Chapter 99: The Shock Hurt Even More

Chapter Ninety-Nine: It Hurt Even More When Shocked

Within the vast silver-gray expanse, dull thunder rolled and boomed, while sparks cracked and burst in the air.

A soft, pale-yellow electric glow flickered gently.

Lu Yun sat cross-legged on a tufted cushion, eyes closed.

Countless tiny electric ions gathered together, like a membrane of birth, tightly wrapping his body.

A pleasant warmth, tinged with a faint numb sting, coursed through him.

Slowly opening his eyes, lightning flaring within them, the pale-yellow electric garment around Lu Yun suddenly swelled. Forked currents scattered in all directions, baring their teeth and claws as they lashed through the air.

He raised his right hand and clenched it.

A shrill burst of noise flashed and vanished in an instant, and a brilliant blaze of light erupted from his palm.

Sensing the full, all-around strengthening of his body, Lu Yun nodded in satisfaction.

With a single thought, the pale-yellow electric robe transformed into countless fine currents and dispersed into the air.

By now, fifteen days had passed since Lu Yun returned to headquarters from Lanny’s place.

During those fifteen days, Lu Yun had not rushed to push himself further. Instead, he chose to patiently consolidate his strength.

The terrifying leap brought by evolving from Flaaffy into Ampharos was like a carp leaping over the dragon gate: a true qualitative transformation.

For the sake of fighting better in the future, fully digesting the enormous boost from his evolution was extremely important.

Over these days, Lu Yun could be said to have spent every moment except eating and sleeping on stabilizing his foundation.

Hard work naturally brought rewards, and Lu Yun had reaped a bountiful harvest.

First, he had completely mastered the ten new moves he learned after evolving.

He even incorporated some of his own understanding into them, making their release smoother and no longer as stiff as it had been just after evolution.

The skill he had just unleashed was one of those new moves: Ion Deluge.

In his previous life, in the game, Ion Deluge changed Normal-type moves into Electric-type ones.

For Lu Yun, this skill might occasionally produce some unexpected effects in battle, but overall it was not especially useful.

Yet after actually using it, Lu Yun had changed his view.

He discovered that in the real world, Ion Deluge did more than that: it could also enhance the body in every respect.

It was a status-type move.

Compared with the Electric Armor he had previously developed, its boost was not particularly large, but its advantage lay in its extremely low energy consumption.

Given Lu Yun’s current energy recovery, in ordinary conditions, he could even keep Ion Deluge active continuously for twenty-four hours.

This new discovery made Lu Yun understand something even more clearly.

Although the knowledge from his previous life’s games had been of immense help to him,

in certain respects, the real world still differed from those games, and he could not trust everything blindly. He had to think for himself.

In terms of moves, Lu Yun had indeed learned new techniques, but he had no intention of abandoning his old craft.

In his spare time, based on several suitable skills, he had begun to devise a new round of combination techniques.

After all, Lu Yun had already evolved into Ampharos, and the combination techniques that suited him in his Flaaffy days were now somewhat inappropriate.

But for now, it was only conception.

Fifteen days was still too short; he had many other things to do, and the actual construction of new combo techniques would have to be planned carefully over time.

Second, Lu Yun had further refined his control over his energy and physical body.

The improvement Ampharos gave him was simply too great.

Right after evolving, the vast power within his body even left him feeling oddly light and floaty.

Then, in the subsequent battle against Scizor, that new strength caused him some discomfort as well.

So after the battle, he immediately put his plan to become familiar with his post-evolution electric power and physical strength onto the agenda.

Now, if he were to face Scizor again,

the result would still be Lu Yun’s victory, but he would win much more easily, much more cleanly, without the same awkward struggle as before.

In short, over these fifteen days, Lu Yun had basically fully digested the boost from his evolution.

And at this point, Lu Yun had finally entered a bottleneck in his growth.

His experience gains had also begun to decline slowly.

He discovered this by accident while checking the system information panel.

He found that the last three of Norn’s Pokemon were giving him pitifully little experience.

Only the Mega-Evolved Scizor provided more than a single-digit amount; the others hovered around five experience points.

And those three were precisely the ones he had defeated after evolving.

That could not help but make Lu Yun sigh a little.

Although, with the system’s help, his leveling speed was still far beyond that of ordinary Pokemon,

compared to before his evolution, it was already far inferior.

If current Lu Yun still wanted, like before, to greatly improve his strength in a short time,

there were only two ways.

The first was to obtain some extraordinary encounter in a future mission, like the protagonist of some novel in his previous life.

Of course, such things came only by chance and could not be sought at will.

Rather than pinning hopes on such illusory and hazy things, it would be better to keep both feet on the ground and improve steadily.

As for the other way...

A sharp light flickered in Lu Yun’s eyes.

In his memory, Ampharos should have a Mega Evolution.

He had already experienced the tremendous increase brought by a return-to-ancestry evolution when he saw it in Scizor.

If he could also Mega Evolve...

Sigh.

Lu Yun shook his head and let out a long breath.

Too hard.

Setting aside whether he could even obtain Ampharos’s corresponding Mega Stone,

he did not even have a human partner with a bond strong enough to allow it.

Lanny?

Just a client, nothing more. There was no real feeling there.

Case?

After the special training, he had never seen that person again.

...

Running through all the humans he had been connected to in this life,

Lu Yun sadly discovered that not one of them was suitable.

So he could only take the idea of Mega Evolution, turn it into a seed, and bury it quietly in his heart,

hoping that one day in the future, that seed might take root, sprout, and grow strong.

Phew—

He let out a long breath.

Lu Yun stretched his body, then folded his hands behind his head and sank into the soft tuft of fur beneath him.

With nothing to trouble him, his heart felt light.

The high-intensity battles of the League Tournament had left him utterly exhausted.

Right now, Lu Yun wanted nothing more than to put everything aside and enjoy a proper lazy sleep.

All in all, if the gains from these fifteen days were to be summed up in just a few words,

then they would be:

he knew more, he was stronger, his electricity hurt more, and he ate...

Yes, he definitely ate more too.

The reward Dark Star had sent him a few days earlier, a high-quality Thunder Stone, had been drained of its electrical energy by the second day after he got it.

There was nothing to be done about that.

Compared with the vast currents surging within Lu Yun’s body now, the energy inside the Thunder Stone was only good enough to serve as a snack.

In his free time, he could just pick it up, take a few sips, and it would be gone.