If he released Farfetch'd here, his team would go back up to fifteen Pokémon. That was not a small number.
Just thinking about feeding fifteen big appetites made Reiji click his tongue. Even a rich trainer would struggle to keep up with that kind of food bill, let alone him.
On this northbound trip, even if he failed to become a Gym apprentice, he was planning to settle somewhere, open a small Day Care of his own, raise his Pokémon there, and maybe earn a bit of money on the side.
If he did get accepted as a Gym apprentice, that would be a different story. No one knew how things would look then, but wherever he went, he was definitely going to pick a place with a black market. The black market was a treasure trove; if he wanted to grow, he had to move some contraband.
Of course, he wasn't planning to rob anyone. He had no grudge against random trainers. But if someone couldn't hold back their greed and tried something on him… then that wouldn't be his fault.
After they happily finished the hot pot, Reiji recalled the Pokémon that had already eaten, leaving only Poliwhirl, Spinarak, Kingler, and Farfetch'd at his side.
The rest stayed in their Poké Balls to rest. There was no training tonight. He wasn't familiar with this deserted island at all; if a Pokémon wandered off in the dark, it would be a nightmare to find.
Of the four he kept out, three were on night watch, guarding the tents while they slept. He contributed three; Shun contributed two. Five Pokémon, one on each corner, was more than enough.
Farfetch'd didn't need to stand guard. Reiji dug into his backpack and pulled out a leek—the one he'd taken from the Pokémon hunter's bag, the one that used to belong to another Farfetch'd.
He stared at the leek for a moment, then looked over at the Farfetch'd spacing out by the fire, and held it out.
"Farfetch'd, this leek is yours. We're leaving this deserted island tomorrow. You can stay here with your own kind instead of running around with us."
"Gah-gah, gah-gah…"
Farfetch'd looked down at the leek in front of it, then up at the human offering it. This human really was different.
Not only had he not eaten it, he'd fed and watered it well, never abused it, never once mistreated it—and even when Farfetch'd gave him an attitude, he never got angry.
Now he was returning its companion's leek and telling it to stay on this deserted island and live with its own kind. But… did it really want to stay? Was this really a place it could call home?
It didn't know. Its heart was a mess. It stared at the partners it had been with for so long, thought back to all the time with them—playing in the water, watching TV together, eating together, training together. They were all kind Pokémon. Did it really want to leave them…
For a Farfetch'd, the leek wasn't just a weapon. It was also a last-resort source of food and material for its nest. Strictly speaking it wasn't an onion at all, but the thick stem of a plant.
If a Farfetch'd lost its leek, it would try to snatch one from another Farfetch'd. That alone showed how precious the leek was.
Now, this Farfetch'd had inherited the leek of a fallen companion. In the orange firelight, it stared blankly at the leek and recalled the carefree days with that partner.
Seeing Farfetch'd stay silent, Reiji didn't keep lecturing it. He instead pulled out the egg incubator.
He hadn't forgotten: today was the twenty-fifth day of incubation. Time to swap the batteries.
Today also matched Pinsir's usual hatching window. He'd already missed the hatching window for that "silly bird," for Growlithe, Cubone, Swinub, Teddiursa, Kangaskhan and the other eggs. Now he was about to miss Pinsir's window as well.
Up to now, this Pokémon Egg still hadn't shown the slightest sign of hatching. All he could do was wait for the thirty-day mark. A thirty-day incubation cycle matched Pokémon like Kabuto and Omanyte.
But those fossil Pokémon were "living fossils." There were still some surviving in the wild in underground caves; they hadn't gone completely extinct. It didn't feel right for them to show up as eggs.
He decided to just wait and see. Whatever hatched, he wouldn't be surprised…
When he took the incubator out, he noticed the heating lamp had gone out.
Which meant it was out of power. But he clearly remembered fully charging it last time and loading in two spare batteries. That should've been enough to run it for ten days.
He'd only taken it out today out of habit—he always recharged it every five days and checked whether the egg had changed at all. He hadn't expected it to already be dead.
That was strange. Was the incubator broken? Or the batteries? He swapped in a fresh pair, and the heating light and temperature display came back to life. So the incubator itself was fine.
That only left the batteries. Either they were duds, or he'd bought fake batteries—fake brand-name batteries, from a big supermarket, of all places.
Before he could start cursing, the incubator died again. The glow faded; the display went dark.
"What the heck? So it is the batteries?" Reiji muttered. "But these are from a major brand…"
Unwilling to accept it, he swapped in another pair. This time they held out for five minutes before the heating light dimmed again.
At that point he was sure it wasn't the batteries. If it were, the runtimes wouldn't be so different—two minutes the first time, five minutes the second.
