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Chapter 115: No Way It's Such a Coincidence, Right?
🕑 Added 2025-09-12 14:18:47 +0000 UTCThe information for this item had already refreshed before Cynthia's eyes—
[Special Item "Dowsing Machine": When activated in your bag, this item helps you see hidden rewards in the surrounding area.]
Hidden rewards?
Cynthia raised an eyebrow, then quickly caught on.
Right, in this game, there were indeed Poké Ball-looking things scattered around the roadside. You could press the interact button to get different item rewards.
And besides these Poké Ball rewards scattered throughout the wild areas and cities, there seemed to be some rewards that were hidden.
For example, earlier in Petalburg Woods, she had noticed a patch of dense grass where one square wasn't growing properly. Out of curiosity, she pressed the interact button on it and got a reward directly.
Cynthia hadn't quite realized what was happening at the time, but now it seemed like that was probably one of the hidden rewards this machine was referring to.
With that thought, Cynthia opened her bag and activated the item.
With a rumbling sound, the screen flickered, and a notification popped up.
[The Dowsing Machine is reacting! There seems to be something special hidden in this area!]
Cynthia was immediately surprised and carefully searched around, but couldn't find any obvious places where hidden items might be located.
With no other choice, she resorted to the most basic and simple method: pressing the interact button on every single spot in this area to try them out.
Her persistence paid off. After a minute, when she pressed the interact button on an unremarkable large tree on the far left, the game finally responded.
[Congratulations! You found a Technical Machine "TM - Trick Room"!]
[Trick Room: When used, opens a special space on the battlefield that reverses the original speed order of Pokémon attacks. Slower Pokémon will attack first instead, lasting for 5 turns.]
As soon as this notification appeared, not only was Cynthia stunned, but the viewers in the livestream exploded too.
[Holy crap, golden legend! Trick Room appeared!]
[Here we go, here we go! An even more broken skill than Tailwind finally showed up.]
[Could this thing have been intentionally left by her rival as a demonstration for Cynthia? If so, that's one heck of a gift.]
Although there weren't really any professional trainers in the livestream, and everyone didn't know that much about trainer-related matters, Trick Room was a well-known special move.
The reason was simple: at one World League Championship, Psychic-type Champion Caitlin had demonstrated Trick Room's power, using this move to turn defeat into victory from an extremely disadvantageous position. This brought the move into everyone's spotlight and sparked countless trainers to compete in learning it.
After all, this move could reverse all Pokémon's speed advantages. For trainers whose teams were slow and focused on going second, this was practically a game-changing skill that could turn defense into offense.
However, everyone gradually discovered that the difficulty of learning Trick Room didn't seem any less than other advanced skills, and might even be higher.
Getting a Pokémon to expand Trick Room's field to cover the entire battlefield wasn't easy, even for powerful Psychic-type Pokémon, let alone other types.
Cynthia naturally knew this point even more clearly. After all, the villa she currently lived in was rented to her by Caitlin, and their relationship was quite good. It's just that Caitlin had been busy with other things recently, so they hadn't been in contact.
But that didn't mean she wasn't aware of how difficult Trick Room was to learn.
She had once tried to have her Spiritomb master this skill, but it ultimately ended in failure.
This might also be related to Spiritomb not being a Psychic-type Pokémon. Plus, the Pokémon in Cynthia's team weren't particularly slow, so they didn't really match well with Trick Room. That's why Cynthia had given up on learning and mastering this skill.
But now in the game, this hidden item reward could directly let any Pokémon in her team learn Trick Room, just like those previous skill moves.
This also reminded Cynthia of something: since those items could exist in reality, wouldn't these Technical Machines, if they appeared in the real world, be able to let a Pokémon directly learn extremely difficult-to-master skills like Trick Room?
Back to the game.
Currently, none of the Pokémon in Cynthia's team seemed to be at an extreme speed disadvantage. Whether it was Victini, Sceptile, or Ludicolo, they were all Pokémon with speed advantages.
Not to mention that if Ludicolo could benefit from its ability's double speed boost, it would already be the fastest sweeper on the team.
But correspondingly, Pelipper, Dracovish, and Rotom all had their speed base stats stuck in a mediocre position.
If she could get a Pokémon to learn Trick Room, perhaps she could change the turn order in certain specific situations, giving these three normally slower Pokémon the chance to attack first.
And speaking of priority attacks, she couldn't help but mention Dracovish's move - Fishious Rend.
Cynthia couldn't help but start building a whole new strategy in her mind. Although her team was currently developing in the direction of a rain team, if she had Trick Room, Dracovish could potentially become a system all on its own!
For example, when the opponent's six Pokémon were all speed-oriented types, as long as one Pokémon activated Trick Room, Dracovish would get five consecutive turns to attack over the next five rounds!
And Pokémon that specialized in speed usually didn't perform particularly well in terms of durability. They simply couldn't withstand Dracovish's double-damage Fishious Rend.
Even with their frail bodies, even if they resisted this move type-wise, they'd still get one-shot!
Cynthia had actually thought about this when she first caught Dracovish, but she hadn't expected Trick Room to come so quickly.
And to implement this strategy, she only needed one Pokémon on her team to master this skill.
After brief consideration, she opened the Technical Machine interface and selected Trick Room, but discovered something that made her feel a bit awkward.
Only one Pokémon on her team could actually learn Trick Room.
And that was - Victini.
