre forward, completely destroying his balance. This showed that he had lured Pierre into a trap.
Using the opportunity he created, he placed his ax at Pierre's neck ending the battle. The referee declared Eric the winner, making him the person to become fourth.
The sad part was that Gallade managed to beat Gogoat at nearly the same time, so if Pierre had held out just a bit longer instead of falling to the trap and losing, then Gallade would have reinforced him, and he would have most likely won.
Hopefully, Mr. Koetsuji would be merciful. I mean, his performance was really not bad. Actually, everyone that managed to reach this stage was pretty good and had some pretty decent Pokemon.
After the fourth place was determined they immediately started the next battle. The first battle between the top 3 happened between Erza Scarlet and Yu Tianjin from the Rota Knight Academy.
Erza had her Rapidash and Corviknight, while Yu had his Zebstrika and Staraptor. He chose a spear as his weapon while she chose a scimitar. Even at this point, she used another different type of sword instead of settling for the one she was the most proficient with.
I mean, I seriously doubted that the scimitar was the sword type she could use the best. No, I pegged her more as someone using a katana or a longsword.
Their Pokemon were at the same stage and should be roughly equal in strength, so the battle was most likely going to be decided between the two trainers unless something major happened on the Pokemon's side.
As soon as the referee gave the start signal Erza ran at Yu. Due to his weapon having a range advantage, she wanted to close the distance between them since being closer was to her advantage instead.
So, Yu obviously stabbed out with his spear, forcing Erza to slow down to dodge the stab. Yu then proceeded to do his best to keep Erza at a certain distance, while she tried to close so that he would be in range for her scimitar.
She managed to get close enough a few times but Yu managed to block her attacks using his spear as a staff, before finding a chance to retreat to open the distance between them once more.
Seeing that the situation between them seemed like it would drag on for a while, I took a look at the fights happening between their Pokemon. The battle between Corviknight and Staraptor was pretty much even. What I meant by that was that they had roughly taken the same amount of damage.
They mostly used long-range moves to position their foe into certain places before closing in for a close-range attack using moves like Aerial Ace, Quick Attack, Close Combat, and Steel Wing.
As for the battle between Rapidash and Zebstrika, it was mostly a long-range one as well. They kept exchanging moves like Flamethrower, and Thunderbolt. They kept dodging each other's attacks due to their speed and moves like Flame Charge and Quick Attack.
Honestly, their exchange was probably the flashiest so far, at least for the mixed combat tournament. Anyway, after assessing the status of the Pokemon battles, I returned my focus to the battle between Erza and Yu, just in time to see Erza successfully closing the distance between them, stop Yu from using his spear, and softly whack her scimitar on his head.
I was a bit stunned at seeing her suddenly win the fight just like that. However, more than being stunned I was thankful that I had returned my focus on the battle on time, or I would have missed her last chain of actions.
I was obviously not the only one who was surprised, since the crowd only started cheering after the referee announced Erza as the winner instead of cheering as soon as she managed to whack Yu.
Yu himself was rubbing his head while looking as he still could not process how he had lost so suddenly when it looked as if they would be fighting for a while.
Nonetheless, the referee did not care for his bafflement and told them to recall their Pokemon before vacating the field. Afterward, he announced a 5-minute break.
Once the break was over he announced that the next fight would be between me and Yu.
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