He still didn't know what exactly was wrong, but he was increasingly certain that the Pokémon Egg was drawing power from the incubator, which was why the batteries were being drained so quickly.
If that was the case, he remembered that Shun's Elekid knew the move Charge. He could have Elekid juice the incubator directly. However much power the egg swallowed would tell them if it was really the culprit.
"Shun, send out Elekid and have it use Charge on the incubator," Reiji said, acting as soon as the idea formed. He set the incubator down so Shun could release Elekid.
"Reiji-nii, are the batteries shot?" Shun asked. He'd been sitting right by the fire and had seen Reiji swap batteries twice, only for both pairs to die almost immediately.
"I'm not sure yet. Let's charge it first," Reiji said. He wanted to know where the electricity was going as badly as Shun did.
In his previous life, he'd read that some Pokémon Eggs would absorb ambient energy matching their type. If this one liked electricity, then odds were good it belonged to an Electric type.
But a brown egg Electric type?
Uh… Stunfisk. Dedenne…
Yeah, no thanks. If the heavens stuck him with one of those, he was going to curse every last one of the heavens' ancestors.
"Ele-ele."
Elekid popped out, and Shun quickly explained the situation, then asked it to charge the incubator—gently.
"Ele."
Elekid nodded seriously, walked up to the incubator, put one hand on the charging port, and started windmilling its other arm to generate electricity—its usual way of building up a charge.
There was no need to worry about the incubator. The designers had accounted for Pokémon charging it directly from the start. It wasn't going to explode.
As Elekid spun its arm and fed current into the incubator, the heater light flared back to life and the temperature display lit up again.
But Elekid's expression soon turned sour. It could clearly feel the incubator sucking power out of it—whatever it pumped in, the incubator took. All of it.
Reiji didn't notice Elekid's face. His attention was glued to the egg, which was now glowing from within. A warm yellow light wrapped the whole shell, bright enough to make his eyes ache if he stared too long, completely hiding the brown markings on the surface.
Seeing that, he knew his hunch had been right. The egg was absorbing electricity, and a lot of it at that. Which meant the Pokémon inside was very likely an Electric type. No other type would love this much voltage.
There really weren't many brown eggs with Electric type pokemon. He could only think of those two. Most Electric Pokémon were golden or yellow; brown ones were rare.
If it did hatch into one of those two, he'd just give it away. Neither of them could evolve. He had zero interest in raising either for battle; at best they were pet material.
While Elekid kept charging the incubator, Reiji pulled out his little notebook. It didn't just hold training plans and tactical notes; he also tracked food consumption there.
He'd added two more Bug-type mainstays to his team. That meant recalculating their supply of premium Bug-type Pokéblocks.
They currently had three hundred boxes, ten Pokéblocks per box—three thousand in total.
Up to now, only Butterfree and Spinarak had been eating Bug-type Pokéblocks. Both of them trained lightly, so together they only went through three blocks a day. After twenty-three days, they'd eaten 138, leaving a bit over 2,800.
Now he'd added two more Bug-types. Butterfree would only take two Bug-type blocks a day since it also had Psychic-type Pokéblocks. Spinarak would get three. Scyther and Shelmet both needed serious training, so they'd each get three with meals, plus three more on heavy training days.
Four Bug-type Pokémon, seventeen blocks per day.
That left 2,862 Bug-type Pokéblocks—enough to feed all four for about a hundred and sixty-eight days. Roughly half a year.
Half a year's worth was acceptable. Reiji exhaled a little. He could worry about replenishing them later.
Food was even tighter elsewhere. His most pressing limit was two months' worth of regular milk and two months of general food and water.
After he finished the food math, he flipped the page. This section tracked his spending on Murcott Island, which was… substantial. The healing bill alone had hurt.
Pokéblocks had cost him 80,000 Pokédollars. Poliwhirl's treatment had been 5,000. Croagunk's examination and treatment, another 5,000. Poliwhirl's second visit, 3,000. Scyther's exam and treatment, 7,000.
One night's stay for the two of them at the Pokémon Center had been 10,000. The second night, Shun had paid.
He'd also bought a Scyther for 2,500,000. Honestly, he didn't like that number at all.
Then there was the frostbite treatment after he captured Scyther: 3,000.
That was all his Murcott Island spending. He hadn't spent anything on food; they'd mostly eaten from his stockpiles. Even the Pokemon Center's lunch specials weren't expensive—five to six hundred a head. He just hadn't ordered any.
Total Murcott Island spending: 2,613,000 Pokédollars.
Previous balance: 34,186,000 Pokédollars.
Current balance: 31,573,000 Pokédollars.
