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Chapter 28: Cave Exploration and the Mysterious Stone?
🕑 Added 2025-08-11 04:03:19 +0000 UTCWhat happened next was truly beyond Cynthia's expectations.
This Team Rocket member wasn’t weak at all—much stronger than the two Team Aqua grunts she’d encountered before!
Especially that Zubat he led with, which knew the Flying-type move Wing Attack, capable of dealing super-effective damage to all the Pokémon on Cynthia’s team.
Thankfully, Zubat didn’t have the insane physical attack power of Archen, or Cynthia might have actually been taken down by this Team Rocket “grunt.”
After winning the difficult battle, all the Pokémon on Cynthia’s team had taken damage.
Teddiursa was hit the worst—as her main fighter, he’d lost over half his HP.
Keep in mind, this was in a wild cave where Pokémon couldn’t immediately recover at a Pokémon Center like they could in cities after battles.
This was when items showed their importance.
Cynthia opened her bag, pulled out the healing items she’d bought from the shop earlier, and quickly restored all her Pokémon to full health.
At the same time, she realized something.
For her current team, Flying-types were an extremely glaring weakness. Whether it was Fighting-type Teddiursa, Grass-type Lombre, or Treecko, they all feared Flying-type attacks.
Her team currently had no moves that could counter Flying-type Pokémon...
And coincidentally, this cave was crawling with Rock-type Pokémon—perfect counters to Flying-types!
Should she catch a Rock-type Pokémon here to round out her team and cover this weakness?
As she pondered this, something else came to mind.
That’s right—Rock-type!
If she remembered correctly, after defeating Roxanne in the gym battle, she’d received a Rock Tomb TM as a reward.
That was a Rock-type move! Plus, it could restrict opponents’ movement and lower their speed!
Against Flying-type Pokémon, it was undoubtedly a solid counter.
She tried opening her bag and clicking the Rock Tomb TM, discovering that both Treecko and Teddiursa could learn this move.
After brief consideration, she positioned the cursor over Teddiursa.
Teddiursa specialized in physical attack, while Treecko was stronger with special attack. For learning a physical move like Rock Tomb, the former was definitely more suitable.
But... how exactly did you use this TM?
As Cynthia wondered about this, she pressed the confirm button, only to see a prompt pop up:
【Ding! Your Pokémon "Teddiursa" already knows four moves. Should he forget one move to replace it with Rock Tomb?】
That convenient?
Cynthia couldn’t help but pause.
The stream chat also erupted in commotion.
【Holy crap, he just learns it instantly? That’s like direct knowledge transfer!】
【Man, if we had machines like this in real life, how awesome would that be?】
【Yeah, right, this is a game. How could something like that exist in reality?】
Everyone’s strong reaction was natural.
In reality, if Pokémon wanted to learn new moves beyond leveling up and naturally learning them, the other method was through “move manuals.”
These manuals—whether paper or digital—were written by advanced trainers, containing detailed records of learning and usage insights for specific moves.
Other trainers could buy these manuals to train their Pokémon.
Whether they could actually learn the moves was another matter entirely.
After all, this form of teaching had major limitations. Every Pokémon’s situation was different, so actual learning would naturally differ from what was written in the manuals.
But if there were discs like in the game that you could just place over a Pokémon’s head for them to instantly learn new moves, plenty of people would be laughing in their dreams.
Meanwhile, after brief consideration, Cynthia replaced Teddiursa’s “Thrash.”
While Thrash was only a 60-power Dark-type move that wasn’t very strong and wasn’t STAB, it could still help Teddiursa cover certain matchups.
But among the moves Teddiursa already knew, there was another Dark-type move called “Payback”!
Although its base power of 50 didn’t look high either, this move had an additional effect—if used after the opponent, its power doubled to 100.
Teddiursa’s speed wasn’t particularly high, meaning in actual battle, he’d often end up moving second.
In those situations, Payback’s effect would naturally trigger more easily, making it clearly superior to Thrash.
With Cynthia’s choice, “Thrash” in Teddiursa’s move list was successfully replaced with “Rock Tomb.”
【Rock Tomb: Physical/Rock】
【Power: 60】
【Description: Controls numerous rocks to fall from above for attack. Has a 100% chance to lower the target Pokémon’s speed by one stage when it hits!】
With this move, Flying-type Pokémon naturally weren’t as threatening anymore.
But Cynthia knew this was just a small measure to alleviate the problem.
Catching a Pokémon that could counter Flying-types to fill her team’s blind spot was still something she needed to do later.
After learning the move, Cynthia continued advancing deeper into the cave.
Along the way, she encountered several more Team Rocket members blocking her path.
For some reason, every single Team Rocket member seemed to have a Zubat as standard equipment...
Fortunately, Teddiursa’s Rock Tomb could easily one-shot these Zubat with double super-effective damage.
And so, without consuming many supply items, Cynthia successfully reached the cave’s third floor.
The chat began discussing things.
【This new move is pretty useful, isn’t it?】
【Definitely, not so afraid of Flying-types now.】
【Isn’t anyone curious why there are so many Team Rocket people in this cave? What are they doing here? Could this be their hideout?】
【Doesn’t feel like it, they’re probably doing something bad in the cave】
【Stealing minerals? Catching rare Pokémon? Secret research? Damn, all of those seem possible】
【Ugh, those evil Team Rocket jerks...】
What the chat didn’t know was that Cynthia was thinking the same thing.
She just didn’t know... what Team Rocket’s scheme was in coming to a cave like this.
Definitely nothing good.
As she pondered this, something appearing on screen suddenly grabbed her attention.
Wait, what was...?
Before her eyes, on top of a rocky platform, sat a golden boulder.
Light filtering through cracks in the cave illuminated the stone, reflecting its ancient, weathered appearance...
And on the stone’s surface were extremely strange patterns and shapes.
It looked like—
A massive jaw?
