For many professional Pokémon Trainers, battling in the City Arena was primarily a way to make money and earn a living.
For Ash, however, the main purpose of participating in City Arena battles was to train the practical combat abilities of his Pokémon.
With his current wealth and ability to make money, the small amount of prize money offered by City Arena battles was something Ash no longer cared much about.
Of course, that was beside the point.
Those were Ash's arrangements for the afternoon and evening.
His mornings, meanwhile, were devoted entirely to training.
He would train his Pokémon, while also setting aside time to train himself.
The four ace Pokémon in his first echelon—Pikachu, Greninja, Pidgeot, and Fearow—had now reached the point where Ash no longer needed to worry much about them.
Greninja in particular had undergone tremendous progress.
More than half a year had passed since it had first begun training to master Bond Phenomenon.
Originally, Greninja had only reached Bond Evolution 3.0.
But throughout the past half year, during its regular morning training sessions, it had consistently spent one hour every day practicing coordination, tacit understanding, and the bond between Trainer and Pokémon.
With that persistent effort accumulating day after day, Greninja's control over Bond Evolution had gradually advanced to 4.0.
At Bond Evolution 4.0, the water-dragon-like vortex cloak surrounding its body could transform into the enormous Water Shuriken on its back.
Then there was Bond Evolution 5.0.
At this stage, Greninja had completely mastered the power of Bond Evolution and could further activate and unleash its power during intense battles.
This allowed it to perform a technique that Ash and Greninja had only used once in the original anime during the finals of the Kalos League—
the so-called "Golden Healing Water Shuriken."
Of course, "Golden Healing Water Shuriken" was actually a mocking nickname.
It was used sarcastically to ridicule the enormous golden Water Shuriken unleashed by the original Ash's Greninja.
Not only had that massive golden shuriken failed to defeat Alain's Charizard, it had instead seemed to make the Fire-type Pokémon even more energetic.
It was as though the gigantic golden shuriken unleashed by the original Greninja wasn't an offensive move at all.
It was a healing move.
And not just an ordinary healing move, either—it seemed to restore the opponent's condition and HP!
That was why Pokémon fans had jokingly—and eventually mockingly—nicknamed the original Greninja's gigantic golden Water Shuriken the "Golden Healing Water Shuriken."
But now, Ash had carefully trained his own Greninja.
Under his guidance, Greninja had successfully mastered this ultimate killing technique in its Bond Evolution state.
Naturally, Ash wasn't going to let his Greninja carry the disgraceful name of "Golden Healing Water Shuriken."
So Ash gave this ultimate finishing move a brand-new name.
Furious Waterfall Golden Whirlpool Water Shuriken.
Compared with the ridiculous-sounding "Golden Healing Water Shuriken," the name Furious Waterfall Golden Whirlpool Water Shuriken was obviously far more imposing and domineering.
More importantly, it actually sounded like the name of an offensive technique.
Apart from the four Pokémon in the first echelon, there were also the second-echelon Pokémon.
There was Gyarados, which followed the path of overwhelming physical offense, and Milotic, which followed the route of a regenerative special-defense tank.
As the two Pokémon's levels increased, their abilities grew stronger, and their move frameworks gradually became more complete, both of them were slowly reaching the point where they could stand on their own.
Then there was Venusaur, the lone member of Ash's third echelon.
Under Ash's wholehearted cultivation, its strength had also continued to grow stronger.
At the same time, it was increasingly beginning to resemble a true Grass-type defensive tank.
Unfortunately, Ash's attempts to purchase Mega Stones had not gone smoothly.
In fact, he hadn't managed to acquire even a single Mega Stone.
Therefore, for the time being, there was no need to consider Mega Evolution for Gyarados or Venusaur.
As a result, all of Ash's Pokémon continued steadily improving their strength according to their established training plans.
Little by little, training his Pokémon no longer required Ash to worry about every detail personally.
He also hadn't chosen to capture any new Pokémon to raise.
Instead, he shifted his time and energy toward himself.
Toward his own cultivation and improvement.
There wasn't much to say about his cultivation of the Viridian Force.
With the constant stream of injured Trainers and patients coming from the " Dashiwan Valley, Stone Bridge" and his online shop's third clinic, Ash received a large and steady amount of experience for cultivating the Viridian Force every single day.
Although the higher his Viridian Force cultivation level became, the more experience he needed to advance, making his cultivation speed increasingly slower compared with the early stages, there was one major advantage.
It was stable.
And continuous.
Furthermore, the Viridian Force was an auxiliary ability.
It possessed only four specialized abilities:
1. Healing Grace
2. Natural Affinity
3. Will Empowerment
4. Source Cleansing
There was no room left for him to continue digging deeper into or developing additional abilities.
Therefore, when it came to cultivating the Viridian Force, the only thing Ash could do was diligently and relentlessly continue playing the role of his super-powered doctor, rain or shine.
Compared with the Aura, Ash didn't spend any less time cultivating the Viridian Force.
However, in terms of energy and attention, Aura undoubtedly received far more of his focus.
After all, Aura possessed far more specialized applications.
As a superpower that originated from and was born within the mind, the potential functions of Aura could practically be described as limitless.
As long as he could think of something, there was a high probability that Aura could make it happen.
However, when it came to Aura, Ash's greatest expectation at this stage was still combat.
He wanted it to provide him with powerful offensive strength and give him enough power to protect himself.
As for the various smaller auxiliary functions, he could wait until his combat capabilities had been developed to a sufficient level.
Once he had more time in the future, he could slowly dig into and develop those abilities.
As for developing the combat applications of Aura, Ash was mainly focused on practicing four techniques:
1. Aura Jujutsu
2. Aura Laijutsu
3. Aura Sphere
4. Aura Rasengan
Ash had already mastered the first three techniques half a year ago.
With the assistance of the system's skill proficiency panel, he quickly became highly proficient in all three.
As for Aura Rasengan, that was something he had mastered during the past six months.
In his previous life, when Ash had watched Naruto, the story had provided an extremely detailed explanation of how the Rasengan was trained.
Therefore, when Ash used Aura to recreate and practice the technique, the process went remarkably smoothly.
However, the Rasengan was merely the starting point of an entire combat system.
Using the Rasengan as its foundation, countless additional techniques could be developed.
Therefore, Ash had spent quite a lot of time working on it throughout the past six months.
Fortunately, hard work was never wasted.
Ash had invested an enormous amount of time and energy into this pursuit, and he eventually received substantial rewards for his efforts.
Not only had he successfully recreated the Rasengan using Aura, he had also used it as a foundation to master its subsequent variations:
Big Ball Rasengan and Ultra-Big Ball Rasengan.
And because Ash had been helping Greninja train its Bond Evolution, he often trained alongside it in Water Shuriken throwing exercises.
As a result, he had also made significant breakthroughs in the Rasengan Shuriken series.
Techniques such as:
Aura: Mini Rasenshuriken,
Aura: Rasenshuriken,
Aura: Ultra-Big Ball Rasenshuriken...
had all been mastered by Ash within the past six months.
With the assistance of the system's proficiency panel, he had also rapidly raised their proficiency levels all the way to Grandmaster.
In short, over the past six months, not only had Ash's Pokémon been improving at an astonishing rate, but Ash himself had also been steadily increasing his personal combat power.
His self-development journey from [Complete Newbie → Human Legendary Pokémon] was becoming increasingly convincing.
At this rate...
One day, catching a Legendary Pokémon barehanded would no longer be a dream.