No Cheats, So I Could Only Rely on Myself

The aftereffects of this video were far greater than Xia Chen had imagined.

By noon, exactly twenty-four hours later, its total views had already surpassed one million!

This terrifying pace shot the video straight into the site's top ten trending list, while its high-quality content sent its popularity into a virtuous cycle.

Xia Chen's personal follower count had also exceeded one hundred thousand.

However, he had no intention of setting any "one hundred thousand followers face reveal" or cross-dressing flags. He decided to pretend this rather meaningful milestone had never happened.

For him, something more important awaited him now—the first training session with Eevee.

Bringing little Eevee into the convincingly outfitted training area, Xia Chen stood straight with a solemn expression.

"Every afternoon for the next month will be our special training time. During this period, no acting cute. I'm an emotionless training machine. Understood?"

He had watched Marnie and Snivy train before. Whether Trainer or Pokémon, they were completely different from how they usually behaved.

Xia Chen understood that if he wanted to maximize the effectiveness of training, he had to cut off any softness in his heart.

Therefore, this warning was not only for Eevee, but also for himself.

"Eevee!"

Eevee raised her head proudly, her excitement practically overflowing from her eyes.

Xia Chen nodded in satisfaction. Before finding this Eevee, he had always heard that Eevee were extremely difficult to train due to their gentle nature. Now, it seemed that was not entirely true!

Perhaps her previous experiences wandering alone and being bullied by other wild Pokémon had made her eager to grow stronger?

Xia Chen felt that his guess was extremely reliable, but even if someone beat him to death, he would never have guessed the true reason behind Eevee's enthusiasm for training.

Looking at this "training base," which had once accompanied her for an entire year, Eevee's eyes filled with nostalgia.

Back then, because of her naturally timid nature, she had spent far too much time merely adapting to training.

One step behind meant falling behind every step of the way. During those most precious few months, her strength had grown painfully slowly.

Not only had she let down the training plan Xia Chen had prepared for her, but in later battles, it had also become clear that her strength simply could not keep up with Xia Chen's tactical demands.

It was precisely because of her pathetic performance that Xia Chen had failed to get into his preferred university later on.

Xia Chen had said the same thing before training back then, but whenever she did not want to train and acted cute around him, he would still hesitate before reducing her workload.

This time, she absolutely could not be so disappointing again!

"Eevee!"

Thinking of this, Eevee cried out again, filled with fighting spirit as she reaffirmed her resolve.

"Very good, Eevee. Full of spirit!"

Xia Chen's expression remained stern. "First up is the first training item: balance and evasion."

"This training mainly develops bodily coordination and reaction speed. It will be a huge help to you at every stage of battle."

Xia Chen was a person with clear goals.

For nearly a year since transmigrating here, aside from spending some of his spare time on his video career,

he had spent every other moment studying the Trainer knowledge of this world.

After gaining a preliminary understanding of this world, Xia Chen had clearly realized that becoming an outstanding Trainer here was hundreds, even thousands of times harder than it was in the games.

There was no experience bar to tell you what level your Pokémon was.

The complexity of raising Pokémon was also countless orders of magnitude beyond that of the games.

There were no moves naturally learned through leveling up, no TMs. Every move had to be mastered by the Pokémon and Trainer themselves.

Most importantly, Pokémon were intelligent and even more magical creatures, just like humans—not a pile of cold, lifeless data!

This real Pokémon world, formed from all these factors, had taken Xia Chen a long time to gradually adapt to.

All kinds of Trainer and Breeder knowledge beyond the high school level became rich nourishment for Xia Chen's understanding of this world.

Only now had he barely managed to blend together the Pokémon knowledge of both worlds and form his own unique system for raising and training Pokémon.

There was no helping it. Without cheats, he could only rely on himself.

The balance-and-evasion model of the high-end compact Pokémon training machine Xia Chen had bought took up no small amount of space—more than ten square meters in total.

Its outer shell was made of transparent glass-like material, while inside were various facilities resembling a platforming game, designed to train a Pokémon's balance.

Every facility in the machine could have its difficulty freely adjusted. For Eevee, who had only recently left infancy, there was no need to set the difficulty too high for now.

The training machines made by Silph Co. could connect to the internet. After each run, Trainers could choose to upload their Pokémon's results and compete with other users online.

It allowed Trainers to understand what level their Pokémon's performance was at, while also motivating both Trainers and Pokémon to train.

Xia Chen decided to let Eevee complete the entire course first to test her level before training began.

After adjusting the various settings, Xia Chen thought for a moment and brought over the camera.

He had no plans to make training vlogs. He simply wanted to record every footprint along Eevee's path of growth.

After setting up the camera, little Eevee's first training session officially began.

The first facility required her to dodge "shells" fired from all directions while on a machine similar to a treadmill.

Whenever a shell struck the Pokémon's body, the machine would automatically count it. The time limit was five minutes; the fewer times one was hit, the higher the score.

The treadmill's speed, the shells' speed, and their density were all variables that determined the difficulty.

Xia Chen did not want Eevee's first experience of training to leave her with psychological trauma, so he set all those values to their minimum.

Amid the machine's soft hum, Eevee jumped onto the first facility.

The machine's settings were fairly user-friendly. Only after Eevee had adapted to the speed of the treadmill did the "cannons" in the four directions—front, back, left, and right—begin firing shells one after another.

Although Xia Chen had set the shell density low, they came from every direction.

In theory, no matter how sharp a Pokémon's eyesight was or how wide its field of vision, it was impossible to dodge shells coming from behind.

The only way to evade them was through hearing.

But one had to remember that the Pokémon also needed to do two other things at the same time: keep running without pause and keep its eyes alert.

Not to mention that evading trickier shells sometimes required jumping or ducking, which greatly disrupted a Pokémon's rhythm.

Under such circumstances, dividing one's attention further to use hearing to discern what was happening behind them was even more difficult.

To Xia Chen's surprise, Eevee performed quite well in her first training session. After five minutes, the number displayed in the center of the screen was only "25."

Although this score was nothing noteworthy on the overall rankings, it was already remarkably impressive for an Eevee only a few months old and experiencing this training for the first time.

Even Marnie's Snivy currently only had a score of "15," yet Snivy had begun proper training a month earlier than Eevee.

By comparison, Eevee truly had a promising future ahead of her.

"Eevee."

Eevee deliberately panted heavily and cautiously looked up at Xia Chen. Only when she noticed him lowering his head in thought did she let out a sigh of relief.

It seemed her acting was convincing. Xia Chen had not noticed anything suspicious during that training.