Pokémon: I picked up a reborn Eevee at the start of the game

Despite Blastoise's overly clumsy and straightforward attacks, Elexin, whose absolute speed is not particularly fast, moves with such grace and ease.

Perfectly bypassing the freezing beam, the Electric Flying Squirrel pounced directly onto the Water Arrow *****, its motion design likely inspired by the Facehugger.

However, unlike the facehugger which disgusts by tightly hugging the host's face and then laying eggs in the host's mouth, the electric flying squirrel does much more harmless things, simply releasing an electric shock.

The current is so small that even with elemental advantage, the damage is negligible.

But Blastoise frowned, because the weak but strange electric current had caused all the muscles in his body to go into an abnormal state—paralysis was in effect!

Anyone with even a little knowledge of Pokémon battles can see that Blastoise is in trouble.

Not only was it paralyzed, but worse, the Electric Mouse successfully "landed" on Blastoise, rendering the latter's two proud, thick cannons useless!

Even if your cannon is powerful and can shoot far... I, the Electric Flying Squirrel, am right on your cannon barrel. How are you going to deal with that?

…………

If a trainer is more experienced, they would have Blastoise retract into its shell and then use a high-speed spin to throw Elex off their body first.

But the challenger in front of him was clearly not experienced enough.

The sudden situation left him somewhat bewildered, and in his panic, he chose an alternative way to deal with it.

Blastoise, use Surf!

It sounds like a good choice—an area-of-effect STAB move that can definitely hit the Emolga that's currently perched on my back.

However, he failed to consider that water can be both offensive and conductive!

Without a second thought, Xia Chen immediately commanded, "Fly up, then use Thunder!"

I wonder if Blastoise is lucky or unlucky.

Good news, the paralysis effect did not take effect, and the surfing was successfully released.

The bad news is that the rushing water didn't hit the electric flying squirrel that had just taken flight; instead, it became a bridge.

A bridge connecting Thunder and Blastoise.

Snapped!

With a thunderous roar, the electric squirrel's small body suddenly erupted with terrifying electricity—

The word "terrifying" is definitely not appropriate for creatures like Sylveon, but for Blastoise... the word "terrifying" is not an exaggeration at all.

Lightning struck from the sky, and the panicked Blastoise tried to escape the bolt of lightning, and it did manage to avoid it.

The powerful but also relatively long-charged Thunderbolt failed to hit the fleeing Blastoise, instead landing in the surging waves.

Blastoise managed to dodge the lightning, but it couldn't swim out of the water current it had created. Following this natural conductor, terrifying electric energy surged wildly into Blastoise's body.

"Camel—"

Amidst a painful roar, the Blastoise was electrocuted and charred inside and out; even its originally brown shell was charred black.

Over there, Xia Chen showed no sign of holding back, and commanded, "Continue, one more time!"

Upon hearing this, the challenger hurriedly shouted, "Blastoise, use Retreat!"

After all, he is qualified to challenge the gym; this guy has some battle experience, but not much.

While retracting into its shell increases physical defense, hiding vital parts like the tortoise's genitals and limbs under the shell can indeed mitigate some of the damage from lightning strikes.

However, this also means that Blastoise has completely given up the initiative in the battle.

Xia Chen took the initiative without hesitation and commanded, "Electric Flying Squirrel, Electric Net!"

Since the power of the move would be greatly reduced, Xia Chen stopped using lightning, as it would consume more energy and take longer to charge up, which was not worthwhile.

Why not start by controlling the power grid speed?

Although this move is not very common, it is quite effective, dealing significant damage and having the strategic value of slowing down the opponent.

With such a powerful effect, it's no wonder it became a legendary move used by Caterpie to defeat Rayquaza.

…………

Underneath a giant golden net woven from electric current, a Blastoise with its limbs retracted and only its shell remaining is easily captured.

Because it was retracted into its shell, the damage from the electric grid was not significant, but the shell trembled noticeably, indicating that the additional slowing effect had taken effect.

The tortoise shell remained unmoved, and Xia Chen ignored it, continuing to give instructions: "Then, move at high speed!"

His plan was obvious: create a speed difference between the two and then finish the game with an electric ball.

This is much better than directly attacking the shell and gradually wearing down Blastoise's stamina, because the speed boost that Emolga gains can still be used when battling the next Pokémon.

The challenger panicked at this moment. Even if he was in a bad mood, he understood the principle of not allowing his opponent to strengthen himself at will.

There's nothing I can do, Blastoise, you'll just have to die standing up.

Blastoise, use Blizzard!

The goal was not purely offensive, but to force the Electric Mouse to stop its buffs and engage in a direct confrontation.

Given the current situation, trading his life for injury is the best outcome for him.

Seeing that Blastoise was no longer hiding, Xia Chen switched to another plan, "Electric Mouse, Thunder!"

A biting wind howled, and lightning flashed as two attacks of different attributes were unleashed almost simultaneously.

