Team Member Assessment

The Quicksand Team was a second-rate faction.

It could not possibly compare with Team Rocket, a colossal criminal organization spanning several regions.

Therefore, its method of recruiting new members was nowhere near as thorough as Team Rocket's. It even seemed somewhat crude.

The danger was also far greater than Team Rocket's assessment.

"Your task is simple. There are scattered veins of jade deep inside the mine. Find a piece of jade of any shape, bring it out, and hand it to me. The time limit is sunrise tomorrow morning."

The tall, muscular, rugged-looking man held a piece of white jade and shouted at the group of ruffians before him. Beside him, the short-legged, long-nosed elephant that looked as though it were wearing heavy armor—the Donphan—let out a low growl.

Not far away.

Several abandoned pits that seemed bottomless gave off a cold, stifling aura. The foul smell of dust irritated everyone's nostrils.

"Another abandoned mine? People are going to die, right?"

"Of course people will die in a place nobody regularly maintains. What are you thinking? Didn't two people die last year?"

"Jade veins deep inside... What do we do if we can't find any?"

"Can I dig one outside?"

"You should worry about whether you can get out alive first. I heard there are Pokémon inside that will attack you!"

"No way..."

Amid the crowd, Baimu listened to the surrounding commotion and could not help touching the iron ingot hidden against his chest.

This thing was incredibly easy to obtain in Pyrite Town. With his status as an outer member of the Quicksand Team, he only had to say a word at the smelter to get one.

What he was mainly curious about was how exactly it would come into play later.

During yesterday's second simulation, his fixed talent had not changed. Among the selectable talents, Hot-Blooded Youth was gone, replaced by [Never Abandon (will not abandon Pokémon)].

Having already suffered a major loss from [Romantic Luck], he would have had to be brainless to repeat the same mistake. Thus, he switched to [Careless Hands (rough Pokémon health management)].

Rough health management could gradually improve over the course of a journey. Most Trainers started from nothing, after all. But he could not stomach another romance that only dragged him down.

From the Champion down to the Elite Four, and then the Pokémon Gym Trainers, how many of those young people in the anime actually had romantic partners?

Only Kukui was old enough to have finally started a relationship and gotten married.

That alone said a lot.

The classic Pewter City youngster who started with a Rattata came into existence. His progress was just as rough as the Bug Catcher's. He relied entirely on luck and enthusiasm to challenge Gyms, but unlike the Bug Catcher, he caught a great many identical Pokémon...

For example, he caught multiple Rattata, Pidgey, and the like.

You might think he was selecting powerful individuals, but the Shorts Boy sent every single one of them into battle. He trained and fought them all equally, causing his overall strength to improve very little and making his progress extremely difficult.

Therefore, even without the burden of romance, he had no choice but to stop after barely reaching the sixth Gym, having endured eight straight losses in eight battles.

Even though it was pixel art, Baimu could tell that the Shorts Boy's mentality had completely collapsed. As a result, he was still stuck at the sixth Gym when the League began.

He still had not even seen the entrance to the Indigo League, leaving Baimu speechless. After choosing to level up a Pokémon below Lv. 30 and obtaining [Move: Endeavor], he went to sleep.

Then he welcomed the next day with renewed energy.

Formal members of the Quicksand Team received more than just free Pokémon. Their benefits and treatment were also far better than those of outer members. Although their freedom was further restricted, the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.

He had to try to earn a position.

"Baimu, aren't you nervous at all?"

His colleague's words interrupted his thoughts.

Baimu turned his head and glanced at the other man's strange outfit, which made him look like a Hiker. "Wouldn't it be difficult to move around with all that on you?"

"I think it's fine..." The man hopped twice, looking completely relaxed.

It was only fine for now.

Baimu touched the miner's helmet on his head. For ease of movement, he had not brought much with him: a miner's helmet, a dust mask, a manganese-steel pickaxe, and some necessary water, compressed food, and the like.

The Quicksand Team's entrance assessment had never been a secret. They liked to set up obstacles themselves, such as putting several Pokémon inside to attack the participants or laying various traps.

Therefore, agility was extremely important.

While they waited.

A commotion came from not far away.

"You, a dead poor wretch like you, think you can pass the assessment? I'm dying! Hahaha—"

The shrill taunt made Baimu frown.

He exchanged glances with the colleagues he knew nearby, and they all walked toward the source of the voice.

Wherever there were people, there were struggles. This was even more true of an organization like the Quicksand Team, where status was obtained through force. Internal disputes had never been rare.

There were countless poor people without support like Baimu among the Quicksand Team's outer members. On the other side were people with some money and connections. The two sides each had their own small groups, despised one another, and looked down on each other.

That was when the importance of banding together for warmth became apparent.

