After hearing Archie's words, Maxie immediately felt something was wrong and began pressing him for details.
He couldn't figure out how his plan was about to be exposed when he hadn't done anything yet.
And what exactly was this game about??
Soon, he understood the general situation from Archie's description and began stroking his chin thoughtfully.
"So you're saying that the moment you met the player, you directly revealed your plan, but I haven't explicitly stated my objectives yet?"
"I have to emphasize again - that idiot in the game is NOT me!!"
Archie's voice was muffled and gruff, clearly indicating he was in a very bad mood.
Maxie breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this, but soon his brow furrowed again.
If even someone as careful and cautious as Archie had his plan's contents discovered, then wasn't it just a matter of time before his own plan was displayed publicly in the game?
At this thought, Maxie's voice turned cold and vicious.
"No matter how that guy learned about our plans, we absolutely cannot let him continue causing chaos like this. Otherwise, years of our hard work will be destroyed in an instant."
Archie also spoke up, his tone carrying hints of hatred.
"That's exactly why I came to you. I know your subordinates include many researchers skilled in network technology. Before he completely exposes our plans, we must immediately find whoever made this game!"
"Your Team Magma has been operating openly all these years, and it's inconvenient to act in reality, while my Team Aqua operates in the shadows. You handle finding him, and I'll send people to eliminate him!"
"I know that in all these past years, you and I have never cooperated again, but now we have a common enemy - one more important than the League itself. So I think we should make a brief exception."
Maxie stroked his chin, pondered for a moment, and found the situation was indeed as Archie described, so he nodded.
"Fine. I never thought that after all these years, what would bring us together again would be a video game."
"Tell me the specific information about this game."
"The game is called Pokémon: Emerald. It's a pixel game, but for some reason, it seems to be exploding in popularity online recently. The game's creator isn't some big company or famous studio, but an individual developer called 'Wind.'"
Archie's response came quickly.
"Alright, leave it to me. Within half a day, I'll give you his exact location."
Maxie nodded, memorized all this information, and hung up the communication.
Regarding finding this game developer, he appeared quite confident.
When he first established Team Magma years ago, the very first thing he did was recruit the top network technology talents from the entire Hoenn region for his use, because he deeply understood what such power could bring and change.
Even if this person's information was in the League's classified resource databases, he was confident he could break through and find it!
Although this might require paying some price, and would once again draw the League's attention to Team Magma's existence.
But to prevent his plan from being completely exposed, all of this was worth it!
With this thought, Maxie's gaze sharpened. He suddenly stood up from his chair and turned to look at the researchers behind him:
"Stop whatever you're working on - we've got work to do!"
Meanwhile, in Cynthia's livestream.
She had already entered the Lavaridge Gym, and what met her eyes were four sandpits - nothing else besides these.
Looking at these four pits, Cynthia was momentarily confused.
What did this mean?
She controlled her game character to carefully approach, and from the leftmost sandpit, an NPC with a headband suddenly popped out and challenged her.
"Aha! I saw you!"
The battle difficulty was consistently manageable. After easily resolving the fight, Cynthia began exploring the other sandpits.
Soon, she barely understood this gym's puzzle mechanism.
This Lavaridge Gym seemed to consist of many independent rooms, with each room containing at least four or five sandpits. Some pits hid paths to the next room, while others led to wrong paths that required returning to the starting point.
The remaining sandpits all contained NPCs blocking the way in the gym. Compared to the electrical mechanisms in Mauville Gym, this gym's puzzle difficulty was obviously much higher.
But such obstacles obviously couldn't stop Cynthia. Five minutes later, with her intellect and memory abilities plus decent luck, she quickly crossed all the sandpits and successfully stood before the Gym Leader's room.
Sitting before her was a young girl with red four-leaf clover-like hair, wearing a crop top, full of youthful energy and vitality!
This was none other than the Lavaridge Gym Leader of the Hoenn region - Flannery!
Seeing Cynthia approach, a black exclamation mark immediately appeared above her head.
[Just reaching here doesn't prove anything. Let me see if you have the determination and power to challenge flames!]
Amid inspiring battle music, countless Poké Balls flew across the screen as the game entered the gym battle interface.
At the same time, streams of comments began lighting up in Cynthia's chat.
[This little girl is also a Gym Leader? She looks even younger than Roxanne from before.]
[Being young is good. It's already a Fire-type gym countered by Cynthia's team, so it should be even easier now, right?]
