Sylveon's Evolution Hypothesis

After breakfast, Xia Chen took little Eevee out for another walk to help her digest, then officially began that morning's training.

This was the schedule Xia Chen had stayed up late revising the night before. Because Eevee had performed so well in the basics, he decided to introduce Pokémon move learning and training ahead of schedule.

Moves were the most important and soulful part of Pokémon Battle games.

Type advantages, resistances, and even immunities formed the most entertaining core framework of this turn-based Pokémon game, and the foundation that had kept the series popular for decades. (Though Game Freak had already started coasting on its past achievements.)

Yet in this real world where Pokémon existed, clashes between moves were still the part of Pokémon Battles that set spectators' blood boiling the most.

For Trainers and Pokémon alike, move training was no less important than a Pokémon's basic qualities, tactical choices, on-the-spot command, and a whole host of other factors.

In the games, players never had to worry about move training.

Moves were learned automatically through leveling up, Egg Moves, TMs, and Move Learning. As long as players found the right method, learning every move in a Pokémon's move pool was basically no problem.

If a player wanted, even a freshly hatched Venusaur could immediately learn Leaf Storm.

But reality was different. There were only two ways to learn moves.

Inheritance and learning.

Inheritance needed no explanation. Arceus decided it. If a Pokémon was born with it, it had it; if not, it did not.

Fair, yet cruel.

As for learning moves afterward, there was far more room to work with.

As long as a Pokémon was talented enough and had an affinity for the corresponding type of energy, it could learn any move in its in-game move pool.

As for the power or effect, that varied from Pokémon to Pokémon.

This was another piece of knowledge Xia Chen had gained over the past half year in this world.

Xia Chen had long had plans for Eevee's move-learning program. Beyond the moves commonly used in regular battles,

the most important ones were undoubtedly Baby-Doll Eyes or Charm, the key moves that could allow Eevee to evolve into Sylveon.

Of course, this evolution requirement was only Xia Chen's current hypothesis.

In the games, Sylveon appeared as Eevee's new evolution with the addition of the Fairy type in Generation Six.

Its evolution requirements also differed from those of the other members of its family.

The first condition was reaching 158 friendship.

The second condition was learning a Fairy-type move.

Neither could be missing.

This world's timeline was extremely chaotic. Marnie, the "former Unova Region protagonist," was six years older than the ten-year-old she had been when setting out on her adventure in the games.

At this time, the Unova Region Champion was Alder, whose Volcarona had not died and whose spirit had yet to sink into despair.

Last year, an aura eruption caused by Xerneas awakening in the Kalos Region had granted many Pokémon a new kind of energy.

After preliminary research, researchers determined that it had brought about a new type.

People named it the Fairy type.

For some unknown reason, Sylveon had not yet been discovered in this world.

Xia Chen guessed that, first, the Fairy type had only been discovered recently in this world's timeline, and most scholars were still in the exploratory stage.

Second, Sylveon's evolution requirements might be more unusual and demanding than they were in the games.

Otherwise, those two simple conditions alone should not have stopped scholars with such advanced research capabilities.

Time waited for no one. Xia Chen did not know how much longer Sylveon's evolution could remain hidden, so he had to discover this evolution, the one most suitable for himself, as soon as possible.

Although his funding, facilities, and other material conditions lagged far behind those professional researchers, he possessed an innate advantage.

He knew the endpoint of this research, as well as the approximate conditions, allowing him to avoid many detours.

Returning to Baby-Doll Eyes, research into the Fairy type had only just gotten on track, and the same was true for Fairy-type moves.

At present, the number of discovered and researched Fairy-type moves was extremely limited, and Baby-Doll Eyes was one of them.

Xia Chen had looked into it. Up to now, only four or five kinds of Pokémon had been discovered capable of learning Baby-Doll Eyes, and Eevee was not among them.

This was also why Xia Chen was confident he could complete this research first. Scholars did not seem to place much importance on the possibility that Eevee might have a Fairy-type evolution.

As for how Eevee could learn Baby-Doll Eyes, Xia Chen already had a preliminary plan.

In this world, possessing energy of the corresponding type was a necessary condition for Pokémon to learn moves.

So first, Eevee needed Fairy-type energy in her body. This could be achieved by supplementing Fairy-type Pokéblocks.

At present, these were only mass-produced in Kalos, the birthplace of the Fairy type. Xia Chen had ordered a batch online on the day he found Eevee, and they had been added to her diet yesterday.

Because they were imported and their ingredients were rare, Fairy-type Pokéblocks were absurdly expensive.

But there was no helping it. It was a necessary expense. Xia Chen gritted his teeth and bought a two-month supply, and the numbers in his bank account dropped by another chunk.

Eevee had only eaten Fairy-type Pokéblocks for two meals so far, and Xia Chen did not expect her to learn Baby-Doll Eyes immediately. This morning could only count as an introduction.

"Eevee, have you noticed any changes in the energy inside your body these past two days?"

In the yard, Xia Chen sat cross-legged and guided the well-behaved Eevee sitting before him. "For example, has a new type of energy appeared?"

As the world's first Sylveon from another timeline, how could Eevee not know what Xia Chen meant?

Still, she tilted her head in feigned confusion. "Eevee?"

Then she closed her eyes, pretending to sense the threads of Fairy-type energy flowing through her body. With a touch of surprise and uncertainty, she nodded.

She perfectly portrayed a young Pokémon that had just discovered Fairy-type energy within herself.

Watching the slight curve of her Trainer's lips, Eevee secretly laughed. After being reborn, nothing else had improved much, but my acting sure has gotten a lot better.

As for a move like Baby-Doll Eyes, as long as she wanted to, she could learn it immediately with the small amount of Fairy-type energy in her body.

But because of the same concerns as before, Eevee decided it would be better to take things gradually.

Besides, evolving into Sylveon was far more complicated than simply learning Baby-Doll Eyes.

In her previous life, Xia Chen and she had spent over two years trying and researching before she evolved during Xia Chen's sophomore year of college.

Yet the day after she completed her evolution, a research institute in Kalos published a paper on Sylveon's evolution.

That was right. The two groups had discovered Sylveon at almost the same time. She had evolved slightly earlier, but they had published their paper faster.

As a result, most of the benefits from that discovery ultimately went to that Kalos research institute.

Eevee's expression hardened slightly. In this life, I will never let that happen again!

(Baby-Doll Eyes was introduced in Generation Two. It was originally a Normal-type move, and Eevee could learn it by leveling up at level nine. Some adjustments were made here for the needs of the plot.)