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After a long, tiring day, Jacob showered and stretched out on his bed, turning over the idea of finding himself an assistant. Handling everything on his own was proving far too exhausting.
Lying there with his eyes shut, names drifted through his mind one after another.
Julia… Davis… Caleb… Amelia… Sylvia.
One by one, Jacob set each name aside. The more he considered it, the clearer it became that none of them were really suited to the role — asking any of them to serve as his personal assistant would be a waste of what they were capable of.
He sighed.
Finding someone both capable and trustworthy was never going to be simple. This was something he'd have to take his time with.
He decided he'd ask Sylvia to keep an eye out for suitable candidates on his behalf.
With that settled in his mind, Jacob sent Sylvia a message right away.
… … … …
The next day.
Jacob woke early, had breakfast, submitted his official team roster, and then headed to the Giant Laboratory for his usual training.
With his team of Pokémon growing larger, training all of them alone had become a genuine challenge — more than he alone could reasonably manage.
So Jacob sought out Karl and Eve and asked for their help. It gave him the added benefit of spending more time around them, which might, in turn, ease some of their wariness toward him.
Karl took on the role of assistant coach, helping Jacob directly with training. Eve, meanwhile, took charge of feeding and caring for the Pokémon, and preparing their meals.
Thanks to their Psychic abilities, both of them could communicate with the Pokémon directly, giving them a natural talent for raising and caring for them.
Every ounce of effort now went toward one goal: preparing for the Level 3 Gym Leader League.
… … … …
One day later.
The Pokémon Association's Gym Leader League Organizing Committee finally made it official, announcing Jacob's participation and pinning the news to the very top of their social media page.
The moment it went live, it shot straight to the top of the trending topics.
That was hardly a surprise — everything about this competition, from the time and venue down to the participants, referees, guests, and commentators, had been arranged at the very highest standard.
It marked the first time a Level 3 Gym Leader League had ever been given such lavish treatment.
The venue itself was the Lie Kong Zuo Arena — the single most magnificent stadium not just in the Imperial Capital, but arguably the world, with room enough for well over a hundred thousand spectators at once.
The match was set for the first Saturday following the Lantern Festival, with the final scheduled for prime-time in the evening — and it would also mark the very first Level 3 Gym Leader League held anywhere in the country that year.
As for the other competitors, all sixteen entrants apart from Jacob himself were reigning Champions from the Level N Gym Leader League — not a single weak link among them.
Ordinarily, reaching the top four of a Level N League was enough to qualify a Trainer for the Level 3 League. The usual makeup of sixteen Level 3 entrants was two Level N Champions, four runners-up, four third-place finishers, and six fourth-place finishers.
This time, though, every single one of the other fifteen entrants was a Level N Champion — something that had never happened before.
An occasion on this scale pushed public anticipation to new heights, and the topic's popularity only kept climbing from there.
The organizers, for their part, kept the momentum going — releasing official photos and a fresh round of pre-match trash talk from a different contestant every hour or two, keeping the buzz alive and the traffic flowing.
Eventually, their real intentions became clear the moment ticket sales opened. Tickets would go on sale uniformly at 8 PM, priced at more than double what a typical Level 3 League match usually commanded.
Even so, the moment the sales channel opened, every ticket vanished almost instantly, leaving them nearly impossible to come by.
The fortunate few who managed to secure tickets online wasted no time showing them off.
It soon became clear that it wasn't only ordinary fans chasing the spectacle — plenty of online personalities, actors, and even Gym Leaders and Elites were posting about their own tickets. Setting aside the influencers simply riding the wave of attention, the more striking detail was that four or five of the Imperial Capital's eighteen type-specialist Gym Leaders were among those showing off their seats.
Fans who enjoyed a bit of mischief soon flooded the comment sections of the other Gym Leaders, teasing them with lines like: "Not showing off your ticket? Guess you didn't get one, huh?"
… … … …
The sheer scale of the competition's popularity caught even Jacob off guard.
Raya, who was still resting and recovering, called to tell him that everyone around her couldn't stop talking about the match, and that if it weren't for her current condition, she'd have wanted nothing more than to come watch him compete in person.
Meanwhile, plenty of people were pulling every string they had, hunting for connections to land internal tickets.
Jacob himself fielded no shortage of requests — and every one of them came from someone he simply couldn't turn down.
His father, Rory, and his mother, Zoe, asked, and of course Jacob couldn't refuse them.
Amelia called as well. With no real connections of her own to fall back on, she had no way of getting internal tickets except by asking Jacob directly — and given their relationship, there was no way he'd say no.
Sylvia was much the same, tugging at his arm, asking for a private box. Her reasoning, at least, was sound: she wanted to bring Lucia, Karl, and Eve along, to give them a chance to see more of the world.
In the end, Jacob had little choice but to swallow his pride and call Director Aaren, who oversaw the official event.
The moment he heard from Jacob, Director Aaren waved the request off with a broad, confident gesture, thumping his chest and promising there would be absolutely no trouble at all.
Director Aaren's eagerness left Jacob with a quiet realization — asking a favor always meant owing one in return, sooner or later.
That was simply how things worked in Huaguo sometimes — a society built on relationships and mutual obligation.
Still, Director Aaren proved to be both shrewd and thorough. On top of the tickets Jacob had asked for, he threw in ten more, just to be safe — and every single one of them was for a prime private box.
With tickets to spare, Jacob passed several along to family and friends, then set aside five more to give away to his fans.
… … … …
Time slipped by quickly, and before long, it was the afternoon of the competition itself.
After days of mounting anticipation, the match had finally arrived.
By three in the afternoon, the arena was already packed to capacity, a sea of spectators buzzing with excitement for the evening ahead.
… … … …
During the pre-match warm-up, the cameras swept across the crowd, lingering on the many familiar faces in attendance.
More than a dozen of the eighteen type-specialist Gym Leaders had shown up.
Alongside them, a great many online celebrities and stars had arrived early, dressed to the nines, turning the whole event into something resembling a red carpet affair.
… … … …
Backstage
Jacob ate a little something to keep his energy up, readying himself fully for what was to come.
The rules of the Gym Leader Professional League differed somewhat from those of the High School Cup.
Compared to the High School Cup, the Professional League had far fewer competitors — just sixteen in total — but its rules were considerably harsher.
All sixteen contestants had to complete every match in a single day, narrowing the field down to the final four.
Matches typically began at 4 PM.
The first round unfolded across eight fields simultaneously, fought under 1-on-1 singles rules.
Winners moved on to the top eight; losers were eliminated outright, dropped back down into the Level N Gym Leader League to work their way up again.
After the round wrapped up, there would be a half-hour break before the second round began around 5 PM.
The round from eight down to four followed 2-on-2 doubles rules. Once again, winners advanced to the final four, while losers were eliminated — though this time, they kept their current rank and remained eligible for the next Level 3 League. The winners, meanwhile, earned the right to compete in the Level 2 Gym Leader League.
Those first two rounds — one singles, one doubles — put each contestant's raw strength thoroughly to the test.
After that came a full hour's break, followed by the semifinals at 7 PM and the final at 8:30 PM.
Both the semifinals and the final were fought under 3-on-3 singles rules, separated by only a half-hour break — a brutal test of stamina for Trainers and Pokémon alike.