Walking into the brightly lit lobby, the young trainers couldn't help but let out an exclamation.

It's a fairly upscale hotel, with colorful decorative sculptures and paintings adorning the rooms, and a long table in the center filled with delicate refreshments. Seeing everyone enter, they were immediately greeted by a warm welcome staff, and there was no drawback except that the name of the hotel was a little unfriendly to people with apex phobia.

"Welcome to the Thousand Needlefish Islands Hotel. After reading the invitations in everyone's hands one by one, the greeter smiled and led everyone into the banquet hall, "This is a special dinner for the top 16 players of this year. In order to allow you to relax and unwind, there will be no interviews during the dinner. In addition, we have prepared a program that invites you to enjoy dinner while waiting for the next surprise. ”

"Oh, there's still a show, it's worthy of the Quartz Alliance!" Xiao Ling applauded the venue.

Pichu in the pocket of his nightcoat was already hungry, and as soon as he entered the banquet hall, he smelled the creamy aroma of dessert and immediately ran to the long table. Xiao Ye let it sprint towards the food, and she stopped to look at the people in the banquet hall.

Before the seven of them could enter the door, two of them had already arrived. One of them, a short-haired black girl in casual clothes, was sitting in a corner of the ballroom, tapping her laptop on her laptop with headphones. Seeing a group of people walking into the house in a big way, she quickly took off her headphones and bowed as everyone's eyes swept over, looking a little nervous.

"Who is she......" Yojin muttered, feeling that this girl with a particularly standard saluting posture seemed a little familiar.

He didn't mean to ask questions directly to the people around him, but just said something casually. But Kyoji seemed to hear him talking to himself, and turned his head and replied, "Her name is Saki Akita, the seventh seed in this tournament, and she is a freelance trainer who is good at fighting in sandstorms. ”

Xiaojie didn't remember the player's name for a while, and he was reminded by Jingjiyi.

Although she is the seventh seed in this tournament, this girl named Saki Akita does not have a prominent background like Takuma Natsuyo, and her fighting style is not as eye-catching as the Greyhound, so she really has no sense of existence.

Another person who had already arrived was standing by the wall, looking at the beautiful paintings on the wall. He was dressed in a crisp white kimono with a wooden knife hanging from his waist, and simply nodded in acknowledgment when he saw someone enter the house.

Xingyu Bailan - of course, everyone has no doubt about his name, and they don't even need to look at his face, they can determine his identity just by wearing it.

Xiao Ye's gaze lingered for a moment on the pale blue short-haired boy's face. The other party didn't pay any attention to her, as if they didn't notice her true face hidden under her sunglasses and hat.

"There are nine people in the room...... Who are the remaining top 16 players?" asked Kiriba casually after looking around.

"I saw the greyhound going in the direction of the exit of the player's village just now, so I don't think I'm going to come to the dinner. Xiao Jie was also counting the number of people with interest, "There are six people besides him who didn't come." ”

"Xiaoyun is also one of the top 16, but she hasn't been seen since noon today, and she doesn't know where she went......"

Kiriha's voice with a little worry did not fall, and Kyoji had already taken over the conversation, "Sugino Yun should not be in the player village now. Suspected of being Team Rocket's criminals who fled after swindling the players' Pokémon at noon today, it was two of the top 16 players, Tomoshi Yamaguchi [note 1] and Hiroshi Miyagawa, who chased them into the Silver Mountains. Sugino is a friend of the former's fellow villagers and is said to be working with the police to find their traces. ”

After a pause, Kyoji continued, "No. 5 seed Asaka Matsuda and No. 6 seed Daishi Shibayama both made the cut in the afternoon. The two of them are childhood sweethearts, and they may soon become a couple, and it seems that they are planning to go to Mihara City for dinner together tonight, and they will not participate in this dinner. And Yoshiki Yamashita, the last person in the top 16, is low-key, and most of them don't like this kind of party. ”

After Kyoji's words, not only the six people standing beside him, but even Bai Lan and Shaxi looked over, and their eyes were full of weirdness.

"What?" said the chestnut-haired boy, puzzled.

"No, what's that...... How do you know so much about them?" stammered what everyone wanted to ask.

"They're all big contenders to the round of 16, and knowing your opponent is a basic lesson. ...... Hmm, why are you so surprised?" Kyoji raised his eyebrows solemnly, as if he was seriously probing the cause of everyone's doubts.

“......”

Everyone had complicated expressions on their faces, and shouted inwardly, "This is also too much understanding" - not to mention how he knew the whereabouts of so many seeded players, why did he even have information like "the two of them are childhood sweethearts and may soon become a couple"?

The air suddenly fell into an eerie silence, and Kyoji Toru had a puzzled and serious expression, and even his friend Kiritha held his shoulder and began to laugh silently, making him more and more dazed.

After laughing enough, the crowd dispersed in twos and threes. Xiao Ye walked to the long table and saw that little Pichu had eaten his face with cream, so he took out a tissue and wiped his face for it.

There was a faint oppressive and low smell in the air. Xiao Ye seemed to realize something, and looked back at the entire banquet hall.

