“Six hundred and fifty million, huh. I could grind my whole life and still never make that much. Pretty sure some big city conglomerate took it in the end…”

“Yeah, anything over six hundred million is hopeless. And before that you had that Ralts egg for a hundred and twenty million, then the Riolu egg for three hundred million. All of those are sky-high.”

“By the way, why is there such a big gap between those two egg prices? Weren’t they about the same before?”

“That’s because you showed up late. The Ralts egg had unknown potential; the only thing we know is its parents are former League tournament champions. Getting over a hundred million for it is already pretty good. But for that Riolu egg, the host guaranteed that at least one parent is Elite Four tier. Of course the value doubled.”

“No wonder it’s so much more expensive. Just confirming the parent’s strength doubles the price. What about that pseudo-legendary Tyranitar egg?”

“You don’t need to look at the parents for a pseudo-legendary. Unless something goes very wrong, a pseudo-legendary’s future potential won’t be below Elite Four tier. Six hundred and fifty million is basically cheap. It’s just a shame Tyranitar can’t fly. If it could, the price would be even higher.”

“I’ve seen a Beldum egg go for seven hundred million, and a Bagon egg once hit eight hundred and twenty million.”

“Holy crap, eight hundred million. Nobody tried to rob the place?”

“The black ship’s owner is an Elite Four tier trainer. His first mate and second mate are both quasi–Elite Four tier, and the ship’s sailors are all Advanced tier trainers. You sure you want to make a move here…?”

“Gulp. No wonder the black ship dares to auction off pseudo-legendaries. Without that kind of firepower the cruise ship would’ve been hijacked long ago…”

Watching the whispering crowd drift away, Reiji secretly felt a chill. No wonder this black ship had managed to exist for so long without anyone causing trouble. Turns out the captain was an Elite Four tier trainer.

The commission on a pseudo-legendary auction must be insane, and that Ralts egg and the Riolu egg were absurdly priced on top of it.

It wasn’t that he literally couldn’t afford them. The problem was that Gastly was already a bottomless pit. He really didn’t have the cash to buy a Riolu egg. And that was just the purchase price; the cost of raising it wasn’t even on the board yet. Unless someone handed him one for free… nice fantasy.

Just Gastly alone had eaten over fifty million Pokédollars, and who knew how much more he would have to invest afterward. He really didn’t have the money for a Ralts egg.

Even if he scraped it together, he couldn’t afford to raise it. He was already about to be eaten alive by just one Gastly, never mind all his other Pokémon.

And that pseudo-legendary Larvitar… now that thing was the real money furnace. Any Ground-type, Rock-type, or Steel-type tended to be a money pit, but pseudo-legendaries were another level.

Yeah, talking about it just hurt. Looked like he was destined to miss out on pseudo-legendaries in this life.

Just one Larvitar was already over six hundred million; the other pseudo-legendaries would only be more expensive. He couldn’t even afford a Riolu egg, much less a pseudo-legendary Pokémon egg.

Unless someone gave him a pseudo-legendary for free, he was never buying one. Not in this lifetime.

Once he accepted reality, Reiji felt that going for a starter Pokémon sounded a lot more realistic. For where he was now, getting a starter wasn’t actually that hard. The trouble was that starter Pokémon with decent potential were hard to secure.

Forget it. Leave it to fate.

With the auction over, more masked people filled the corridor again. The crowd drifted back to watching underground matches and shopping.

Reiji found an ATM and slid the two sailors’ bank cards in one by one, punching in their passwords.

He tried the first card, the pilot’s card, and found both passwords the guy had shouted were wrong. That one had always had the shiftiest eyes; of course it wouldn’t be that simple.

After two failed attempts, he still had three chances left. He took out the pilot’s ID card and tried the guy’s birthday as the PIN—and it went through.

He’d only been trying it on a whim, but it actually worked. Looked like if he wanted to keep doing black-on-black work in the future, he really did need to pay attention to people’s IDs. If there were more idiots like this running around, he could milk a lot of them.

Then he checked the account balance and found there was almost nothing in it—just over half a million. He withdrew it all, and after fees, he had an even five hundred thousand.

He put in the other bank card, another anonymous card. This time the password of “111333” worked on the first try. That one at least hadn’t tried to play games with him.

This was the younger sailor’s card. There were over three million in it; after withdrawing and fees, he had three million two hundred thousand left.

After he finished pulling all the cash, he slipped into a quiet corner and started doing the math.