As the group approached the source of the voice, they suddenly saw a group of men whose appearances were relatively clean and whose expressions differed from those of the surrounding lackeys.

The ruffians shoved a rather thin young man around, laughing and joking. Every so often, they glanced at the other lackeys watching nearby. When they saw that nobody dared meet their eyes, they smugly turned back.

"Well, well, well! The leader of the poor wretches is here. What, are you going to back up your dead-poor buddy? Do you even have the strength?"

When the ringleader saw them approaching, he sauntered over with both hands in his pockets, extremely arrogant. His target was clearly Baimu, who was the tallest and had the steadiest bearing.

Unfortunately, he was nearly a head shorter than Baimu. He could only lift his chin to meet Baimu's eyes, his face full of provocation.

The group of ruffians also laughed strangely as they let the thin young man go and stood before Baimu and the others.

Both sides glared at each other, looking ready to start fighting at the slightest disagreement.

"You'll find out whether I have the strength when the assessment begins." Baimu pulled the thin young man behind him, swept his gaze over the others, and slowly raised a hand.

The group of ruffians flinched and instinctively retreated half a step.

Seeing his companions act so cowardly, the ringleader grew furious. He sneered, "Are you good at fighting? What good is being able to fight? When you're out in the world, you need power and connections. You little bastard! Just wait and see!"

With that.

He led his group to the other side.

The tense-looking people beside Baimu immediately relaxed and began comforting the thin young man.

"Don't be nervous. They aren't strong enough to interfere with the assessment. Relax."

An older man stepped forward and said this, trying to dispel some people's hidden concerns.

The troublemaker was named Shibata. His uncle was a mid-level member of the Quicksand Team—a Squad Leader. Although Shibata still had to participate in the dangerous assessment, to people from the bottom like them, that was already an extremely impressive connection.

The assessment would surely provide Shibata with certain conveniences as well.

As for whether they would make a move against them, that remained a question.

The Quicksand Team was desperately short of manpower, so when people at the bottom fought, the middle and upper levels had established a limit that could not be crossed. For example, nobody could be killed, and nobody could be crippled in a way that affected their ability to work.

One reason these tough lackeys dared to stand up to Shibata and the others was that they did not believe the other side would take their lives. They trusted the Quicksand Team's cadres to maintain a balance between both sides.

Nothing had ever gone wrong. As long as they firmly stuck together and fought as a group, someone would step in to mediate. Shibata's uncle had never dared do anything to them.

However.

What about the possibility of secretly attacking them during the assessment?

What if they knew they would be punished once the truth came out, yet still wanted to strike at the fresh blood the Quicksand Team urgently needed to replenish its ranks?

Expecting a small-time ringleader among a bunch of ruffians to have any sense of the bigger picture was laughable. They had their own special way of thinking.

Being a thief for a thousand days was already nerve-racking. Guarding against a thief for a thousand days was even worse.

He had to find a way to settle this once and for all...

It sounded simple, but the assessment itself was already difficult enough. Where would he find the energy to scheme against Shibata?

Baimu was quite troubled.

The conflict between the two sides had been irreconcilable even before he transmigrated, directly extinguishing his plan to keep a low profile.

There was no helping it.

Shibata and the others had lorded it over the outer lackeys for a long time, bullying countless people and calling those who kept to themselves cowards, until they encountered Baimu and the others, who understood the value of sticking together.

Their hardheadedness had undoubtedly made Shibata and the others suffer.

The two sides had also fought several group battles, and Baimu had resolved each one through force.

As a result, Shibata and the others had always regarded them as thorns in their sides and nails in their flesh, coming to cause trouble every few days.

Today was no exception.

Ultimately, the upper levels' laissez-faire, half-survival-of-the-fittest management style was the root of the problem.

A group of people with little intelligence, many of whom had never even attended school, relied on their shallow family connections to act without restraint and do whatever they pleased.

In Pyrite Town, where the law was weak and everything depended on internal punishments, scenes like this were common.

The environment had shaped Shibata's way of thinking. After tasting the benefits of bullying others without paying any "price," he had rarely faced any constraints on his terrible behavior. "Kiss up and kick down" had become the foundation of his logic.

Fortunately, Baimu had a good physique.

The human body in the Pokémon World was fascinating. A person could be so weak that they spent years bedridden, or so strong that they could shatter stone with their fists and break wood with their legs, even facing Fighting-type Pokémon one-on-one and using moves.

He was working toward the latter. By now, he was already far beyond his peers.

This superior physical talent filled him with delight.

"The assessment begins! The first batch of people going down, come over for inspection. If you're carrying jade, hand it over yourselves! If Donphan smells it, don't blame me for not warning you!"

The examiner's roar rose and fell alongside Donphan's trumpeting cry.

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