Get Rich in One Go?

The two of them waited for about fifteen minutes.

Shuangye came running over with a girl who looked like she had just woken up.

The girl wore round-rimmed glasses, had big eyes and shoulder-length fiery red hair, and looked completely dazed. One look was enough to tell she had not woken up yet.

Another night owl.

Heiduo unconsciously glanced at his watch. It was almost ten-thirty. At this hour, anyone still asleep was either a sleepyhead or someone who had stayed up late.

"Ori! Wake up, Ori!" Shuangye excitedly shook the girl named Ori.

Ori struggled to open her eyes and squinted at Heiduo and Serea.

When Shun saw Serea, she jolted awake in fright.

"S-Serea!" Ori gave Serea an awkward smile, as though Serea were some terrifying monster.

Serea gave Ori a slight nod in greeting.

Heiduo looked at the expressions between Serea and Ori, deep in thought.

"Heiduo, this is Ori, my good friend! She and I are a team!" Shuangye said cheerfully to Heiduo.

"Hello!" Heiduo held out his hand to Ori.

Ori hurriedly grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously. "Hello! Hello!"

Was she really that nervous?

Shuangye giggled from the side. "So we can join you now, right?"

This girl seemed to have some sort of obsession with Serea.

Naturally, Heiduo was not narcissistic enough to think Shuangye was interested in him. Nor did he know what kind of spell Serea had cast on her to make her keep calling her big sister.

Maybe it was simply because she was naturally cheerful?

Heiduo neither agreed nor disagreed. He turned to look at Serea, and seeing that she had no strong objections, said, "All right. Then let's not waste any time and get started."

If they wasted any more time, it would be lunchtime.

He pressed the button in the center of the Poké Ball, and a flash of white light appeared.

Ekans lay coiled in a ball, lazily lifting its head.

On the other side, Ori also released her Pokémon—a lively, scruffy little bird: Spearow.

[Pokémon: Spearow / Gender: Female / Level: 12]

[Ability: Keen Eye / Type: Normal + Flying type / Trainer: Ori]

[Moves: Pursuit lv2 / Peck lv2]

[Fury Attack lv1 / Feather Dance lv2]

These Pokémon all seemed pretty similar. Their move levels were basically three level-twos and one level-one.

"Serea, I have something I'd like to ask of you."

Heiduo looked at Serea and said seriously, "I'd like you to throw a few matches against my Ekans."

"Throw matches?"

Serea's eyes were full of confusion.

Heiduo smiled slightly. "I mean having your Zubat pretend to lose to my Pokémon."

"...Why?" Serea did not directly refuse. She wanted to know why Heiduo wanted to do this.

Because I want to see whether throwing matches can earn attribute points.

Of course, he could not tell Serea that. Heiduo merely brushed it off, saying, "I have my reasons, but I can't tell you what they are. I hope you'll agree."

It was exactly like Serea's previous answer.

"...All right." Serea nodded.

She held out her arm, and the Flying type Zubat circling overhead landed on it.

Serea turned and whispered something to Zubat, eventually receiving its approval.

The Flying type Zubat moved in front of Ekans and hovered low in the air.

"Then let's begin."

Heiduo was a little excited. If his idea worked, then two hundred attribute points would no longer be out of reach.

"Ekans, just like I told you yesterday, lightly attack Zubat!"

He had already talked Ekans through this yesterday, though it still did not understand why Heiduo wanted to do something like this.

But Heiduo was its boss now. What Heiduo said went.

It lunged at Zubat and flicked its tail against Zubat's wing.

Smack!

Zubat fell to the ground and stopped moving.

Seeing this, Heiduo hurriedly checked his personal status panel.

[Attribute Points: 1 → 2]

It really worked!

Heiduo could hardly believe it. Normally, a professional system should not make such an obvious mistake.

A loophole like this should not have worked.

Seeing Heiduo standing there in a daze, Serea asked, "What's wrong?"

"Yeah, yeah~ What happened?" Shuangye asked curiously from the side.

Ori was just as curious, but wisely kept quiet.

"Something good happened!"

Coming back to his senses, Heiduo could not help but laugh. He quickly urged Serea on.

"Let's keep going, let's keep going!"

Having no idea what was happening, Serea called over the Zubat that was still playing dead, then watched as it was "defeated" once more.

Heiduo, standing beside her, grinned wider and wider.

In the cafeteria.

"What's wrong with you?"

Serea looked at Heiduo. In front of her sat a small, exquisite cake. She used her fork to pick up a bite and put it into her mouth, revealing a fleeting expression of enjoyment on Shun's face.

Ever since Ekans and Zubat had put on their act, Heiduo had gone from ecstatic to utterly dejected.

Heiduo listlessly picked at the fried rice in front of him. "Nothing. I'm just a little disappointed."

Just when he had been wildly harvesting his crops, the system had quietly appeared to pour cold water over him.

[Attribute values can no longer be obtained from the current Pokémon.]

