On the sixteenth day of the trip, the weather was clear.
That morning, everyone jolted awake from nightmares. When Reiji got up he was drenched in sweat, T-shirt plastered to his skin like he'd just been dragged out of a pool.
Anyone who's spent a whole night being chased by demons and monsters in a dream would look just as wrecked. He needed a shower.
When he came out of the bathroom, the Pokémon were chattering with each other, comparing notes on whether they'd all had nightmares.
Turned out they had.
Sharp-eyed Poliwhirl had noticed how weird that was. When it saw Reiji come out, it hurried over to report that everyone had been scared in their dreams last night.
Reiji normally wouldn't have understood, but that's what Ditto was for. On Poliwhirl's cue, Ditto turned into a Ghost type—into Gastly—and pulled a spooky face.
Then Poliwhirl pointed at Ditto-Gastly and at the still-sleepy "Dummy," clearly saying they'd all been spooked like that in their dreams. In other words: nightmares.
"Scared? In a dream? Nightmares? All of you?" Reiji looked at his sixteen Pokémon. Fourteen of them had had nightmares. The only ones that hadn't woken up yet were Gastly and Dummy.
That was the weird part. There was no way it was just a coincidence that everyone had bad dreams on the same night. Rule out coincidence and there was only one explanation left: some unknown force was affecting both humans and Pokémon at the same time.
He'd already had two nightmares before this. He'd chalked them up to nerves or normal sleep stuff, figured he was just spooking himself. Clearly not. Now this was starting to look really strange. And there was one thing he knew of that could hit humans and Pokémon with nightmares together.
Darkrai.
The Pitch-Black Pokémon.
But this was the Orange Archipelago. Darkrai was supposed to be a Sinnoh Pokémon. Why would it show up here of all places?
Unless Darkrai wandered from place to place around the world. That was possible too. He wasn't sure.
Since there was no way to confirm whether it really was Darkrai, Reiji could only shelve the idea for now. He made a big breakfast for everyone. Good food should at least help chase away the lingering shadow of a bad dream.
Once they'd eaten, the team went back to their scheduled morning training.
Reiji also started his usual morning jog. Feeling the cool breeze on his face, he couldn't help thinking that his own body really was a Trainer's true foundation. He could clearly feel his physical condition steadily improving.
As for Gastly, that guy still wasn't awake. He'd have to see how it was doing at lunch.
And the black market "fishing" plan? He wasn't going anywhere near the black market in broad daylight. And he wasn't going back to the ship-black-market either. That place was fine for buying things, but that was it.
What he needed now was money. A lot of money.
Tonight, he planned to check out the underground black market in the sewers. From what he'd heard, the place was a mess. Should be perfect waters to fish in.
He was a fishing guy, after all. When it came to fishing, that was his specialty.
But he still had to scout things out properly first. If someone couldn't resist the bait, well, they'd have no one to blame but themselves.
They kept up training all the way till noon. Just as Reiji was making lunch for the Pokémon, Haunter finally woke up.
Once Haunter was awake, it reverted back down to Gastly. Its potential was the same as before, still stuck at ninety-nine point something. Reiji was used to it at this point. Until Gastly broke through the Champion threshold, he wasn't stopping. Even if he had to throw a hundred million into it.
While they were eating, he pulled out the big full-dex encyclopedia, flipped to the Dark type section, and found the page for Darkrai. He set the book where all the Pokémon could see it and asked if any of them had seen this guy before.
If Darkrai was hiding somewhere nearby, and Reiji had never noticed it, there was at least a chance one of the others had caught a glimpse.
"Yobo yobo."
Poliwhirl stared at the picture of Darkrai, then shook its head. Never seen it.
"Baaa daa."
Butterfree shook its head as well.
"Keh-li keh-li."
Pelipper also indicated that it had never seen the nightmare god.
"Sha."
Scyther gave the same answer.
Rhyhorn, Shelmet, Croagunk, Spinarak, and the rest of the team all shook their heads in turn, saying they'd never seen that kind of Pokémon either.
But when he asked Gastly, Gastly instantly tensed up, hunching over its food and guarding it with both eyes, as if terrified Darkrai would swoop in and snatch it away.
"Gastly, you have seen Darkrai?" Reiji caught that guarding-food reaction right away. Had Darkrai actually stolen Gastly's meals before?
"Ka-keh, ka-keh." Gastly nodded hard. Not only had its food been stolen, it had also been beaten up in its dreams more than ten times. Its impression of Darkrai was crystal clear, and it immediately started complaining to Reiji.
"Ka-keh! It was that one! In my dreams it stole so much of my food…"
The other Pokémon all went silent. Food in a dream… what was the point of stealing that?
