Hydreigon watched Iron Valiant with growing interest.
It had expected this small challenger to fold — just like the others before it. Every trainer who reached this layer eventually did. The gap in strength was simply too wide.
But Iron Valiant had not folded.
It had taken Hydreigon's Dark Pulse head-on, endured the pressure bearing down on it, and in the middle of that desperation had broken through to a new level entirely. That was not something Hydreigon had anticipated.
Interesting.
Its gaze moved over Iron Valiant slowly, reading it in the way only a Pokémon of its experience could. The aptitude there was not exceptional — not by the standards that mattered at the highest levels. But there was something else. Something in the way it had refused to bend. A conviction that ran deeper than strength alone.
Hydreigon had seen that quality before. Rarely, but it had seen it.
In another time, it had seen it in its own reflection.
There had been a period — long past now, blurred by the distance of centuries — when it too had been small. When the path upward had been a series of hardships and near-failures, each one demanding more than the last, until eventually something had shifted. The shackles had broken. The ceiling had given way.
It had not been a gift. Nothing about it had been a gift.
For a Pokémon that was not Legendary, the ceiling of natural aptitude ended at the Master level. That was simply the reality. Crossing from there into the Legendary Class was something else entirely — not a matter of training harder or longer, but of something that could not be forced. Conviction. Relentless effort. And fortune, when fortune was willing to cooperate.
Iron Valiant's aptitude had not yet reached Master level. But its character suggested that, given time, the ceiling was not necessarily fixed.
As for deity-level strength — Hydreigon did not dwell on that. Beyond the highest-tier Legendaries, no Pokémon reached it. That was a boundary of a different kind.
"Interesting."
Hydreigon's voice rumbled across the platform. Its massive body descended, landing with a weight that sent a shudder through the rock underfoot, and it brought its central head down toward Iron Valiant until the two were nearly level.
"You have passed my trial."
Then it shifted its attention to Jacob.
The enormous head swung toward him slowly, close enough that Jacob could feel the warm, faintly rancid breath from its nostrils pressing against him in irregular gusts. At this distance he could see every detail — the rows of dark scales, the constant drip of saliva from its open jaw, the red vertical pupils that held his reflection with unsettling steadiness.
"What kind of reward should I give you?"
The question seemed directed at Jacob and at no one in particular simultaneously. Hydreigon tilted its head back, as if genuinely deliberating. Then something shifted in its eyes — a flicker of recognition, like a thought clicking into place.
The gaze that returned to Jacob felt different. Heavier, somehow. As if it were looking past his surface.
"Oh?" A faint note of curiosity entered Hydreigon's voice. "I think I know what to give you."
Its eyes moved to the Poké Balls at Jacob's side.
"You carry quite a few Dragon-type Pokémon." There was something almost amused in the way it said it. "I've been in this place alone for a long time. Long enough that I've lost track of it entirely. Leave one of them with me. Train with me for half a year. You can come back and collect it when the time is up."
Jacob stared.
He hadn't expected that. Of everything the third layer could have offered — items, moves, knowledge — this hadn't crossed his mind.
Half a year of personal guidance from a Legendary Class Pokémon. No system, no shortcut. Just direct, intensive experience under one of the most powerful Dragon-types he had ever encountered.
He turned it over carefully.
The downside was real. Half a year was a long time to be without one of his team. But the upside was also real, and it was difficult to overstate. Whatever Pokémon stayed behind would return changed in a way that no item or training method currently available to him could replicate.
Who should go?
He ran through the roster mentally. Charizard and Sceptile only became Dragon-types through Mega Evolution — it felt like a stretch to count them here, and practically speaking, both served critical roles on his team as they were. He set them aside.
That left six: Dragapult, Haxorus, Salamence, Noivern, Dragonair, and the Duraludon egg still in its shell.
Duraludon was out immediately — it hadn't even hatched.
Dragapult was also out, though for a different reason. It was a Shiny Pokémon, and more than that, it was the Pokémon most closely associated with Jacob in the eyes of anyone who knew him. If someone else reached the third layer during those six months and found a Shiny Dragapult here, the connection would be obvious. And if Jacob was somewhere else at the time without Dragapult at his side, that was a gap in his story that would be difficult to explain away.
Dragonair was the other clear exclusion. He had only recently caught it. The bond between them was still new, still fragile — leaving it here for six months before that foundation had properly formed felt like a gamble he wasn't willing to take. There was a real chance he'd come back to a Pokémon that no longer felt like his.
That narrowed it down to three: Haxorus, Salamence, and Noivern.
Of those three, Noivern had the highest aptitude by a significant margin. It had started at King-level Qualification — lower than Dragapult or Iron Valiant — which was precisely why Jacob had invested Bottle Caps in it. The logic behind that decision was straightforward: Bottle Caps raised individual values toward their maximum. On a Pokémon like Dragapult or Iron Valiant, whose aptitude already suggested near-ideal values in most areas, the gain would be marginal at best. On Noivern, where the ceiling was lower to begin with, the same investment produced a much larger improvement. Five Bottle Caps had taken it from King level up to Master level — a jump that would have been far less dramatic on a Pokémon that was already close to its limits.
Now, at Master level, Noivern was the natural choice for this kind of opportunity. Training to cross from Master level into Legendary Class was a fundamentally different challenge from anything that came before — closer to a change in kind than a change in degree. Guidance from a Pokémon that had already made that crossing, and had centuries of experience on the other side of it, was exactly the kind of thing that could make the difference.
But Jacob caught himself before he went any further with that reasoning.
The Pokémon had a say in this.
He reached for three Poké Balls and released Noivern, Haxorus, and Salamence onto the platform.
All three appeared and immediately went still. Hydreigon's presence hit them like a wall — the sheer scale of the creature, the aura radiating off it, the instinctive recognition that this was something far above them. It was not a comfortable feeling.
Jacob gave them a moment, then spoke.
"Noivern, Haxorus, Salamence." He kept his voice level. "I want to ask you something, and I need you to hear me out before you answer."
He explained the offer as plainly as he could. Hydreigon's proposal. The six months. The separation. What it could mean, and what it would cost.
"I won't pretend the training won't be hard," he said. "And six months is a long time. We won't see each other during that time. But whoever stays will come back stronger — in ways I probably can't offer you on my own right now."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"If any of you want to stay, I want to know. And if none of you do, I'll turn the reward down. No pressure either way."
Haxorus shook its head immediately. Its expression was almost apologetic — it had grown a great deal from the small, clingy Axew it had once been, but some things hadn't changed. Separation wasn't something it was willing to consider.
Salamence followed, shaking its head as well, just as quickly and just as clearly.
Jacob turned to Noivern.
The bat Dragon Pokémon was looking at Hydreigon.
"Noivern." Jacob's voice dropped slightly. "Whatever you decide — I mean it. If you want to stay, I'll come back for you. If you don't, we leave together."
"It's your choice."