It appeared when he obtained his twentieth attribute point.

To be honest, when Heiduo saw that line, he did not really care. If there was a policy, there was always a countermeasure. At worst, he could just find another crop to harvest.

And once he had harvested all the crops around him, he could use Ultimate Weapon trade points to harvest more.

What could money not accomplish?

Then the system showed him what it meant by countermeasures below and new policies above.

[The user's current maximum for each of the five attributes is 10. Each Badge obtained increases the original maximum by 10.]

[A held Pokémon's additional attribute values may not exceed twice its current level.]

[When attribute points are used, a held Pokémon's move level may only be raised to its current level's leading digit plus 2.]

The returns from adding attribute points to himself had already been low enough, and now there was even a limit. He could ignore that one; the latter two were the real problem.

The former meant that level-seventeen Ekans could currently gain only thirty-four additional attribute points.

The latter meant that if level-seventeen Ekans upgraded its moves using attribute points, its moves could only reach level three at most.

It had completely blocked off Heiduo's path to getting a huge haul in one go.

A system was still a system. It was damn impressive.

The only upside was that, as long as he was willing to patiently keep developing, he could build an incredibly powerful Pokémon empire!

When it came to stats alone, no one's Pokémon could compare to his.

Looking at the remaining attribute points in his personal status panel, Heiduo reached out and rubbed Ekans's neck.

He had harvested three crops in total, gaining sixty points.

Including the one daily point, he had held sixty-one points.

He spent the vast majority of his attribute points on Ultimate Weapon, raising the additional attributes to the limit, then upgraded both Ekans's Rock Slide and Glare to level three.

Next, he used attribute points to learn Dig and Toxic, raising both to level three as well.

After calculating everything, Heiduo only had twelve attribute points left.

Still, that was already very good. Based on the game's stats, Ekans should now have stats that it would only reach in its thirties.

"Ugh!" Heiduo sighed.

His dream of getting a huge haul in one go had completely failed.

Shuangye, sitting to his left with a piece of sushi in her mouth, mumbled, "Heiduo! If you keep hanging your head like that, all your luck will run away!"

She reached out and gave Heiduo a hard pat on the back.

Ori, sitting to Heiduo's right, strongly agreed and nodded. "Shuangye's right! I was like that before too, and then I had terrible luck for several days in a row..."

After spending the morning together, although Ori still feared Serea like the plague, she had become remarkably familiar with Heiduo.

"If you went to bed earlier, bad luck definitely wouldn't cling to you."

Heiduo earnestly advised Ori.

The dark circles beneath her eyes were practically becoming permanent eye bags. Why stay up so late for no reason? No matter how healthy she was, she could not keep abusing her body like that.

A Pokémon like Spearow, which liked waking up early, was completely unsuitable for her. Hoothoot was her perfect Pokémon.

They both slept during the day and became active at night.

Ori said in surprise, "Bad luck shouldn't have anything to do with staying up late, right?"

She had never heard anyone say that staying up late could make someone less lucky.

"Once you stay up late, you won't have much energy all day. You'll look listless, and no one who sees you will feel good about it. If their impression of you drops by two points, sometimes those two points are enough to make a job that should have been yours slip away! Wouldn't you call that bad luck?" Heiduo said self-deprecatingly. Back when he was job hunting, he had suffered countless losses because of his appearance and bearing.

For two people meeting for the first time, one's overall demeanor practically determined their first impression.

Ori and Shuangye looked at each other, each seeing curiosity in the other's eyes.

Heiduo looked no older than fourteen or fifteen, but the way he acted and spoke was exactly like an adult who had struggled in society.

Even his habit of lecturing people at every turn was the same.

"Enough about that! Let's discuss this afternoon's training schedule." Heiduo took the initiative to change the subject. That was all in the past, and there was no need to dwell on it.

Excluding the twenty minutes spent throwing matches, they had spent the morning simply familiarizing themselves with one another's Pokémon and moves.

Through that, he had seen just how outstanding Serea's command ability was.

He discovered that rather than giving detailed instructions for every little thing, Serea's command style leaned more toward letting Zubat act on its own.

She only gave commands at the most opportune moments.

It was vastly different from the anime, where Pokémon would only act long after a command had been given.

Whenever Serea gave an order, Zubat moved immediately. It made Zubat seem less like it was obeying Serea's commands and more like it had already wanted to act that way, with Serea merely voicing it.

When Heiduo asked Serea why it was like that, Serea told him that the stronger a Trainer was, the deeper the bond and connection between them and their Pokémon.

They often did not need to give detailed commands. A glance or gesture alone was enough for perfect communication.

Hearing that, Heiduo immediately understood Shun's purpose in Ekans's status panel.

It probably showed itself in situations like this.

Serea ate the last bite of cake and said calmly, "Originally, I planned to improve our coordination through simulated training.

"But since Shuangye and Ori are here as well, why don't we just have a doubles Pokémon battle? Actual combat is always the best teacher."