Be the First to Be Eliminated

Amid the jolting.

Baimu was shoved somewhere.

He pricked up his ears and listened carefully. His tense body slowly relaxed.

Drip.

A soft sound.

As agreed, he removed the blindfold and opened the Poké Ball.

Bang!

A white blur shot out and landed as an Aron the size of a Border Collie.

"Guh!"

"Don't panic. We're safe for now."

Baimu surveyed the surroundings.

His luck was pretty good. They had landed on a long slope covered in scattered rocks. Strange, towering rock formations stood all around, and there wasn't a single person in sight.

He pulled a dusty-yellow cloak from his backpack and put it on to block the scorching sunlight. Then he glanced at the Aron, which had already put on its desert camouflage gear. After confirming that it wouldn't reflect any light, he nodded in satisfaction.

"Money well spent."

The most awkward thing about Aron moving through the desert was that its metal shell easily reflected sunlight and drew the enemy's attention.

To prevent its smooth shell from reflecting light, he had specially made several dusty-yellow cloth covers.

Still, they probably wouldn't last long. Digging a hole and having a battle could easily wear them out. It was better than nothing.

"Next... Just as I thought."

Baimu searched through the various compartments of his backpack and, sure enough, found an extremely tiny opening on the reverse side of the bottom. Stuffed inside was a black object the size of a grain of rice—

A transmitter.

Were they treating him like an idiot, or had the operatives and support staff simply failed to communicate?

He tossed the transmitter to Aron and ordered it to chew it into powder before stopping. "We need to relocate as soon as possible. Our position might already be exposed."

"Guh!"

The Bracelets distributed by the organizers had a radar function in addition to activating battles. It displayed nearby enemies as red dots, and could be used once every half hour for three minutes.

In other words, blindly trying to hide wouldn't work.

Also.

Bzzzz—

A sound like a mosquito's hum gradually drew closer. Baimu raised his head and suddenly saw a light-green Rotom Drone flying in from somewhere, hovering above him.

It was roughly three meters off the ground.

So it was filming him.

That made sense. Since this was a spectator-friendly competition, how could there be no live filming?

However, with the thing hanging over his head, the risk of exposing his position increased greatly. Ambushes and the like would be much harder to pull off.

Baimu and Aron took up positions five meters apart and raised their arms to activate the search function.

Beep!

A light screen appeared above the Bracelets, displaying an extremely simple map and several red dots that kept flashing as a vertical bar rotated.

The contestants couldn't see their teammates' locations. If they really wanted to know, they could only judge the approximate direction from the Rotom Drone's warning when it stopped.

They had to avoid entering an "encirclement."

Baimu glanced at the map. There was at least one red dot in every direction, so he chose the one farthest away.

He would stay as far as possible from densely populated areas, then catch the farthest target and battle it.

But just as he was about to set off, a small red dot on the radar suddenly stopped flashing and became solid.

"Is this... an engagement?"

He froze for a moment. He hadn't expected someone to start fighting so soon, and immediately left with Aron.

--

Three kilometers away from Baimu, on the other side of the towering rock formations, several figures fled and pursued one another along the tangled paths.

"Don't push me too far!"

The person fleeing ahead shouted angrily, "Sandslash, use Pin Missile!"

As soon as he spoke, a glowing green aura surfaced over the body of the huge, dark-brown spiked ball rolling beside him. Several cone-shaped light arrows as thick as a forearm suddenly shot backward!

Puff, puff, puff!

The light arrows left blazing trails like fireworks, making for a terrifying sight.

The pursuer sneered, without the slightest trace of fear on his face.

"Pursuit!"

"Arf!"

After the bark came a gray-black blur as swift as lightning. It easily dodged the glowing green arrows, ignored the Sandslash curled into a ball, and charged straight at the Trainer!

Bang!

"Argh!"

The fleeing man let out a piercing scream and fell to the ground, where he was pinned down tightly.

The gray blur was a Mightyena standing over a meter tall at the shoulder and roughly 1.3 meters tall including its head.

"Grr!"

Sensing that its Trainer was in trouble, the spiked-ball Sandslash howled and charged at the Mightyena before suddenly leaping into the air!

"Ice Beam!"

A streak of icy-blue lightning appeared with the shout and struck its body precisely!

Bang!

White mist scattered.

