Pokemon : The Master of Dragon-Types

The Protect barrier held just long enough.

Then it shattered.

Shards of light scattered outward like broken glass, each fragment briefly catching Iron Valiant's reflection before fading away — and with them went Relicanth's last real chance at victory.

Iron Valiant moved immediately.

Its elbow blades flared back to life, blazing with Grass-type energy as it flickered around Relicanth in rapid bursts, too fast to follow cleanly. Each pass left another clean slice across Relicanth's rocky hide. The ancient Pokémon cried out, "Reli—!" trying to turn, trying to track the movement — but Iron Valiant was already somewhere else. Blood welled from a dozen small cuts, and with each one, what little stamina Relicanth had left drained away.

When it was done, Iron Valiant stood still.

It folded its elbow blades back into their resting position, reassembling them along its arms, and fixed Relicanth with a calm, level stare. It didn't advance. It simply waited.

Relicanth collapsed onto the sand.

Then, in its final moments, something strange happened. An aura surged out of Relicanth's exhausted body — deep and resonant, like a pressure building from somewhere ancient. Its strength spiked back to where it had been at the start of the fight, flooding up to Master-level in an instant, as if its body had remembered what it once was.

Jacob watched without alarm.

He understood what it meant. When a Pokémon's suppressed strength returned like that, it was the sign that the trial was over — that Iron Valiant had won.

He let out a long, slow breath.

It had been a difficult match. He was glad — quietly, genuinely glad — that he had chosen Iron Valiant. If he had sent out Sceptile instead, the outcome might have been very different. Grass-type advantage or not, Relicanth's experience and instincts ran deep.

But Iron Valiant had pulled through, and in the end, the margin came down to a single move.

Protect.

Without it, Relicanth's combined Head Smash and Double-Edge would have landed clean, and the match would have gone the other way. Jacob had been fortunate to call it in time.

He thought about that for a moment — about what everyone always said, that wild Pokémon rarely matched up to those raised by experienced Trainers. This battle had illustrated exactly why. Relicanth had been extraordinary. Its instincts were sharp, its timing was precise, and that final combination — chaining Head Smash into Double-Edge mid-charge — was a stroke of tactical brilliance that could have knocked out most Pokémon at the same level in a single hit.

But it had only those tools. No broader move pool. No backup options when the combination failed. A Relicanth raised by a skilled Trainer, with a wider repertoire and the experience to adapt on the fly, would have been a much harder opponent. At equal strength, battles were decided by tactics, type matchups, and options — and a deeper move pool meant more ways to respond when one plan didn't work.

That was the difference.

Jacob filed it away and turned his attention back to Relicanth, now resting quietly in the sand.

Then a different thought crossed his mind.

That combination — Head Smash into Double-Edge. Two independent moves, chained together into something far more dangerous than either alone. It had nearly worked. And now that he was thinking about it, he recalled that Relicanth wasn't the only Pokémon that could learn both moves at once.

Drednaw could as well.

And Drednaw — unlike Relicanth — had access to Gigantamax.

Jacob turned the thought over slowly. If he could find a permanent Gigantamax Drednaw in a Secret Realm, capture it, and then develop that same Head Smash and Double-Edge combination into a polished technique... he couldn't quite picture the result. The numbers alone were staggering, and Gigantamax transformed moves into something else entirely.

He let the idea rest for now. But he didn't forget it.

On the far island, Colby had finished circling the perimeter.

He had caught the distant sounds of battle — the crashes, the surges of energy — but the gap between the two islands was too wide. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn't make out anything useful. He shook his head and looked back down at what he had found instead: a circular mark on the ground, crackling faintly with lightning.

He crouched beside it. This was it — the key to this layer of the Secret Realm.

Back on the main island, Relicanth had delivered its trial reward, just as the Pokémon in the first layer had.

Three choices, as before.

Jacob used his system's ability to evaluate the options without guessing. The three items laid out before him were an S-rank Water Stone, an S-rank Deep Sea Scale, and an A-rank item he set aside without much consideration.

Between the two S-rank items, the choice was straightforward.

The Deep Sea Scale was a rare held item, but its usefulness was narrow — it only applied to Clamperl, and only under very specific conditions. He had no Clamperl, and even if he did, the item's limitations made it hard to justify over the alternative.

He selected the Water Stone.

With that, the second layer of the Dragon Spiral Tower Secret Realm was behind him.

Which meant the third layer was next.

He recalled the description he had read: "The fierce Hydreigon soars in the sky."

Sky. Hydreigon. An aerial layer. He considered what that might mean as the transition pulled him forward.

Dragon Spiral Tower Secret Realm — Third Layer.

Cold wind.

Jacob found himself on a wide, exposed mountaintop. There were no trees, no shelter — just open rock, swirling mountain mist, and a wind that cut right through him. The platform stretched out in every direction, and the edges dropped away into cloud.

He was still getting his bearings when it arrived.

"Roar!"

The sound hit first — a deep, furious bellow that shook the air and sent the mist rushing past his ears in thick waves. A smell came with it, faintly rancid, like something wild and ancient.

Then a head broke through the fog.

Jacob took an involuntary step back.

The head alone was nearly as tall as he was. Scaled in dark Dragon-type plating, mouth slightly open to reveal long fangs slick with saliva. Purple vertical pupils locked onto him without blinking.

A beat later, the rest of Hydreigon came through.

It was enormous — far larger than any Hydreigon Jacob had ever read about. The species typically measured around two meters tall and four meters in length. This one was at least eight meters tall, and its body stretched well over fifteen. Its thick tail trailed off the edge of the platform and disappeared into the mist below.

Its two smaller heads, one on each side, gripped the edge of the platform like arms as the central head drew close — close enough that Jacob could count the scales on its snout, could see the saliva dripping from its fangs, could feel the sheer weight of the aura radiating off of it pressing against his chest.

He didn't move.

He also didn't speak. Partly because he was too busy reminding himself to breathe.

The aptitude readout in his system was clear: Legendary Class. Its actual strength was suppressed down to Champion level, but the potential underneath was enormous. This was only the second Legendary Class Pokémon Jacob had encountered — the first being Cresselia. What Hydreigon lacked compared to Cresselia was a divine title. In terms of raw presence, the gap was smaller than Jacob would have liked.

Hydreigon studied him for a long moment, its purple eyes scanning slowly.

It recognized something — the aura of someone who had unsealed the tower.

"Human..." The voice was deep and resonant, rolling through the mountains like distant thunder. "Are you here... to accept my trial?!"

Jacob's breath caught.

He looked up at the massive dragon looming over him — nearly blocking out the sky — and thought, not for the first time, that being a Dragon-type Trainer did not mean he had signed up to face something out of a legend.

He had unsealed a tower. He had beaten a Relicanth older than most human civilizations. And now there was an eight-meter Hydreigon asking him, in plain language, whether he wanted to fight it.

He steadied himself.

Right, he thought. Let's do this.

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