Jiang Xing naturally knew that the Pokémon world possessed attributes such as Fairy and Normal that did not exist in the Beast Taming World.
He also knew perfectly well that besides Return, there was also the emotional move Frustration, whose power increased the lower the Friendship became.
After all, he had personally been designated by System Bro as the "urban Pokémon power-fantasy protagonist."
How could he possibly not know the standard wish-fulfillment elements of urban Pokémon novels?
Precisely because he understood all of this too well, he had instead ruled out the possibility of it being an "attribute" from the very beginning.
The reason was simple—
In the Pokémon world, nearly every attribute had some kind of interaction with other attributes. Even the Normal attribute, which had the fewest interactions, still had type relationships with Fighting and Ghost.
Within the Pokémon world, the only thing truly without any type interactions was Typeless.
But Typeless genuinely meant having no attribute at all. Even if a Pokémon became typeless and used typeless moves, there would still be no same-attribute power amplification.
In the games, it only appeared as a special case, which directly conflicted with the current situation.
Jiang Xing had personally tested the Clouddown Birds and confirmed that they only displayed Water-attribute interaction responses.
Under those circumstances, it was only natural for him to dismiss the possibility of attributes entirely.
'The same logic applied to the Return move.'
'In the Pokémon world, Return is a Normal-type move. Since its interaction relationships are minimal, in most cases it can practically be treated as a "typeless move."'
'Meanwhile, in the Beast Taming World, Return had always been interpreted by previous researchers as an "ordinary move without attributes."'
'The two were basically identical, so I subconsciously assumed there was no issue...'
'System Bro screwed me over!!'
Jiang Xing felt somewhat annoyed. Having the system constantly steering his thoughts every day had unconsciously influenced his assumptions.
In certain details, he had overlooked the fact that this was the "Beast Taming World," not the "Pokémon world"!
Perhaps this world possessed many powers similar to those in the Pokémon world, yet they could not simply be treated as completely equivalent.
If not for sheer luck causing him to coincidentally discover the abnormal power of the Return move this time...
Then he might very well have overlooked the matter entirely and failed to discover the existence of this new attribute.
Jiang Xing could not help but feel fortunate.
No wonder Dr. Ail had once said that only scholars blessed by the goddess of luck could travel farther down the road of research...
Since he happened to be raising an Auspicious Cloud Qilin that symbolized good fortune, it seemed he had indeed benefited from quite a bit of luck.
Once he got back, he was definitely giving Little Qilin extra food!
Of course, luck in the field of research only favored those who were fully prepared.
The reason Jiang Xing had been able to discover the abnormality in the Return move was because his progress in the Friendship field far surpassed everyone else's, and because he had already summarized the Return Formula.
After all, there were many variables capable of affecting a move's power.
Power Level, status, and Friendship.
All three variables varied from one Pet Beast to another.
If Jiang Xing had not understood the Return Formula, lacked the ability to precisely measure Friendship, or failed to possess enough sensitivity toward move power...
Then even if luck appeared right before his eyes, he would merely overlook it and let it quietly slip away.
…
Confirming that the Return move belonged to a "new attribute" was only the beginning.
After all, offensive interactions and defensive interactions were calculated separately.
The Clouddown Birds still did not display any additional attribute interaction responses. Merely possessing the trait of "doubling the power of the Return move" was not enough to prove that the unknown variable within them was this new attribute.
After all, there were simply far too many factors capable of affecting a move's power.
Weather, environment, talents, mentality, ally effects, enemy effects…
No one could confirm whether the increase in Return's power was merely a coincidence.
For example, perhaps the Clouddown Bird did not possess this attribute at all, but simply happened to have a similar ability capable of enhancing this one move specifically... that was also entirely possible.
However, the appearance of the Return move had already dispelled the fog clouding Jiang Xing's vision.
A clear path stretched out before him—straight and unobstructed.
'Attributes are a kind of omnipresent extraordinary power. They are one of the foundational elements composing the Beast Taming World.'
'They cannot possibly exist solely for the sake of a single move like Return.'
'Just like Time and Space—even the rarest attributes possess quite a few corresponding moves... representing the manifestation of extraordinary power.'
'This unknown new attribute must also possess corresponding moves beyond Return.'
'As long as I find those moves and teach them to the Clouddown Birds...'
'Then I can use that to infer the nature of the unknown variable within them.'
'If all moves of the new attribute receive a power boost, then that unknown variable is, in all likelihood, attribute amplification.'
'If they don't, then this possibility can also be ruled out.'
Now that he had a research direction, things became much simpler.
The first step was finding more "new-attribute" moves.
Within the Pet Beast Compendium, the number of Pet Beast forms alone already exceeded one million, while the number of moves was as vast as the stars.
There was no way Jiang Xing could test them one by one.
He neither had the energy nor enough Pet Beasts for that.
Fortunately, he had a teacher.
Inside Dr. Xu's "backyard" lived nearly a thousand different species of Pet Beast.
As long as food was offered as compensation, those Pet Beasts would gladly cooperate with the testing.
With that, the testing scope was greatly reduced.
Even so, among nearly a thousand species of Pet Beasts, the total number of moves still exceeded two thousand even after removing duplicates.
Jiang Xing then excluded all "attribute moves" from the testing range.
Much like Pet Beast attributes, moves could also possess "composite attributes." For example, the Ghost-and-Fire move [Will-O-Wisp] or the Fighting-and-Ice move [Frost Punch]...
However, composite-attribute moves rarely maintained a strict fifty-fifty balance between their attributes. Most had a primary and secondary attribute, making them troublesome to test, so their priority was not high.
After filtering things down, over four hundred "ordinary moves" remained.
Then he further removed special moves whose power was difficult to measure, such as Roar, Intimidate, Rally, and similar techniques...
In the end, fewer than three hundred moves remained waiting to be tested.
At this point, the filtering process was already nearly complete.
However, after reviewing the information on those moves, Jiang Xing selected several more as key targets of interest—
Within Pet Beast studies, there were also patterns linking moves and attributes.
For example, if a move carried flames or could raise temperature, then there was a high probability that it was a Fire-attribute move.
The same should apply to the new attribute. As a move attribute, it inevitably possessed certain characteristics shared by all corresponding moves.
Using that line of reasoning—
Jiang Xing extracted several characteristics from both the Return move and the interaction relationships of the new attribute.
Friendship, emotion, feelings, spirit, light...
Based on those characteristics, Jiang Xing selected several moves and prioritized testing them first.
The results were extremely encouraging!
By the second move tested, the exact same interaction response as Return appeared!
'Wake-Up Rage, huh...'
The effect of this move was: if a Pet Beast was in a sleeping state and got woken up, then for a certain period afterward, because of its intense anger, it could unleash an extremely powerful strike.
It had nothing to do with kindness, light, or similar elements, but it did possess characteristics related to emotion, feelings, and spirit.
Jiang Xing noted that point down, selected new moves, and continued testing.
The very next move immediately produced another attribute reaction!
[Rage: Delivers a strike against the enemy. If attacked during the process, the user becomes enraged, greatly increasing the move's power.]
And this was only the beginning.
Facade, Fake Out, Revenge, Play Rough...
As those moves appeared one after another, the pattern connecting them finally surfaced.
Every single one of them was related to "emotion"...
More precisely, every single one of them was connected to feelings!
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