Dummy shuffled over, sticking its tongue in to join the fun. It stared at the picture of Darkrai on the page.
"Whooo… lemme see. Next time it shows up, I'll help you whack it, and you can give me some of the tasty stuff…"
At that, the others all turned away, acting like they didn't know these two idiots. They'd already said it was a dream. What was there to eat in a dream? They genuinely couldn't follow the logic these two were running on.
Reiji pushed Dummy's big tongue aside. This guy wasn't even eating properly; why was he nosing into this?
He had been surprised when Gastly nodded, but after seeing Dummy butt in, he was just exasperated. Who knew what those two were saying to each other in their "encrypted" chats.
He couldn't speak Pokémon, so he had to keep asking Gastly questions directly.
"Gastly, where did you see Darkrai?"
If Gastly had met Darkrai before, how had Reiji not noticed? Gastly had barely left his sight the whole time.
"Ka-keh, ka-keh…" Gastly thought for a moment, looked at the Darkrai on the page again, and decided it had probably overreacted. The only place it'd seen that thing was in its dreams, not in the real world.
It turned to Poliwhirl. "Ka-keh ka-keh, I saw Darkrai in a dream. Will Reiji get that?"
"Yobo. Just pull a scary face," Poliwhirl explained. They'd all had nightmares yesterday and had used ghost faces to show Reiji what they meant.
"Ka-keh ka-keh."
Gastly stuck out its long tongue, eyes bulging as it glared fiercely at Reiji. After that one big ghost face, it relaxed and indicated that it had seen Darkrai in a dream.
"Scary face… got spooked… nightmare… in a dream."
Reiji deciphered Gastly's body language. It was trying to say the same thing Poliwhirl had. So the encounter with Darkrai had also been inside a dream.
If that was the case, then that nightmare he'd had the other day at noon—right before he killed himself in the dream, someone had opened the door. That had to have been Darkrai.
But where was Darkrai now?
Reiji thought it over, closed the book, and went back to the table. Then he looked slowly around the living room's shadows: the sofa's shadow, the table's shadow, the curtains' shadow, the corners of the walls…
There were shadows everywhere. If Darkrai really wanted to hide, there was no way he'd spot it.
What he didn't know was that in one of the very shadows he'd just looked at, Darkrai was curled up, watching him.
When Reiji's gaze swept over that patch of darkness, Darkrai had already tensed up, ready to slip away instantly. Then the human's eyes moved on.
Which meant Reiji hadn't found it.
When it saw itself on the page in that book just now, Darkrai had thought for sure it was blown. Turned out, it wasn't.
Gastly, on the other hand, sold it out without a second thought. It hadn't even tried to cover for Darkrai.
If it had known that earlier, it would've hit Gastly even harder last night. Either way, it was going to be betrayed. Might as well have really pounded the thing to vent.
Reiji scanned the room several more times and still didn't find anything. In the end, he had no choice but to give up.
After everyone finished lunch, he sent the Pokémon back to training while he spent the afternoon reading more training manuals—everything was about boosting their growth.
So the day passed like that. The Pokémon trained; he read. The sun crept down from overhead toward the horizon. By the time it sank, dinner was ready.
Once they'd eaten, it was time for the Spider Bandit persona to log back in.
He pulled on his full anti-stab outfit again, clipped his core Poké Balls to his belt, and climbed onto Pelipper's back to head for the harbor.
Tonight he was going to scout the sewer black market, and see if he could hook any "fish" while he was at it. He'd already prepared the bait: two Poison-type items Gastly had shed down from Advanced tier all the way to Beginner.
Two Poison-type items that had dropped from Advanced tier to newbie level were more than enough as bait.
If he used real Advanced-tier bait, he might not catch anything… but even worse, he might hook something he couldn't pull in.
He'd only been a Trainer for a bit over two months. He had just one Pokémon at a decent level, Poliwhirl. Of the rest of his battle-ready team, Kingler and Scyther were the only ones that could fight.
Croagunk had only just started his training. Ditto was just a protection mask. Spinarak was just a bit higher level than Croagunk.
Pokémon that could handle a straight fight: Poliwrath, Kingler, Scyther.
Pokémon that could barely handle a fight if they had to: Croagunk and Spinarak.
Ditto was something he didn't want to reveal unless he absolutely had to. Pelipper was transport; it needed to save its strength. If it burned too much stamina in a fight, who was going to carry him when it was time to run—cough, fly?
With a lineup like that, how was he supposed to hook "big fish"? He'd be lucky to safely handle Elite-tier fish. If some Advanced-tier monster butted in, he'd have to play everything extremely carefully. If he couldn't win, he'd have to run.
