Day 15 of the trip to Kanto. Fog.

When Reiji woke up that morning, the entire Gym—and the whole forest around it—was buried in mist. From where he stood, he could barely make out the front gate. Beyond that, everything vanished into white.

He had no idea whether this was just today’s weather or what the area was like year-round. If it stayed this damp and foggy all the time, it couldn’t have been easy on old people.

They all ate breakfast together that morning: Reiji, Blaine, Amber, Agatha, Tania, and the younger apprentices living at the Gym.

The maids had already laid everything out. Once breakfast ended, the children still had lessons to get through, so they all headed out to the open yard to train their Pokémon.

Reiji, meanwhile, had nothing to do.

Training his own team was out of the question. The Gym battle was coming up soon, and the last thing he wanted was for his Pokémon to burn too much stamina beforehand, only to lose because they were already tired.

Once Blaine and Agatha finished eating and settled on the second floor with tea, Tania sent the younger apprentices to the corridor to watch.

The Gym battle was about to begin.

“Rai, right? The trainer from the Orange Archipelago,” Tania said.

She had already learned where he was from over dinner the night before, when Reiji introduced himself. But the two of them had clashed yesterday, and today she would be fighting in Agatha’s place.

She intended to win.

Forget any talk about “testing challengers.” That didn’t apply to someone like him. Her real goal was simple: stop him from taking the Occult Badge.

For one reason only.

He was an arsonist. A shameless, smooth-talking one who twisted everything back around with excuse after excuse. A person like that did not deserve a Badge.

“Leader Tania, please go easy on me,” Reiji said with a smile, Poké Ball already in hand. She was cute, after all. He could afford to be a little gentler than usual.

Tania gave a cold snort and threw her Poké Ball without even looking at him. “Go, Venusaur.”

“Then let’s do this. Gyarados!”

The instant Gyarados appeared, its roar blasted across the battlefield. The pressure alone shoved the surrounding fog outward, and visibility across the arena cleared almost immediately.

“Tch. Intimidate,” Tania muttered the moment she saw Venusaur recoil.

The effect was obvious. Between the pressure from Gyarados’s presence and the way it glared down at Venusaur, Venusaur’s Attack, Defense, and Speed had all dipped.

In truth, she had already felt that pressure yesterday. That was exactly why she had led with Venusaur in the first place.

“He knows you’re using Venusaur and still sends out Gyarados?” Agatha glanced at Blaine. “Does the brat not understand type matchups, or is he just arrogant?”

“Who knows?” Blaine said with a laugh. “It worked well enough, didn’t it?”

“Worked well? You mean Intimidate?” Agatha watched Venusaur’s momentary hesitation with narrowed eyes. “That’s no real problem. Special attacks still work fine.”

If this had been a full tournament battle like the Indigo Plateau Conference, Tania could have reset the Intimidate drop by switching Venusaur out.

“Gyarados, Flamethrower!”

Reiji’s Gyarados knew Flamethrower. A Grass-type wasn’t automatically safe just because it had the typing advantage.

“Venusaur, Solar Beam!” Tania shouted at once.

Venusaur’s flower folded shut and began gathering yellow-green energy. Once the charge was complete, the whole blossom glowed white, snapped back open, and fired a blazing golden beam straight at Gyarados.

“How was that so fast?” Reiji stared as the two attacks met head-on.

Solar Beam was supposed to need a turn to charge. It shouldn’t have gone off that quickly.

Then he saw his own shadow on the ground and understood.

It was the sun.

Gyarados’s entrance had blown the fog away for a moment, and that had exposed the sunlight.

So the battlefield had effectively shifted into harsh sunlight, and under that condition, Solar Beam didn’t need charging at all.

The moment he realized it, he switched tactics. “Gyarados, Rain Dance!”

Gyarados lost the exchange, but Solar Beam’s power dropped off at the end and failed to hit it cleanly.

The moment it heard the next order, it roared upward, calling in a bank of dark clouds that covered the sunlight. A light rain began to fall.

“Venusaur, Leech Seed!” Tania didn’t try to stop the weather. Instead, she used the opening to lock down Gyarados’s massive body.

Before the rain had even fully settled, vines shot out and wrapped around Gyarados. Seeds from Venusaur’s flower had latched onto its body, sprouted, and spread. The vines not only tightened around it, but also drained its HP and fed it back to Venusaur.

“Gyarados, burn the vines off yourself with Flamethrower!”

Reiji had let one careless moment flip the whole match. Gyarados had blown the fog away for the enemy, handed Venusaur a free Solar Beam, and now it had gotten itself caught by Leech Seed while trying to fix the weather.

Of course Tania wasn’t going to let him recover that easily.

“Venusaur, Sleep Powder.”

A sly little smile touched her face. If Gyarados got put to sleep here, the match was over.

Reiji laughed. “Gyarados, burn the powder too.”

Trying to use powder moves in the rain? That was bold, he’d give her that. Even without Flamethrower, the rain alone would have made landing Sleep Powder difficult. Still, playing safe mattered.

Flamethrower burst out again and again, turning the rain into rising steam. The fog around the Gym thickened all over again, and the falling rain only made it worse.

“Venusaur, Razor Leaf!”

Since Sleep Powder had failed, Tania switched cleanly into direct offense.

