"It won! Slowpoke actually won!"
"It really won! Is this Slowpoke seriously this strong?"
"A shiny Pokémon, and people thought that was funny?"
"Before I won, you all called me Slowpoke, and I didn't say a word. But now, what are you going to call me? Hm?!"
"Slow God! Slowpoke, you're a legend!"
The moment Slowpoke pulled off the win, the livestream chat went absolutely wild. Comments flooded in, gifts started flying, and the whole room erupted.
The chat was chaos, but on the battlefield, Caster wasn't giving Exeggutor a second to breathe. He pressed the advantage without hesitation: "Slowpoke, Blizzard!"
Rumble!
As Slowpoke called up its power, the interior of the sealed tower transformed. Snow and howling wind materialized from nowhere, swirling together into a ferocious blizzard, as though winter had been dropped inside the building by force.
Up on the seventh floor, Emanuel couldn't help but shiver.
"Slooow~"
The blizzard hit Exeggutor full on. Already badly hurt, the Pokémon was buried under an avalanche of snow and ice, frozen solid before it could react.
"Exeggutor is unable to battle. The winner is Slowpoke!"
The referee called it quickly.
"Okay, that's it? Damn, if someone hadn't told me this was the seventh floor of the Battle Tower, I'd have guessed the third."
"I thought the streamer's Shellder was already busted, but honestly? This Slowpoke scares me more. The psychic power is way stronger than it looks. And it's not slow at all. It's nothing like a normal Slowpoke."
"Are Pike's Shellder and Slowpoke actually just borrowed from Miss Lorelei? Because they're absolutely ridiculous."
"Anyway, if Pike tries to tell me there's nothing going on between him and Miss Lorelei, I'm not buying it."
After dropping the first round, Gentleman Emanuel's expression turned serious.
He stood there for a moment, thinking it through, then finally made his call.
His second Pokémon was entirely yellow, built like a sleek fox, with white and yellow spikes bristling around its neck and along its body. Electric sparks danced across its fur with a constant, low crackling.
"A Jolteon?"
Caster raised an eyebrow, sizing it up.
According to its Pokédex entry, Jolteon's lungs generated electricity, drawing negative ions straight from the air and amplifying the faint currents from its own cells — concentrating all of it into lightning.
The battle picked up right where it left off.
"Jolteon, Agility!"
Emanuel moved first, but he didn't go for damage — he went for speed.
"Awoo~"
Jolteon burst into motion immediately, cutting left and right, each pass faster than the last, until it was moving so fast that Caster could barely track it with his eyes.
"It's too fast. I can't keep up with it. My psychic sense can't lock on."
Slowpoke's voice came through in Caster's mind, edged with genuine unease.
In the world of Pokémon, Psychic was one of the most dominant types around. It covered offense, defense, and full-field awareness. But right now, Jolteon was simply moving too fast for even Slowpoke's perception to keep pace.
Caster didn't have a clean answer for that.
Jolteon's base Speed was a staggering 130, already exceptional in itself. With Agility stacked on top, it had crossed into territory where it practically vanished from sight.
After a beat, Caster called out, "Slowpoke, Amnesia."
You want to stack Speed? Fine. I'll stack defense.
At the end of the day, every battle came down to damage. And Jolteon was built around its Special Attack, which meant this whole fight was going to hinge on a trade: Special Attack versus Special Defense.
More importantly, Slowpoke had something in its toolkit specifically made for dealing with fast Pokémon.
The only catch was actually pulling it off without going down first.
So defense it was.
"Slooow~"
Slowpoke closed its eyes and cleared its mind.
A soft, hazy glow spread across its body.
Its Special Defense jumped sharply.
Across the field, Jolteon had finished its speed boost, and Emanuel allowed himself a grin. "There's a saying in every martial art: it doesn't matter how strong you are, you can't hit what you can't catch. Fast enough, and nothing touches you. Fast enough, and you touch everything you want. And right now, I want to touch that Slowpoke."
He watched Slowpoke stack defense and just shook his head. "Jolteon, Thunder!"
"Awoo~"
Nobody even saw it move. One moment Jolteon wasn't there; the next, it was directly behind Slowpoke, electricity racing across every inch of its body, the crackling constant and sharp.
Boom!
A massive bolt of lightning punched into Slowpoke at point-blank range.
"Slooow~"
Whatever Emanuel had done to train Jolteon's Special Attack, it showed. The hit was devastating.
The only reason Slowpoke was still standing was that one layer of Amnesia had bumped its Special Defense up two stages. Without that, it would have been over.
Even with it, more than half of Slowpoke's stamina was gone in a single shot.
"Slooow~"
Slowpoke's face contorted in pain, electricity still flickering across its entire body.
"Great. Thunder's paralysis actually went off."
Caster exhaled through his teeth, then reached out through their link: "Slowpoke, Courage Charge!"
"Slooow~"
Slowpoke pulled in a long, slow breath, and something shifted in its eyes. They went sharp.
Right then, Jolteon's second Thunder arrived.
Boom!
Electric current swallowed Slowpoke whole. Gold light erupted off its body so bright it was hard to look at directly.
Down in the lobby on the first floor, Albert, the Battle Tower's director, let a small smile cross his face and quietly breathed out.
Caster had been climbing through the floors far too easily. It made the Battle Tower's other gatekeepers look like warm-up acts. But now, finally, they'd drawn blood. Or the closest thing to it.
Lorelei stood with her arms crossed and said nothing.
She hadn't known Slowpoke could communicate telepathically. What she had noticed was that Caster had gone completely silent just now, no verbal commands at all, and that was unusual. When he went quiet like that, it meant something was happening.
She couldn't point to anything specific. Just a trainer's gut feeling.
When the electric light finally died down, the field came back into view.
Slowpoke looked rough. Its whole body was charred black, and the smell drifting off it was something no one in the tower had expected: a rich, savory, almost meaty scent mixed with the sweet fragrance from its tail into something that was, against all reason, oddly appetizing.
But Slowpoke's eyes weren't glazed. They weren't spinning. Its brow was furrowed tight, and it was staring straight at Jolteon with a look that, if Emanuel had to name it, he'd have called smug.
"Wait. It actually took that?"
Emanuel blinked, thrown off completely. Had it used Amnesia again mid-hit?
He shook it off. "Doesn't matter. Stacking buffs only helps you if you can actually land a hit. And you can't catch Jolteon. So all that defense just means you get to feel every Thunder on the way down. Jolteon, finish it. Thunderbolt!"
"Awoo~"
Jolteon exploded into a full sprint across the field.
Its whole strategy was built around the same idea it had been from the start: close the gap, hit hard at point-blank range where missing wasn't an option, then pull away before anything could touch it.
But this time, something felt wrong.
The faster Jolteon tried to run, the slower it actually moved, like it was pushing through wet concrete. And then it understood — the field itself had changed.
A translucent lattice flickered once across every surface, faint and almost transparent, before vanishing as though it had never been there. But Jolteon had already felt it. The whole arena was a trap.