From a pure power standpoint, among the three gangs the Rock gang's boss is the strongest, then comes Poison gang's boss Viper, with Storm gang's boss Riku in last place.
After hearing the peddler's breakdown, Reiji could already sketch the balance of power between the three gangs in his head.
In a black market, the boss's strength is what really matters.
If the boss loses, it doesn't matter how many small fries win—nothing changes.
"You're not wrong. In those uneven cave tunnels, the Rock gang really are the most combat-ready gang. Once the fight shifts to water, though, things can flip…" the peddler added.
"Yeah." Reiji nodded slightly, turning it over in his mind.
He remembered that both the Rock gang and Poison gang bosses had an Electric-type on their squads.
Obviously, that was to keep Riku's Water-types in check.
Looking at it that way, Storm gang really was the weakest of the three.
On dry land, Ground-types held a clear advantage, especially in a maze-like underground cave system.
Poison-types were just as terrifying.
Once a Pokémon was badly poisoned, it was basically out of the fight, and curing poison took time and resources.
In the water, Storm gang's Pokémon would constantly face the threat of Electric-types, hemmed in on every side.
Reiji couldn't help wondering how that gang had even survived this long in such a bad matchup.
Most likely, when the old Bug gang still existed at the bottom, Storm gang never felt real pressure.
Only after they dropped to the bottom themselves did they wake up to the fact that they were at a disadvantage against everyone.
"What else do you want to know? I'll tell you everything I know." The peddler blew a lazy smoke ring, feeling like this was the easiest money he'd made in a while. Just a bit of small talk and he'd earned a nice payout—much simpler than haggling over junk at his stall.
"That's enough." Reiji handed over the remaining thirty thousand, then turned away from the drain outlet, ready to start tonight's "fishing trip."
"Oh, right, kid—seeing how generous you are, I'll throw in a free tip." The peddler lowered his voice. "Lately, Poison gang's boss and Storm gang's boss have been meeting a lot. Looks like they're planning something big. If you don't want trouble, best not to come down here too often. Go back up top and lay low for a while…"
"Thanks." Reiji thanked him, then left the outlet and headed back toward the black market run by Poison gang.
Given that he was selling Poison-type items, he really had picked the perfect place.
"Kid, the ones in black uniforms are Poison gang members. Don't mess with them if you can help it…" the peddler added once Reiji's back was to him.
Reiji just lifted a hand in a silent wave and disappeared into the darkness of the sewers.
His thoughts kept circling around that bit of news about the Poison gang and Storm gang bosses meeting frequently.
Were they planning to team up against the Rock gang?
According to the peddler, when the Bug gang still existed, the three gangs kept each other in check and the place stayed relatively orderly.
Then Poison gang burst onto the scene, wiped out the weakest Bug gang in one move, took their turf, pushed Storm gang down to third place, and held onto second with overwhelming force.
Now it looked like Poison gang wanted to ally with Storm gang to crush the Rock gang.
But if they really took down the Rock gang, would Poison gang actually spare their "ally" afterward?
He already knew the answer.
Of course not.
Poison gang would almost certainly turn around and hit Storm gang next—maybe even wipe them out—so they could seize total control of the Trovitopolis sewer black market.
This wasn't some simple turf reshuffle.
Ever since they devoured the Bug gang, Poison gang hadn't tried to maintain any kind of three-way balance. From the start, they'd aimed to eliminate all rivals and monopolize the whole black market.
That style—dragging their underlings up by smashing the competition—reminded Reiji uncomfortably of Team Rocket.
If he hadn't seen what Team Rocket was like back in Kinnow City, maybe he wouldn't be making the connection.
But the second Team Rocket got involved, he felt like no matter where he went, he could never really get away from their shadow.
Especially this Poison gang boss—Viper.
Just look at his team: Arbok, Nidoking, Victreebel, Magnezone, Golbat, and Weezing. Six Poison-types.
Arbok, Golbat, Weezing—those three on the same roster were practically the standard issue Team Rocket loadout.
It was hard not to suspect who he might really be working for.
If this place really was a Team Rocket base aiming to unify the Trovitopolis underworld, then Reiji's urge to bail spiked hard.
He wanted nothing to do with Team Rocket.
Once that leech of an organization stuck to you, shaking them off was almost impossible.
But he needed money. Desperately.
He needed money to buy resources for Gastly, and badly.
