Thinking it over, Nova suddenly felt like something about this was off.
Nothing about those two old men's usual shameless behavior suggested they were the type to bury themselves in work to the point of never marrying. And yet, somehow, both of them really had stayed bachelors their whole lives.
As far as Nova understood it, the Layered Peaks Gym had passed through eight generations of Gym Leaders, always from master to student, never from father to son. Some earlier Gym Leaders had bad luck with family, saddled with children who turned out mediocre or worse, forcing them to name a disciple as heir instead. Others ended up alone, like Gilbert and Mort, and by sixty, they'd be scrambling to find someone worthy, terrified of letting down everyone who'd held the position before them.
Was the Gym Leader's seat cursed or something?
The thought actually startled Nova a little. He found himself wanting to hold Aresdra a bit closer, just in case whatever strange luck haunted this Gym had a way of spreading.
Of course, that was Nova jumping to conclusions. If he'd actually grown up as a Layered Peaks Gym Trainer and known the place's real history, he never would have thought that way to begin with.
The truth was that Sand River City, compared to naturally favored places like Purple Gold City or Nivan City, had always been dirt poor. When the Norlandia Alliance was first established, it needed to hold back the constant waves of Ground and Rock type Pokémon pouring out of the northwestern desert, and that meant building major Gyms right at the edge of human territory, out where the desert began. The Layered Peaks Gym carried that burden, and it was exactly why the place had never really been able to grow.
In terms Nova understood from his old life, the Layered Peaks Gym functioned as the northwestern frontier's last line of defense for the whole Norlandia Alliance. Without generation after generation of Gym Leaders holding that line, none of the cities near the desert, not Sand River City, not Harmony City, not Forest City or Stone City, would have had any stable ground to stand on.
Anyone who took the seat without real strength would not last long against the constant attacks. A responsible Gym Leader would never hand the position to a descendant who couldn't handle it, since that wasn't a gift so much as a death sentence.
It was only in the last sixty or seventy years that the Norlandia Alliance's technology finally advanced enough, the ranks of Professional Trainers swelled, and the wild land between cities started getting properly settled. As luck would have it, the current Gym Leader, Gilbert, turned out to be not just powerful but sharp when it came to business as well. Under him, the Layered Peaks Gym finally grew by tapping into the mineral wealth of the Cengluan Mountain Range, eventually building it into a proper economic power.
Still, becoming wealthy hadn't lightened the Gym's responsibilities one bit. Whoever eventually inherited Gilbert's seat would still need to understand the desert inside and out, live in it, and ultimately master it. Anyone who reached the position without that could climb through other means, sure, but they'd be walking a path that would likely get them, and plenty of people relying on them, killed.
Which was exactly why Gilbert and Mort had gone to such lengths to trick Nova into heading out into the desert in the first place.
As for why the two of them had stayed single their whole lives, that traced back to some old history. Whatever it was, it had been enough to set the two of them and their whole generation of Trainers against each other back when they were young.
Nova wasn't particularly interested in digging through that old business right now, though.
At the moment, he was focused entirely on refining Nidoking's abilities.
Shaping a Pokémon's inner potential this way took time, effort, money, and patience in equal measure; skimp on any one of those and the whole thing fell apart. Years earlier, getting Nidoking's mastery over Toxic to where Nova wanted it had drained nearly every coin he could scrape together, and it still took two and a half years before he saw real results.
By now, Nidoking had been evolved for close to four months, eating well and sleeping soundly every night, and its energy reserves had built back up to where they needed to be. With his official registration with the Norlandia Alliance still pending, Mort wasn't letting Nova wander off anywhere, keeping him confined to Layered Peaks Gym grounds instead.
Since Gilbert now had more money and more hands on staff than he knew what to do with, it seemed a waste not to make use of it. Taking full advantage, Nova threw himself into refining Nidoking further.
First on the list was its raw special attack potential and the deep well of Psychic energy it had inherited.
Nova already had a clear path mapped out for boosting that special attack potential further, pushing it toward becoming something closer to a true elemental powerhouse. Its inherited Psychic potential, on the other hand, was a trickier problem. Nidoking could only draw on that potential through its one inherited move, Confusion, which on its own was proof enough that the talent underneath ran deep.
The trouble was that no matter how strong that raw ability actually was, Confusion remained the only outlet for it. Nidoking couldn't pick up any other Psychic type moves, and there was no getting around that. In practical terms, that potential wasn't doing much for it as things stood.
After turning the problem over for a long while, Nova finally settled on a direction. Rather than treating Nidoking's Psychic energy purely as something to throw outward as damage, he would instead turn it inward, using it to quietly reinforce and sharpen Nidoking's other offensive moves, boosting its overall special attack in the process.
It was an unconventional approach, one no properly trained Norlandia Alliance Trainer would have tried. But Nova had spent years building an instinct for this kind of work, poring over Nidoking's data until he found an angle most Trainers would never have noticed.
While he waited on his registration at the Gym, Nova spent almost every waking hour out on the Layered Peaks Gym's training grounds. There was no room for Nidoking to slack off either. Other Trainers might let their partners follow a standard routine, but Nova stood over Nidoking personally, wringing every last drop of stamina out of it during every session.
Luckily, Nidoking had been by Nova's side longer than any of his other partners, and it understood by now that this brutal pace was exactly what pushed it forward. Training its mastery of Toxic all those years ago had looked no different. Because Nidoking had been his very first partner, the two of them had grown to think almost the same way, and so it never resented Nova falling into this kind of relentless, work-obsessed rhythm. It had its own reasons to want to grow stronger, after all.
After two solid days of pushing hard, Nidoking finally managed something new: using its own Psychic energy to quietly boost the force behind its special attacks, if only for a moment.
It wasn't anywhere close to becoming something Nidoking could call on reliably yet, but managing it even once was enough to prove that the direction Nova had chosen actually worked.