After all, since he had made the game himself, Wattson's move was naturally within Kairos's expectations—in fact, he had done it on purpose.
As the first turn began, before Dottler's pixel model had even fully appeared on the field, Kairos had already made his choice decisively, selecting the move Reflect.
The opposing Electabuzz also launched its attack, its arms igniting with brilliant flames as it punched Dottler square in the body.
[Super effective!]
Even with Dottler's excellent durability, taking a level-suppressed punch like that cost it a whopping 3/4 of its HP.
At the same time, Kairos's first-turn action immediately confused many viewers.
The previous gameplay had given everyone a deep understanding of Dottler's role—it didn't matter if Dottler fainted, since its sacrifice could give teammates damage reduction for a full 5 turns.
But the problem was, anyone could see that Wattson's team was obviously all specialized in special attack moves, yet Kairos had actually used Reflect.
—This move only reduces physical attack damage!
The chat started buzzing with discussion.
[Did the streamer click the wrong move? Should we restart?]
[Since the streamer has played through and done his homework before, he should know that Wattson's team has Thunderbolt as their highest damage output. Why didn't he use Light Screen to reduce special attacks instead of Reflect to reduce physical attacks?]
[And streamer, why didn't you send out Swadloon to set up Grassy Terrain to override Electric Terrain? You can't have learned that move for nothing, right?]
[The streamer isn't trying to be greedy, is he? But even with Light Screen up, there's no way to survive another Flame Punch.]
Since Kairos's plays had always been flawless, now that he finally seemed to make a mistake, quite a few chat messages naturally seized this opportunity to start questioning him.
However, just as the chat was expressing doubt, the new turn had already begun.
The opposing Electabuzz moved, its fists suddenly bursting with raging flames!
This second punch slammed hard into Dottler's body.
Even with Reflect's damage reduction, Dottler's remaining sliver of HP was taken away completely, failing to successfully set up Light Screen.
However, Kairos seemed to have everything under control.
He simply pressed the voice interaction key and said to Dottler: "Good work."
Then without hesitation, he sent out his new Pokémon—Butterfree.
This Electabuzz seemed to have quite high Speed stats, and with the level advantage, it was even faster than Kairos's Butterfree, moving first.
As the turn began, Electabuzz slammed a punch hard into Butterfree!
Even with Reflect's damage reduction, the super effective damage still took away a full half of Butterfree's HP bar!
When it was Butterfree's turn to act, brilliant silvery-white powder immediately scattered as it flapped its wings, falling on Electabuzz's body and causing "zzz" symbols to appear above its head.
[Butterfree used Sleep Powder!]
[Electabuzz fell asleep!]
Right after that, as the next turn began, Kairos habitually followed up with Supersonic, causing the sleeping Electabuzz to become confused while applying two status conditions.
At this moment, the chat began discussing:
[Confusion plus sleep again. That familiar feeling—the streamer really hasn't changed at all.]
[But this time the situation is different! Even with double status conditions, how is the streamer going to win? Wattson's strongest Pokémon haven't even appeared yet. But now Butterfree only has half HP left, and Dottler didn't even get Light Screen up before fainting. I say the streamer should just restart.]
[There's really no way to see how to win right now. Streamer, if you can still win this, I'll eat my hat.]
[I told you the streamer definitely couldn't one-shot the Electric Gym, haha.]
However, as the chat was being pessimistic, Kairos suddenly made a move that no one expected!
—As the new turn began, he directly switched to Beautifly!
This turn, Electabuzz continued sleeping.
This Sleep Powder had pretty good luck, making Electabuzz sleep for three consecutive turns.
But according to status condition rules, he should definitely wake up next turn no matter what.
When the move selection screen popped up, all the viewers suddenly noticed that Beautifly's move list seemed to have a new move they'd never seen before—Silver Wind.
And this was exactly the move Kairos selected this turn.
The next moment, as Beautifly flapped its wings, brilliant silver light burst forth, rushing forward to engulf Electabuzz's body.
Silver Wind had a listed damage of 60 points. Even with STAB [same-type attack bonus], against an Electabuzz with higher level than Beautifly, it wouldn't deal very high damage, just barely taking away a bit over 1/3 of its HP.
Feeling the attack, the sleep symbols above Electabuzz's head immediately disappeared as it jolted awake from its slumber.
At this moment, the chat started flooding again.
[I thought the streamer had some master plan, but it's just switching to Beautifly to do chip damage.]
[It's over. You should have used Light Screen earlier. Electabuzz's special attack is just as high as its physical attack. Beautifly definitely can't survive a Thunderbolt boosted by Electric Terrain. The streamer's about to lose three Pokémon—time to restart for real.]
[You could say that using Air Slash against the Fighting Gym was as satisfying as using it against the Electric Gym is frustrating, haha.]
[Yeah, next time the streamer should just honestly set up Light Screen and think of something else. At least there'd be some chance.]
However, while the chat was frantically discussing, Kairos remained silent.
His gaze was fixed intently on Beautifly's figure on screen, as if waiting for something.
Indeed, the Electric Gym was quite difficult to handle.
After all, Wattson's team quality far exceeded any previous Gym Leader, and both Beautifly and Butterfree had type disadvantages, so clearing this gym required finding an alternative approach.
If the key factor for clearing Pokémon Ultra Emerald was first the player's skill, then second place would definitely be the player's luck.
Sometimes, the same operation under luck's influence could bring completely different outcomes.
