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The match that would decide Baimu's future slowly began.

Although Ayana, who seemed to be their team leader, had shown up last night and ordered them to go to bed early and rise early, hardly any of them had slept peacefully. Of the fifteen people who gathered at the venue, thirteen were dozing off.

Of the remaining two, one had fallen asleep standing up, while the other silently checked his equipment. That person was Baimu, brimming with energy.

"You're awfully energetic." Otsuka was quite surprised.

He had tied a headband around his head today, with some crooked, twisted patterns drawn on it. They seemed to represent some kind of determination.

"I just made good use of a Pokémon move."

Baimu glanced at him and continued straightening his clothes.

Chansey's Sing was practically a divine skill for insomniacs. It only took a few notes to lead someone into dreamland and send them off to a night of sweet dreams.

"Huh?" Otsuka was somewhat confused, but before he could ask anything else, Ayana clapped her hands.

"All right, wake up and get your spirits up!"

Her voice was not particularly loud, yet it was enough to rouse everyone who had been dozing. Even the person sleeping while standing opened his eyes.

Ayana looked at everyone. "A vehicle will be here to pick you up soon. Remember, you may only win this match—you are not allowed to lose. There will be no room for bargaining. Is that clear?"

"Crystal clear!"

The response came in perfect unison.

After finishing her speech, she fell silent until a hover bus arrived and lightly honked its horn twice.

Baimu looked over and found that the driver was actually a burly, powerfully built woman, with arms so thick they looked capable of supporting a galloping horse. If not for the obvious rise and fall of her chest, her crew cut and rugged facial features would have made it impossible to tell her gender.

"Heh heh heh! You little brats! Ready to set off for hell? Hahahaha!"

She burst into wild laughter.

Ayana kicked open the bus door and climbed aboard. "I'll be counting on you again this time!"

"Don't worry! Even if ten Pokémon ambushed us, they couldn't stop my driving!" The female driver spoke boldly as she honked the horn. "What are you standing around for?"

Baimu moved forward with the flow, and Otsuka followed right behind him. The others imitated them one after another.

The bus interior could not be called spacious, but it was more than enough for the fifteen of them. Once the last person boarded, the female driver did not even bother checking whether they had found seats before setting off.

The inside immediately began rocking violently.

"We're safe this time."

Otsuka, who had barely managed to steady himself, said in a low voice, "This was the driver when the Sand Group went out for a match last time too. We'll definitely reach the arena safely."

Baimu, sitting beside him, said, "???"

Seeing his confusion, Otsuka hurriedly added, "You probably don't know this, but there have been cases in the past where participating factions were attacked halfway there. Every single one ended in disaster."

"After that, whenever this kind of match was held, factions would ambush the participants along the way. A few years ago, our boss went out and reached a verbal agreement to form the Peace Alliance, which eased the situation somewhat. But those scum from the Hound Team might very well launch a sneak attack!"

"Really? If even you, Otsuka, call them scum, what kind of people must they be?"

Baimu pretended to be shocked.

"..."

Otsuka looked like a goose that had been strangled. His enthusiastic desire to chat vanished completely, replaced by a dejected, embarrassed expression. He turned his head away and said nothing.

Baimu, meanwhile, kept looking at him with an unchanged expression, even wearing the faintest smile.

From believing that bullying the weak was only natural, to feeling ashamed and embarrassed when mocked for it, and subconsciously considering such methods low-class—even if it was merely a reaction to losing face, Baimu felt that it represented tremendous progress.

He was not the first person Otsuka had bullied, but he hoped to become the last.

They had to be considerate enough to look after those who were bullied, but they also could not let the bullies run unchecked and create more victims.

Physical elimination and mental reformation were both options. For now, Baimu was tentatively experimenting with the latter, relying on the fact that he owed Otsuka more than a million and that Otsuka did not dare fall out with him recklessly.

Well, the person in debt was the real boss.

As for the Hound Team's reputation, Baimu had heard plenty about it. As another second-rate faction in Pyrite Town, the Quicksand Team had held a grudge against them for years. The two sides had fought with Pokémon countless times.

The Quicksand Team's current mine had even been seized from them.

The two sides were equally aggressive in their propaganda war. The Quicksand Team denounced the Hound Team's members as inhuman scum who did not even spare the labor of ten-year-old children, sending them down into the mines to dig for ore.

