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"Oh?"
Rok looked at the driver's secretive expression, curiosity was immediately piqued.
"What do you mean?"
"Well… I only heard this. Can't guarantee it's one hundred percent accurate," the middle-aged driver said, raising his hand slightly to shield his mouth as he lowered his voice.
"They found signs—outside Whiteleaf Town, near the edge of the Koron Plains. Traces of Nightmare Pokémon… moving in groups."
"What?!"
Rok shot to his feet so fast his chair scraped loudly against the bus floor, startling the Breloom beside him.
That made no sense.
Whiteleaf Town hadn't been built randomly. The League only established settlements after confirming absolute safety.
Decades ago, after the Nightmare Pokémon offensive had receded, the Ignis City League had dispatched large numbers of Trainers to conduct a full-scale purge along the Koron Plains' perimeter.
On top of that, the lingering Dragon-type pressure left behind by Ignis City's guardian was supposed to ensure Nightmare Pokémon could never return to the area.
Even so, veteran Trainers were still sent every few years to patrol the region just in case.
In Rok's mind, the Whiteleaf Town massacre was already an absurd statistical anomaly.
Now he was being told that groups of Nightmare Pokémon had breached the Dragon-type deterrent?
Did that mean—
Another wave?
"Trainer—sir—please don't get worked up," the driver said hurriedly, waving his hands. "I'm not sure myself. It's just something I heard."
But Rok barely heard him.
His thoughts were already spiraling.
As he connected this rumor with the strange movements he'd noticed among several familiar Trainers lately, a heavy realization began to form.
This wasn't random.
This wasn't a coincidence.
The Nightmare Pokémon…
We're coming back.
Rok forced himself to breathe, then slowly sat back down. His face was tight, expression grim.
Looking straight at the driver, he spoke firmly.
"If there's anything else you know anything at all—tell me."
"Well…" the driver hesitated.
"It's fine," Rok said. "True or not, I need to hear it."
"…You won't blame me?"
"I won't."
The driver swallowed.
"Alright. A while back, I transported a group of professional Trainers from Crack Sand City. They were heading out on an unscheduled assignment…"
His voice dropped lower as he spoke.
The quiet bus seemed to amplify every word, as though history itself was shifting in the background.
---
Twenty minutes later—
Rok sat silently in his seat, expression unreadable.
As expected.
Combining what the driver had said with his own observations, the conclusion was impossible to ignore.
Something big was happening.
The situation was delicate.
The League had likely noticed the signs but didn't dare act openly. To avoid public panic, after years of peace, they were probably restricting information to only the strongest Trainers, preparing quietly behind the scenes.
Trainers like Rok?
Still in the dark.
A strange light flickered in his eyes.
The return of Nightmare Pokémon was a catastrophe—
But for someone like him, stuck at a developmental bottleneck…
It might also be an opportunity.
BOOM!
A sudden, distant explosion from deep within the forest shattered his thoughts.
Rok frowned and turned sharply toward the window.
Through the scratched, dust-streaked glass, he caught sight of something strange above the treetops—
A faint, fleeting blue glow.
It felt… familiar.
His mind flashed back to moments spent at the Fighting Gym.
Suddenly, his heart skipped.
Aura…?
The Gym Leader?
That blue light—
He recognized it instantly.
That was the color of the aura.
And in the entirety of Ignis City, only one Trainer and one Lucario were known to wield it.
"…Why?"
Rok stood up slowly, confusion spreading through him.
Why would the Gym Leader be anywhere near the summer camp?
Wasn't he supposed to be dealing with matters in Crack Sand City?
Unless—
There was a hidden mission?
Curiosity overcame caution.
Rok opened the bus door and stepped outside with Breloom at his side.
He looked up once more at the now-clear blue sky, hesitated only briefly—
Then, they headed toward the forest.
It was almost time for patrol anyway.
He could take a look.
---
BZZZZZZZZ—
A sudden, piercing high-frequency hum ripped through the air—far louder and sharper than the earlier explosion.
It felt like a sonic blade drilling straight into Rok's skull.
"AAAGH!"
Rok clutched his ears and collapsed to his knees, agony tearing a hoarse scream from his throat.
"What… is that?!"
A shadow fell over him.
He forced his head up and saw Breloom standing in front of him, having moved instinctively to shield him from whatever was coming.
But something was wrong.
Breloom's usual calm expression was gone.
Its posture was rigid.
Its mushroom-like cap lifted high as it stared toward the forest interior, eyes locked on something unseen filled with unmistakable wariness.
"…What is it?"
Gritting his teeth through the pain, Rok followed Breloom's gaze.
And froze.
Above the emerald sea of treetops, ribbons of brilliant pale-pink light drifted like silk in the wind.
The sky clear and blue moments ago now looked like smooth water, as if ink had been spilled across it. Waves of pink radiance spread outward, dyeing the horizon above the forest a soft, unreal rose.
Along with it came relentless psychic pressure.
The air shimmered.
Space itself warped and blurred.
The shrill noise continued, vibrating through bone and mind alike.
"…No way."
Rok's pupils shrank.
"…Did something really happen?"
That kind of phenomenon was far beyond what any camp Pokémon could cause.
Good or bad, he didn't know—
But one thing was certain.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
The spectacle above the forest was so immense that it would be visible from dozens of kilometers away.
There was no point in contacting nearby colleagues.
They'd already seen it.
Without hesitation, Rok took off running Breloom at his side charging straight into the forest.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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