An entire afternoon passed.
Aside from Nemona—who challenged again and again with endless enthusiasm no matter whether she won or lost—
Even Paul eventually paused to rest after repeated defeats.
As for Arven and Eri, the two players whose battle IQ wasn't exactly top-tier had long since been toyed with by Politoed.
Midway through, Shizuka—acting as team medic—volunteered to join the fight, eager to test the Minimize + Rock Slide + Substitute/Protect/Toxic combo she'd been studying so hard for days.
The result was brutal.
Because her proficiency and experience were nowhere near enough, Shizuka agonized for ages over which move to use.
And in that time, Politoed simply bound the minimized Chansey with Ice Beam—then ended the match with a perfectly timed Focus Punch.
Shizuka was dumbfounded on the spot.
How could the same tactic feel so different in her hands compared to Lucas's!?
By the time Lucas prepared to clock out exactly at five, even though the five students used a rotating gauntlet to wear Politoed down, they still hadn't taken a single win.
Now they were all drooping like eggplants after frost, applying medicine to their partners' wounds.
Lucas clapped his hands, drew their attention, and addressed the key issues he'd observed today.
"Nemona—Pawmot's Double Shock already hits very hard, but you've fallen into a misconception. You treat it as a finishing blow and use the dumbest method to charge it up—"
"You need to find a way to smoothly weave it into Pawmot's combo flow. Right now it's a once-only finisher, but that will change before long. You need to prepare ahead of time."
What Lucas meant was: after Pawmot Terastallized into Electric, it wouldn't need to fear losing its Electric typing, and its power wouldn't be depleted by a single Double Shock. With the energy from Electric Tera, Pawmot would be able to use Double Shock more times.
Nemona's eyes shone. "I'll work hard on that!"
Lucas looked at Eri.
"Eri—about martial arts, I might understand even less than you, so I won't ramble. The biggest problem between you and Annihilape today wasn't technique—it's that you love tanking hits over and over, then stacking Rage and firing off Rage Fist."
"It's powerful, sure, but you saw how Politoed dealt with it. A single trick won't carry you forever. You need to think through other tactical lines."
"Oh—also, Combusken's Speed Boost is worth developing. Its leg muscles matter. Train them."
Eri sat up straight and nodded, a bit stiffly.
Just as Lucas turned to Arven, Nemona leaned toward Eri and quietly invited her to train together later.
Seeing Arven's guilty face, Lucas sighed helplessly. "What gave you the courage to have Scovillain fight Politoed for weather control?"
Arven didn't dare to speak.
He couldn't exactly say he'd hoped Scovillain would win weather and then Solar Beam Politoed into oblivion.
"But being able to consider the synergy between abilities and moves is already a big improvement from before."
Lucas patted Arven's shoulder and turned to Paul and Shizuka.
Their problems complemented each other in a strange way.
Paul had meticulous battle thinking and tactics, but his Turtwig and Fuecoco were just starting out; their strength and learned moves were far from enough to support many of his ideas.
Shizuka, meanwhile, had Chansey with an insane movepool… but her command skill was frighteningly bad.
For now, Lucas only gave them basic advice.
Their teams were still far from having a distinctive style like Nemona's and Eri's. Basic guidance was enough for them to digest.
As Lucas finished, the five o'clock bell rang right on time.
The students discussed whether they should go together to the Pokémon Center in Los Platos to visit Penny and Flareon.
Lucas, very wisely, did not join the topic and simply walked away.
Which made Arven—who'd planned to mooch dinner at Lucas's place tonight—wisely shut his mouth.
Walking out of Naranja Academy, Lucas was suddenly called from behind:
"Yo, busy man. Long time no see!"
Lucas stopped and turned back with resignation. "Ms. Raifort—what is it?"
"It's not really anything. I'm just curious how your Paldea coins collection is going."
Raifort spread her hands, insisting she'd only called him over out of curiosity.
Lucas glanced at her and answered honestly: "Still at 26. Haven't gone collecting lately."
Raifort stepped forward—so close she was nearly pressed against him—utterly lacking in boundaries. Watching his expression, she spoke in a teasing tone: "Need me to introduce you to some channels?"
Lucas stepped back a couple of paces and shook his head. "No need. I've already got plans."
Compared to the suspiciously motivated Raifort, Lucas would rather handle it himself—and he'd already put things in motion, though he hadn't yet received a reply from a suitable candidate.
As if wounded by his retreat, Raifort put on a hurt expression. "What a shame. I was even planning to break my own rules and introduce a few channels—just so I could see the first modern Gholdengo."
"I'll thank you for the kindness, but I don't need help for now." Seeing through her acting, Lucas changed the topic. "Anything else? If not, I'm leaving. There's a lot to do at the farm."
Raifort stepped back as well, shrugging. "Nope. We're still investigating the exact locations of the four Treasures of Ruin, the stake sites, and the Clear Amulet. When there's a breakthrough, I'll contact you."
"After all, if it's just little old me, even if I unseal the Treasures of Ruin, I wouldn't be able to subdue them or keep them."
Lucas nodded and said no more. He left Naranja Academy, rode Dragonite from Mesagoza's outskirts, and flew back toward the farm.
Just as he reached the airspace above the farm, Lucas happened to catch the Corviknight Sky Patrol changing shifts.
As clan leader, Three Scar directed the Murkrow and Corviknight to switch smoothly, then land at the farm to collect their daily wages.
For the Corviknight and Murkrow's mental health, Lucas and Oranguru had recently adjusted the patrol schedule.
Instead of working all day straight, it became three split shifts.
After delivering milk in the morning, they only needed to stay until noon before swapping with the next shift.
The new shift ran from around 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., then the final shift came to hand over, worked until 9 p.m., and returned to the roost to rest.
