It was said that a small family had once possessed a Technical Machine for Dragon Dance, though its strongest member had only been a quasi-Elite Four-level trainer.
When word got out, a mysterious Elite Four-level trainer wiped out the family overnight, leaving no survivors. The Dragon Dance Technical Machine vanished too, and that trainer was still wanted by Pokémon Leagues everywhere.
Reality was no anime. It was often far bloodier. This world did not believe that justice always prevailed. It believed in survival of the fittest.
"You two have talent. Even if you don't have to attend classes, don't slack off. Train hard, and you might earn places in this year's provincial tournament."
Principal Liu Qingshan encouraged them, then told them to collect their rewards from the school storeroom and said they could leave.
Ye Lan and Lin Yan left the principal's office. Lin Yan barely spoke on the way, but he could not hide the joy in his eyes.
The principal had clearly made the decision on a whim. For a single assessment, a Protect TM was an awfully valuable reward.
Ye Lan was delighted too. He had never expected the principal to be so generous. A free Protect TM just for passing an assessment? What a decent man!
But he soon realized that if their Starter Pokémon had not been Snivy and Charmander, the principal probably would not have been so generous.
"We'll be training together from now on. When we have time, we can battle to see how far we've come. What do you think?"
Ye Lan put the idea to Lin Yan. Truth be told, he was glad Lin Yan had passed too.
With Charmander as an opponent, Snivy would improve much faster. The little fellow would just have to suffer a bit more for it.
"Sure. It's a deal!"
Lin Yan was usually quiet, but the moment battling came up, his eyes seemed to burn with excitement.
Even Charmander sensed his trainer's fighting spirit, and the flame on his tail flared brighter.
"Char!"
Ye Lan's mouth twitched at the sight. Lin Yan got fired up whenever battling came up, yet he had not fought a single match. How had he gotten so hooked already?
By then, the principal had announced over the school broadcast that Ye Lan and Lin Yan had passed the assessment and no longer needed to attend the relevant Pokémon classes. Every final-year student had heard the news.
It was an effective way to motivate the students to study.
After all, passing the assessment meant having more than twice as much time as everyone else to train their Pokémon. That could lead to better results in the weekly battle exams.
After collecting his Protect TM, Ye Lan agreed to meet Lin Yan at the training grounds the next day. Then he strode out of school, intending to prepare Snivy's diet before training began.
From what Ye Lan knew, direct-line trainers from major families often maintained long-term partnerships with breeders who could design diets for their Pokémon.
Breeders held considerable status in this world and worked in many specialties. Some excelled at caring for injured Pokémon; others specialized in assessing a Pokémon's condition before evolution.
Everyone had limited time and energy. Developing expertise in even one field was proof enough of a person's talent and hard work.
Pokémon Nutritionists who could tailor a diet to an individual Pokémon held an especially important position.
A Pokémon would follow its diet throughout its life, and the diet might need ongoing adjustments as its training took different directions.
Ye Lan had not heard of anything like Pokéblocks in this world. Perhaps no one had developed a way to extract and combine pure energy yet. If they had, Pokémon Nutritionists might be out of a job.
But even though the field remained unexplored, Ye Lan had no intention of plunging into it blindly.
Ye Lan had always possessed one virtue that barely counted as a virtue: he knew his own limits.
He knew perfectly well that he was no genius like Red, who had set off at ten and reached the pinnacle as a Pokémon League Champion at eleven, after just one year of travel.
Aside from his informational head start, every advantage Ye Lan had came from the system.
Could he really beat the true geniuses of every generation on that alone?
The answer was obvious.
This world had ten major regions, and Ye Lan had never heard of famous trainers like Red or Green here.
That meant there was a good chance he could start on equal footing with the people he had once looked up to and face them on the stage of a Pokémon League Conference!
Just thinking about it made Ye Lan, an avid battler in his previous life, tremble with excitement.
"Clearly, the best plan is to catch myself a... ahem, make friends with a Pokémon Nutritionist, tell him about Pokéblocks, and enjoy the results."
As he pondered this, Ye Lan arrived at the entrance to the Mianzhou Black Market. He had already recalled Snivy into his Poké Ball.
On his way to school that morning, he had noticed that Snivy, a Starter Pokémon from the Unova Region, was fairly rare in the Huaxia Region and always drew attention.
If someone decided to steal Snivy, Ye Lan's current strength would leave him little chance of fighting back.
This time, Ye Lan did not plan to venture deep into the black market. He only wanted to buy some Berries suitable for Snivy from the Pokémon supply shops near the entrance, where prices were much lower than at the official Poké Mart.
Officer Jenny of the Huaxia League patrolled the black market entrance. That made the area much safer for a novice trainer like Ye Lan.
The deeper one went into the black market, the more gray-market businesses there were. Why did the authorities not shut it down? Trainers at the bottom needed a path upward; taking it away would only make them harder to manage.
Ye Lan liked a saying: the world was not black and white, but a refined shade of gray.
He entered a shop and looked over the shelves packed with Berries of every kind. Some had sat there so long that their colors had faded, and fruit flies were buzzing around them.
After a quick look, Ye Lan saw that the Berries were divided into three sections: high quality, bright and fresh; medium quality, stored for a while but still mostly intact; and low quality, stored for a long time and badly scratched and bruised.
The prices differed just as sharply. High-quality Berries cost four times as much as low-quality ones!
Even so, high-quality Berries cost only a third of what they did at an official store.
Ye Lan studied the Berries in front of him.
As he remembered it, Speed, Special Attack, and HP were all important to Snivy. Of course, HP was not something people measured in the real world, which narrowed his choice of Berries to two kinds.
But the shop only stocked ordinary Berries. A super Berry like the Salac Berry, which could greatly boost a Pokémon's Speed, would never turn up in a little shop like this.
In the end, Ye Lan bought Coco Berries, which could reduce damage from flames.
He chose only high-quality Berries and bought enough for half a month. Altogether, they cost him another eighteen hundred or so.
He could hardly bear to eat the medium- and low-quality Berries himself, much less feed them to his proud little princess!
He could let anyone suffer, but not his own child!
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