The first thing Julian realized about the Pokemon world was that it smelled like damp earth and rot.
In his previous life as a data analyst in Chicago, "nature" was a manicured park. Here, in the outskirts of a nameless hamlet on the edge of the Viridian Forest, nature was an oppressive, suffocating force. He had died in a hospital bed at thirty-four; he woke up in the body of a malnourished twelve-year-old orphan with a stabbing pain in his stomach and memories that weren't his own.
In this world, the "League" was a distant aristocracy. For the commoner, a Pokemon wasn't a friend—it was a tool, a weapon, or a predator.
The Logic of Survival
Julian sat on a mossy log, watching the treeline. He had been here for three days. His "inheritance" was a rusted bug-catching net and a single, cracked Poke Ball he'd scavenged from a shallow grave behind the village.
Most "Issekai" stories involved getting a Dratini or a Charmander. Julian had no such luck. He was a "Snatcher"—a bottom-tier scavenger who caught low-level bugs to sell to the local silk mills for pennies.
"The math doesn't add up," Julian muttered, his voice raspy.
He had spent the last forty-eight hours observing the local ecosystem. The village kids dreamt of Beedrill, but Beedrill were suicide. They lived in hives, acted with a hive mind, and their venom caused necrotic tissue damage within minutes. To catch a Weedle was to invite the wrath of the swarm.
No, he needed something manageable. Something with utility.
The Encounter
He saw it near a fallen Sitrus tree. A Caterpie.
It was nearly three feet long—much larger than the anime ever portrayed. Its skin was a vibrant, toxic green, and its osmeterium (the red antenna-like organ) flickered as it sensed the air. To a normal person, it was a "weak" bug. To Julian, it was a biological printing press.
Subject: Caterpie (Low Tier)
Condition: Wild, wary.
Potential: High-tensile silk production, sensory detection.
Julian didn't run at it. He didn't yell "I choose you." Instead, he pulled a small pouch of fermented berries he'd gathered. He knew that Caterpie were voracious eaters, spending 90% of their time consuming foliage to prepare for evolution.
He tossed a berry. It landed five feet from the larva.
The Caterpie froze. It didn't have "cute" eyes; it had black, multifaceted orbs that reflected Julian's gaunt face. It crawled forward, its suction-cup feet making a wet thwip-thwip sound on the bark. It ate.
Julian tossed another, closer. Then another.
He did this for three hours. He didn't try to catch it. He waited until the sun began to dip, casting long, jagged shadows across the forest floor—the time when the Pidgeotto started their evening hunt.
The Caterpie felt the shift in temperature and the vibration of wings above. It panicked, looking for cover. Julian held out his hand, offering the last, largest berry right next to his rusted net.
The bug lunged. Julian didn't use the net. He pressed the button on the cracked Poke Ball.
A flash of violent red light. The ball shook once, twice, and then hissed. The seal didn't even click properly; he had to hold it shut with a piece of twine.
The Harsh Reality
"You're not a pet," Julian whispered to the ball, his heart hammering against his ribs. "You're my ticket out of the dirt."
He returned to his "home"—a lean-to made of corrugated metal and pine branches. He released the Caterpie. It immediately reared up, its osmeterium emitting a foul, acidic stench that made Julian's eyes water.
"Easy," Julian said, keeping his distance. "I have food. You have protection. We're partners."
The Caterpie didn't understand English, but it understood the pile of leaves Julian had spent the morning gathering. It began to eat ravenously.
Julian pulled out a notebook he'd fashioned from bark and charcoal. He began to calculate.
Average Silk Output: A Caterpie can produce approximately S meters of silk per day.
Tensile Strength: High enough to bridge gaps or create snares.
Evolutionary Clock: If fed optimally, Metapod stage occurs in 7–10 days.
But Julian didn't want a Metapod. A Metapod was a decorative rock that waited to be eaten. He needed to stall the evolution. He needed the silk.
