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Chapter 10: The Streamer’s Getting Ready to Log Off
🕑 Added 2025-08-10 05:31:06 +0000 UTCAs Iono confidently resumed her journey, chat buzzed with heated discussion.
[Looks like the streamer should breeze through the first gym!]
[Classic Iono, progressing faster than even Cynthia. Our girl is really stepping up!]
[Hey now, Cynthia just had work obligations. If she were playing right now, she wouldn’t be any slower than Iono!]
[Exactly! Just wait until Cynthia gets back and check her stream. She’s the Champion—no way a Gym Leader beats her at a game with actual battle mechanics!]
Deep in Petalburg Woods, the character triggered a story event: a Devon Corporation employee was being robbed by Team Aqua members who had stolen his package. Naturally, Iono’s character stepped in to help, battling the Team Aqua grunt, successfully retrieving the package, and earning an Ultra Ball as a reward.
After helping the Devon employee, instead of immediately leaving Petalburg Woods, Iono stayed to level up her Electrike and Mareep. Only after both Pokémon reached the current level cap of 15 did she leave the forest and enter the first gym’s city—Rustboro City.
This was a thoroughly modern metropolis, with towering buildings and busy streets that made for quite a sight. The game’s visuals beautifully captured the city’s character, drawing amazed reactions from viewers.
Iono headed to the Pokémon Center to quickly heal her team, then followed the map to find Rustboro Gym’s entrance. Her face showed clear anticipation.
As a Gym Leader herself in the real world, she was only used to others challenging her. Though this was just a game, it was still her first time challenging someone else’s gym—a novel experience.
“I’m ready! Time for an intense gym battle!”
She took a deep breath, eyes full of excitement. Considering how tough even the Team Rocket NPCs were in this game, this Gym Leader would surely be no ordinary opponent. The upcoming battle would probably be challenging.
But that was exactly what excited her!
With that thought, Iono had her character enter the gym. The first thing she saw was a signboard:
[Rustboro Gym]
The sign displayed a large brown rock icon.
So this was a Rock-type gym??
Could she really be this unlucky? She should never have jinxed herself earlier!
Iono’s eyes went wide.
Chat went wild.
[HAHAHA it really is a Rock gym!]
[Love that quote from the streamer: “With so many type possibilities, surely the first gym won’t be Rock or Ground, right?”]
[LOL I feel like this game was designed this way on purpose. With this game’s style, maybe choosing different starter types changes the gym’s type too.]
Reading chat, Iono took a deep breath and tried to pump herself up: “Even if it’s Rock-type, there’s nothing to fear! At least it’s not Ground-type! It’s still early game—Rock Pokémon shouldn’t know many Ground-type moves. Plus, I’ve got two excellent Electric Pokémon at the level cap. I believe they won’t lose!”
With that, she had her character head deeper into the gym. A path stretched ahead across rocky terrain, leading to a raised platform. NPCs stood on both sides, waiting.
The moment Iono approached, an exclamation point appeared over an NPC’s head.
[You want to challenge Rustboro Gym? Let me see if you’re worthy!]
Battle activated instantly.
Three minutes later, Iono had cleared all the gym’s NPCs and reached the platform. What gave her a headache was that, despite being a Rock gym, these trainers used two Ground-types—a Sandshrew and a Diglett.
Fortunately, as preliminary gym trainers, their levels weren’t particularly high—several levels behind her team. After a few close battles, she took them down.
But this raised a new concern—if even the gym’s regular trainers were this tough, wouldn’t the Rock-type Gym Leader’s team be packed with Ground-types?
This wasn’t impossible—she’d heard that a certain Dragon-type Elite Four member from Kanto actually had more Flying-types than anything else on his team.
However, when she started the battle with Gym Leader “Roxanne”—a girl with twin-tails wearing a sharp business suit—Roxanne’s opening words made her breathe a sigh of relief.
[The solid, powerful hearts of Rock-type Pokémon—let me show you now!]
After saying something like that, it would be pretty rude to pull out Ground-types, right?
The next moment, Roxanne threw her Poké Ball, and white light flashed. A strange purple Pokémon with what looked like blooming lilies on its head appeared before Iono.
Looking at it, she paused. As an Electric-type Gym Leader from the Paldea region, she knew quite a lot about Pokémon—she could recognize most of them. But this was genuinely her first time seeing this one.
She instinctively looked at the name display and read it aloud: “Cradily? Looks like it should be a Grass-type Pokémon.”
“If so, you’re up, Electrike!”
She decisively switched Pokémon, sending out Electrike. According to the game’s rules, the first switch during a gym battle wouldn’t consume a turn—faithfully recreating the real-world gym challenge rule where the Leader sends out first, then the challenger chooses their response.
Seeing this bizarre Pokémon, chat started buzzing again.
[Huh? What Pokémon is this? Never heard of it before.]
[Did the developer create an original one?]
[Who cares? If it’s Rock + Grass, it shouldn’t be too strong, and the streamer just trained Electrike. Bug beats Grass—perfect timing!]
Iono had Electrike use the Bug-type move “Bug Bite.” After a flash of dark green light, “Super effective!” appeared.
