Looking at the disbelief written all over Caterpie's face, Mark shook his head helplessly.
"Actually, according to my original plan, you and I would spend some more time training in the Caterpie clan's territory and gain more experience.
Once you'd grown enough, I planned to take you to the Caterpie Breeding Base and see if you could become its leader.
If that didn't work, we could wait a while longer.
According to the evolution pattern of the Caterpie in Clear Stream Forest, the Caterpie Leader will evolve into Butterfree at the end of this summer, then head south to the Sea of Flowers in Yunrui Province. There's a high chance you could naturally succeed it as leader."
Butterfree beside them nodded.
In fact, Mark's words were exactly what it had been thinking.
Even if Mark and Caterpie had no intention of succeeding the leader's position, it would have taken the initiative to ask them.
Though this human-and-bug pair's Combat Training was absurd, even somewhat insane, they were trustworthy overall.
At the very least, it would feel at ease entrusting the Caterpie children of the forest to them.
"Hiss?"
Caterpie's eyes widened. This was the first time it had learned that Mark had prepared so many plans for it.
Mark gently patted Caterpie on the head. "I didn't mean to keep it from you. You're very smart, but if there are too many things on your mind, your personality makes it easy for you to overthink and affect your daily training. So I planned to tell you about the later plans when the time was right."
Caterpie showed an enlightened expression. It did seem to be just as Mark had said.
At that point, Mark let out a long sigh. "But because of Arbok's territorial expansion, many things have been disrupted.