Chapter 171: News of the Graduation Tournament

Chapter 171: News of the Graduation Tournament

In this world, there were a total of three major T1 level tournaments: the League Cup, the Champions Cup, and the World Cup.

The World Cup was held once every four years and had the highest visibility. Because participation was by Alliance, winning brought glory to one's Alliance, making its significance extraordinary. Thus, its viewership naturally soared.

The League Cup, on the other hand, was held annually. However, because it didn't involve international competition and was organized by each Alliance for its own members, its viewership ranked last among the three major leagues.

Moreover, the League Cup was purely an individual competition, not the mainstream league's team-based format. Its structure was similar to the Indigo Plateau Conference from the anime in a parallel world, requiring participants to register at least eight Pokémon, with a maximum of twelve.

This entry threshold was too high, resulting in a low number of participants in each Alliance annually.

Only seven Alliances worldwide held a League Cup each year; other smaller Alliances didn't host one at all.

Finally, the biennial Champions Cup was the highest honor for which major clubs competed!

To draw an analogy with traditional sports from a parallel world, the Champions Cup was like football's Champions League, or esports' S-series (Worlds) and TI (The International).

To compete in the Champions Cup, one first had to achieve ranking points in the tier below, the professional leagues, before qualifying for the Champions Cup.

It was like needing to play in Serie A or the Premier League to get into the Champions League, or needing to qualify through the LPL to play in the S-series.

The first half of each year was dedicated to the professional league competitions of various Alliances, with all playoffs concluding before June.

Then, the entire month of July and early August were for the League Cup.

From late August until October was the period reserved for either the Champions Cup or the World Cup; these two competitions would not occur in the same year.

After all competitions finished in October, the transfer period would begin.

This was also why major youth training camps started in October.

The professional leagues would then resume in January of the following year.

This year happened to be a Champions Cup year.

It was currently July, and Kubfu's professional league for the year had already concluded. The ace players from various clubs were currently participating in the individual competition of the League Cup.

Subsequently, in late August, four teams from Kubfu would travel to the Sinnoh League to compete in the 41st Champions Cup, hosted by Sinnoh this year.

Of course, none of this really had anything to do with the Sea Carp Club…

Although the Sea Carp Club was a leading force in Skyspire city, in the professional league, it was merely at a mid-tier level, the kind of team for whom qualifying for the playoffs was considered a success.

This year, regrettably, they didn't even make it to the playoffs. The main team had gone on break collectively before May in the first half of the year…

The team's ace player was so disheartened that he didn't even sign up for the League Cup's individual competition.

However, even so, as a professional club, they still had to maintain the proper competitive spirit.

Even if they were on an early "vacation," they still had to organize everyone to watch the Champions Cup in the latter half of the year! Including the youth training camp!

This was probably the club's last shred of stubborn pride.

And so, this led to the news Justin had brought: the youth training camp's graduation tournament would be held early.

The so-called graduation tournament was still the previous ranking match format, but this ranking would be maintained until the October transfer period, serving as a reference for major clubs during recruitment.

After listening to Justin's explanation, Arthur finally had a concrete understanding of the importance of this graduation tournament.

Specter, who had been maintaining his physical form beside Arthur, smacked his lips regretfully.

Too bad he just had surgery.

Otherwise, he would have gone on stage and wiped the floor with everyone!

Naturally, this earned him another swift rap on the head from Arthur's finger.

Justin also noticed Specter beside Arthur at this moment.

"Bro Arthur, is this the new Pokémon you've caught? It's an adult Gengar, so cool! I always thought adult wild Pokémon couldn't be caught by humans."

The most suitable age for catching Pokémon was always their infant or youth stages. Once adult Pokémon grew accustomed to life in the wild, they normally wouldn't be willing to follow humans.

To this, Arthur could only give a couple of profound-sounding coughs.

"It was all an unexpected turn of fate…"

In reality, he felt rather guilty.

Specter wasn't a wild Pokémon at all; he had been a young Gastly when he first started following Arthur.

But this wasn't convenient to explain to outsiders.

Afterward, he followed Justin back to the youth training camp.

Many people were still training as usual at the base today.

Seeing Arthur return with Justin, many gazes immediately turned towards him, their expressions complex and hard to decipher, leaving Arthur quite puzzled for a moment.

"What are they looking at?" he asked Justin beside him.

"Ahem, ahem."

This time, it was Justin's turn to cough.

"It's nothing, Bro Arthur, have you forgotten? You're a celebrity now."

Arthur thought about it and it seemed to make sense, so he didn't delve further.

Actually, the trainees they encountered were thinking nothing of the sort.

The real reason was that in the last ranking match a few months ago, Justin had made a powerful comeback, abused/dominated them all, and unexpectedly taken first place among his peers!

And the thing was, after every match, he would boast about his "Bro Arthur," so now, even though Arthur had been away for several months, the moment he appeared, everyone still looked at him as if he were a final boss.

Justin didn't mention this, so Arthur naturally didn't know.

He had thought that after being away for so long, everyone would have almost forgotten him.

After returning, Arthur quickly discovered that the changes here were quite significant.

Galen, his original roommate, had moved out.

Moreover, he had now completely given up on his initial Scyther and had bought a Magby early on to raise anew, which had now already evolved into a Magmar.

Magmar had one more evolutionary stage, Magmortar, and in terms of species potential, it was indeed a bit stronger than Scyther.

However, Arthur still felt it was unnecessary.

Back when Galen's Scyther won the Golden Autumn Cup, Arthur had thought it was a Pokémon with a lot of spirit.

Unfortunately, the other person had his own ideas.

Flora's Dragonair had become even plumper after a few months, clearly well-fed, and it looked like it might not be far from evolution.

Besides these, many other trainees from his cohort had also changed their main Pokémon.

In comparison, Justin, who had always insisted on battling with a Pidgeotto, seemed rather out of place.

Arthur initially thought such a Justin would be ostracized, but unexpectedly, everyone seemed to respect him quite a bit, which surprised Arthur somewhat.

Later, as he was coming out of his dormitory, he ran into Flora.

"Is there something you need?" Arthur asked perfunctorily.

Previously, because he had beaten her once in the Golden Autumn Cup, Flora had never taken a liking to him. He hadn't expected her to take the initiative to approach him this time.

"It's nothing. I heard you were back, so I came to see you. I hope you haven't let your Pokémon training slide during your months away."

Flora stood with her arms crossed, her posture elegant. The impressive curves of her chest were momentarily even more prominent, forcing Arthur to slightly avert his gaze before replying.

"Thank you for your concern."

Flora immediately became somewhat annoyed. "Don't think I'm concerned about you! I just hope you'll fight well in the upcoming matches and not embarrass yourself!"

Arthur scratched his head.

Wasn't that still concern?

"I will. I look forward to facing you again." He replied with standard politeness.

Unexpectedly, this seemed to anger Flora for some reason.

"Are you an idiot? How is this me looking forward to facing you?"

"Huh?"

It wasn't until after a long pause that Flora confirmed: Arthur genuinely didn't know.

"I give up. Are you a caveman living in modern times? How can your information be so outdated? For this graduation tournament, people from other youth training camps will be joining us, and there will also be 2v2 Double Battles! I'm not looking forward to facing you! I just hope you don't lose face for our Sea Carp camp when you face trainees from other camps!"

"Er…"

Only then did Arthur learn that there was this piece of news.

(End of Chapter)

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