The difference is that Blastoise stands there blankly, as if doing both releasing a blizzard and dodging at the same time would burn out its CPU.

The electric flying squirrel, on the other hand, was much more agile, its small body constantly nimbly flipping in the air as it unleashed its thunderous attack.

While it's impossible to completely avoid the damage from a blizzard, avoiding the larger hailstones within the blizzard significantly reduces the damage this attack can inflict.

"Finally, the electric ball!"

The electric flying squirrel, gliding through the air with outstretched wings, puffed out the two electric sacs on its cheeks. Amidst the crackling of electricity, energy condensed into a ball and shot towards Blastoise at top speed.

As the saying goes, the electric ball became the final straw that broke Blastoise's back, and this powerful Pokémon, whose strength was close to that of an elite, collapsed.

The onlookers gasped in astonishment—the damage control of a top-tier trainer was terrifying!

This dojo challenge ended with Xia Chen, the defending dojo member, winning by a large margin.

Xia Chen didn't hand over the dojo's spirit badge, not because his opponent failed to win, but because he didn't show the qualities worthy of the spirit badge.

To be honest, Emolga's absolute strength is clearly inferior to his three Pokémon, yet he almost managed to defeat all three of them in one go. There's absolutely no reason for him to get a badge.

…………

The gym challenges that followed were mostly the same. Xia Chen rotated his Pokémon, using Emolga, Slug, Teddiursa, and Volcarona, and surprisingly, he didn't lose a single match.

Soon, the news that "Yuanling Dojo has refreshed the rankings of its leader Xia Chen" spread like wildfire on the internet.

Countless trainers immediately became excited and prepared to come and challenge, even those who were not from the Eastern Empire region and did not intend to challenge the Eastern Empire League joined in the fun.

The number of people booking to challenge the dojo on the [Yuanling Dojo] app jumped from a few hundred to tens of thousands in just one morning.

Looking at the string of numbers, Chrissy looked up and gazed resentfully at her master.

"This number...it would take me ten years of playing non-stop to finish it. Are you trying to tie me to this for the rest of my life?"

While closing the dojo challenge reservations in the backend, Xia Chen reassured them, "Don't worry, after a few days when I stop playing, more than 90% of them will cancel their reservations."

Chrissy: "..."

That sounds reasonable, but something just feels off.

For the next few days, Xia Chen settled into a peaceful daily "working" life.

Although the gym challenge was indeed not very intense, it wasn't entirely boring for Xia Chen.

This is currently the best stage for the Burning Bug to shine.

Shortly after the Burning Worm was born, Xia Chen was busy with the research on crystallization, and later a series of events occurred in the Galar region.

Now that he finally had some free time, he naturally wanted to spend quality time with the Burning Worm during his final period of adolescence.

After calming down and taking care of him, Xia Chen was amazed by the special characteristics of the burning insects.

Logically speaking, having raised more than a dozen abnormal Pokémon, Xia Chen's threshold for surprise should be very high, but the Burning Bug still gave him a big surprise.

Because the flames inside its body are truly unique.

After nearly half a year of growth, the Burning Bug's energy intensity has reached the elite level.

This alone is enough to be considered an extreme growth rate, after all, even the exceptionally talented Gomi Dragon, who is almost a demon, can only achieve this speed.

Even more astonishing than its growth rate is its incredibly high flame temperature.

To put it bluntly, this is a Burning Bug that has only just reached the elite level, but the fire-type moves it uses have the strength of gym-level Pokémon!

And the properties of this flame are even more powerful—it is minimally affected by attribute resistance!

Despite being four times more resistant to fire, Milotic seemed to have only twice the resistance when attacked by the Flamethrower.

In order to study the characteristics of the Flamebug's flame more accurately, Xia Chen had Sylveon Mega Evolve into various types and then subjected to the scorching heat of Flamethrower.

The final conclusion is that it's normal for types like Steel and Grass to be naturally weak to each other, or for types like Electric and Poison to be not weak to each other.

However, the resistance of Water, Dragon, and Ground types, which are normally able to resist Fire-type moves, will be greatly reduced.

This magical and somewhat eerie flame completely shattered Xia Chen's existing understanding—it completely overturned the most basic rule of the elf world: water beats fire, fire beats grass, and grass beats water!

Compared to this, Ho-Oh's Sacred Flame, Heatran's Lava... they're all utterly weak.

"This is a bit too outrageous..."

Even the well-informed Xia Chen was speechless in the face of this situation.

But in any case, this is a good thing.

But where did the Burning Worm get this strange ability to break the rules of the world?

Looking at the Burning Bug, which was lively and energetic one second and then fell into a sweet dream the next, Xia Chen fell into deep thought.

------

Meanwhile, in the Ultimate World.

It's still that planet inhabited by Poison Baby and Jawless Needle Dragon.

But compared to four months ago, the planet's environment has undergone a complete transformation.

Sunlight, plants, water—all the elements necessary for life exist here.