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Quinn's Oscar-worthy acting made the players in the Gym lounge believe his response without question.
Boom...
The moment his words fell, the entire room instantly boiled over.
One by one, the players rubbed their hands together and fixed their eyes on the clock above them, waiting for their turn to challenge and conquer Sobble with their true strength, and earn its recognition and loyalty.
At that moment, Quinn, who had spread the false information, quietly slipped out of the Gym.
The reason he spread information that was completely different from the truth was mostly his mischievous nature.
But on the other hand, he also wanted to cause Sobble a little trouble.
After all, he had lost far too miserably.
Although his ambition did not lie in Pokémon battles, he was still a proper player. Getting brutally crushed by an NPC inside the game naturally made him feel annoyed.
Pokémon: World was not some Soulsborne game where players trained their skills through repeated deaths.
Wasn't it nice to log in, look at the scenery, research the cultural background, and occasionally have a passionate battle or two?
Why did it have to include this kind of high-difficulty Gym challenge that struck down his confidence as a player?
Quinn's mentality had still been fairly stable right after the battle ended.
But now, the more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
He had spent so many Federation credits buying an expensive helmet-style neural linker, as well as the main Pokémon: World game, which cost ten times more than an ordinary game.
And after entering the game, he was still here suffering.
"Seriously…"
At that moment, Quinn's suppressed frustration finally erupted.
How did he vent?
As a student who was not especially wealthy, he naturally could not smash his gaming equipment in anger.
In the end, Quinn chose to turn his anger into words and post them on the forum, hoping to find others who could understand how he felt.
And so, ten minutes later, a new post silently appeared on the built-in Pokémon: World forum.
[Trash Game! Why Is Even a Gym Battle This Hard!?]
Unfortunately, just like tens of thousands of similar posts, this thread did not stir up much of a wave on the forum.
It did not even stay on the front page for more than two minutes before being pushed back by the dozens of new posts appearing every minute, sinking toward the bottom.
That extremely brief stay only left Quinn with a few comments from game fans who did not understand his complaint, along with several insults.
Quinn's post did not cause much commotion among the players.
But from a broader perspective, his action was like planting a tiny, inconspicuous seed in the players' hearts.
As the storm later watered it, that seed would quietly grow, gather strength, and finally break through the soil, forming a wild storm with Kael at its center.
…
That day, no matter how excited and expectant the players in the Gym lounge were, none of them had the chance to encounter Kael.
Because he had gotten off work.
The players challenged the Gym over and over again for the entire day, but the defending Pokémon they encountered were all Pokémon that had originally belonged to Azure Bay's Water-type Gym.
Yet through a strange twist of fate, the players' desire to challenge and conquer Kael grew even hotter.
The reason was simple.
A very common psychological phenomenon.
What one could not obtain was always the best.
Kael's extremely eye-catching potential, combined with the fact that he rarely appeared before players, added a layer of mystery to his image in their minds.
The more they could not meet him, the more they tried again and again.
Every player believed that they were the lucky one who would be able to capture Kael.
That night, under Kael's overwhelming attraction, the players inside the Gym transformed into grind demons, challenging the Gym again and again.
As a result, when Kael returned to his post the next day, the players he saw all looked listless, weak, and sickly.
It was baffling.
"Do people play games this hard nowadays?"
Silently complaining in his heart, Kael shook his head hard and roused his still-scattered mind, which had not fully awakened after sleep.
He prepared to seriously handle today's challenge missions.
His clear blue eyes looked toward the edge of the field ahead.
There, a player whose character looked like a handsome man was staring at him with wide eyes, his face completely blank.
Then, as if finally reacting, the blankness on the handsome man's face disappeared.
In its place was overwhelming joy, so intense that it seemed about to overflow.
His eyes turned red, as if he might burst into tears at any moment.
His legs, which had been weakly supporting him on the floor, suddenly sprang upward. His right hand clenched into a fist and swung hard in front of him as he celebrated wildly in a way that almost made one feel sorry for him.
If one considered the fact that he had spent the whole night repeatedly challenging the Gym, then his crazed behavior was not difficult to understand.
The problem was that Kael did not know the players outside the field had been waiting for him all night.
"Is he having an episode?"
Kael looked at him with eyes full of confusion.
He turned his head and glanced at the referee.
Only after seeing that the referee showed no special reaction did Kael relax.
"What luck. Whether they're NPCs or players, I can meet weirdos every day."
Kael mourned for himself in his heart.
Then he took up his battle stance, preparing to face the coming battle.
Although the other party acted like a lunatic who had escaped from a mental hospital, Kael still decided to treat him cautiously.
Players came in all kinds.
Maybe this guy really was a dangerous opponent.
And the result was just as he had expected.
In the following battle, the crazed player at the edge of the field and his Pokémon partner, Bunnelby, displayed extraordinary coordination far beyond any challenger Kael had met at the Gym before.
At the start of the battle, they even suppressed Kael to a certain degree before he had fully adapted, which was genuinely surprising.
Fortunately, relying on his rich battle experience, Kael eventually regained his composure and fought steadily.
Once he became serious, he found the fatal weakness the opponent exposed during battle and used it as the key to defeat him.
Ding.
[Defeated Pokémon: Bunnelby]
[Experience +21]
Along with the opponent's soulless, dejected back as if his dream had shattered, the crisp system notification rang in Kael's mind.
"Ah…"
Kael could not help but let out an extremely comfortable sigh.
"That long-lost fragrance of experience. How long has it been since I smelled it…"
For Trainers with some strength, whether they were NPCs or players, he wished more of them would come.
So much experience.
Honestly, if the person who had fought him just now had been an NPC instead of a player, Kael would definitely have given out a Badge.
What a shame!
And while Kael was immersed in the joy brought by this harvest of experience, outside the Gym, a massive storm caused by his reappearance was quietly beginning to rise.
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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!