Kairos took a deep breath, moving his mouse to the close window button in the upper right corner.
Looks like he'd need to try a few more times.
However, the next moment—
Whoosh!
A rainbow-colored radiance suddenly burst from Beautifly's body!
Such brilliant and sudden light change naturally caught the attention of viewers in the livestream, with lines of chat messages rapidly scrolling.
[What's happening?? Streamer's Beautifly, is it about to Mega Evolve?]
[No way, didn't the streamer not even get a Mega Stone? How could it evolve?]
[Hard to say. Look at how Cynthia can evolve without a Key Stone, right? Maybe the streamer and this Pokémon have a bond that's reached unimaginable levels...]
[No wonder the streamer seemed so confident this round—turns out he was hiding such a trump card, holy crap!]
However, seeing the chat messages flying everywhere, Kairos couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth slightly.
This world's people's understanding of Pokémon seemed even more sparse than he had imagined.
They didn't even know about Silver Wind's additional effect.
Silver Wind—Bug-type move, special attack category, with only 60 power. Generally, no Bug-type Pokémon would bother carrying it.
After all, there's the superior Bug Buzz with a whopping 90 power. This move was at best used as an early-game transition skill.
But besides that, Silver Wind actually had an additional effect: when using this move, there's a 10% chance that all stats will increase by one stage.
A move with the exact same effect was "Ancient Power."
A 10% chance honestly wasn't particularly high—one chance in ten uses, definitely not something you could call practical.
But in a game like this where you could retry countless times after failure until you succeeded, this was undoubtedly an overpowered early-game move.
Because once Silver Wind's additional effect triggered even once, this Pokémon's strength would receive a comprehensive, massive boost—all stats increased by 50%!
And if it could trigger twice, this battle would undoubtedly be completely steamrolled.
You have to understand that even Dragon Dance, such a powerful boost move, only increases a Pokémon's Speed and Attack by one stage each.
And Kairos's luck this time was obviously excellent—triggering Silver Wind's additional effect on the very first use!
At this moment, along with the rainbow light on Beautifly's body, beams of different colored light began rapidly flashing around its outline.
What followed was a series of notifications:
Beautifly's Speed rose!
Beautifly's Attack rose!
Beautifly's...
Amid the string of boost notifications, the chat had already started spamming question marks.
Kairos took this opportunity to directly explain Silver Wind's additional effect to them, while also clarifying his strategy.
"Wattson's team all have Thunderbolt, a high-power move. If I just set up walls to reduce Thunderbolt's special attack damage, even surviving 4 turns wouldn't mean anything."
"Besides, with Electric Terrain's boost, that damage would be completely overkill anyway."
"And Electabuzz's physical attack moves are quite powerful too. Without Reflect, neither Beautifly nor Butterfree could survive its Flame Punch."
"So I had to change my approach—instead of passively taking hits, I needed to actively attack. Given the current team situation, the only chance of victory is having Beautifly use Silver Wind to boost all its stats, then rely on Beautifly to sweep the team."
As Kairos spoke, the opposing Electabuzz groggily woke up from the Silver Wind attack.
As the new turn began, he unhesitatingly gave his command again.
"Beautifly, Silver Wind!"
With the Speed boost from earlier, Beautifly naturally became the first to move.
Silver Wind, which had previously only taken away less than 1/3 of Electabuzz's HP, now had significantly increased power with the one-stage Special Attack boost, directly reducing Electabuzz's HP to critical levels.
Unfortunately though, this Silver Wind still left Electabuzz with a tiny sliver of HP.
The next instant, as if to vent its anger at being attacked, Electabuzz roared and sent brilliant lightning crashing down from above, striking hard at Beautifly!
Given this game's NPC intelligence level, Wattson naturally knew what kind of move to choose in this situation.
He abandoned using the physical attack move Flame Punch and instead used an Electric-type move that was super effective against Flying-types.
[Electabuzz used Thunderbolt!]
The super effective notification quickly appeared as Beautifly's HP bar began rapidly falling.
And this time, there was no Reflect to reduce the damage!
With Electric Terrain's boost, this move's power reached a shocking and terrifying level, instantly blasting Beautifly's HP bar to critical levels, putting it in the same precarious state as Electabuzz.
Seeing this scene, the chat in the livestream started refreshing.
[So Silver Wind has this kind of additional effect—learned something new. But even though the streamer got lucky and Beautifly got all stats boosted by one stage, it still feels like he can't beat Wattson, since he still has so many more Pokémon.]
[Yeah, feels like just triggering once isn't nearly enough. You'd need at least two consecutive triggers to work, but with only a 10% chance, that's way too low.]
[Are there any math majors who can calculate the probability of two consecutive triggers?]
[Can't really calculate it precisely, but I feel like the streamer would need to restart at least 10 times to encounter that situation. Oh well, at least having a chance to win is already pretty good.]
[Hard to say—what if it keeps not triggering? Everyone's blood pressure would go through the roof.]
However, as the livestream chat discussed, Kairos looked at their conversation and his mouth curved upward slightly.
"Everyone, Beautifly's attack power, even with one stage of boost, indeed can't one-shot opponents that aren't weak to it."
"But if it's now, the situation is completely different."
The next moment, on the game screen, a brilliant brown radiance suddenly surged from Beautifly's body, directly boosting its presence several times over.
Along with it came a dazzling notification.
[Beautifly's Swarm ability activated!]
[Its Bug-type moves received a significant power boost!]