It might even be possible for Gyarados to tank the damage head-on and still chase down its opponent!
After all, Gyarados, despite not having great resistance against Electric-types, is truly tough and durable.
As long as it's undergone proper training, it can still hold on for a while.
However, Zeraora's one move, Chidori, completely slapped the faces of both experts and amateurs alike!
The sheer piercing force, which completely abandoned the paralyzing nature of electricity, left everyone in awe!
"Want to continue? Want to keep feeling... what it means to despair?"
Tilting his head slightly again, Nathan asked the man.
The man, however, had already lost all the confidence, malice, and mockery he had at the start.
His face was pale, and internally he was struggling.
Fight? Or not?
Actually, the man still had one non-Water-type Pokémon left.
But just recalling the sight of Zeraora wielding Chidori like a god of thunder...
"I-I surrender!"
Cowardice seized his heart in an instant, leading the man to make an incredibly shameful decision.
At the same time, Nathan also withdrew Zeraora.
There were too many participants, and he still had at least four more matches today — he had no time to waste exchanging trash talk.
"Was this guy really... just a hyped-up product like people said online?"
…
Watching Nathan's departing figure, the man stumbled off the battlefield, his mind dazed.
After mixing in the lower leagues for so long, encountering a true top-tier elite naturally made him question his entire existence.
If he couldn't recover from this, this man might very well be completely broken.
Not that he had much of an achievement record to begin with.
As for Nathan —
He had no interest in bothering with a random stranger who just wanted to mock him.
That day, there were five matches in total.
Nathan only used one Pokémon for all of them!
Zeraora!
Except for a Gym-level Nidoking who put up a bit of resistance, every other opponent was one-shotted!
Without a doubt, this stunned many spectators and made them feel like they were seeing the world anew.
After all, none of them had seen Nathan in action before; most of what they knew was just unreliable internet gossip.
Back at the hotel,
Nathan had just started preparing to make Pokéblocks when his phone suddenly rang.
"Evelyn?"
Seeing the caller ID, Nathan answered, "Miss Evelyn, what's up?"
"Nothing much, I just wanted to ask... are you doing okay over there?"
Evelyn's voice, usually so cold, carried a rare note of concern.
Not because she had any romantic feelings — they were simply partners.
And Nathan was someone highly worth investing in.
That's why the young heiress Evelyn worried if the nasty comments online might affect him.
"Don't worry, I hardly ever go online. Besides, there's no need to worry about public opinion flipping too soon."
"In short, just make sure you control the narrative on your end. Later, you can even exaggerate a little."
Nathan smiled lightly as he spoke.
"Exaggerate a little?"
Evelyn still didn't quite understand.
After all, online-based marketing methods hadn't really been developed in this world yet.
And more importantly, if a few hot-headed trainers decided to come after them —
Well, they'd be left to fend for themselves.
Several years ago, after a poorly received Pokémon food advertisement campaign,
the mastermind and the backing capitalists actually got beaten up —
not hurt badly, but stripped and hung on a drying rack.
And to this day, no one found out who did it.
Nathan knew, though.
Gym Leader Serene Lee had once drunkenly blabbed about it at a dinner!
So, without any precedents to rely on, even if the Mist Group hired professionals to predict his moves, they could only guess Nathan's purpose, not the specific tactics.
After thinking this through, Nathan didn't get impatient.
He patiently explained:
"When it gets to the Top 4 or semi-finals, you can let the hype become so exaggerated that anyone can tell it's fake — that it's just bots."
"At that point, just a little push and the narrative will flip completely."
"But you can't use this trick too often — if you get exposed, it'll backfire badly."
"Backfire?"
"It means, basically... you'll get a free ticket to visit some cannibal tribe."
"Pfft!"
Hearing Nathan's joke, even Evelyn, who was usually cold and aloof, couldn't help but laugh.
That was a pretty amusing way to put it!
"Alright, that's all I needed to say. The rest is up to you guys."
"The Pokéblock market is way too massive for me to monopolize alone."
"Honestly, even if a dozen more billionaires showed up, they couldn't eat it all."
"So I just want the biggest share. You get what I mean, right?"
Hearing Evelyn's laughter, Nathan's tone remained serious.
Although they were friends, Nathan treated this as a business partnership —
and he was working with the Mist Group.
With a corporate giant like that, only interests could truly bind them together.
As for whether Nathan would lose out?
He joked to himself:
Even if he spent his whole life shopping from the system store, could he even burn through a trillion?
As long as Nathan and the system controlled the core formula of Pokéblocks, the market's worth would be at least in the trillions.
That was the minimum!
Thus, it wasn't worth it for Nathan to waste energy trying to scrape up small change.
Better to use that energy to secure bigger, long-term benefits.
As expected, after a moment of stunned silence, Evelyn's breathing became uneven and she stammered:
"R-really? Nathan, you're not lying to me, right?"
Being the Mist family heiress, Evelyn knew better than most how huge this could be!
Currently, the Mist Group was the domestic leader in the Pokéball industry.
Overseas, they were a dominant force too, though they faced competition.
But Nathan?
He had no such competition at all.
Even the Mist family patriarch — Evelyn's own father — once said:
What Nathan held in his hands had the potential market value of over ten trillion!
And there were no competitors yet.
As long as Nathan steadily moved forward, even a pig could eat its fill of this enormous pie!
Ten trillion.
Even a tenth of that was a number 99.99% of the world would never dare to dream of.
Monopolizing it would bring astronomical profits!
Otherwise, why would the Mist family allow their precious daughter to "mess around" with a powerless, poor boy?
Even being a genius trainer wouldn't have been enough.
The reality was that most talented trainers from humble backgrounds never ended up making it big because the lack of resources dragged them down at every turn.
"I have no reason to lie. I hold the core requirement for Pokéblock production."
"Without it, even if someone stole the recipe, they wouldn't be able to manufacture them."
"So, this market is genuinely too big for me to handle alone."
Nathan shook his head, sounding utterly certain.
As for what exactly the "core requirement " was — Nathan wasn't too sure either.
The system shop's after-sales explanation was that without it, even if scientists analyzed the formula perfectly, it wouldn't matter —
Nathan could just upgrade the product again.
The high-end and most of the low-end markets would always stay in his hands.
The Mist Group knew this too.
Even if they didn't have any bad intentions, it would have been impossible not to research it.
After chatting casually for a bit longer, Nathan hung up the phone.
"Whether it is a dragon or a bug depends on whether you can give it your all."
Staring at the snow-white ceiling, Nathan murmured.
If this were his past life, breaking through rigid class barriers and capitalistic monopolies would've been impossible.
But in this world —
Nathan was prepared to smash them all with overwhelming force!
With the Mist family, the biggest dragon of them all, backing him up —
how could he possibly lose?