Eevee, We're Rich!

As the sun slanted westward, time flew by amid the dull yet fulfilling cycle of training and recovery.

It took Eevee an entire afternoon to complete the full set of specialized balance and evasion training Xia Chen had designed.

The reason it had been drawn out so long was not because Xia Chen was heartless. He had deliberately divided the training into more than a dozen sections, with substantial rest and recovery periods between each one.

All told, Eevee had trained for just over an hour.

He had learned this was the best training method for growing Pokémon from Professor Sonia's videos on Pixiv.

It could maximize a Pokémon's physical potential without causing harm to its body.

Still, although Professor Sonia had verified the method's reliability in both theory and practice, Xia Chen asked Eevee how she felt after the training ended.

After all, every Pokémon was different. Treating conclusions drawn by other Trainers from other Pokémon as absolute truth would be irresponsible toward his own Pokémon.

Eevee's feedback was positive, finally putting Xia Chen's last doubts to rest.

After dinner, Xia Chen curled up in front of his computer again.

By the time he had adjusted Eevee's training plan and edited the next video, it was already late at night.

Gentle moonlight spilled through the window, bathing the entire room in a soft glow.

Looking at Eevee, who had somehow climbed onto his lap and fallen asleep again, Xia Chen silently sighed. Being a Trainer was no less exhausting than being Eevee.

After stretching, he carefully carried Eevee to her little bed, quietly washed up, climbed into bed, and fell into a deep sleep.

What he did not know was that shortly after he entered dreamland, Eevee's eyes suddenly opened in her little bed.

After carefully confirming that Xia Chen was truly asleep, she tiptoed out of the room and headed to the training machine in the courtyard.

The moon was beautiful tonight, but Eevee had obviously not sneaked out in the middle of the night to admire the scenery.

By the light of the moon and streetlamps, Eevee felt her way around the balance-and-evasion training machine.

Of course, her daytime score had been deliberately staged for Xia Chen. After all, her current identity was merely that of a little Eevee born a few months ago.

It was fine to perform better than Pokémon of the same level, but Eevee had no intention of exposing her Elite Four-level experience and awareness.

Her main concern was frightening her Trainer. She had only become his starter Pokémon two days ago. Being moderately outstanding made for a comedy story, but being excessively outstanding made for a horror story.

Eevee did not want to arouse Xia Chen's random suspicions, so she had hidden her true strength.

But that daytime training had nearly driven her mad. At that sluggish pace, even with her current body, she could have dodged everything with her eyes closed—yet she still had to suppress her body's instinctive reactions.

In a sense, getting hit by twenty-five projectiles was probably far more difficult than clearing the course without taking a single hit.

So the moment Xia Chen fell asleep, Eevee immediately came over to "take revenge" on the machine.

On the other hand, she also wanted to know exactly what level her current body could reach.

Having lived with Xia Chen for ten years, Eevee knew that he slept incredibly soundly. The machine's faint noises would not wake him.

Putting those thoughts aside, she expertly adjusted the difficulty of every variable and began her real training test.

The faint hum of the machine rang through the courtyard once more.

If anyone had witnessed what was happening, they would have called it a horror movie.

Inside the training machine, more projectiles than during the day burst from the launchers at greater speeds and trickier angles, firing toward Eevee at the center.

Yet the little Eevee on the track dodged left and right as if she possessed a god's-eye view, evading every projectile coming at her from all directions.

She had somehow turned a first-person game into one played from an overhead, full-map perspective.

And a cheat-like viewpoint alone was far from enough. She also needed incredibly fast reflexes.

Otherwise, it would be the classic case of:

Brain: I learned it!

Hands: I botched it!

Clearly, Eevee's brain and her four little legs worked together exceptionally well.

Compared to the measured yet perfectly timed dodges of her upper body, the astonishingly rapid cadence of Eevee's lower body was even more remarkable.

Eevee's legs were admittedly rather pitifully short, but short legs had their advantages. Compared with the long legs of speed-focused Pokémon, Eevee's little paws excelled in agility.

Her exceptionally smooth shifts in rhythm and ghostlike footwork made her overall performance immensely pleasing to watch.

Elegant!

Too elegant!

Unfortunately, no one was there to appreciate that elegance.

Under the pouring moonlight, the unobserved training test continued.

In the end, Eevee still failed to complete the training with a perfect evasion score.

By the final stage, Eevee was no longer as relaxed as she had been at the beginning. She grew increasingly disheveled as it went on and was eventually struck by a projectile fired from behind.

The number changed from 0 to 1.

It was not because Eevee had found the difficulty insufficient and raised it further. The problem was with Eevee's body itself.

Stamina!

In other words, the software had kept up, but the hardware had not.

Reality was not a game. There was no such thing as just having a health bar.

Having only recently passed her infancy stage, Eevee clearly had serious deficiencies in physical attributes such as stamina and endurance, and those could not be fixed overnight.

Nourishing meals and suitable training could help Eevee improve her stamina, speed, and other areas considerably.

Eevee lay on the grass, panting heavily as she silently reviewed herself.

There was no doubt that although this first training session had come even earlier than in her previous life, her score far surpassed what she had achieved back then.

With the speed set to low and every other variable controlled at mid-to-high difficulty, being hit only once was a result she had needed two years of training to achieve in her previous life.

Besides the Elite Four-level awareness and experience she had brought back with her, the solid foundation she had built at the Zhijiang City breeding base had also been indispensable.

She was already far stronger than she had been at the same point in her previous life, but it was still nowhere near enough.

Her current situation was a classic case of her body failing to keep up with her mind. Her mind knew exactly what to do, but her physical capabilities could not meet the requirements.

That feeling was especially frustrating. This was why Eevee felt so stifled, not merely because she had failed to clear her first training session without taking damage.

Forget it. This was not something that could be solved anytime soon. She could only take it slowly.

The next day.

The sun rose as usual, and Xia Chen opened his Pixiv homepage as usual.

One number instantly woke Xia Chen up. He had stayed up a little late last night and was still somewhat sleepy.

Two million!

That was the current view count of the video he had posted the day before yesterday, Eevee's debut video!

Along with it, his follower count and the views on the dozen or so videos he had posted before had all risen sharply.

This was all money!

Xia Chen felt no shame whatsoever about being money-minded. That was just his situation—what else was he supposed to do?

For Xia Chen, who only had a five-digit amount left in his pocket, this news was practically a shot in the arm.

He could not help picking up Eevee, who was eating breakfast beside him, and taking a deep sniff of the great contributor.

"Eevee, we're rich!"

"Eevee!"

Eevee reluctantly played along with Xia Chen's smile, then wore an utterly lifeless expression.

Good for you!

How noble of you!

You did not even show your face in your own video!

I was the one crying in front of millions of viewers!

I was the one who died of embarrassment!

Complaints aside, Eevee knew the video going viral was ultimately a good thing.

In her previous life, she could only eat Pokéblocks that had barely reached intermediate quality during her early days. Now, she could probably eat Advanced Energy Cubes like candy.

Anyway, having money was great!