Seven hundred thousand from the bodies, one point eight million from the drawer, two point three million from the stash under the seat, six million from the stash under the floor, three point eight million from selling the used speedboat, five hundred thousand from the pilot’s card, three million two hundred thousand from the other sailor’s card.

Total: 16,050,000.

Sixteen million plus.

However many times those two had pulled black-on-black jobs, they’d managed to stack up that much cash. And they hadn’t even invested in stronger Pokémon as enforcers. In the end, it all fell into his lap.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt something was off. Their strength and their savings just didn’t match. Since when was black-on-black this easy? Trash like that could actually make a living? With that kind of flimsy power they dared to run black-on-black on the sea, over and over? Where did they get the courage?

Reiji once again refreshed his understanding of how “simple and honest” people in this world really were. There were that many rich newbies lining up to feed their heads to a Sharpedo’s jaws.

After packing away the sixteen-plus million, Reiji went to check prices. He stepped into a Pokémon food shop and asked about Life Pokéblocks and Psychic-type Pokéblocks.

Buying in bulk, the member price here was six thousand per box after discount, ten percent off. That was two hundred Pokédollars cheaper than over at the department store.

Not that much cheaper, honestly. Looked like the shops here kept a close eye on the department store’s prices and shadowed them pretty precisely.

But the Fighting-type Pokéblocks here were way cheaper: four thousand a box for premium quality, a full thousand less than in Kinnow City.

Water-type premium Pokéblocks were also five hundred cheaper than in Kinnow City.

It seemed that anything related to Ghost- and Psychic-types didn’t depend on the region at all; it depended on the typing. No matter where you went, the price was about the same.

Either way, this trip’s main goal was still Ghost Gems and Poison Gems.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want Dusk Stones. It was that Dusk Stones were too sensitive. If he started buying them in bulk, even setting aside whether they were available, he’d definitely draw attention from the wrong people.

That was the last thing he wanted. He just wanted to move quietly. Best case, no one noticed him at all. He was a nobody, a small fry. No big shot needed to turn around for his sake. He wasn’t worth it.

Ghost Gems and Poison Gems were different. Buying those in bulk was normal—there were tons of them. Food shops had them, item shops had them, evolution stone shops had them; all kinds of shops stocked them. He could just spread his purchases out.

Next, he got prices for Ghost Gems and Poison Gems and shopped around. After comparing a few places, he finally started buying.

Poison Gems were the easy ones. At the discount rate they were four hundred thousand per gem, forty thousand cheaper than at the department store.

Ghost Gems were harder to find. High-quality ones ran at seven hundred thousand per gem, at least six hundred and fifty thousand even for the cheaper end—more expensive than the department store’s six hundred thousand.

In the end he found a place that didn’t vouch for quality but let customers pick gems freely at a flat five hundred thousand per gem.

So he picked out every Ghost Gem with at least fifty-percent purity.

If the shopkeeper noticed, so what? He wasn’t using any instruments. If the guy had a problem with it, he shouldn’t have put them out at all. He might as well close early and go home.

The place was a gem shop, a big pile of rejected gems dumped in one area—gems of every type, some not even real gems. Even those chunks were fifty-thousand-Pokédollars a piece.

The whole thing really did feel like an all-you-can-eat buffet from his old world. The more you “ate,” the more you profited.

In the end, he bought eighteen Ghost Gems for nine million, and fifteen Poison Gems for six million—a total of fifteen million.

Remaining: 1,050,000. A bit over one million.

After that, he went looking for poison sacs. The best he could find were not good at all.

He still bought about a kilo and a half of poison sacs, which came to another nine hundred thousand Pokédollars.

Remaining: 150,000. One hundred and fifty thousand.

While he was at it, he also sold off Sharpedo and Pelipper, for a total of four hundred thousand—two hundred and fifty thousand for Sharpedo, a hundred and fifty thousand for Pelipper.

Sharpedo was the valuable one; its whole body was useful. The skin, the fins, the teeth—excellent raw materials. The flesh was actually the least valuable part.

After selling both Pokémon, he now had: 550,000. Five hundred and fifty thousand.

With five hundred and fifty thousand left, plus thirty-three gems and the poison sacs, Reiji left the ship’s B3 level and headed up to the deck to catch some sea breeze. On the way he tossed both sailors’ IDs and bank cards into the ocean.