Having the team's strongest overall Pokémon learn a support-type move...
Honestly, Cynthia felt like something was a bit off about that.
But thinking about it more carefully, wasn't Victini's Victory Star ability already the team's most powerful support skill? Having it learn one more support move like Trick Room didn't seem like a big deal.
After learning Trick Room, Cynthia activated the Dowsing Machine in her bag again.
This time, there wasn't the same reward notification as before. The machine had no reaction, indicating that the hidden items in this area had already been found by Cynthia - that Trick Room TM from earlier.
So Cynthia closed the bag interface.
Too bad she had only gotten this machine now. If she had used this thing periodically throughout her journey, she probably could have discovered quite a few hidden items. She had no idea what she'd missed along the way.
If every item were high-quality stuff like Trick Room, she'd even consider starting over from Littleroot Town and exploring the entire route again.
For now, she'd see what rewards this item could find going forward.
After mentally reminding herself not to forget to use this thing from now on, Cynthia set off again.
That battle with her rival had actually given her a special sense of achievement when it ended.
Not long ago, when she first commanded Treecko against her rival's Torchic, it had been quite difficult. She'd failed several times in a row, and later encounters with her rival had basically been one-sided suppression.
But now she could defeat them head-on in direct battle. This was enough to prove her growth alongside her Pokémon throughout this journey.
And this feeling was naturally quite good.
Since becoming Champion, she hadn't experienced this familiar joy in a long time.
Meanwhile, the livestream chat was discussing the reward machine.
[They just hand out Trick Room like that? I gotta say this game's rewards are really generous. Not only free weekly leaderboard rewards, but you can pick up tons of items on the roadside, plus hidden events give rewards too. What game is this, generous?]
[Exactly! Didn't people complain that ₽288 [about $40] was expensive? I ask you, if you spend ₽288 in other games, can you get this much stuff?]
[This game really gives players a lot of rewards, but the difficulty is so high, too. I can't imagine how fun it would be if they released an easy difficulty version]
[Yeah, if this game's difficulty was a bit lower, wouldn't it just be pure power-trip gaming? I could pull all-nighters for three days straight and make it to the Champion's Road]
[You guys above should buy the game first before talking. Having such a high-quality game to play is already great, and you're still being picky with demands, haha]
While the chat was in a heated discussion, Cynthia was already preparing to continue toward Fortree City.
Since the research facility incident was now resolved and she'd experienced a rival battle, according to her intuition, she should be close to Fortree City.
Sure enough, when she opened the map, she discovered her destination wasn't far ahead.
Cynthia couldn't help but think: the Flying-type gym was undoubtedly Rotom's time to shine, and Flying-type Pokémon were generally quite fast.
In that case, perhaps the Trick Room she'd just obtained could come in handy right away!
But just as Cynthia was about to continue her journey, something unexpected happened.
Her phone suddenly rang on the desk, interrupting her gameplay. Cynthia couldn't help but stop what she was doing and look toward her phone.
As a Champion, even with the League's confidentiality measures, her phone number inevitably got leaked sometimes. So she had set her phone to only allow calls from people she knew.
Once a call came through, it usually meant something new had happened on the League's end.
She just hoped it wasn't anything major.
Lost in thought, Cynthia picked up her phone and looked at the screen. When she saw the caller's name clearly, she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
The call was from someone named Sayaka.
Cynthia naturally knew this person. She was a member of the League's archaeological research team, a squad leader with some reputation.
The reason Cynthia knew her was because they had worked together on a previous archaeological expedition. Sayaka greatly admired Cynthia's archaeological abilities, and naturally, they had exchanged contact information.
While thinking, Cynthia had already answered the call. An urgent female voice came through from the other end, sounding extremely excited.
"Cynthia! Something big happened, something big happened!"
"Finally... we finally did it."
Hearing the first part, Cynthia's heart tightened, but after hearing the second half, she relaxed a bit.
"Sayaka, calm down. Tell me clearly what happened."
Sayaka's voice came through the phone again: "Remember that document you sent us? Based on the ancient script content in that file, we successfully deciphered all the information on that parchment. Now we've discovered that the parchment's records seem to be specific coordinates. The League just located this position - it's in a desert area north of the Hoenn region."
"We've been researching this ancient civilization for so long, and this is the first time we've successfully deciphered their writing with such major progress. Because what these coordinates record seems to be a larger ruin of that ancient civilization!"
"The archaeological team has prepared and is departing today to explore the ruins. Professor Sugi asked me to tell you this news and invite you to join us. Do you have any assignments today? I'm asking on behalf of the entire archaeological research team!"
The voice on the other end was full of pleading.
However, for Cynthia, this was actually unnecessary.
After all, everything about this ancient civilization had always been what she was pursuing.
In the past, exploring various related ruins with research teams and even studying those scripts had cost her considerable energy and effort.
It's just that there had been no progress on this matter for a long time. Combined with her responsibilities as Champion, she had temporarily set aside this project and handed it over to these people.
Now that there was a new breakthrough regarding this ancient civilization, she naturally had no reason not to go. But one point mentioned in the other person's words caught her attention.
The location of that ruin was in the Hoenn region.
And the place where Regirock appeared in the game also seemed to be in the Hoenn region.
But surely...
There couldn't be such a coincidence, right?
Comments
john mark
Still got 2 and a half weeks.... there should be new game from the other company soon
Aurelius
I wonder when that video game competition will come in to play
