The Path of a Genius to Becoming a Pokémon Champion

Chapter 218: The League Begins

Faced with Arthur's question, Bella could only sigh helplessly.

"This... is an unsolvable problem. There's no good solution."

Arthur was silent for a moment.

"Why did it turn out like this?"

He was genuinely confused.

The Heavenly King who had transmigrated from two hundred years ago had clearly not experienced the madness of the internet age and simply could not comprehend the fanaticism born from this kind of fan effect.

From Arthur's perspective, he had had almost no interaction with the Otter Team.

They had sent him an invitation, but because the conditions they offered were too overbearing and he was unwilling to let others interfere with his plans for training his Pokémon, he had refused. It was as simple as that.

Why had it turned into this?

Luna looked at him and suddenly sighed.

So there are things you can't handle after all. Only at times like these do you truly seem like a sixteen-year-old boy, she thought for no reason.

"This can't be helped. This is just how this era is. The fan effect can bring huge economic benefits to the clubs, so they are happy to promote these rivalries and conflicts, even if the parties involved don't actually want to stir up trouble."

Hearing this, Arthur's gaze instantly sharpened.

"Are you saying the Otter Team was behind this?!"

Bella shrugged. "It's not related to the team's players, but it's definitely related to the team's operations. The operations departments of these clubs now especially love to engage in this 'fan circle' model. The more fanatical the fans, the stronger their purchasing power. To them, pathological fans are the most high-quality fans."

To be honest, Arthur was already starting to get angry.

"Just because of this? Just because of this, they can randomly drag irrelevant people into it? What kind of victory or defeat can't be settled in the arena? What's the point of pulling these kinds of tricks?!"

To this, Luna could only give him a "you're still too young" look.

"All crows under the sky are black. Almost every club is like this now. This current drama you're in, our own team's operations department might even be fanning the flames."

The two of them—one with a professional career spanning many years, the other a master of online sarcasm before even going pro—had long since seen through such things and become detached, their mentalities as saintly as a Buddha's.

Only Arthur, this "naive youth" who had hardly ever surfed the internet, still felt a lingering sense of indignation.

He then also took out his phone, opened the group chat, and read the fan's pleas for help, one by one.

He remembered this girl. Her real name was Liu Yingwen. She was a high school girl who had added him as a friend back during the Golden Autumn Cup qualifiers, one of his earliest fans.

He still remembered when he had just started streaming and had little popularity, it was this girl and her classmates who had helped him make highlight reels, submitted them to various video websites, and even added music and editing, doing it with great care.

They had brought him his first wave of popularity for his stream.

This was a fan he would always remember, even if he rarely went online.

But now, she was as helpless in the group chat as a Pidove facing a wicked dragon.

Simply because she had spoken up for Arthur a few times after the drama started, and being too young, had been tricked into revealing her information, she was then doxxed by a small group of fanatical fans.

Scrolling all the way up, Arthur read through the entire afternoon's chat history.

By the time he finished, the food on the table had gone cold.

"What can I do?" he lifted his head and asked Bella coolly.

Bella, chewing on a bubble tea straw after her meal, answered very helplessly, "Honestly, the best thing for you to do right now is to do nothing. The more you do, the more mistakes you'll make."

Arthur was silent.

He wasn't stupid. With a little thought, he understood what Bella meant.

Luna also advised, "Every team has its fanatical fans. Just remind that kid in the group to be more careful in the future. When you run into something like this, you can only consider yourself unlucky."

Arthur picked up his chopsticks again. At this moment, for no reason, he felt a growing disgust for the current state of this circle.

As he ate, he asked again, "If we beat the Otter Team later, will the situation get any better?"

Luna shrugged. "It doesn't really have anything to do with the Otter Team itself; their players most likely don't even know about this. But well, if you can really win, it's definitely a good thing. At least it'll be a slap in the face to those rabid fans and let off some steam for that little fan of yours."

"Will we face Otter in the upcoming training matches?"

Scheduling training matches mainly depended on the head coach's ability; the players usually didn't know in advance.

But Bella thought for a moment and said, "We have in previous years. The Otter Team's base is the closest to ours, so we usually schedule a match, as long as they still think we're worthy."

Arthur nodded.

For his recent training, he suddenly had a bit more motivation.

That night, he made a point to privately message Liu Yingwen to comfort her, which left her feeling flattered and overwhelmed.

Because he typed slowly, Arthur used voice messages to chat with her the whole time. When the rhythm of the conversation slowly went off-track and she started asking him to coax her to sleep, Arthur decisively used the excuse of taking a shower to cut off the chat.

The girls of this era seemed to mature remarkably early; he felt he couldn't quite handle it…

However, he had achieved his goal of helping her cheer up.

Afterward, the storm gradually subsided. Since there were no major changes involving big-name star players during this year's transfer window, the entire period seemed rather uneventful.

The grudge between a mere rookie like Arthur and the Otter Team had even ranked among the top three major events of the transfer season.

Of course, this was also related to the immense popularity Arthur had before even stepping into the professional scene.

Afterward, December passed by in a flash.

In the blink of an eye, Arthur welcomed his second New Year since transmigrating.

The Kubfu of this world didn't have a Spring Festival, but correspondingly, there was a major festival at the beginning of the year, at the end of winter, symbolizing the welcoming of spring.

After this festival, the off-season was more or less over.

When spring came in February, the new year's professional league began again!

This year, there were still seventeen teams in the league competing for the championship title.

The regular season was a grand round-robin, where each team needed to play against the other sixteen teams once. The final ranking would be based on points.

The top eight teams could enter the playoffs.

The playoffs used a double-elimination format, divided into a winners' bracket and a losers' bracket. The top four from the regular season would enter the winners' bracket, and the fifth to eighth would enter the losers' bracket.

Finally, the champion would be decided after battling through the playoffs.

However, besides the champion, the top four teams in this year's professional league playoffs would all earn league points. After next year's professional league concluded, the four teams with the highest total points would represent Kubfu in the Champions Cup.

In last year's Champions Cup, Kubfu's best performer was the Blaze Team, which was generally not favored before the tournament. They ultimately secured third place.

Looking at the Champions Cup over the last decade, this was already a relatively good result for Kubfu.

So, for this year's league regular season, the very first opening match was the Blaze Team against one of the old "Big Three," the Jinchan Team.

And subsequently, the second match of the same day was somewhat unexpected!

One of the two opposing sides was not an old, popular team.

But the buzz around this match was not small either. Back during the transfer window, there had been a series of storms and dramas between these two teams.

This matchup was precisely—

The Sea Carp Team versus the Otter Team!

(End of Chapter)

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