He also took out two Poké Balls and released the Carvanha and Wingull inside, then crushed their Poké Balls under his heel. Feeling the bond from the balls vanish, Carvanha dove straight into the dark sea, disappearing from sight.

Wingull, seeing its Poké Ball smashed, flapped its wings and flew off as well, with zero desire to avenge its old trainer. That just proved there was no bond there at all.

Reiji let those two go for one simple reason: they weren’t worth anything. If they could have fetched even a little money, he wouldn’t have released them.

These were black-on-black Pokémon, not wild ones. If they were wild, he’d actually be worried about the League cracking down. Black-on-black Pokémon, though, he could sell with a clear conscience. Their trainers were already dead; no one would chase him.

It was just too bad both were unevolved and not even Elite tier. The Pokémon buyers on B3 had no use for such babies; they had zero economic value.

In a way, that had saved both their lives. They were so weak they were worthless; if they’d been strong enough to be “not great, not terrible,” they’d have ended up harvested.

Boom—boom—boom—

He had just released the two Pokémon when he saw fire blossom on the sea and explosions erupt. He quickly pulled out his binoculars. Through the lenses he saw a dark yacht with no lights burning on the waves.

If the thing hadn’t caught fire, you’d never guess there was a lightless yacht moving around out here in the black ocean.

“Look, they’re fighting! Must be because of that pseudo-legendary egg…”

Reiji heard the crowd around him yelling, excitedly speculating about the explosions’ cause. He lowered his binoculars and knew immediately it wasn’t that simple.

Winning the auction for a pseudo-legendary was one thing. Getting it off the ship alive was another. The egg in question was a pseudo-legendary Tyranitar egg.

Hatch that Larvitar, keep it alive, and the absolute floor on its future was Elite Four tier. That was the baseline for anyone who took a Larvitar: at least an Elite Four trainer.

The amount of interest it drew was huge. Of course plenty of powerhouses were eyeing it. All he needed to do was sit quietly and watch the show. Even if someone handed him a pseudo-legendary right now, he wouldn’t dare accept, much less use it.

Six hundred million Pokédollars—that was three hundred million in old-world money—and that was just the purchase cost. Raising it was another story. Just think about how Larvitar was supposed to eat an entire mountain.

That’s right, a whole mountain. The anime back in his old world had mentioned it: an adult Larvitar needed to eat a whole mountain.

If it was just a mountain of ordinary rock, you could forget about how strong that Larvitar would be when it grew up.

Just that detail alone showed how much money you had to burn to raise one. Tens of billions wouldn’t even be surprising. Who could afford that kind of money furnace?

It was like those young couples back in his old world debating whether to have kids. Raising a child to adulthood cost the equivalent of a million-Pokédollar apartment, just in ordinary spending—and that was cheap. If you just gave birth and barely fed it, it would cost less, sure…

But what was the point of a child raised like that? A cog? A background extra?

It was like cars: the moment you got one was the cheapest it would ever be. Same for kids, same for Pokémon, same for cars.

What came after was layer upon layer of sunk cost. Double, triple, more. A pseudo-legendary handed to him was useless if he couldn’t feed it. That was the real problem. Unless he took Larvitar out to rob mines with him, how was he supposed to raise it?

All of his current Pokémon were basically “picked up on the road.” He’d gotten lucky: without spending much, he’d ended up with nine high-potential Pokémon. The most expensive one so far was Croagunk at four and a half million.

Once he reached quasi–Elite Four tier himself—maybe even Elite Four tier—he could think about picking up a pseudo-legendary. Right now it was way too early.

And that only applied to Larvitar. Other pseudo-legendaries weren’t necessarily any cheaper. And forget about comparing with Beldum; that one ate ore too. Those two money pits were more or less the same; no need to argue about which was worse.

After watching the firefight on the yacht, Reiji released Pelipper and left the cruise ship. Pelipper soared up into the night and away from the liner floating on the sea. That ship was probably going to be lively until dawn.

He wasn’t going to stick around that long, and he had zero interest in pulling an all-nighter. He wanted to go home, sleep, and then feed tonight’s resources to Gastly to push its potential higher.

As he left the ship, Darkrai drifted off after him as well. The moment Darkrai slipped away, the passengers sleeping aboard the liner woke up, one after another, from their nightmares.

Realizing it had all just been a bad dream, everyone let out a long breath of relief.

Those nightmares had felt way too real—and way too terrifying…

(End of Chapter)

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