The Hound Team, meanwhile, believed that the Quicksand Team were all lapdogs of money. As long as they were paid enough, they would wag their tails at them like canine Pokémon and might even bite their own comrades. They had absolutely no bottom line.

Whether any of it was true was another matter. They simply hurled whatever vicious insults came to mind.

Bzzz—

Amid a deep hum, the hover bus sped into an underground passage and soon emerged onto the surface again. Through the grimy windows appeared an endless, barren desert.

Gray, brown, and crimson dominated the landscape. Rocks, gravel, and enormous boulders were piled atop one another, while even the drought-resistant plants carried a withered air, struggling to survive on this land.

Several barren cliffs could be seen at the edge of their vision. The blazing sun overhead made one's throat tighten after only a few glances, instinctively prompting the need for water.

To launch a sneak attack in terrain like this, they would have to hide in the sand, right?

Baimu swept his gaze around and gripped a Poké Ball with one hand, slightly on guard.

At that moment, Ayana, who had been sitting at the very front, stood up and said:

"I'll say a few words, so listen carefully. This match will be broadcast live to the public. In other words, every move you make—even when you go to the bathroom—will take place under the watch of others. But I am not telling you to restrain yourselves.

"On the contrary, whether you tease your opponents, help them, or attack their bodies directly, you can try anything that might interest the audience. Once you win the viewers' favor, you will receive donations of varying amounts. The Sand Group will only take seventy percent of those donations."

Live-stream donations?

The top donor dropping a big 666? Otsuka putting on a show for the folks back home?

In a match where both sides wanted to beat each other senseless, they could make money by adding some dramatic flair. Baimu had not expected that.

Could he earn donations by pulling off some flashy stunts?

No. He should first consider how to make it safely to the end. His strength was nowhere near the level where he could think about how to please the top donor.

"Baimu! Didn't you hear that? We only get seventy percent!"

Otsuka suddenly grabbed his arm excitedly. "It used to be ninety percent! Now it's only seventy! This is a great chance to make money! You might be able to pay me back very soon!"

"Then do you know what the audience likes watching?" Baimu poured cold water over him. "Besides, compared to the donations, you should be more concerned about where to go once the match begins.

"Speaking of which, what kind of plan did you come up with?"

"Plan?" Otsuka froze. "What plan? The two of us charge in one after the other, a hundred meters apart. Whenever we meet someone, we find a way to take turns fighting them. What other plan do we need?"

Baimu said, "...A hundred meters?"

Otsuka spread his hands. "Yeah. Since grouping up is forbidden, we just stay a hundred meters apart. Going in the same direction by coincidence doesn't mean we're grouping up."

"Are you sure that sort of behavior is allowed?"

"I asked people who competed before. That's what they all did!" He looked at Baimu smugly, as if saying, You didn't think of that, did you?

Baimu was about to ask something else when Ayana's gaze suddenly turned toward them.

"Right, I almost forgot. Otsuka just reminded me. The rules for this match have been updated. There will be dedicated Pokémon monitoring the contestants to prevent teammates from joining forces and setting traps during the early and middle stages. When they tell you what to do, you do it. If you refuse and get attacked, I won't take responsibility."

Otsuka's smile instantly froze. The others also began talking among themselves, growing restless.

The audience's tastes really were strange. They were not even allowed to take turns beating down an opponent.

Baimu comfortingly patted his shoulder, but that was not the only piece of bad news. Ayana added another new rule concerning their entry.

The usual system of setting out in order had been canceled. Instead, "designated personnel" would randomly drop them somewhere on the battlefield. It all depended on their decision. If they were unlucky, they could land near three or four enemies.

When the Quicksand Team members heard this, their faces went pale with fright.

Someone could not help asking whether there were any other new rules, but Ayana thought for a moment before waving her hand.

"I'll tell you once I remember."

What!?

Did they actually want them to win or not? She was only mentioning such important information now, and she was not even telling them everything at once. She was unbelievably unreliable!

This time, it was not only the others. Baimu also sighed involuntarily.

Having lived under the constraints of law in his previous life, Baimu found it genuinely difficult to fit into this environment where the upper-middle ruling class had completely torn off its mask of respectability and acted however it pleased through sheer force—if not for the memories of this body.

As expected of Pyrite Town, the city of the underworld where, as certain merchants put it, crisis and opportunity coexisted.

Through the window,

the desert canyon that served as the battlefield slowly came into view.