"Dusknoir, Z-Move: Never-Ending Nightmare!"
The moment battle commenced, Damian immediately produced a Z-Crystal and slotted it into his wrist-mounted Z-Ring.
Purple-black energy immediately enveloped Damian, and as he raised his hand, the power condensed into a shockwave that shot into Dusknoir’s body.
Instantly, with Dusknoir as the epicenter, purple-black light spread across the soil in all directions, as if trying to dye the entire island the same ominous hue.
No, more precisely, this spreading darkness resembled a gaping maw, incorporating everything around them.
Standing on the island, the surrounding ocean and forests vanished, replaced by a purple-black aurora. In the distance, ghostly trees and phantom towns could be vaguely seen.
It seemed they’d been transported to a suburb of the spirit world itself.
John waited several seconds, but the endless ghostly hands that typically emerged from the ground during Never-Ending Nightmare never appeared.
Instead, Damian issued his next command: "Phantom General!"
The massive mouth on Dusknoir’s belly opened wide as its arms spread as if to embrace everything around it.
A black shadow materialized behind the Pokemon, rapidly expanding and growing larger.
In the blink of an eye, a colossal dark figure loomed over the battlefield.
John had witnessed this technique during Damian and Riley’s battle moments ago.
However, the "Phantom General" summoned by Dusknoir differed somewhat from the spectral warrior created by Damian’s ace Gengar.
Gengar’s phantom had been a general wielding a massive blade, while Dusknoir’s creation was a bare-chested, muscle-bound brute. The strange thing was its pair of horns and two massive arms that looked like concrete pillars, very intimidating indeed!
It looked like a minotaur!
"Are the phantoms different for each Pokemon? Or does it only depend on the individual Pokemon’s mastery of Night Shade?
The bull-headed phantom raised its fist and struck directly at John’s Gengar.
"Dodge, then Shadow Ball!" John commanded quickly.
Don’t let Gengar’s appearance as a chubby purple mascot fool you, their speed and base stats were actually quite high. It could be said they were surprisingly agile for their rotund appearance.
Twisting slightly, Gengar easily avoided the minotaur phantom’s attack.
The fist crashed into the ground, causing an explosion that made the entire island shake under the impact.
John had to admit his senior was quite talented. Night Shade was inherently a special-type move, designed to be unsettling and terrifying to achieve psychological damage, but Damian had transformed it into something with physical destructive power, and the force was quite impressive!
Having dodged the attack, Gengar quickly launched a counterattack. Pressing its chubby little hands together against its chest, football-sized shadow orbs immediately materialized behind it, more than twenty of them, densely packed. Pointing forward, the Shadow Balls immediately shot toward their target.
"Rock Tomb," Damian calmly instructed.
Dusknoir crossed its arms in front of its chest, and immediately the space above its head rippled with dark energy. Several massive rocks, two to three meters high, crashed down, blocking all of the Shadow Balls’ attack vectors.
Using Rock Tomb as a defensive move, John had not only seen this before, he used the technique himself.
A series of explosive sounds echoed across the battlefield.
Just as John was considering what move to use for his next attack, the minotaur phantom behind Dusknoir moved again, swinging sideways at Gengar.
John’s eyes twitched.
Since when could Night Shade become a persistent summon that could continue attacking independently?
Damian had developed what was normally a one-off attack move into a genuine "summoning" technique.
"Dodge!" John called out urgently. The rightful source is nοvelfire.net
The purple pudgeball fled desperately.
"Shadow Sneak," Damian followed up perfectly.
Dusknoir, positioned behind the Rock Tomb barrier, immediately crouched and slapped both hands against the ground. The moment its gloved palms sank into the soil, they reappeared in the shadow beneath Gengar, grabbing hold of the Ghost-type.
Once caught, the minotaur phantom’s attack would land perfectly!
"Teleport!" John had no choice but to play one of his trump cards early.
Gengar, locked onto by both the phantom and Dusknoir, instantly vanished from that location.
Immediately after, an explosion erupted as the Rock Tomb that Dusknoir had used for defense was blasted apart from the inside out!
Dusknoir went flying backward from the debris.
There was Gengar, holding a Shadow Ball in one hand like a spiraling energy sphere, pressing it against the back of Dusknoir’s head and propelling it forward. Gengar had always envied how Greninja knew Aura Sphere, so it had copied the technique using Shadow Ball instead.
Caught completely off guard, Dusknoir hadn’t expected or reacted to the surprise attack.
"Teleport?" Damian frowned slightly. Was that a move Gengar could learn? Why couldn’t his own Gengar use it?
He quickly issued another command.
"Dusknoir, use Imprison!"
Dusknoir’s single eye gleamed as it twisted around in midair with the Shadow Ball pressed against it, immediately reaching out with its gloved palm to grab the nearby Gengar.
This was the Ghost-type move Imprison. Once it connected with an opponent, that Pokemon would be unable to use any moves they shared with the user.
It was specifically designed to counter opponents of the same type in actual combat.
If Gengar was hit by Imprison, it wouldn’t be able to use most Ghost-type moves, cutting its combat effectiveness by at least half.
But just as Dusknoir was about to grab Gengar, it disappeared again.
The distance wasn’t far this time, but the positioning was identical, behind Dusknoir.
Gengar pressed forward with one hand, simultaneously imprinting five Shadow Balls against Dusknoir’s back.
It looked like Gengar had given Dusknoir its own version of a "five-point palm exploding heart technique."
Dusknoir’s body flew backward again, crashing into the rocks of its own Rock Tomb and causing another explosion.
A crisp bursting sound echoed across the battlefield, like a balloon being popped.
It was Dusknoir’s minotaur phantom collapsing like smoke, for its creator, Dusknoir, had fallen with swirling eyes.
The mechanical referee announced in due course: "Dusknoir is unable to battle! Gengar wins!"