The Sandslash, released from its spiked-ball form, had half its body embedded in the ground. Both claws were covered in snow-white frost, and it stopped moving.

"Sandslash..."

The Quicksand Team member pinned beneath the Mightyena clenched his teeth and desperately tried to retrieve a Poké Ball, but Jian arrived and planted a foot on his wrist.

"You're really a coward. You ran the moment you saw me. Where did that swagger you had while cursing me outside go?"

He spat in dissatisfaction, while the black-and-white honey badger beside him let out a shrill, strange laugh.

"Maah!"

Without a doubt, that Sandslash had just been brought down by this Galarian Linoone.

Jian glanced around and poked the man's face with the toe of his shoe. "Which one of you is called Baimu? Have you seen him?"

"Grr..."

The Mightyena lowered its head, its sharp teeth brushing against the Quicksand Team member's neck intentionally or otherwise.

"...Gulp."

The Quicksand Team member's eyes were filled with terror. His anger had long since vanished before his desire to survive. "If I tell you, can you spare my life?"

Jian's lips curled upward. "Trying to bargain? You won't cry until you see the coffin."

The Mightyena lowered its head without hesitation and prepared to bite down.

"East!"

The man immediately let out a shrill scream. He had no idea, but he had to make something up to save his life. "He's east!"

Jian raised his right hand, and the Mightyena stopped biting.

Seeing the man's face twisted with fear and his body trembling nonstop, Jian burst out laughing. "Coward! Worthless trash! Is this the kind of person the Quicksand Team produces?"

He turned to look at the Rotom Drone hovering in midair, his expression full of mockery.

Afterward.

Jian first took all the Quicksand Team member's Pokémon, then stripped the man naked and had the Mightyena burn his clothes with Fire Fang. He also stomped and broke both of the man's ankles.

Listening to the howls of pain, he said happily, "Don't worry. I'm a very kind person. I don't like killing people."

"But whether you'll fall to your death before someone comes to rescue you, I can't say."

Jian recalled the Mightyena and Galarian Linoone, then released a powerful male Honchkrow wearing a top hat. He ordered it to hang the man from a distant, bamboo-shoot-shaped boulder.

The Quicksand Team member cried and struggled, but he was powerless to resist. The Honchkrow dragged him away and swayed as it hung him from the summit.

With no other choice, the Quicksand Team member could only wrap both arms around the peak.

The huge rock was dozens of meters tall. Even if he didn't die from the fall, he would lose half his life.

"Go on, shout for help! Hahahaha!"

Jian doubled over with laughter below.

One Rotom Drone circled the naked Quicksand Team member and filmed him, while another landed beside Jian.

"You have received a total of four hundred and fifty thousand in tips."

"Hehe, thank you, everyone."

Jian gave the Rotom Drone's camera a slight bow.

In fact, the only people who could tip weren't just the group of distinguished guests at the top. Anyone following the competition, regardless of which faction they came from, could send tips.

That was why his targets also included people dissatisfied with the Quicksand Team, those who enjoyed watching a good show, and people with twisted mindsets.

He didn't go as far as killing the man because he didn't want things to become too bloody. He knew that many of the distinguished guests were women, and some sights would be too stimulating and easily upset them.

Besides, broken bones didn't show much blood on the outside, while stripping the man naked was merely humiliation.

He didn't even care whether the man's words were true. He only wanted to show the spectacle of one member of a faction harming another.

Perfect!

As for what the Quicksand Team thought...

Who cared?

He had spared the man's life. What more did they want? They should first think about how much money it would take to buy back the man's Pokémon!

The battle victory reward, the tips, plus the money for the opponent to redeem his Pokémon—

He had really struck it rich!

Jian excitedly licked the corner of his mouth and swaggered as he pulled a small box from his pocket. He glanced at it twice, then frowned.

No signal?

Forget it.

The battlefield was only so large. They would run into each other eventually.

Outside the battlefield.

A gloomy atmosphere hung over the Quicksand Team's base, and many passersby looked toward it with amused expressions.

In the competition's control room, Ayana ignored the strange looks around her as well as the smug expression of the dark-faced man nearby. She stared at the screen with an utterly cold expression.

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Today's promotional recommendation—Pokémon Invasion: I Livestream Pokémon Popular Science. It made me want to write a popular-science article too.