Chapter 28: Exploring the Cave, The Mysterious Stone?
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What happened next was rather beyond Cynthia’s expectations.
The Team Rocket member standing before her was far from weak—much stronger than the two Team Aqua grunts she had encountered earlier!
In particular, the Zubat he had sent out first also knew the Flying-type move Wing Attack, which could deal super-effective damage to every Pokémon on Cynthia’s team.
Fortunately, Zubat did not possess the terrifying physical attack power of Archeops. Otherwise, Cynthia might well have been carried away by this mere Team Rocket “grunt”...
After a difficult battle, all the Pokémon on Cynthia’s team had sustained some damage.
Stufful was in the worst condition. As one of her main fighters, it had lost more than half of its health.
And this was a cave in the wilderness. After a Pokémon battle, they could not immediately visit a Pokémon Center to restore their strength as they could in a city.
That was when the importance of items became apparent.
Cynthia opened her bag, took out the Potions she had bought from the store in advance, and quickly restored the health of several Pokémon to full.
At the same time, she realized something.
For her current team, Flying-types represented an exceptionally serious weakness. Whether it was the Fighting-type Stufful, the Grass-type Nuzleaf, or Grovyle, all of them were highly vulnerable to Flying-type attacks.
At present, her team did not possess a single move that could counter Flying-type Pokémon...
As luck would have it, however, the cave she was currently exploring was filled with Rock-type Pokémon, which were perfectly suited to counter Flying-types!
Should she catch a Rock-type Pokémon here to improve her team and make up for this weakness?
As she pondered the matter, something suddenly came back to her.
That’s right... Rock-types!
If she remembered correctly, after defeating Roxanne in the Gym battle, she had received the TM for Rock Tomb as a reward.
It was a Rock-type move! It could also restrict an opponent’s movements by lowering their Speed!
Against Flying-type Pokémon, it was undoubtedly an excellent countermeasure!
She tried opening her bag and selecting the Rock Tomb TM. To her surprise, both Grovyle and Stufful could learn the move.
After a moment’s thought, she placed the cursor over Stufful.
Stufful specialized in physical attacks, while Grovyle was somewhat stronger on the special side. Since Rock Tomb was a physical move, it was clearly more suitable for the former.
But... how was she supposed to use the TM?
Just as Cynthia was wondering about that, she tried pressing the confirmation button—and a notification immediately appeared.
[ Ding! Your Pokémon “Stufful” already knows four moves. Would you like it to forget one move and replace it with Rock Tomb? ]
So convenient?
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Cynthia could not help staring in astonishment.
The live-stream chat also erupted into a commotion.
[No way, it just learned it instantly? Is this some kind of power infusion?]
[Tsk, if machines like this existed in real life, how amazing would that be?]
[Give me a break. This is a game. How could something like that possibly exist in reality?]
...
There was naturally a reason everyone was reacting so strongly.
In the real world, when Pokémon wanted to learn new moves, aside from comprehending them naturally upon leveling up, the other method was through “move manuals.”
These manuals were essentially written or electronic materials painstakingly created by advanced Trainers. They contained detailed records of how to learn and use a particular move, along with the author’s own insights.
Other Trainers could only purchase these manuals and use them to train their Pokémon.
Whether the Pokémon could actually learn the move was another matter entirely.
After all, this form of instruction had severe limitations. Every Pokémon was different, so the experience of learning in practice naturally varied greatly from what was written in the manual.
But if they had a disc like the one in the game—one that could simply be placed against a Pokémon’s head to teach it a new move instantly...
Countless people would probably laugh in their sleep!
Meanwhile, after a brief moment of consideration, Cynthia replaced Stufful’s Brutal Swing.
As a Dark-type move with a power of sixty, Brutal Swing was not especially powerful, and it did not receive same-type attack bonus. Nevertheless, it could still provide Stufful with some additional offensive coverage.
However, among the moves Stufful already knew, there was another Dark-type move: Payback!
Although its base power of fifty did not appear particularly impressive either, the move possessed an additional effect—if used after the opponent attacked, its power would immediately double to one hundred!
Stufful’s Speed was not especially high, which meant that in actual combat, it would often move second.
Under such circumstances, Payback’s additional effect would naturally be triggered more often, making it clearly superior to Brutal Swing.
With Cynthia’s decision, Brutal Swing in Stufful’s move set was successfully replaced by Rock Tomb.
[Rock Tomb: Physical / Rock]
[Power: 60]
[Description: Causes a large number of rocks to rain down upon the target. Upon hitting, it has a 100% chance of lowering the target Pokémon’s Speed by one stage!]
With this move, Flying-type Pokémon were naturally no longer quite as threatening.
But Cynthia knew that this was only a temporary measure to alleviate the problem.
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Catching a Pokémon capable of countering Flying-types and filling the blind spot in her team was still something she would have to accomplish later...
...
After learning the move, Cynthia continued deeper into the cave.
Along the way, she encountered quite a few more Team Rocket members blocking her path.
For some reason, every one of these Team Rocket members seemed to have a Zubat, as though it were standard equipment...
Fortunately, with Rock Tomb dealing four-times super-effective damage, Stufful could easily knock out these Zubat in a single hit!
Thus, without using many of her supplies, Cynthia successfully reached the cave’s third level.
The viewers in the live chat began discussing the matter as well.
[This new move is really useful, isn’t it?]
[Definitely. She isn’t nearly as afraid of Flying-types now.]
[Isn’t anyone curious why there are so many Team Rocket members in this cave? What are they all doing here? Could this be their hideout?]
[It doesn’t feel like it. They’re probably doing something shady in the cave...]
[Mining ore? Catching rare Pokémon? Conducting secret research? Damn, any of those seem possible...]
[Tsk, those rotten members of Team Rocket...]
What the viewers did not know was that Cynthia was thinking along the same lines.
She simply had no idea what Team Rocket was plotting in a cave like this.
Whatever it was... it probably was not anything good.
Just as she was pondering the matter, something appearing on the screen suddenly caught her attention.
Wait, what is that...?
Before her, on a raised rocky platform, stood a massive golden boulder.
Light streamed through a fissure in the cavern and fell upon the stone, accentuating the ancient, weathered traces left upon it by the passage of time...
The surface of the boulder was covered in extremely strange patterns and shapes.
It looked like...
—an enormous jaw?
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