She saw that Xiaotian and Kiritha walked to the bookshelf with the same interest and browsed the foreign language books on it. The golden retriever siblings had gathered around the long table like her, seemingly muttering about what to eat first. Kyoji was chatting with a young waitress and took a drink from the other's hand. Yoshi, who seemed out of place in the dinner environment, looked at ease, beckoned to a sommelier and said, "Please give me a cup of screws and awls." ”

Night: ...... What? What awl? Does it look like a flathead screwdriver?

Xiao Ye watched as the sommelier smiled and brought a light cyan cocktail, and the two chatted about the origin and processing of limes...... I only felt that I was reminiscing about the confusion of being thrown at the bar in Dead Leaf City in the past, and I didn't understand the introduction of the wine list. If Yojin wasn't wearing a punk casual suit that suited soul rock at this time, he would look a lot like an aristocratic boy talking at a Western-style banquet.

Shaking her head secretly, Xiao Ye felt that it was still suitable for him to eat snacks silently with the golden retriever brothers and sisters. At this moment, the skin chu that was originally hanging on Xiao Ye's arm suddenly slipped down.

Xiao Ye hurriedly caught the small hair ball so that it would not fall directly to the ground. The electric mouse had fallen asleep at some point, smacking his lips while sleeping, as if he was still reminiscing about the meal just now.

The purple-haired girl was stunned, and suddenly felt a strong sense of disobedience. She does have a few companions who like to fall asleep after eating, such as Charizard and Snow Boy, but Pichu never goes to bed immediately after eating, preferring to run around and jump around for a while to digest food.

The faint feeling of depression that I had noticed before was like a fine needle, piercing the girl's back little by little. She was excited, and snatched the dessert that Xiaojie next to her was about to put into her mouth, "Don't eat it!"

Xiao Ye didn't have time to look at Xiao Jie and Xiao Ling's shocked expressions, and immediately turned around and shouted, "Yang Zhen, don't drink that glass of wine!"

The half-raised wine glass in the gray-haired boy's hand froze in the air, and the wine hung in the air and did not flow into his mouth. Not only did he look at Xiao Ye in astonishment, but the other people in the banquet hall were also alarmed and looked over one after another.

At this moment, the lights in the banquet hall suddenly went out, and the room fell into darkness. The projector at the foreground works silently, casting a snow-white picture on the screen.

"Hello young and promising top 16 players. As the voice sounded, a man wearing a naughty grenade mask appeared on the curtain. His voice was sharp and eerie, apparently with the voice-changing device activated.

"Welcome to this banquet for you. The sixteen didn't show up, but it didn't hurt - thank you for giving me the information to let me know that the rest of the top 16 players weren't in the village. The man in the mischievous thunder mask grinned, "It's just a little bit bad." I've sent someone to prepare a dessert, so why don't you all try it? It's easier for you to get a good night's sleep after eating. ”

Before he could finish his words, everyone else realized that something was wrong. Xiao Tian, who was sitting at the table flipping through the book, stood up abruptly and ran to the center of the banquet hall, and Bai Lan directly released Eluredo with a cold face.

"But that's fine, since you don't want to get a good night's sleep, witness the miracle of the night. ”

As soon as the words fell, all the vases placed on the table suddenly exploded, and the thick smoke spread, instantly filling the entire banquet hall. Xiao Ye reacted very quickly to take Xiao Jie and Xiao Ling behind him, and used his sleeve to block the fragments of the vase that burst out, and the power of the waveguide spread out quickly to the surroundings at the same time, but all he found was a strange chaos.

A muffled sound mingled with the sound of porcelain cracking. Kiriba seemed to follow the sound consciously, and his pupils shrank from the image left a second before his vision was swallowed up by smoke.

The chestnut-haired boy fell silently to the ground, half of the juice left in the cup poured out, seeping into the carpet and leaking a blood-red color.

"A-Jing!"

His panicked cries were drowned out by louder voices. Heavy metal plates rumbled down along the walls, blocking all doors and windows. The eerie voice of the man in the mischievous thunder mask loomed in the roar.

"We are the ones who drive the crows. We want ...... Light a big firework ......"

In the midst of the chaos, Eluredo let out a low sigh, and his rich spiritual power turned into airflow, whistling and began to disperse the smoke. When everyone's eyes could barely see, they found that the waiters, sommeliers, and even Kusama Kyoji, who had walked around the banquet hall before, had disappeared, replaced by a pair of blood-red eyes and a hostile whispered growl.

Before anyone could make a move, a violent vibration suddenly struck. The plates containing snacks on the long table fell to the ground with a crisp cracking sound. The crowd was also shaking like an earthquake, staggering and staggering, and it was difficult to stand firm.

At this moment, a deafening explosion swept through the entire athletes' village. Countless bursts of fire engulfed the night, and the hotel was like a thin boat bobbing in the wind and waves, threatening to capsize at any moment and sink to the bottom of the sea with the nine passengers it carried.

Immediately, the projector went out, and the last light on the "boat" disappeared without a trace.

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[Note 1]

Ash's full name is not officially given, so the private setting is used here for the time being, and the unused default name of the Japanese red and green version of the game's protagonist "やまぐち (i.e. Yamaguchi)" is used as Ash's surname.

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Small Theatre:

Pichu: So my position in this copy is to test the drug rat mound?!(Qi to the point of deformation)