This not only solved the too many hours issue, it also allowed more Corviknight and Murkrow to participate—and kept them in peak condition while guarding the farm's skies.
All it cost Lucas was a small portion of the farm's gradually overflowing output.
Watching the Corviknight and Murkrow complete the handover expertly, Lucas was about to have Dragonite descend when he noticed something off.
"Huh?"
As Three Scar flapped its wings, several glossy black feathers with a metallic sheen fell one by one.
Some were blown away into the wild.
Some drifted down into the farmyard, fields, and Thunder Lake.
Were they molting—shedding feathers because it was time?
Lucas frowned and looked around. The other Corviknight and Murkrow showed the same phenomenon.
There were basically two reasons Corviknight would molt:
Some illness.
That seemed unlikely. Surely not a dozen Corviknight and Murkrow had caught the same disease at once.
Their nutrition was abundant, letting them grow better feathers than before.
Lucas suspected it was the second.
Since being recruited into the farm workforce, Three Scar and the others—once skinny, with dull feathers—had visibly improved. Some Corviknight were even over-nourished and had gotten chubbier.
Starting to replace their feathers with tougher, higher-quality ones made sense.
A little later.
Dragonite landed at Thunder Lake. Lucas released Politoed from its ball, interacted a bit with it, Dragonair, and the Dragonite leader, and finally returned home.
Oranguru was probably out buying necessities. Calyrex was holding Cosmog—rarely awake—and playing with it.
When Lucas came in, Calyrex spoke via telepathy: "Luxray and Arcanine have returned. They brought good news."
Lucas's eyes lit up. "What good news?"
Calyrex used Psychic to float over a note that looked like it had been torn off casually.
"The Nurse Joy at the Los Platos Pokémon Center has already formulated a prescription that pairs with the bitter Herba Mystica—and asked them to bring a copy back."
Lucas quickly took it and read carefully.
Perhaps because Flareon's condition was racing against time, this prescription was more aggressive than the conservative sour formula from before. It boldly added several medicinal plants that might synergize with the salty Herba's effect and enhance it.
It was practically custom-made for Flareon.
Seeing it, Lucas understood why Joy had Luxray bring it back.
She was setting him a problem.
Replace the plants with certain irritating or too-strong effects with gentler ones more suitable for general use.
Lucas put the prescription away, planning to study it slowly at night. Once he derived an appropriate formula, he'd buy the herbs and have the sister Shuckle brew the medicinal liquid in her shell.
Then Lucas told Calyrex about the Corviknight molting and asked his question.
"Could Corviknight feathers help when reforging the Rusted Sword and Rusted Shield?"
Corviknight feathers were strange.
While they carried the inherent properties of feathers, they could also exist as hard steel. Lucas remembered they were quite prized in Galar among certain metalworking plants.
So could they serve as one of the materials to restore the Rusted Sword and Rusted Shield?
Calyrex set down the rattle it had been using to entertain Cosmog and answered without hesitation: "If you can gather them in large quantity, adding such materials would indeed help restore them."
As a kind of metal, Corviknight feathers had excellent performance.
Calyrex vaguely remembered that when it once ordered a craftsman to forge sword and shield, the craftsman had added Corviknight feathers.
The craftsman had said something like:
"If one only uses the finest iron ore and such materials, then no matter how high our craft, the final product will never be capable of bearing the King's power—nor can it become a worthy divine artifact."
"Fortunately, the world holds much living 'steel.' If you mix in fragments of their bodily matter or even what they shed, it becomes enough to grant the finished work the strength to receive the King's bestowed power."
Calyrex recited the memory word for word.
After listening, Lucas fell into thought.
So one of the necessary requirements to restore the Rusted Sword and Rusted Shield was parts from various Steel-type Pokémon.
Like the bronze chunks from Copperajah, or the metal on Bisharp.
…
…
In a patch of grass tall enough to reach a human's waist, a rustle rustle sounded.
A moment later, a small pink figure poked out a head larger than its body, scanning the surroundings cautiously.
Its name was Tinkatink. It loved forging hammers. Every Tinkatink dreamed of becoming a master smith—this one was no exception.
But Tinkatink was missing something that, to it, was as important as a soul.
Looking down at its empty hands, sadness flashed through its eyes.
When it left its tribe to begin its training journey toward becoming a master smith, it passed through a bamboo grove. There, those vicious brutes stole its hammer—and forced it to watch as they tore it apart and devoured it.
Who knew what they might do if it stayed longer?
With no choice, Tinkatink fled in disgrace, beginning a wandering life—searching for materials, hoping to forge a new hammer.
In this area, there also seemed to be members of those hateful brutes' kind. Tinkatink knew it had to be even more vigilant.
Moving carefully through the grass to avoid making any conspicuous noise that might draw those bullies over, Tinkatink searched with meticulous focus.
It remembered that a few feathers had suddenly drifted down from the sky. They should have fallen somewhere nearby.
After searching for a long time, its already grimy body became even more smeared with mud.
But effort paid off. At the boundary between a patch of grass and a water source, Tinkatink finally found a feather.
It was pitch-black. Under the not-yet-setting sun, it faintly reflected light, giving off a metallic sheen.
To Tinkatink's amateur apprentice eye, using this feather would let it craft a hammer far superior to the one it had once made after attacking Bronzor together with the elders of its tribe!
Thanks for heaven's gift!
Tinkatink's eyes sparkled. It immediately tossed its old hammer out of its mind and searched even harder for more feathers.
But even by sunset, it had only found five feathers in the area—still far from the hundreds or thousands needed to make a hammer!
Tinkatink looked toward the direction it remembered the feathers had drifted from and silently made a decision.