Compared to David's relaxed, easy pace, the rest of the school team was having a much harder time of it.
This was the core area of the entire mountain secret realm, and the Pokémon who lived here were either members of the eight clans they'd already met, or powerful lone wanderers strong enough to hold their own ground. Either way, none of them were weak.
The Infernape that Lucario had just dealt with was a good example of the second kind. If David hadn't been the one to run into it, even Luke and Miles would have had to work hard to bring it down — and there was a real chance they could have lost outright, since neither of their ace Pokémon held a type advantage against it.
Gathering materials here meant fighting for them. Even students who weren't picky about quality, unlike David, still came away thoroughly worn out. That said, these battles were doing wonders for everyone's experience. The wild Pokémon here had no Trainers giving them orders, but every one of them was seasoned and sharp from real combat, which made them excellent sparring partners for the students.
David understood the school's reasoning well enough. Training inside a secret realm didn't just mean a better environment and richer resources — it meant access to opponents at exactly the right level, the kind that were hard to come by anywhere else. With the High School League drawing closer, training through ranked battles out in the real world came with its own risk: facing a truly strong opponent could reveal all of a Trainer's cards before it mattered, while facing a weak one taught nothing at all.
The morning passed quickly. Between the two hours of travel to reach this spot and the excitement of exploring the wilderness once they arrived, time had simply slipped by. At noon, as agreed, everyone made their way back to the base camp the school had marked out for them — a stretch of land set aside specifically so they wouldn't accidentally trespass on any wild Pokémon's territory.
In just a few hours, David had already gathered more than half the materials he needed. That wasn't surprising; at his level, he had almost no real opponents below Gym rank. His other Pokémon barely got the chance to fight at all — Lucario alone was more than enough to handle nearly everything that challenged him.
It had been almost two months since David had recovered the three Divine Feathers from the Temple of the Sea ruins. With Lucario's own understanding and the added boost from the Feathers' energy, his "Farmer's Three Punches" — Ice Punch, Fire Punch, and Thunder Punch — had come a long way. On top of that, there was the Urshifu martial arts lineage, the Aura training method, and the breathing technique passed down through the Lin family, plus the Hisuian techniques David had won through a lottery draw. Taken all together, Lucario's collection of rare fortune and hard-earned skill was genuinely staggering by now.
He'd absorbed so much in such a short time that this training camp couldn't have come at a better moment — plenty of strong opponents meant plenty of chances for Lucario to weave everything together into something whole. That was exactly why David kept sending Lucario into battle after battle. Since he only wanted the best materials, the Pokémon guarding them were never weak, which made each fight a perfect whetstone. All morning, aside from having Salamence carry the finished haul back at the end, Lucario handled everything on his own.
At noon, Teacher Dominic mentioned that the pre-ordered lunch would be arriving, though exactly how it got delivered into a secret realm remained a mystery. David took a portion and gave it a sniff — not bad at all. Then he pulled out a small mountain of Pokémon food and various bottles and jars from his backpack to put together lunch for his own team.
The school had provided standard Pokémon food for the camp, but David, used to a far more comfortable lifestyle, had no need for it. His Pokémon had eaten specially prepared meals since they were young, recipes built from studying old training manuals passed down through his family and consulting with some of the region's best Pokémon breeders. Food made this way was simply a cut above the ordinary, and more often than not, that early difference was exactly what separated one Pokémon's growth from another's.
Talent mattered most for a Pokémon's long-term ceiling, and it usually only showed its real weight once a Pokémon reached a certain level. Early on, its influence wasn't nearly as dramatic as people assumed — with enough invested resources, a Pokémon with a Blue Aptitude could actually out-level one with Purple Aptitude. And feeding a Pokémon the right special-grade food over a long enough time could even raise its Aptitude outright. The overwhelming strength and Superior levels of David's team came from talent, effort, and resources working together — take away any one piece, and the rest wouldn't be enough.
Even so, there simply wasn't time during this camp to prepare his Pokémon's usual home-cooked meals, so standard Pokémon food would have to do for now. David had already promised them a proper feast the moment they stepped out of the secret realm.
With most of his materials already gathered, David took his time over lunch, completely unhurried. The same couldn't be said for everyone else. Most students hadn't come close to finishing their shelter materials, and plenty of them bolted down their food before heading straight back out with their Pokémon. Understandably, nobody wanted to spend the night with nothing but a sleeping bag if there was any way around it.
Not even Luke, Emma, and Miles were exempt. Their strength put them well above the average student, and their standards were just as high — they wouldn't settle for ordinary materials either. Against Pokémon that were mostly Superior-level, with more than a few reaching Professional-level, even they couldn't clear the work as effortlessly as David had. If they wanted a proper shelter built before nightfall, they still had a long afternoon of battling ahead of them.
"So, what do you think? Not bad, this batch of kids," a voice said.
Unnoticed by David and the others, several figures had been watching from the shadows for some time, quietly discussing what they saw. A closer look revealed Teacher Dominic, standing among the Gym-level Pokémon who'd been introduced earlier as the Secret Realm's Guardians.
At his words, the Pokémon traded glances, nodded, and offered their own thoughts. The gist of it was simple — this year's group was genuinely strong, far better than the disappointing students who'd slipped through the cracks in recent years. More than five of them had already surpassed the strength of past team captains, and one boy with a Salamence in particular had left even the Guardians quietly impressed.
Hearing that, Teacher Dominic looked a little embarrassed, a flash of awkwardness crossing his face. The truth wasn't quite so flattering. A few years back, the man serving as principal of First High School had only reached that position through a string of compromises — never strong enough in his own right, without solid backing, and by the end mostly just counting down the days until he could retire in peace. He'd become little more than a figurehead, hollowed out from within while old factions inside the school jockeyed for power and left the place in disarray.
The school team hadn't escaped the fallout. Years of mismanagement had dragged the quality of students at Imperial First High down far below what it used to be. People kept shoving in whoever they pleased — favors for the well-connected, backdoor admissions, straightforward bribery — until the reserve roster was packed with names that meant nothing on the battlefield. It got so bad that when one of the seven starters was sidelined by injury, not a single one of the eight reserves was fit to take their place.
No school team built like that could ever hope to succeed, and it was no surprise the Pokémon guarding this realm had little respect for the students it had been producing. Eventually, the excesses grew too blatant for the Alliance's more influential figures to keep overlooking, and that was what finally led to Arthur taking over as principal of First High School.