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Kael sat on the battlefield, watching the player being held up by the staff as his figure gradually disappeared into the corridor.
His heart was still pounding hard.
It was not because he was timid.
Kael understood very clearly that if he had truly been forcibly taken into a Poké Ball by the enemy under those circumstances, he would have faced an extremely dangerous situation.
After all, the opposing Trainer was a genuine player.
Players had all kinds of conveniences provided by the system. They were absolutely different from the native NPCs inside the game.
Kael had no experience being captured by a player, but that did not stop him from assuming the worst.
Perhaps, as long as a Poké Ball was thrown by a player, escaping from it would be several times harder than escaping from an ordinary NPC's Poké Ball.
Or perhaps it would be impossible to break free at all.
If that were the case, then the instant he was confirmed to have been forcibly captured, what if the other party logged out on the spot?
What could the people in the Gym do then?
As an online game, Pokémon: World naturally would not pause the flow of in-game time just because one player logged out.
If the other party waited ten days or half a month before logging back in, perhaps his spawn point would not even be here anymore. By then, who could possibly find him?
In this short, hurried span of time, Kael alone could already think of so many possibilities.
Whether those methods were reasonable or feasible was another matter, but he believed that since the player dared to do something so extreme, he must have had some backup plan to avoid the League's punishment.
At that point, Kael would have been like a fish on a chopping board, completely at another's mercy.
Of course, these were only Kael's predictions of the worst possible situation.
Right now, under Swampert's protection, he had already escaped danger.
Although he did not know why Swampert had appeared here, Kael was still extremely grateful that it had acted to help him.
"Gu, gu."
Facing Swampert at the edge of the field, Kael cried out loudly twice in gratitude.
Sobble's cry was a young, adorable sound.
To describe it abstractly, it was like combining the call of a frog with the cry of an owl, then raising the pitch by several levels.
In response to Kael's thanks, Swampert still acted cold and calm. It merely nodded at him before returning to its Poké Ball.
Kael's impression of Swampert had actually been quite good from the beginning.
Although he had fought a fierce battle with Swampert when he first arrived at the Gym, and at one point during the fight had thought he would die at its hands, after thinking carefully about it afterward, Swampert had clearly held back a great deal during that battle.
It had given Kael enough pressure to let him perform beyond his limits and show his strength in front of Evan, while also holding back at the critical moment so that he would not be hurt.
Now, it had even helped him during the Gym challenge when he had fallen into danger.
This raised Swampert's image in Kael's heart to another level.
Sitting on the damp, soft grass, Kael calmed the emotions stirred up by the accident.
At the edge of the field, the square-faced referee was frowning while making a phone call. From the scattered words Kael heard, the referee was probably reporting the detailed process of the incident to his superiors.
Of course, that did not have much to do with Kael.
Standing up from the soft, damp grass, Kael walked toward the lounge.
The sudden accident had left his emotions somewhat unstable. He planned to do another dozen or twenty sets of physical training and use diligent sweat to wash away the shadow left by that dangerous moment.
Suddenly, just as he turned around, he noticed the red-and-white Poké Ball containing Swampert tied to the referee's waist.
As if thinking of something, Kael's eyes suddenly lit up.
If he remembered correctly, ever since the first time he had seen the square-faced referee, that Poké Ball had always been tied to his waist.
At first, Kael had thought the Pokémon inside was one raised by the referee himself.
Now, it seemed that the one inside had been Swampert all along.
His eyes blinked lightly.
He suddenly felt that there was room for some maneuvering here.
If Swampert protected him throughout his battles, then under the premise of obeying battle rules, would that mean he could be protected even if he performed certain relatively dangerous actions?
For example…
Evolving mid-battle?
Of course, Kael was only thinking about it for now.
Although he currently possessed more than five hundred stored experience points, enough to raise him four levels after evolution, that was still far from the number he had imagined.
After all, there were only two evolution opportunities in his entire life.
No matter what, he had to make proper use of them, right?
Because of that, Kael only briefly considered the idea before throwing it to the back of his mind. Then he stepped forward and returned to the lounge.
…
A fulfilling, pleasant, regular life where every day was filled with a sense of achievement could satisfy the heart, while also making one unknowingly forget the passage of time.
Although a few small twists and accidents would appear along the way, in the end, they usually only brought Kael a bit of freshness.
One day.
Two days.
One week.
Two weeks.
The river called time flowed quietly, carrying everything in this world along with it.
The sunlight became slightly weaker.
The air became slightly colder.
The man's beard also seemed to grow a little longer.
As one member within this river of time, Kael naturally also endured the changes it brought him.
These changes were not shallow things visible on the surface, not something others could see with the naked eye.
They were bigger changes, closer to the soul.
Three to five Pokémon battles every day allowed him to carry out the most primitive, yet also the most direct form of capital accumulation.
On his status panel, the number in the experience value column increased steadily and slowly, just like clothes in the wardrobe of a woman who loved beauty.
At the same time, the huge storm caused by Kael gradually began to stir waves in the world outside the Gym.
Of course, Kael himself could not feel the effects brought by this storm, and neither could the NPCs inside the game.
The ones truly standing inside the raging storm were those pitiful players.
With his powerful physical condition far beyond Pokémon of the same level thanks to system items, combined with battle experience accumulated over several reincarnations, deeper than ninety-nine percent of his kind in the world, Kael was unstoppable in his battles against players and held every advantage.
A slightly higher level?
Defeated.
A type advantage?
Defeated.
Failure after failure made the players, who had seen themselves as chosen ones, feel deep disappointment and frustration.
Before many unrelated players had even reacted, posts about Kael on the game forum began increasing like weeds across a spring field.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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For early access to advanced chapters on P-atreon:
P-atreon/iamxeno
(Just remove the - hyphen to access normally)
Thank you so much for your support and for reading!