Actually, even without the contract, Ash wasn't worried at all. After all, Erika is a Gym Leader, so she can't just disappear. Besides, with Erika's wealth, she doesn't really care about the profits; she's interested in expanding and strengthening her perfume business.
After everything was settled, Ash and his friends waved goodbye to Erika. As for the revenue, a money transfer would be made to Ash a week after the perfume goes on sale, with subsequent transfers on a monthly basis.
This week's transfer was because Erika knew about Ash's financial situation. If it got delayed by a month, Ash would probably have to rely on street battles during that time.
Besides, the money from street battles likely wouldn't allow the Pokemon to reach full developmental potential.
So logically and reasonably, the transfer date needed to be moved up. Otherwise, delaying by a month could significantly impact Ash's performance in the Quartz Conference.
Ash happily agreed to this plan.
However, the sale of the perfume couldn't be done immediately. Although Ash's formula wasn't complicated, some time was needed to master the process of replicating the perfume perfectly. It was estimated to take around three to four days.
Erika had already informed Ash about this.
Ash originally planned to stay in Celadon City a bit longer and, once the money came in, go shopping at the department store to gear up all his Pokemon. But now it seemed that the wait was a bit too long, so he'll have to wait until next time.
…
After leaving Erika's perfume shop, Ash and his friends headed towards Beauty Street in Celadon City. However, they didn't make it there before encountering an issue on the next street: many children seemed to have disappeared.
So Ash and his friends decided to investigate and found out it was Hypno causing the trouble. They located those hypnotized kids in a park, and Ash immediately had Gardevoir lift the hypnosis from all of them, bringing the situation to a satisfactory conclusion.
After everything was resolved, Misty encountered a Psyduck that seemed dazed. Initially, Misty thought it hadn't been released from hypnosis, but even after Ash summoned Gardevoir, they couldn't break Psyduck's hypnosis.
In a twist of fate, Psyduck accidentally touched Misty's Pokeball, inadvertently becoming her Pokemon.
This left Misty's face turning completely dark!
Although Psyduck is a Water Type Pokemon, this particular Psyduck clearly had issues!
In its usual state, it seemed just as dazed and silly as other Pokemon under hypnosis!
Misty had no idea how she was supposed to raise such a Pokemon!
But Misty had already caught it, so she could only accept her fate. She couldn't bring herself to release it back into the wild.
However, Ash comforted Misty, saying that this Psyduck might turn out to be quite strong.
Misty just chuckled dryly at Ash's comfort, without replying.
Strong or not, can't I tell by looking at it? If this thing turns out to be strong, I'd write my name backwards!
In fact, Ash wasn't just comforting Misty. According to the data from the Eye of Insight, this Psyduck's strength ranged from Newbie Level Peak to Professional Peak.
Ash had seen fluctuations in potential, and he'd seen fluctuations in ability values, but he had never seen fluctuations at the level of skill, especially such an exaggerated fluctuation!
What does this mean? It means that when it's weak, this Psyduck couldn't even beat a newbie, but when it's strong, it could go toe-to-toe with someone at the Professional Peak level!
However, exactly how its power was triggered remained unclear to Ash.
After capturing Psyduck, Ash and his friends continued on their journey and finally arrived at Beauty Street before nightfall. They then found a random inn, took a bath, had a meal, and started looking for the person Brock wanted to find.
The person was named Suzie, and with a little inquiry on Beauty Street, they found her shop. She seemed to be quite famous on Beauty Street.
On Beauty Street, each shop displayed signs related to breeding, offering relaxation, massage, fatigue elimination, vitality enhancement, and so on...
On the surface, breeding skills seemed capable of anything, but many breeders were just pretending and doing something else instead.
Massage was a basic skill that breeders were supposed to learn, but to truly relax a Pokemon through massage, eliminate fatigue, or even enhance its vitality, was something only a Professional Breeder could do.
Even Brock couldn't do that yet. Instead, Ash was the one who could do it. After all, he had inherited some top-level breeder abilities, along with his Aura Power and Power of Viridian, making massage just a routine skill when combined with those two special powers.
And on Beauty Street, the only recognized Professional Breeder was Suzie!
"I'm telling you, Suzie has been consistently rated as the most popular breeder and the Professional Breeder Beauty of Kanto. You guys better be polite when you meet her," Brock chattered away, making the other two and Pikachu feel like their ears were growing calluses.
"Got it, got it, you've said it at least five times already! Is this Suzie really that amazing?" Ash mumbled somewhat helplessly. When it came to breeding skills, he might not be the most elite, but he'd seen the top-tier folks.