[You two above forgot this game's nature. I bet this Gym Leader won't be weaker than Wattson.]
[Come on, guys, we have rain that absolutely counters Fire-types. No matter how strong she is, how hard could it be?]
While comments debated the battle's difficulty, Flannery, as the Gym Leader, sent out her first Pokémon.
It was a turtle-like creature, but unlike Torkoal, this one stood upright on two legs.
The shell on its back had an explosive, radiating form full of black spikes, looking quite powerful!
This was clearly a Fire and Dragon dual-type Pokémon - Turtonator.
Seeing this, Cynthia directly sent out her lead Pokémon - Pelipper!!
Since she'd confirmed the opponent's lead wasn't something like Torkoal that would steal weather with Drought ability, there was definitely no problem starting this battle by setting up rain.
As Pelipper entered the field, the sky immediately filled with dark clouds as large raindrops began falling densely.
[Due to Pelipper's Drizzle ability, it started raining!]
After brief consideration, Cynthia directly chose to use Water Pulse, testing the opponent's setup as usual.
In her memory, Turtonator was quite slow, specializing in physical defense since the armor on its body was quite sturdy.
For Pelipper, these were undoubtedly very favorable conditions, since all of Pelipper's attack moves were basically special attacks!
Sure enough, as the first turn began, Pelipper moved first.
Deep blue water rings shot from its mouth, precisely hitting the opponent's Turtonator!
However, no "super effective" message appeared - Turtonator's Dragon typing resisted Water attacks, successfully covering the Fire-type weakness.
Obviously, this Pokémon was one of Flannery's defensive measures against Fire-type weaknesses.
Cynthia wasn't particularly surprised by this. She'd naturally thought of this the moment Turtonator appeared.
But remember, Pelipper was currently under rain weather's boost - its Water-type moves would get significantly increased power.
Even without a type advantage, that Water Pulse successfully took away nearly half of Turtonator's HP bar!
And with Turtonator's outstanding defense, it theoretically shouldn't be able to threaten Pelipper much.
But the next moment, something completely unexpected happened.
Golden electric current suddenly flashed across Turtonator's body!!
[Turtonator used Shock Wave!!]
[The Choice Specs it's holding boosted this move's power!]
[It's super effective!!]
In the golden radiance, Pelipper's HP bar was instantly emptied!!
Remember, it was a Water and Flying dual-type Pokémon - Electric-type was its fatal weakness, capable of dealing massive 4x damage!
A huge question mark appeared above Cynthia's head at this moment.
Wait, why can your Turtonator use Electric-type moves??
Is this reasonable?
The livestream viewers were just as baffled. They had all expected Cynthia's Pelipper to dominate this gym battle.
With its ultra-high Special Attack base stats boosted by rain weather, it should at least take down two of the opponent's Fire-types, right?
But now it had only used one move and... that's it??
Starting the battle by immediately losing one Pokémon put Cynthia at a huge disadvantage in this gym battle.
However, somehow Cynthia found herself getting used to such situations.
Ever since playing this game, at the start of every battle's first turn, she'd mentally prepare herself.
Because nobody knew what underhanded moves and strategies the opponents in this game would pull...
She took a light breath, quickly adjusted her mindset, and chose to send out Ludicolo to take over.
Although Pelipper had lost its ability to fight, as compensation, Flannery's Water-type counter, "Turtonator," had also lost nearly half its HP!
Next, she just needed Ludicolo with its Swift Swim ability to finish it off, then use rain's power and speed boosts to clean up this battle.
But the next moment, something Cynthia didn't expect happened.
As she switched to Ludicolo, intending to use Zen Headbutt...
The Turtonator on the opposite side suddenly became a red light and was recalled!
The Pokémon that appeared next made Cynthia's body stiffen!
Because this Pokémon was an old acquaintance - none other than Torkoal!
In Cynthia's ominous premonition, sure enough, a familiar scene played out.
Brilliant light burst from Torkoal's body, shooting straight into the sky. The gloomy, rain-filled sky suddenly cleared at this moment.
[Torkoal's Drought ability activated - the weather cleared up!]
Cynthia couldn't help but hold her forehead.
Not again!
Do all you Fire-type trainers have a Torkoal or what?
Can't people set up rain in peace??
Meanwhile, another person was also having a gym battle.
This person was Iono, but she was currently battling the Mauville Gym in Mauville City.
With her team of almost entirely Electric-type Pokémon, facing Wattson's gym was quite unfavorable.
