Where the Hell Had I Ended Up?!

On a sweltering summer day, scorching sunlight poured through the ninth-floor window and onto the bed.

Still lying in bed, Xin Mu instinctively draped an arm over his face to block the sunlight, but it did little good. Before long, he groggily sat up and felt around by the head of the bed for his glasses.

"Weird. Where did my glasses go...?"

As he muttered and fumbled around, he suddenly jolted. The bedside table, made of an iron frame and polycarbonate panels, wasn't furniture from his old home. It belonged to the apartment he had rented in college.

"Was I reborn?"

After a brief hesitation, Xin Mu rubbed his face. Once he was sure this wasn't a dream, joy welled up inside him.

As everyone knew, being all alone was simply a fact of life in certain circumstances, and Xin Mu was no exception.

He barely had any family to begin with, so he didn't have to worry about those concerns. Winning lottery numbers might be a weapon governed by the laws of causality, but he knew how the next few years would unfold. Even if he couldn't become filthy rich, escaping the "blessed" life of working nine to nine, six days a week, and taking it easy wouldn't be hard.

He walked into the cramped bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror, unable to stop the corners of his mouth from rising.

His was a face that could blend into a crowd, three parts cool refinement and seven parts everyday warmth.

The shadows cast by his brow bones perfectly balanced his slightly rounded eyes, while his jawline ended in an unexpectedly sharp angle, like freshly polished jade.

Most importantly, this was exactly how he had looked when he was young.

As Xin Mu imagined what he would do in the future, a sudden shiver ran through him. The air conditioner was blasting, and he was wearing nothing but shorts in the summer heat. After standing there lost in thought for a while, he was bound to feel cold.

"I remember leaving the AC remote here."

Xin Mu returned to the bed and rummaged around for the remote, but couldn't find it.

In the process, however, he discovered that he could read the tiny print on a package several meters away without his glasses.

"A rebirth bonus? My nearsightedness is gone? Well, that's a good thing..."

Meanwhile, he failed to notice a mass of something resembling computer code taking solid form on the floor behind him, right on top of the remote he was looking for.

"Thanks."

"Meow~"

Seeing the remote held out in front of him, Xin Mu thanked whoever had handed it over on instinct, only to hear a meow in response.

He whipped his head around and found himself looking straight into a pair of mischievous, differently colored eyes.

"So this isn't a rebirth story, it's a transmigration story... where the hell did I end up?!"

Xin Mu had originally thought he had simply been handed a rebirth scenario. But when he saw the cat before him standing on two legs, its body mostly light and dark green and its face sporting a peculiar mask, he realized this world was far more interesting than he had imagined.

Meowscarada, the Magician Pokémon, was the Grass-type starter's final evolution from the ninth-generation games, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. It had been Xin Mu's favorite Pokémon, and the partner he had chosen in numerous games.

Compared with those strings of cold, lifeless code, the living, breathing Meowscarada before him was... impossible to resist.

Who could say no to a real Pokémon, especially their favorite one?

"Are you my Pokémon?"

"Meow?"

At his question, Meowscarada wore an incredibly human expression of disbelief. Xin Mu could even make out an entire string of meaning in that simple meow.

[I told you not to turn the AC up so high when you sleep. Now you've got a fever, don't you? You're delirious!]

Meowscarada seemed even more familiar with the room than Xin Mu. With practiced ease, the Pokémon took a thermometer out of a drawer and gestured for him to check his temperature. Before he could say anything, fever medicine, a damp towel, and other supplies appeared before him one after another.

Those three-fingered paws were remarkably nimble. Meowscarada also tugged over the jacket draped across a nearby chair and settled it over Xin Mu's shoulders.

"I don't have a fever. You don't need to do all this. My head's just a little muddled."

"Meow!"

"Okay, okay, I get it. I'll check so you can see."

Under Meowscarada's persistent insistence, Xin Mu finally used the thermometer to prove that there was nothing wrong with him. Only when the display showed 36.7 did Meowscarada breathe a sigh of relief.