But contrary to her expectations, Cradily’s HP bar only dropped a small amount.
Iono’s eyes widened again. That tanky??
Immediately after, brilliant, mesmerizing light flew from Cradily’s head, striking Electrike.
[Cradily used Confuse Ray!]
[Electrike became confused!]
Even worse, a ring of deep blue light points appeared around Cradily before merging into its body.
[Due to holding Leftovers, Cradily’s HP was restored!]
Its barely-touched HP bar instantly climbed back up.
Iono: ???
Being tanky was one thing, but it had passive healing too??
What happened next was predictable. After Electrike became confused, it was demolished by Cradily.
After all, Cradily had extremely high defenses, perfect EVs and IVs, and Leftovers—neither Electrike’s Bug Bite nor Spark could break through. It healed more than it took damage.
Not to mention, Electrike’s confusion occasionally made it hit itself, adding insult to injury.
In this situation, after Cradily finished off Electrike while maintaining full health, Mareep stood no chance either, quickly falling in defeat.
After this battle, chat went wild.
[Haters speak up! A clean sweep! Oh, wait, sorry—the streamer got swept. My mistake.]
[Who said the gym leaders in this game would be easy? That was pure bad luck hahaha]
[First time I’ve seen a game NPC sweep a player’s team with one Pokémon. Sure, the streamer only has two, but this would be impossible on the Battle Road. This game is seriously hard!]
[GG This gym leader is broken! This thing is tanky as hell, plus has control AND healing—who could possibly beat it?]
When Iono lost to Team Rocket’s three NPCs earlier, it was at least a 1v2, so losing made sense. But now her two Pokémon had been swept by a single gym leader’s Pokémon.
While everyone marveled at the game’s difficulty, Iono steadied herself and walked her character from the Pokémon Center to the gym entrance.
“As you can all see, viewers, this Gym Leader Roxanne is quite something. But no worries—I’ve already thought of a strategy. We’re going back to our Thunder Wave tactics from before!
“Since this Cradily isn’t Ground or Electric-type, it can’t be immune to paralysis. And judging by its bulk, it should be slow, so both Electrike and Mareep should outspeed it.
“So we just need to use Thunder Wave first, like we did against Koffing and Ekans, then pray for paralysis to trigger.”
Iono organized her thoughts and explained to chat. However, it seemed like the same old strategy, as the saying goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Facing this game’s extreme difficulty, she had to use every available resource.
The “Leftovers” item also reminded her that both her Pokémon could hold items, too. Unfortunately, she didn’t have anything like that, but she had picked up some Oran Berries on the roadside.
According to the berry’s description, when equipped on a Pokémon, it would automatically activate when HP dropped to a certain point, restoring some health. Though the recovery was minimal, it was better than nothing.
After equipping both Pokémon with Oran Berries, Iono re-entered the gym to challenge Roxanne again.
This time, her plan worked perfectly—Electrike’s Thunder Wave successfully paralyzed Cradily, preventing it from using Confuse Ray. Several turns passed with Cradily barely able to act. Even when it got off one “Confuse Ray” during consecutive paralysis triggers, it missed.
With Electrike’s Spark hitting Cradily, its HP finally dropped below half, turning yellow.
“Great! Keep it up just like this!”
Iono’s excited voice echoed through the stream. Chat started celebrating.
[Nice one, streamer!]
[Holy crap, four paralysis procs in a row! Iono’s luck is insane!]
[Did she turn on cheats?]
[Obviously, she turned something on—her computer monitor.]
[This looks promising! At least we can take down this Pokémon and see the gym leader’s next one, right?]
Iono glanced at chat and confidently pressed the keys, selecting Spark again. Her battle with this Pokémon had shown it probably didn’t have any moves that could seriously threaten Electrike—otherwise, it wouldn’t keep alternating between Confuse Ray and Giga Drain.
Based on its attack pattern, the next move should be Giga Drain. Even if it hit, due to Electrike’s resistance to Grass-type moves, it would only deal minimal damage, and Cradily wouldn’t recover much HP.
If she could keep grinding with a few more paralysis triggers, Electrike should maintain about two-thirds of its HP going into the next Pokémon battle.
As she calculated, Spark hit Cradily again, bringing its yellow HP down another notch.
Next, paralysis effects flickered across Cradily’s body, but it didn’t twitch. Iono knew this meant paralysis didn’t trigger.
But she didn’t care—just as she had analyzed, Giga Drain couldn’t turn the battle around.
But then, something completely unexpected happened.
Cradily suddenly raised its head, and a beam of white light descended, enveloping its body.
“What… move is this?”
Iono froze, a bad feeling creeping over her.
The game’s notification appeared:
[Cradily used Synthesis! HP was restored!]
In the glow, Cradily’s HP bar instantly climbed, returning to two-thirds full.
Another notification:
[Cradily’s held “Leftovers” restored a little HP.]
Blue light points danced as its health recovered again.
Looking at Cradily’s nearly full HP bar, then at Electrike, whose move PP was almost depleted, Iono sat frozen at her screen.
“????”
She suddenly felt like logging off.