Although her Pokémon could also benefit from Electric Terrain's boost, facing Wattson's three Pokémon, who all knew "Thunderbolt," her Pokémon's Electric-type move power was really too low. Direct confrontation was quite disadvantageous.
More critically, Electric-type Pokémon were immune to paralysis!
This meant her "Thunder Wave," which had gotten her through key battles multiple times, was useless this time.
This made Iono's battle at Mauville Gym almost impossible to describe as anything but extremely difficult.
Fortunately, through countless failures and repeated attempts, Iono successfully found the only possibility for victory.
She successfully seized an opportunity to let her Pikachu complete two "Nasty Plot" boosts and finally swept the team!
But this opportunity was actually found by Iono herself!
Discovering paralysis didn't work, she directly chose to have Pikachu use the HM move "Flash" from before, lowering Wattson's Raichu's accuracy.
So even the theoretically sure-hit Thunderbolt actually missed twice in a row!
It was thanks to these two lucky breaks that Iono finally defeated Wattson and won the Mauville Gym battle.
Upon victory, following normal procedure, besides obtaining the Dynamo Badge and Rock Smash usage rights, Wattson also handed Iono a TM.
The moment she saw this disc, Iono's eyes immediately lit up. She directly opened her bag and began frantically using this TM on every Pokémon in her team!
Uncontrollable laughter echoed in her livestream.
"Thunderbolt!! Woohoo!!"
As Electric-type's most commonly used, high-power move, it was hard to imagine that so early in the game, she could use this TM to teach every Electric-type Pokémon in her team this move!!
This was equivalent to directly raising her team's combat power by more than one level!
Not only that, what surprised Iono even more was that after giving her the Dynamo Badge and TM, Wattson's head actually showed another red exclamation mark:
"By the way, looking at you, you seem to share my unique love for Electric-type Pokémon..."
"If that's the case... take this too."
He produced another disc and handed it to Iono.
"You obtained TM - Electric Terrain!"
Iono: !!!!
Wasn't this the special field that could directly strengthen all Electric Pokémon's combat power in battle?
He's giving this away, too??
At the same time, the chat exploded.
[Holy shit, he's giving that too! The streamer's gonna go crazy with joy!]
[She's invincible now, truly invincible!]
[Suggest investigating Wattson's family tree. With all this giving, I suspect he's actually related to the streamer.]
[Streamer with Thunderbolt and Electric Terrain: Who dares kill me?!]
Looking at the chat and her every Pokémon in-game now knowing Thunderbolt, Iono couldn't help but smile.
Finally! After enduring so much in this game for so long, it was finally being nice to her!
After brief consideration, she decided to have Pikachu, the fastest on her team, learn "Electric Terrain" to serve as the lead Pokémon for setting up Electric Terrain.
Then she addressed her livestream audience:
"Hehe, watch closely. Next, I'll demonstrate completing this game without a single loss!"
After thinking, she quickly added:
"Of course, assuming the opponent isn't a Ground-type specialist."
Seeing such bold declarations, the livestream audience naturally erupted in cheerful laughter.
[Streamer's getting cocky too. Want me to remind you about being stuck at the Rock Gym for two hours and fifty-six minutes?]
[What's giving you this confidence, Thunderbolt?]
[Waiting for the streamer to get one-shot by random Graveler on the roadside.]
[Hahaha]
However, while the comments debated, Iono thought more carefully.
Ever since battling Roxanne that day, she'd researched all official Hoenn gym data.
The Hoenn region didn't seem to have any Ground-type specialist Gym Leaders.
Not only that, even the official Elite Four and Champion didn't include a single Ground-type specialist.
This meant she should be able to steamroll ahead with Thunderbolt from here on!
Thinking of this made Iono excited.
This was right! Electric-type Pokémon should be like wild lightning, crushing opponents with maximum power and speed!
Lost in thought, she'd already left Mauville Gym, preparing to follow Wattson's hint to find that researcher to teach her Pokémon the HM "Rock Smash."
Iono looked around at the buildings, unconsciously muttering:
"Huh, where's that person again?"
But at that moment, three familiar figures — a man, a woman, and a cat — jumped out from the nearby grass!
Along with them came mixed male and female voices:
"Hmm? Just now... You asked a question, right?!"
"Well then..."
"Since you asked so sincerely!!"
"We'll graciously tell you!"
Intense music suddenly blared!!
Iono: ?
"Wait, you're back again??"
۞۞۞۞
~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones