Contract Construction

"They'll definitely open the door eventually. It's just a matter of time."

Not just the people from the Pokémon Academy—even Ito Hei and Sen Anxiang had no idea why Liu Xin had said that.

Did he have another ace up his sleeve?

In fact, the system notifications in Liu Xin's head were loud and clear, chiming nonstop.

Although the Sandslash were strong and numerous, they had run into a bunch of battle maniacs. Not one of them could behave.

They wiped out the entire group of Sandslash in no time, then turned their attention to the mastermind behind it all.

Five or six minutes passed. The underground chamber was utterly silent, and they had no idea what was happening outside. The soundproofing was a little too good.

Shinya lost his patience. "Why are we just sitting here? Are you really waiting for someone to open the door for you?"

"Unless he's an idiot, why would he open it? If he actually does, I'll wash my hair while doing a handstand, right here!"

Wash his hair while doing a handstand?

Liu Xin estimated the timing and said confidently, "Remember what you said. Get ready to wash your hair upside down!"

Before long, the door really did open.

Everyone was stunned. Only Liu Xin took it as a matter of course.

Everything had gone just as he had predicted.

He smiled faintly. "Better give it some thought and practice. How are you going to wash your hair while doing a handstand?"

Shinya tried to argue his way out. "Maybe he opened it by mistake. There's no way he'd let you out."

"If he lets you out, then I'll admit you were right."

But fate always seemed to enjoy playing jokes on Shinya.

The man who opened the door was middle-aged, with hair covering his eyes. He had a rather distinguished air about him.

Right now, though, he looked a little worse for wear and spoke urgently. "Please, come out and help me stop these three Pokémon!"

"They're your Pokémon, aren't they?"

The man who had trapped them was now pleading for mercy and asking for help.

He really had opened the door to let them out. Could Liu Xin actually use Future Sight? His prediction had been spot-on!

Shinya conceded defeat. Dazhi found it a little strange, but followed everyone outside anyway.

Only when they saw the devastation before them did they realize what the three Pokémon had done.

Sandslash were only moderately strong. Without training, they weren't much of a threat.

As a result, all dozen or so Sandslash had been beaten into the ground.

The battle maniacs hadn't stopped there. They had started tearing the place apart.

They could give huskies a run for their money, with how quickly they wrecked the place.

Half of the hundred-square-meter wooden house had already been destroyed. Ground Spikes were everywhere, not to mention the cracks all over the ground.

The middle-aged man wanted to cry, but had no tears left. He had planned to trap them, then take down the three Pokémon.

Who could have known these three were such tough customers? They had dispatched the Sandslash in a few blows, then torn his house apart with their bare hands.

If this went on, everything he had built up over the years would be destroyed.

"Hurry and make them stop! Tell them to stop attacking! I know I was wrong!"

"We can settle our differences afterward..."

But Liu Xin covered his face. "I don't even know whether I can get them to stop."

"These guys are way too rebellious. They never listen..."

"Cubone! Gabite! Phanpy!"

Hearing their owner shout, the three Pokémon turned their heads and stared at him.

Their expressions seemed to say, "What do you want?"

Liu Xin's imposing manner suddenly wilted, and he spoke meekly. "You three mighty lords, could you please stop?"

"Do me a favor and stop wrecking the house. I don't want to resort to special measures, either."

Could you please just behave?

"Cubone! Cubone!"

"Phanpy!"

"Gabite!"

All three roared at once, their meaning remarkably consistent.

"They attacked us! Shouldn't we go all out?"

"Beating the Sandslash wasn't enough! There's still this wooden house!"

They were so obsessed with fighting that Liu Xin was at his wits' end.

They were strong, sure, but they were far too disobedient.

Liu Xin could only resort to special measures, recalling them directly into their Poké Balls so they couldn't destroy the house any further.

By now, however, the wooden house could hardly be called habitable.

The middle-aged man let out a long breath. "Luckily, the foundations weren't damaged. That's something, at least."

Shinya patted the man and asked, "What's going on here?"

"How do you explain the missing items from our Pokémon Academy and this whole underground chamber incident?"

"Calm down, calm down."

"First of all, congratulations on passing the test."

Suddenly, a mechanical voice rang out.

Dazhi and the others immediately turned serious and greeted it respectfully. "Hello, Principal."

The middle-aged man pulled a communicator from his pocket. Was he from the Pokémon Academy? What on earth was going on?

Those involved were baffled, and Liu Xin and his companions were even more confused.

The middle-aged man cleared his throat and explained, "This was actually a practical extracurricular test arranged by the Pokémon Academy. It was meant to train your ability to respond to and handle incidents."

"Did you really think someone could breach the heavily guarded Pokémon Academy? Or that catching the culprit would fall to you?"

"So apprehending the culprit was your team's assignment. You only won with their help, but since the principal says you passed, you passed."

Huh? So all that hard work was just for this test?

Shinya didn't care about any of that. Instead, he asked anxiously, "Then where's the photo of my goddess Seina?"

"You'd better not have lost it, or I'll kill you! Even if this was just a test!"

The middle-aged man looked puzzled. "What? What photo?"

"I only had the Sandslash take garbage from inside the academy. That way, we could clean up the environment while running the test."

It took a full five or six minutes to get everything straightened out.

Then Shinya roared, "Dazhi! How dare you lie to me!"

"I'll make sure you can't walk straight today!"

But there was something Liu Xin found strange and couldn't understand.

As far as he knew, a Trainer could only carry six Pokémon. One or two extra might be possible, but any more than that had to be transported to storage.

Yet the middle-aged man before him had somewhere between a dozen and twenty Sandslash. Wasn't that far too many?

The man soon noticed Liu Xin's confusion and chuckled. "These aren't my Pokémon. They're all wild Sandslash."

"So they aren't subject to any of those number limits."

But wild Pokémon generally weren't very obedient, and controlling them was even harder. How did that work?

The middle-aged man said proudly, "That's the subject of my research: how to get along with wild Pokémon."

"In fact, we often deal with wild Pokémon more than anything else, so our relationships with them are extremely important."

"After several years of painstaking research, I finally developed this method of contract construction."

Contract construction?

What sort of concept and method was that?

The middle-aged man took a few things out of his pocket and said leisurely, "Next, I'll explain this contract construction to you, little by little."

"This is a major discovery I've made concerning the relationship between humans and Pokémon. Learning it will do you nothing but good."