"Phew..."
After scraping out a hard-fought win, Qingyu breathed a sigh of relief, though he clearly still wanted more.
It wasn't just because his battle of wits with Lucian had excited him. He had played matches of this caliber before, after all. Although there had been a few twists and turns, he had still secured the win comfortably enough.
The bigger reason was that Lucian had brought an item he hadn't expected.
"Red Card Torkoal... pretty interesting."
Qingyu couldn't help murmuring to himself.
The Red Card might have been nothing more than a flash of inspiration on Lucian's part, but it had shown him some subtle shifts in thinking.
As a young member of the Sinnoh Elite Four, Lucian was very receptive to online battling. The changes in his lineups across their two encounters in Pokémon Champions lately made that abundantly clear.
So, after sweeping through the Pokémon world for a while, the "evil winds of battling" Qingyu had stirred up were finally beginning to noticeably influence these Ace Trainers' thinking.
Of course, Qingyu had always known that quite a few Gym Leaders and Elite Four members were probably watching his streams in silence. Most of them didn't bother hiding it, either, often popping up to send him gifts as "tuition" for what they had learned.
But this time was different.
Normally, Lucian's tactical style should have favored consistency, using the Psychic type's various status moves to disrupt his opponent's rhythm and gradually secure victory.
Today, however, Lucian had made several extremely aggressive choices in succession, completely defying Qingyu's preconceptions.
So, after getting hit by that Red Card Torkoal strategy, which was essentially a lottery draw, even Qingyu, his opponent, had wanted to applaud him and ask how he had come up with it.
To be fair, Red Card Torkoal