An unexpected battle (bonus chapter for "Aga-a"'s 10,000-point tip)

Dian glanced at the bridge, which seemed to have been damaged again, and silently felt sorry for the road maintenance workers.

Bridges in the Pokémon World are hard to repair because they're mostly for humans. But some curious, heavyweight Pokémon see them and want to try them out, and they'll most likely end up destroying them.

The bridge itself is fine, but the problem is that people will fall into the river. Once they fall in, they'll think it's a trap set by humans, so they'll destroy it whenever they see one to prevent other victims from falling in.

Who should be blamed for this? It's the road maintenance workers who suffer the most.

Dian shook her head, then patted the Misdreavus that was constantly eating on her head. "Please, young lady, take me there."

"Dream..."

The Misdreavus, preoccupied with the allure of the snacks, nodded silently, then casually used its shadow to pull the palace along, and quickly flew towards the town across the river.

As soon as he landed, Dian's Pokémon Pokédex started beeping. He took it out and saw that it was a message he had pre-programmed, which was only now being sent. This meant that the river separated the human residential area from the Pokémon living area.

In other words, he may have arrived at a small town near Violet City.

He picked up the Pokémon Pokédex and used its screen to adjust the light blue circular Necklace around his neck.

All that was displayed on the screen was an unremarkable gray Rock Head Necklace.

The temple had long since discovered the wonder of this treasure from the Naporant Ruins; it seemed that only what he saw was its true form—or perhaps what he saw was also an illusion.

However, it appears to look like an inconspicuous cheap item in the mirror, and it seems to look the same to others as well, as if some kind of Illusion has been fixed, making people unconsciously ignore it.

He checked and found that the reply he received was just a confirmation receipt set by Azisa. Then he thought for a moment, sent a greeting email to Nurse Joy whom he knew, and then sent a password-protected email to Chinami.

After he finished, he realized that a middle-aged man with a buzz cut and a whistle was standing in front of him.

"Hey, young man."

He gave Dian a hearty laugh, "Could it be that you're contacting your girlfriend? Ah, youthful days! My relationship with Cheng's mother was just like that back in the day."

The middle-aged man whistling was momentarily immersed in memories of his youth.

He didn't notice that the young man opposite him was already preparing to slip away.

The princess is in a hurry to meet up with Azisa and has a lot of things to do, so she doesn't have time to spend with a middle-aged man reminiscing about youth.

That's right, he knew without even thinking what this guy was going to do: Pokémon battle.

However, fighting against this kind of middle-aged man is extremely disadvantageous, because it's a simple principle that applies in any world: does a middle-aged man with a family have any savings?

Even if he did have some, how much could it be? Anyway, I know that Uncle Tony at the amusement Paradise in Tani City only had ten dollars a day for pocket money, which was a tragedy. It wasn't even half of his son's pocket money.

Moreover, Uncle Tony painstakingly saved up some money, but one time he didn't hide it properly and it was immediately confiscated. Years of hard work went up in flames, which was a truly heartbreaking tragedy.

They say men don't easily shed tears, but when Uncle Tony recounted his experience of hiding money from his wife, he burst into tears! It was terrifying, absolutely terrifying.

So when he traveled, he made up his mind not to fight with middle-aged men, figuring there wouldn't be much of a profit in it.

Moreover, if the other party is a sensitive man, and he can't help but cry when he tremblingly hands over twenty yuan, just thinking about that scene makes my heart tremble.

If other people saw this, who knows what they would think.

"Whoo--"

Suddenly, a sharp whistle rang out, "Young man! Have a tutorial battle with my Arbok!"

The middle-aged man ran to the front of the hall and actually bowed, saying, "Please!"

Dian was about to refuse again, but his eyes lit up immediately when he heard about the other party's Pokémon, "Arbok?"

He immediately helped the middle-aged man up, saying, "Uncle, I just wanted to find a venue right away, you've misunderstood."

He spoke lies without batting an eye, even to the point of not believing them himself.

It doesn't matter if he's a middle-aged man, as long as there's a Trainer willing to accompany him in a tutorial battle.

It's because no Trainer have come over since the bridge on the other side was destroyed by someone; otherwise, he wouldn't be in such a hurry.

The middle-aged man led the way and explained the purpose of this training battle.

It turns out that he was also a trainer when he was young, so he always hoped that his daughter could follow in his footsteps. However, he was good at Arbok, while his daughter always used the Bug-type Pokémon Ladybug.

He wouldn't have cared if that were all, but his daughter had absolutely no experience in combat and seemed to have a strong aversion to fighting. In the end, she came up with the idea of using Ledyba to plant fruit trees nearby.

This made him completely restless, so this time he had to make his daughter understand the allure of battle.

After hearing this, Dian was speechless. It seemed neither of them was wrong. If the man's heir were his son, continuing to train Arbok might be acceptable, but since the woman was a woman, training Arbok was a bit...

After all, not everyone has the courage to approach a terrifying giant snake, let alone spend almost all of the time with it.

Speaking of which, Arbok, who treats Jessie like a servant at will, is indeed very capable in some ways.

Putting aside their breeding techniques, they must have unique secrets when it comes to making their Pokémon obedient.

In the eyes of the Lord, Jessie and James were more like orthodox Trainer than Team Rocket Agent.

At least if it were a real Team Rocket, they would hand over any unused Pokémon to headquarters instead of releasing Pokémon according to their own will.

Although Ash released many Pokémon along the way, he kept many of them in their Poké Ball, so it wasn't a true release; it would be more accurate to call them foster care.

Jessie, however, stomped on all of Arbok's Poké Ball before the Arbok left. This shows that her bond with Arbok far surpasses that of many Trainer, and in any case, this is worthy of admiration.

This is probably why, although those three are villains, they are not annoying, and can even be liked.

This empathy stems from the fact that people share a love for Pokémon.