The elevator descended at high speed.
The enclosed space fell into silence, but no one intended to break the deadlock first.
Until with a clang, the running elevator hit the brakes, gradually slowing to a stop, when the Arven AI finally spoke: "Well then, I'm counting on you, Mr. Aiden."
"To rescue those trapped in the chaotic spacetime, to repair the spacetime distortion caused by the Time Machine—"
Just as the words were halfway out, the elevator doors slowly opened. The Arven AI, whose expression had seemed somewhat sorrowful, suddenly froze in place, then its body began to twitch slightly.
[Illegal personnel detected entering the Time Machine interior. Defense system automatically activating.]
[Arven AI has switched to sleep mode. Combat program initiating—]
The voice did not come from the out of control Arven AI, but from the magnificent, dazzling building outside the elevator that emitted rainbow-colored light.
"—Should we take it out now?"
Red vaguely sensed a hint of danger, so he turned to look at Aiden and asked.
However, after immediately receiving a head-shaking denial, Red returned to his previously silent and obedient appearance, making no further movements.
"After all, it's a robot connected to the entire research institute's internal system. If we don't defeat it head-on to obtain authorization, who knows what might happen."
"So, let's just see how things play out first."
After speaking, Aiden walked out first.
The interior space of the Time Machine wasn't particularly spacious, and the surroundings seemed to be composed of special Stellar crystals from within the Area Zero Underdepths, naturally emitting strange rainbow light.
At the center of the room, a machine that was continuously operating and connected to two spacetime wormholes above emitted rumbling sounds.
That must be the Time Machine that anchors spacetime coordinates, travels to the past and future to capture Paradox species, and brings them back to reality, right?
While Aiden was observing curiously, he suddenly heard a sharp metallic noise from behind.
Turning around, he saw that the Arven AI had somehow stood up at some point. Its eyes had turned completely crimson red, and its originally smiling expression had shifted to anger.
"Halt! Do not proceed further!"
"Whoever interferes with the Time Machine's operation is an enemy!"
After speaking, the Arven AI had already taken out a special Poké Ball from its lab coat pocket and immediately threw it at Aiden.
"Roar—!"
A flash of red light emerged from the Poké Ball, followed by a terrifying monster entirely blood-red in color, like a crescent moon, appearing in the air above the room.
Moreover, the instant it emerged from the Poké Ball, it had already locked onto its highest priority attack target—Aiden, who was closest to the Time Machine!
It was Roaring Moon—
Aiden nodded inwardly and without hesitation reached into his pocket, quickly retrieving a Poké Ball.
In a flash, the low-altitude flying Roaring Moon had already flapped its wings and charged forward ferociously. Its steel-hard claws were about to strike the seemingly defenseless Aiden!
However—
The four students present showed no trace of panic whatsoever. Instead, they stared at Aiden with faces full of excitement.
In their eyes, it was just a mere Paradox species. Along the way, Nemona and Red alone had defeated who knows how many of them, so it couldn't possibly be a match for Teacher Azure!
And indeed, that was the case.
Just when Roaring Moon thought it was about to succeed, revealing a cruel smile—
A flash of red light suddenly appeared in Aiden's palm, but was quickly obscured by a mysteriously appearing pale pink atmosphere.
"Sylveon, use Blood Moon!"
"Syl!"
Taking advantage of Roaring Moon's complete lack of preparation, Aiden waved his hand decisively and gave the command.
Of course, actually, when Sylveon saw this familiar Paradox species in the Poké Ball, it had already understood and began secretly charging up inside the ball.
Since the opponent had directly attacked the trainer, there was no need to observe any formalities!
Just use the most barbaric fighting style!
Boom—!
Along with Sylveon's voice and petite figure came the strange pink energy that rapidly burst forth from the Poké Ball.
From the moment it appeared, the entire Time Machine interior was already dyed with a macho-pink filter.
The four students, who were not the targets of the attack, blinked. They suddenly felt a chill in their hearts as the hardships they had endured during the Champion's Path challenge resurfaced in their minds.
"Sylveon's Blood Moon move—can that Paradox Pokémon really withstand it?"
The corners of Penny's mouth twitched wildly. For a moment, she didn't know who to sympathize with.
But after all, the opponent had struck first, and had aimed directly at the trainer from the start, so taking a vicious beating was beyond criticism.