He had no intention of flipping the boat. Until he reached at least quasi–Elite Four tier, there would always be people who got a bit of strength, then started thinking they could control everything.
Those people never stopped to think that on the climb to the peak, any step you take off the main path could be the last step you ever take. You might think you're still climbing, but that one sidestep is all it takes to send the whole game crashing down.
Until he became an Elite Four–level Trainer, he had to stay cautious on top of cautious, moving carefully, like walking on thin ice.
Once he did reach Elite Four level, then he could lie flat. House, car, money—everything he'd never had in his previous life—he'd be able to get by just stretching out a hand.
For an Elite Four Trainer, people would trip over themselves to bring whatever he wanted to his door. Everything would "naturally fall into place," because in this world, strength was authority.
He absolutely couldn't let the boat capsize. He still wanted a wife.
He'd been single for more than twenty years in his last life. He'd long since forgotten his first love from his school days. After that, because of all the reasons he'd already thought through a dozen times, he'd stayed single the whole way.
Now that fate had actually let him transmigrate, if he didn't at least get a wife and then lie flat, it'd feel like he was insulting the very concept of transmigration.
For the sake of lying flat in comfort, for house, car, money, and for the warm little home with wife and kid, a bit of extra caution was more than worth it.
With that baseline set in his mind, he rode Pelipper to the edge of the city and had it look for a sewer outflow. The drains here emptied straight into the sea and connected to the sewer system. If he wanted into the underground black market, this was his entrance.
He could have used a manhole in the city itself, but then people might think he was stealing the lids. He wasn't about to get mistaken for a sewer-cover thief.
"Keh-li keh-li."
Pelipper had night vision and quickly found a huge outflow tunnel.
When Pelipper flew into it, Reiji got a good sense of just how massive the thing was. The outlet was at least three stories high. There were walkways on both sides of the tunnel, and a central channel of filthy water at least three meters across. Who knew what Bigger City had been thinking, building sewers this big.
He switched on his flashlight, recalled Pelipper, and let Croagunk out. Tonight this little guy was going to run with him, and at the same time, it made perfect bait.
A Trainer in a mask selling low-tier Poison items, with a Croagunk at his heels? Anybody looking for an easy mark would see him as a greedy little scrub. In a chaotic place like this, they'd almost feel obligated to try their luck. Leaving that kind of money on the ground would be the real stupidity.
Spinarak on his shoulder didn't need to hide either. One Spinarak, one Croagunk—he looked like a total pushover. In a place this messy, not getting mugged would almost be unnatural.
Once he'd set everything up, Reiji headed deeper into the sewers with his three Pokémon, telling Croagunk to listen carefully and lead him toward any nearby human voices.
"Kwa-kwa."
Croagunk padded ahead, then pointed down a side passage to the right. The noise was coming from that way.
"Jump."
As soon as the words were out, Spinarak and Croagunk hopped over the water channel. Reiji followed them with a jump of his own.
It was only after he landed that it hit him: the drainage ditch was more than three meters across. How the hell had he cleared that so easily?
Back in his old world, the average standing long jump for a guy was around two meters. Three meters and beyond was a competitive athlete's level.
There was no way his old self could have managed that jump, especially not that casually.
This channel was clearly over three meters wide, and he'd cleared it with no run-up at all.
That meant his body really was getting stronger.
He hadn't even noticed the change until now. Turns out, the legend about "humans turning into pseudo-Pokémon" wasn't completely made up. Still, he didn't feel that strong. It was all within reasonable bounds.
If humans really could chop Pokémon in half with their bare hands, nobody would bother becoming Trainers. Captured Pokémon wouldn't be muscle; they'd need humans to protect them.
That was never going to happen. Pokémon were still the synonym for power, especially those legendaries that could tear open space itself. That was a realm humans could only look up to.
"Croagunk, keep going."
Once Spinarak had hopped back up onto his shoulder, Reiji followed Croagunk deeper in.
Nothing else unexpected happened for a while. They eventually saw lights up ahead. On the walkway on the other side of the channel, masked strangers were walking by. Both sides watched each other warily and only relaxed once they were well past.
The closer they got to the noisy area, the more Reiji became aware of a nasty stench. It was a sewer, and the ventilation wasn't great. A stink was to be expected.
But then Croagunk made a little noise that pulled his attention.
He followed Croagunk's pointing arm with his flashlight and found the true source of the smell.
"A corpse? Is this supposed to be a welcome present?" Reiji turned the light away. There in the water was a swollen body. If nobody dragged it out, it would eventually float along with the sewage out to sea.
(End of Chapter)
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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