Xin Mu also began examining the changes in the room. Overall, it was still the rental apartment he remembered, except that there were now far more Pokémon-themed decorations.

A photo by the head of the bed caught his attention as well. He remembered being alone in that picture, but it had now become a photo of him and Meowscarada together.

"Xin Mu and Meownei" was written in one corner.

The name Meownei gave Xin Mu a clearer idea of this Meowscarada's identity. Although he had played many versions of Pokémon games before coming to this world, his Meowscarada had a different name in each one.

Meownei was the name of his partner in the latest VRMMORPG.

VRMMORPG stood for virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The games in Sword Art Online and Overlord belonged to that genre.

After all, Xin Mu's previous era had experienced another technological boom, and Pokémon, as a classic franchise, hadn't missed out on the upgrades.

That photo was a screenshot taken when he cleared the game. The character he had created in his own likeness had also become more lifelike in the picture.

"Meownei, have you seen my phone?"

Xin Mu looked around, wanting to see whether anything besides Meownei had come to this world with him, but found nothing.

That was within his expectations. The account had originally contained only one Pokémon, Meowscarada, so all his resources had naturally gone into that partner. Max level, six perfect IVs-Meowscarada had reached the peak of what was legally possible, and their friendship had long since exceeded the usual limits.

Those hundreds of hours in the game had been nothing more than an experience in a virtual world to Xin Mu, but to Meownei, they had been something far more real.

From Meownei's perspective, Xin Mu was simply "acting weird" again. Without giving it much thought, the Pokémon began helping him look for his phone.

Xin Mu merely wanted to use the internet to learn more about this world.

Now that the scenario had changed, his earlier plans had naturally gone out the window. He intended to first find out just how different this world was from what he knew.

"Meow~"

The phone "flew" into Xin Mu's reach on its own-or, more accurately, it was delivered alongside Meowscarada's flower bud.

The leaves and fur around Meowscarada's neck grew into a cape-like shape. The fur on the inside reflected light to conceal a special stem, which served as something like a third hand and was commonly used by the species in battle.

His phone was still the same phone, but the app icons on its screen had changed considerably.

An app with a mostly blue-and-white icon, a Doduo image, and the character "度" looked rather familiar to Xin Mu. He tapped it and was greeted by a familiar trending-search list.

[Today's Doduo headlines: Local police recently uncovered a case involving the illegal abuse of a Pokémon.

The suspect, surnamed Chen, placed a Toxic Orb on a Dratini purchased on the black market, forcing the Dratini to repeatedly shed its skin through its Shed Skin Ability for immense profit.

These actions severely harmed the Pokémon's physical and mental well-being. Leather shoes made from the toxic shed skin also posed a threat to human health.

The suspect has been arrested, and the Dratini has been sent to the Johto Region for proper care. Police are following leads to investigate the poaching involved. Anyone with information is asked to contact their local Officer Jenny...]

[Preparations underway for the next Pokémon World Championships...]

[A trainer in the Hoenn Region officially announces a relationship with Gardevoir...]

The news recommendations on his phone's home page made Xin Mu's mouth twitch, both at Baidu's name having changed to Doduo and at the news itself. Still, the contents did help him establish a rough picture of the world.

Parts of this world matched his impressions, but it was certainly not his original world. Its geography, for example, consisted of regions such as Kanto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and Galar, while Xin Mu's current location appeared to be called Donghuang.

He could also see a special app in one corner of the screen: the game icon containing Meownei's save data. However, the icon was now gray and stuck loading. He could neither open nor delete it, and he had no idea what it might do.

"If only the in-game features still worked."

According to the game's setting, everyone had their own base, with facilities that made raising Pokémon more efficient and helped them grow with half the effort.

Looking at the gray icon, Xin Mu left it alone for the moment and switched back to Doduo to continue searching for information.

But before he could search for more news, a phone call interrupted his thoughts.

As Xin Mu answered, an anxious voice came through the speaker.

"Bro, where are you?! It's your graduation makeup exam! Do you still want your diploma and degree or not?!

"You've already retaken Pokémon Appraisal Theory twice! If you fail again, you'll really have to delay graduation!"