All he could do was pray he could make his money without drawing Team Rocket's attention—or their kill order.
Back in Poison gang's slice of the black market, he found one of the uniformed guards running the place, paid the thousand-Pokédollar stall fee, and picked an empty patch of ground to lay out his "shop."
He took out Black Sludge and a Toxic Orb from his jar of loot and labeled them as rookie items.
Those two would be the bait.
There was no need to display anything else. He didn't want Team Rocket's eyes to land on his bait by mistake.
He'd chosen these two after careful thought.
Beginner-tier gear wasn't rare in a place like this.
Since rookie items weren't very useful for Advanced-tier trainers,that meant they wouldn't attract high-level trainers at all.
Items weren't like evolution stones.
Sure, both got more valuable the higher the tier, but even low-tier evolution stones still had real use—they could evolve a Pokémon.
Low-tier items, by contrast, did nothing for higher-level Pokémon, so their price stayed low.
He had barely finished laying out the two items when a masked man wandered over to ask the price.
"How much for these rookie items?"
"Two million each," Reiji said casually.
He knew rookie items usually went for under a million.
But he wasn't here to run an item stall.
The actual price didn't matter.
"Two million? Why don't you just rob me while you're at it?"
"If you're not buying, get lost. What are you yelling at me for?" Reiji shot him a glare. "It's not like I'm forcing you to buy anything."
He had no intention of hiding his attitude.
Provoking people was the whole point of this "fishing" setup.
"Fine, fine. Cocky little punk. Just you wait…"
"Heh." Reiji watched the man walk off, a cold smile curling under his mask.
If you act too arrogant, you die ugly—that was exactly what he was counting on.
He stayed put, not packing up until that furious masked man came back.
The only reason he hadn't left earlier was because he was waiting for the guy to call in backup.
Judging by his body language, that was exactly what he'd gone to do.
Right into the trap.
While he waited, a few other people came by asking about the price.
Reiji answered all of them the same way, chasing them off with that "go away if you're not buying" attitude.
From the corner of his eye he could see plenty of onlookers watching his stall, whispering about him. Everyone knew there was a ridiculously arrogant newcomer here now.
Only after he had slowly packed up his goods and stepped out of the cave did he finally gain the tail he'd been fishing for—a small crowd of people he'd just pissed off.
He didn't care in the slightest.
He slipped out of the black market and into the unlit stretch of the sewer tunnels.
Seeing him "run," the people behind him assumed he was scared and bolted after him.
But Reiji was already waiting at the next corner.
As they turned into the bend of the sewer, he shouted, "Now!"
"Damn it, it's an ambush—!"
"The flashlights! Something knocked out the flashlights—!"
Four men had followed him in all.
Their flashlights were smashed in the opening instant, and these weren't complete amateurs—they reacted quickly and reached for their Poké Balls.
Too late.
At the exact moment Poliwhirl and Kingler smashed their lights into the filth, Scyther's blades were already swinging.
The buzzing of wings roared through the dark.
Scyther flashed forward in a green blur, a single pass of its scythes sending three heads flying.
Only the last one survived the first strike, blocking with Protect at the last second so that the scythe slammed against a shimmering barrier instead of flesh.
"All together. Don't let him run."
The instant Reiji saw the survivor throw out his Pokémon and try to flee, he gave the order.
There was no way he was letting anyone walk out of here.
At his shout, Poliwhirl exploded forward, legs driving off the wet concrete as it lunged.
Kingler surged up out of the sewage channel, towering claws cutting off any path back.
Scyther stayed locked onto the enemy trainer, harassing and herding him so he couldn't escape.
Even though the guy had his Pokémon out, under the three-on-one assault from Poliwhirl and the others, he still went down hard.
Reiji had Spinarak handle the looting, while the three headless corpses he just kicked into the sewage channel.
The current would carry them straight out to sea.
As for the one they'd spared, he'd already been knocked cold.
He only had three Pokémon to his name: a Spinarak, a Weepinbell, and a Tentacool.
With that kind of lineup, he'd dared to chase Reiji.
These idiots really had no idea how high the sky was or how deep the water ran.
The other three hadn't even set up basic anti-ambush precautions.
Scyther had decapitated them in one strike.
This was exactly what Reiji wanted: lure in rookies who thought they could rob a cocky "newcomer" for a quick score.
Guys with that mindset were almost never strong.
If someone serious showed up instead, cleaning them up would be a much bigger headache.