Why provoke anyone else when you had to provoke Teacher Azure, who could fight the best and held grudges the longest—
"Wasn't that Roaring Moon? I remember its type is Dark + Dragon?"
Arven tried hard to recall, ultimately shaking his head helplessly.
"Hope the person—hope the dragon is okay."
As for Red and Nemona?
"Teacher Aiden, let me help you!!!"
Nemona didn't care about the details. The moment she saw a fight, she immediately got excited and wanted to step forward to throw out a Poké Ball.
Of course, her plan hadn't even begun before Red confiscated her Poké Ball.
After pressing down on the Poké Ball, Red didn't speak. He just looked at Nemona with a serious gaze, then shook his head.
"Alright—I understand what you mean."
Nemona, who had originally wanted to fish in troubled waters, immediately became obedient. She could only squat on the ground with a dejected face, bored as she watched Roaring Moon being repeatedly battered by the "Blood Moon" offensive.
Since Teacher Aiden hadn't spoken, that meant he didn't want them to intervene.
In other words, this was currently Aiden's exclusive stage, and there must be his considerations behind it.
So she just needed to listen!
"Sylveon—Pokédex data confirmed—"
"Move Blood Moon—Pokédex data unknown. Unable to retrieve relevant data—"
Compared to the students who appeared very relaxed, the Arven AI on the other side, who was in the midst of anger, actually seemed somewhat confused.
Due to missing data, it fell into a temporary shutdown until Roaring Moon continuously let out painful wails under the Blood Moon, finally confirming partial intelligence about this move.
"Extremely lethal to Roaring Moon. Temporarily deduced to be Fairy-type, or a Normal-type move utilizing Sylveon's 'Pixilate' Ability."
"Deduced that opponent knows Roaring Moon's weakness. Possibility of knowing all Paradox species exists—"
"Probability of victory in frontal confrontation—less than 1%. Immediately evading unfavorable matchup!"
The Arven AI, having come to its senses, raised its hand again and immediately recalled the struggling Roaring Moon to its Poké Ball.
Under normal circumstances, after taking this powerful move from Sylveon, and with a 4x weakness on top of that, almost no Pokémon could withstand it.
Even with the Paradox species' exceptionally tough constitution, it was definitely heavily damaged, with its combat effectiveness greatly reduced.
It had initiated the attack first, yet lost a powerful combatant in the blink of an eye—
The Arven AI couldn't understand what had happened, but became even more vigilant as a result.
"Selection to counter Fairy-type—optimal choice confirmed. About to deploy future creature Iron Moth."
Aiden stood on the other side, silently observing the Arven AI's behavior. Only after hearing its "loud secret planning" did he make his next move.
To actually reveal your next Pokémon directly—well then, he would have to teach it a lesson.
"Come back, Sylveon."
"Syl?"
Though somewhat confused about having to exit right after making a cool entrance, Sylveon immediately chose to trust its trainer's judgment and was recalled by a flash of red light.
And just as he made this move, the Arven AI had already thrown out a Poké Ball.
A creature resembling Volcarona but with a more futuristic texture, its body completely made of metal, immediately appeared before the robot.
Iron Moth, the future species of Volcarona, with Fire + Poison typing, very afraid of Ground-type attacks.
Just as the Arven AI suspected, Aiden was basically familiar with all the intelligence regarding these Paradox species.
So, dealing with them naturally wasn't difficult.
And more importantly—
This battle had a very serious information gap. Aiden completely knew all the cards in this "invincible Arven AI's" hand, but conversely, the other party knew nothing at all about his Pokémon.
And what it was facing happened to be Aiden, who was best at exploiting this point.
From the very beginning, this battle was almost destined to be one-sided.
"Next up is your turn, Salamence!"
"Roar!"
Another flash of red light passed, and Salamence, which had already completed Mega Evolution on its own inside the Poké Ball, made a brilliant entrance, its momentum even stronger than the previous Roaring Moon.
"Salamence—no, judging from its form, it should be Mega Salamence that evolved under the influence of Hoenn's special power."
The Arven AI's gaze lifted. When it saw the Tyrant of the Sky appearing before it without any evolution process, its brain temporarily shut down again.
However, thanks to previous experience, this time it had learned to automatically filter out parts that would interfere with its thinking, focusing all attention on how to defeat this Pokémon.
