Regarding the strength of those two people, Cain already had a preliminary understanding.
"Phoebe, I'll help you get your things back," Cain said with a smile. At that moment, his heart had already completely calmed down; the anger he had felt earlier had quickly receded, leaving virtually no emotion showing on his face.
The smile he gave Phoebe at that instant was solely because of the inexplicable trust she had in him.
Upon hearing Cain's words, Phoebe immediately threw everything Will had said earlier to the back of her mind. In her large eyes, an expression of surprise—no, of joy—burst forth.
"Really? But they're already in their hands... how do you plan to take them back, Cain?" Phoebe asked, her big eyes spinning. Evidently, with her little head, she simply could not imagine how Cain intended to recover her belongings.
Cain smiled mysteriously.
He did not hide his words at all. Even though he did not speak very loudly, in front of two users of psychic powers, it was impossible for them not to hear him.
"Ha! The things are right here. I'd like to see how you plan to take them," the man in yellow said with absolute confidence. He was convinced that Cain would not dare to initiate an attack first; if he did, he was fully confident that he and Will could join forces to finish Cain off quickly.
Generally speaking, the one who attacks first leaves more openings than the one who defends.
But just as he finished speaking, Cain's eyes flashed with an intense blue light, and the psychic power within his body erupted violently.
"Damn it!" Although Will's psychic power did not perceive anything specific, his sharp sixth sense made him instinctively dodge to the side.
The man in yellow beside him did not have such a reaction.
That was precisely what people like them, who had lived comfortably there for twenty-five years, lacked compared to the truly strong.
The intuition of a true powerhouse!
That instinct was something those accustomed to a comfortable life could never comprehend. People who were overly confident, to the point of arrogance, never considered a problem or an event from multiple angles.
Sss—
Will dodged in time, but the blue backpack slung over one shoulder, along with one of his sleeves, was violently torn away by a black claw, which also left three bloody marks on his arm.
Gengar emerged from Will's shadow. It was precisely because Will used his psychic power that he managed to avoid Gengar's direct attack.
Seeing that her backpack was now in Gengar's hands, Phoebe did not show any joy. Instead, her eyes widened as she stared fixedly at the man in yellow, who had failed to dodge.
A sharp black claw pierced through his chest. From the point of contact between the claw and the skin, an enormous amount of blood gushed forth like an endless fountain.
In addition to Gengar, there was another Pokémon even more powerful, with movements even more sinister: Darkrai.
Darkrai's palm pierced straight through the man in yellow's chest. The man himself, as well as Cain and Will, all showed expressions of surprise or utter shock.
In reality, Gengar and Darkrai had already left Cain's shadow when he approached the spatial device.
The Electric-type attacks of Jolteon and Ampharos were too powerful, explosive, and wide-ranging. Under such intense illumination, not only Cain, but even Will and the man in yellow had difficulty discerning whether anything was hidden within the explosion.
Moreover, the energetic impact produced by the detonation of electrical energy interfered with psychic power, preventing them from detecting that some Pokémon had silently slipped through the shadows on the ground until they reached their own.
This was what was known as "darkness under the light."
They never imagined that, in such a situation, Cain would choose to keep an ace up his sleeve instead of using Gengar and Darkrai to protect himself directly.
At that moment, any stray electrical discharge splashing onto his body would have caused severe injuries; if it struck a vital point, he might even have lost his life.
But this also demonstrated the level of confidence Cain had in Salamence. After the Mega Evolution between trainer and Pokémon, that fusion of wills granted a sense of absolute control.
Once Gengar and Darkrai hid within the shadows of Will and the man in yellow, it became impossible to detect them again.
Both Gengar, a Ghost-type, and Darkrai, a Dark-type, had strong resistance against psychic power. If they wanted to hide, it was practically impossible to discover them.
Only when Cain gave the order to attack did they suddenly burst out of the shadows to launch their offensive.
In truth, Cain's initial objective had simply been for Gengar and Darkrai to retrieve Phoebe's backpack.
In his judgment, as long as the opponent used their psychic power with sufficient concentration, they could still dodge the attacks. After all, these attacks relied on the element of surprise and could not employ long charge-up moves, being limited to basic strikes and physical attacks.
Will's reaction posed no problem. Although his psychic power was not the first to detect Gengar, his intuition was on par with his strength. Clearly, his power had been honed in complex and dangerous environments. Although it had not reached perfection, it was already outstanding.
By contrast, the man in yellow truly surprised Cain. His psychic power was clearly superior to Will's, but he seemed to have excessive confidence in his own safety. He was struck head-on by Darkrai's simplest attack, at a vital point, and judging by the position of the wound, it seemed he had not even attempted to dodge.
He died in an entirely ordinary manner.
Although Darkrai was stronger than Gengar and, as a Dark-type Pokémon, had a greater advantage against psychics, even so, for someone with Champion-level strength—and who was not inferior to Cain in psychic power—to lack such reaction speed and danger instinct was inconceivable.
Just as Cain had anticipated at the beginning, Gengar and Darkrai should have caused trouble for the enemy, perhaps even inflicted injuries, such as the damage to Will's arm. In the worst case, they might have disabled one of his arms.
He never imagined the outcome would be this.
Because of that, the four present were stunned at the same time.
Will's shock was probably similar to Cain's: how could someone who seemed so strong have such disastrous reaction ability?
(End of chapter)