After finishing off the last man, he collected all four people's loot—three backpacks in total—and left the sewers, heading for the drain outlet to do inventory.
The four of them had ten Pokémon between them, eight Poison-types and two Grass-types: Spinarak, Weepinbell, Tentacool, Ekans, Grimer, another Weepinbell, Golbat, Gloom, Beedrill, and Lombre.
What a pile of trash.
Bottom-tier lineups from bottom-tier crooks, still trying to play black-on-black in the underworld.
After checking their Pokémon, he emptied out all three backpacks.
Altogether, they'd been carrying 2.8 million Pokédollars, four bank cards, and two ID cards.
Since the other two cards weren't matched with any ID, there was no way for Reiji to guess the passwords.
He just chucked those bank cards into the sea—they were dead weight anyway.
The more valuable items included a rookie item, Poison Barb; a low-purity Leaf Stone; a heap of Antidotes and all kinds of other medicines.
There were also poison sacs, a mess of daggers and short knives, piles of Poké Balls, and both Poison- and Grass-type Pokéblocks.
He found some ugly, broken stones mixed in as well.
On a closer look, he saw embedded bone fragments—probably fossils dug up in the caves.
Aside from adding to a collection, he couldn't think of any use for those rocks.
He'd be able to get a living fossil like Kabutops if he really wanted; compared to that, these busted stones were worthless.
He also turned up several Poison-type breeding manuals.
The kind of trash books you'd find on a street stall, and someone had actually bothered to read them.
Reiji was speechless. Use them and you'd probably just poison your own Pokémon to death.
He kept the few things that were worth something and threw all the junk straight into the sea.
He had no interest in their clothes or food.
This wasn't survival on an uninhabited island anymore—he wasn't desperate enough to wear some dead crook's second-hand clothes.
The poison sacs and Poison-type Pokéblocks he fed to Gastly, and tossed the useless ones.
Anything still useful went into his own backpack.
Once he'd finished sorting out their belongings, Reiji decided to go find that young bartender from before.
Someone like that would definitely know how to move this kind of mixed goods.
He had no intention of going back to set up a stall again.
The moment he showed his face in the black market, even idiots would realize those four were already dead, and he'd never move this stuff from an open stall anyway.
He wasn't sure if anyone would still be stupid enough to bite after word got out that those four had disappeared.
If business really dried up, he could always head back to the Black Ship.
The haul from that last trip had been way better than this.
Reiji returned to the harbor bar and quickly spotted the young bartender.
He liked that the guy was about his age, efficient, and didn't waste time on nonsense.
For this kind of job, that was exactly the sort of middleman he wanted.
The second he saw Reiji walk in, the young bartender understood.
If Reiji had come back, there was definitely something that needed handling—and the cut wouldn't be small.
Smart kid that he was, he immediately led Reiji back out of the bar.
"Sir, what can I do for you this time?" the young bartender asked respectfully once they were outside.
"I need to sell some goods—both Pokémon and items. Find me a buyer and there's fifty thousand in it for you." Reiji lifted his gloved right hand, five fingers spread to show the amount.
"Understood, sir. Please, come with me."
Hearing that, the bartender knew Reiji had once again gotten his hands on hot merchandise.
He hurried to lead Reiji through a few side streets to a small corner shop that looked like it only sold cigarettes and alcohol.
That was just a front.
If the bartender hadn't brought him, Reiji would never have guessed this place fenced black-market goods.
"Sir, this is the place."
The bartender pushed open the door to the general store and shouted toward the counter, "Old man, we've got a deal!"
"What are you doing here, brat?"
The grey-capped old man behind the counter was the shopkeeper.
"Boss, take a look at these and tell me what they're worth." Reiji dropped three backpacks onto the counter. Only one still held anything; the other two were empty.
Besides the three backpacks, there were ten Pokémon, a rookie item Poison Barb, a low-purity Leaf Stone, a stack of Antidotes and other medicines, plus a bundle of knives, a pile of Poké Balls, and the Grass-type Pokéblocks.
Those ugly fossil stones he'd found in the cave, as well as the street-stall manuals, were all stuffed in there too.
He himself had already kept the 2.8 million in cash, the two ID cards, and two of the bank cards, along with poison sacs and Poison-type Pokéblocks—the ones he'd already fed to Gastly.
Those unknown toxins were something only Gastly could handle safely.
(End of Chapter)
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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