"Iron Moth—unable to learn Ice-type moves. Current optimal solution is—"
"Use Dazzling Gleam."
When the AI spoke, Iron Moth had already begun accumulating power, ready to launch an offensive against Salamence at any moment.
However—
After Mega Evolution, Salamence's speed had made a qualitative leap, so its reaction speed and attack speed were clearly faster than the opponent's by several notches.
Simply put, Iron Moth had to abandon defense to have a chance to counterattack.
And Aiden had already realized this in advance.
"Rush over, use Earthquake!"
"Roar!!!"
Because it didn't require much thinking, Aiden's command actually came out a step before the AI's.
This resulted in—while Iron Moth was still charging up, Salamence had already shot forward and kicked its metallic body with one foot.
Calling it Earthquake, when used in mid-air the effect was more like Stomp.
However, clearly this move's lethality was extremely terrifying, even interrupting the Dazzling Gleam move that Iron Moth had been charging, directly kicking it to the ground with one big flying kick, nearly knocking it unconscious.
The Arven AI's brain shut down again, because the current situation had already exceeded its cognitive range.
As a product of the two professors' devoted efforts and memories, combined with Paldea's highest technology, its computing power even surpassed Mega Metagross, entering realms unimaginable to ordinary people.
But—even when comparing data from all previous Champions' battles, it couldn't find an opponent as terrifyingly powerful as Aiden.
In just two rounds of exchange, it had nearly lost two powerful Paradox species.
Yet during simulation calculations, this situation was impossible.
Even against Top Champion Geeta, it was confident it could defeat the opponent while losing only one or two Paradox species—
Why was this happening?
The Arven AI fell into confusion.
"..."
Of course, if Aiden knew what it was thinking at this moment, he would probably laugh heartily and pat its shoulder: "This silly child, you've been fooled by Geeta too."
The data the two professors could obtain most likely came from previous Victory Road. Every Champion needed to defeat Geeta to truly earn their title.
So, the question is—how do you know how much Geeta was holding back?
Using the strength of ordinary Paldean Champions to benchmark the full power of the Elite Four and Champion was inherently abnormal.
However, after all, the two professors weren't battle specialists. They still needed bodyguards to explore Area Zero, so not understanding this point was normal.
Fighting against this AI that completely believed in theoretical data, Aiden hardly even needed to use his brain. Just a simple rotation almost had the opponent beaten into depression.
With this level of AI, no wonder Chairwoman Geeta felt confident letting him come down instead of coming personally.
It even feels inferior to Nemona—
If the opponent continued to send out other Paradox species later, he would have the other little ones in his team come for some "easy mode experience," and finally finish with style, giving the Arven AI a little Kitakami shock~
Just as Aiden was pondering in his heart, the Arven AI that had fallen into depression finally came to its senses and immediately entered phase two.
"Opponent strength detected far exceeding expectations. Security level automatically raised to maximum. About to deploy Paradise Guardian Dragon to expel invaders."
Red signals representing danger flashed in the Arven AI's eyes as it took out yet another special Poké Ball from its pocket.
After hearing its words, Aiden, who had been very casual until now, suddenly became interested.
Here it comes, here it comes—the main event is finally here!
As is well known.
Because the Pokémon series has always liked selling the same thing multiple times (cross out)
Because Legendary Pokémon in the Pokémon world generally appear in plural form, so each generation's cover Legends usually exist in 2–3 individuals.
And in the Scarlet/Violet generation, the cover Legends are naturally the ancient and future species of Cyclizar that fit the "past and future" theme—the Paradox Pokémon Koraidon and Miraidon.
Since Miraidon was in his hands, the fact that the Arven AI held Koraidon as the final part of the Paradise defense program was something he had already anticipated.
The opponent hadn't hidden it at all either.
"Come back, Salamence."
After recalling Salamence, which was still immersed in the joy of defeating an opponent in one move, to its Poké Ball, Aiden held a special Poké Ball almost identical to the one in the Arven AI's hand, his gaze becoming exceptionally focused.
He had been waiting for this battle for a very, very long time.
This concerned whether Miraidon could break through its psychological barrier and restore its original power. For this battle, he had to go all out and command Miraidon to win perfectly and stylishly!
So—the calculations tell me, now is the time to go all out!
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