"Battle start! Blue team, attack first!"
With the referee's order, the Pokémon of both teams immediately took on combat stances.
The clash was incredibly intense, and every spectator in the stadium was completely thrilled.
On the giant screen, the scenes of each skirmish kept shifting, and the flow of the battle was astonishingly close to what Ethan Black had predicted.
It could be said that from the very moment of team selection, Team Devon had already lost.
A single Rhydon with the Lightning Rod ability was enough to completely dismantle Team Devon's entire plan, and in the end, Team SkyCrown took a crushing victory.
"So this is the Pokémon Professional League...?"
"In this kind of battle, the most important thing is team coordination and team composition."
"However, it seems that in this world research on Pokémon is still not very advanced."
"After all, Pokémon only appeared in the real world a little over twenty years ago. Many things are still not fully understood."
"On top of that, this competition has a certain degree of spectacle. Those families who master powerful strategies surely won't reveal them to the public... things like weather teams, terrain teams, and so on."
Ethan Black reflected silently. In the selection phase, he had already managed to deduce Team SkyCrown's strategy very clearly. If he had been in their place, upon seeing the opponent choose Rhydon, he definitely would not have chosen the heavy Feraligatr, but instead a fast Water- or Grass-type attacker.
With the quadruple type advantage, a single well-executed strike would be enough to defeat Rhydon. Even if the Pokémon delivering the blow fell afterward, the trade would still be worth it.
By eliminating Rhydon, the team's main defender, Electabuzz in the air could then become a magical artillery platform, and neither Pelipper nor Walrein would be able to counter it.
In that scenario, Team Devon could truly have turned the match around and won the championship.
In reality, even without specifically drafting different Pokémon, Team Devon's lineup still had winning chances.
After all, Sneasel, with its Ice typing, still had double effectiveness against Rhydon. If at the very start of the battle all of Team Devon's Pokémon had focused on attacking and eliminating Rhydon, there also would have been good odds of victory.
But to be fair, in an era where abilities are not yet fully revealed, the fact that Team SkyCrown had already managed to develop Rhydon's Lightning Rod ability to such an extent shows just how strong they were.
It must be remembered that abilities were still a very vague concept. For example, Lightning Rod in Rhydon: if not specifically trained, at most it could absorb a little electricity when very close to the source of the attack.
That's why, even though some people noticed Rhydon absorbing electrical energy, they never connected it to an ability like Lightning Rod, and only saw it as some kind of special reaction from Ground-type Pokémon to electricity.
But making a Rhydon capable of drawing lightning from the sky—that definitely isn't achieved overnight.
With that kind of thorough preparation from Team SkyCrown, Team Devon's defeat was not unjust.
And that is precisely what the advantage of information represents. And that very point... is Ethan Black's greatest trump card.
As someone who traveled from another world, if he were ever to lead a battle team, he would definitely bring about unexpected and astonishing results.
Of course, he only thought that to himself. His identity as a world traveler could never be revealed. Besides, he was only 18 years old. If he were to show up at a team claiming he wanted to be head coach, they'd surely think he was crazy!
(End of Chapter)