Looking at the final number, Reiji felt it wasn't nearly enough. If Gastly's potential checked out, this kind of small change wouldn't last. Especially not at 8,000 a box for Pokéblocks.
He could only hope prices on Mandarin Island were a little cheaper. It was a big island with its own industrial base; if prices were lower, he'd stock up on as many Life Pokéblocks as he could.
He planned to feed Gastly as many Life Pokéblocks as it wanted, letting that condensed vitality bounce back into Gastly's evolution potential and boost its limits.
If venom could also raise potential, he'd buy toxins from other Pokémon as well. Use poison and Life Pokéblocks together to push Gastly's potential, then layer in evolution and de-evolution. Three lines of attack.
But that kind of venom-based training was only risk-free for a Pokémon like Gastly, which didn't have a physical body.
Even Poison-type Pokémon struggled to handle extremely strong toxins, never mind Croagunk's lethal venom.
Croagunk itself, despite being the source of that poison, could still accidentally poison itself. Other Pokémon simply couldn't withstand its toxins. That level of venom was exactly what made Croagunk's Poison-type talent so freakish.
If Croagunk's venom problem went unsolved, its own future wasn't bright either.
Croagunk's one stroke of luck was that its poison came from a natural mutation in its own poison sacs, not from devouring and stacking foreign toxins through brutal "gu-breeding."
The former still left room to change things later. The latter… probably only a legendary Pokémon could save something that ruined.
Even then, a legendary would, at best, purge the poison. It wouldn't reinforce the body.
He knew what legendaries were like. They'd lived a very, very long time; they saw straight through human schemes. They'd never seriously help a human pushing a Pokémon that hard. In fact, there was a good chance they'd just erase that kind of human on the spot.
Counting on a legendary to bail you out? Forget it. Legendaries might have kind hearts, but not that kind. More like you tossing a sugar cube at an ant nest on a whim.
If any Pokémon could endure Croagunk's level of venom, survive, and gain a toxic gift from it, there was one species that came to mind.
And it wasn't Gastly. Gastly was one of the candidates, sure—but the best choice was actually Grimer.
Grimer was literally a mass of toxic sludge. Sewage, filth, polluted water, drainage ditches—every environment it lived in was soaked in poison. It could absorb extra venom without issue. It was already a pile of living muck.
Not that Reiji intended to catch a Grimer. The reason was simple: the smell. He just… couldn't stand it.
He closed his notebook. Once Gastly woke up, he'd start arranging its evolution/de-evolution regimen. For now, he turned his attention back to the egg.
"Ele, ele…"
Elekid looked like it was about to be wrung dry. It could clearly feel that the egg still wasn't full—still hungry for more electricity.
Seeing that, Reiji scratched his cheek, a little embarrassed, and turned to Shun. "Shun, you can recall Elekid. I didn't think the egg would soak up that much power…"
"Reiji-nii, this egg has to be an Electric-type, right? Otherwise it wouldn't love electricity this much," Shun said. He fed an Electric-type Pokéblock before recalling Elekid, then offered his own guess.
"It should be. I'm not completely sure. We'll know when it hatches," Reiji said, shaking his head. He released Butterfree, the only other Pokémon he could think of with an Electric option.
Spinarak also knew Electroweb, but Spinarak was on night watch duty. If he drained it charging the incubator, there'd be no one left to guard them. He didn't feel comfortable leaving that to anyone else.
Spinarak's webs were perfect for early warning; anyone who stumbled into camp would trigger them. As a night-watch Pokémon, it was invaluable. He couldn't waste its stamina on power generation.
"Fwee-ee."
Butterfree emerged and immediately nuzzled Reiji's cheek.
Reiji gently pushed its face away and explained that the incubator needed power, asking Butterfree to charge the egg. Its Electroweb came out of its mouth; all it had to do was spit a strand of silk onto the charging port and keep feeding current through the thread.
This time, Butterfree charged only a short while before stopping. It shook its head at Reiji, signaling that nothing was going in—the egg had stopped absorbing electricity.
Reiji rewarded it with a Bug-type Pokéblock, stroked its soft head, and recalled it.
Then he sat back down by the fire and watched the egg for another half hour. It looked exactly the same as before: brown markings, a dusty shell, none of the warm glow from earlier, and no sign of draining any more power from the incubator.
In the end, there was nothing more to see. He cleaned off the sticky silk from the charging port, tucked the incubator back into his backpack, and called Shun back to the tent.
It was already past ten at night. Time to sleep. They had to get up early tomorrow and head for Mandarin Island.
(End of Chapter)
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
[Check out my Patreon to read 20+ chapters ahead]
[[email protected]/BellAshelia]
[Thanks for your support!]