The First Test
The next morning, the "Tax Collector" arrived. In this region, it wasn't the government; it was the Miller's sons—three teenagers with a bruised Machop and a mean streak.
"Hey, Snatcher," the leader, a boy named Galt, spat. "Where's the tribute? My old man says you're squatting on mill land."
Julian stood in front of his lean-to. The Caterpie was hidden inside, under a pile of burlap.
"I don't have credits," Julian said calmly, his mind racing through variables. "But I have a proposition. You're trying to catch the Scyther that's been killing the livestock in the north pasture, right?"
Galt blinked, his Machop flexing its grey muscles. "What's it to you?"
"Scyther move at speeds exceeding 50 miles per hour in short bursts," Julian said, his Chicago analyst brain taking over. "Your Machop is a brawler. It'll be shredded before it lands a Low Kick. You need a snare. Not hemp rope—Pokemon silk."
"You don't have enough silk to trip a Scyther," Galt laughed.
"I will," Julian said. "If you give me three days of peace and a bag of high-protein feed, I'll give you a web strong enough to hold a Tauros. If I fail, you take the net and the ball."
Galt looked at the pathetic lean-to, then at Julian's unnervingly steady eyes. "Three days. If there's no silk, I let Machop use your ribs for Karate Chop practice."
The Grind
As soon as they left, Julian turned to the Caterpie.
"We have work to do," he said.
He didn't just let the bug produce silk naturally. He began "Stress-Training." He used a small needle to prick the silk glands gently, forcing a reactionary over-production. It was cruel, and the Caterpie hissed in pain, but Julian softened the blow with the best berries he could find.
He wasn't playing a game. He was surviving a nightmare.
By the second night, his hands were raw from weaving. He wasn't making a rope; he was making a non-Newtonian lattice. By layering the silk in a specific geometric pattern—a trick he remembered from a structural engineering report—he could create a net that tightened the more a target struggled.The spring constant of the silk was his only hope. If he could maximize the elasticity, the Scyther's own momentum would be its undoing.
The Night of the Hunt
On the third night, Julian didn't wait for Galt. He went to the north pasture himself.
He knew Galt was a thug, not a strategist. If Julian gave Galt the net, Galt would mess it up and Julian would still get beaten. He had to prove his value as a "Tactician."
He found the Scyther's trail—severed stalks of grass, clean as a razor's edge. He set the trap between two sturdy oak trees. He didn't use himself as bait; he used the Caterpie's scent. He forced the bug to spray its osmeterium musk onto a central point in the web.
Then, they hid.
The Scyther arrived like a ghost. It was a blur of emerald and steel, its scythes gleaming in the moonlight. It smelled the Caterpie—an easy snack—and charged.
Zip.
The sound wasn't a crash. It was the sound of a thousand silk threads singing at once. The Scyther hit the web at full tilt. The non-Newtonian weave hardened instantly on impact. The more the mantis-mon flailed, the tighter the silk bit into its joints.
The Scyther let out a chilling, metallic scream.
Julian stepped out from the shadows, his Caterpie perched on his shoulder, trembling. Julian looked at the most dangerous predator in the woods, now a gift-wrapped package.
"Smart beats strong," Julian whispered, mostly to himself. "Every single time."
He heard footsteps. Galt and his goons were approaching, lured by the scream. Julian adjusted his posture, wiped the dirt from his face, and prepared to negotiate his way into a life that didn't involve sleeping on the ground.
Julian didn't wait for Galt to find him. He stood in the moonlight, a silhouette of a boy holding a sharp rock near the trapped Scyther's throat. When Galt and his goons broke through the brush, they stopped dead.
"You caught it," Galt whispered, his bravado replaced by genuine fear. The Scyther was a localized nightmare, a creature that had maimed grown men. Seeing it bundled like a common roast was a reality check.
"I didn't just catch it," Julian said, his voice cold and analytical. "I secured it. Now, we talk about my new position