“Gyarados, block with Iron Tail!”

Now neither side could see properly. The battlefield had vanished into mist again. All they could do was judge direction from where the attacks had come before. In the fog, only the cutting hiss of flying leaves could be heard.

Gyarados reacted immediately, driving its tail up in front of itself. A metallic sheen flashed over it, and the next instant the ringing sound of leaves slamming into steel echoed out.

“Gyarados, Hurricane!”

At this point Reiji couldn’t even see Gyarados properly, let alone Venusaur. He needed the field cleared.

Gyarados roared, and the Hurricane it unleashed swept the fog away, along with the rainclouds overhead. Fortunately, the higher cloud layer stayed intact, so the weather settled into an ordinary overcast sky instead of clearing completely.

When the wind died down, the whole field came back into view.

Gyarados and Venusaur were both still standing exactly where they had been before, glaring each other down.

“Gyarados, Ice Beam!”

He gave up on fire and switched to ice. It was still super effective on Venusaur.

“Venusaur, Protect!” Tania snapped back immediately.

The moment Reiji heard that, he watched Venusaur more carefully. Why wasn’t she dodging? Even after the Speed drop, she should still have tried to avoid the hit first.

Then he saw the roots.

They had spread from beneath Venusaur’s body into the ground.

“Ingrain? Damn it…” Reiji clicked his tongue. “So that’s why you didn’t move. No wonder it’s so hard to wear down. I’m not even outdamaging the recovery.”

Realizing it, he adjusted instantly. “Gyarados, Flamethrower!”

If Venusaur didn’t want to move, then fine. He’d burn it until it changed its mind. The rain was gone now, so Flamethrower’s power was back to normal.

She must have used Ingrain under cover of the fog. He had almost missed it.

Ingrain rooted Venusaur into the ground and restored HP each turn, but in exchange, it also locked the user in place.

“You finally noticed?” Tania smiled, the first genuine smile she had shown all match, and there was obvious mockery in it.

Then she raised a hand and called out, “Venusaur, Solar Beam!”

“What? There’s no sun!” Reiji didn’t have time to think and shouted back at once, “Gyarados, Hydro Pump!”

Gyarados opened its jaws wide and blasted out a massive column of water. It met Venusaur’s Solar Beam head-on, and the two sides went into another beam clash.

“Gyarados, Flamethrower again!”

Reiji didn’t care that the impact had filled the field with spray and steam. He immediately had Gyarados target the ground around where Venusaur had rooted itself.

That Solar Beam had probably been charged during Protect.

She looked like a sweet girl, and yet the tricks she played were even dirtier than his. Reiji was starting to question which one of them was supposed to be the transmigrator here.

“Venusaur, move!”

This time Tania didn’t try to tank it. Protect had already been used once, and relying on it again right away was too risky.

“There we go,” Reiji said with a grin. “Now we’re playing.”

The moment Venusaur moved, the matchup became much easier to force.

“Gyarados, get in there and use Bind!”

Anyone who had ever seen a snake coil up understood the move immediately. He wanted Gyarados to wrap its whole long body around Venusaur and pin it down.

“Venusaur, Vine Whip. Then Leech Seed again!”

Gyarados surged forward, its thick body snapping around Venusaur and locking it in place. Venusaur didn’t even try to resist immediately. Instead, it scattered more seeds from its flower, and they latched onto Gyarados, trapping it right back.

Now both of them were entangled.

But Gyarados’s head could still move.

It dropped its jaws and bit down with Ice Fang, freezing Venusaur solid.

“Use Vine Whip and tie its mouth shut!” Tania ordered at once.

So that was why she had used Vine Whip.

Gyarados tried to pull its head back, but it was too late. Venusaur’s vines wrapped around its jaws and sealed its mouth tight.

The moment its mouth was tied shut, the ice on Venusaur’s body cracked apart and shattered. Venusaur shook itself once and broke free. It looked a little drained, but otherwise seemed mostly unharmed.

“Gyarados, Thunderbolt!”

Reiji stared at the mess they had gotten into: Gyarados wrapped around Venusaur, Leech Seed wrapping around Gyarados, and Vine Whip sealing Gyarados’s mouth.

That giant cabbage turtle really was hard to deal with. If he had known it would turn out like this, he would never have forced close combat. Gyarados had played itself right into a dead position.

At that point, its mouth was unusable and its tail couldn’t swing freely either. Thunderbolt was the only move left that might break the situation, even if it was practically an eight-hundred-for-the-enemy, one-thousand-for-yourself trade.

Lightning flared from the three crests on Gyarados’s head and arced straight into Venusaur.

But the two Pokémon were wrapped around each other too tightly.

Venusaur took resisted damage.

Gyarados took quadruple-effective damage.

There was only one possible ending.

Gyarados electrocuted itself unconscious, while Venusaur, astonishingly, looked almost fine once it pulled its vines back.

“So I lost,” Reiji said with a sigh.

This was the first time his lead Gyarados had ever dropped a match.

A loss was a loss. There was nothing to argue.

Still, it did feel cramped. He had plenty of tools he never got to use. He wasn’t trying to make excuses—he really did lose cleanly—but that didn’t change the fact that the battlefield limited him badly. Hurricane, in particular, couldn’t be used freely here. He had already thrown it once just to clear the fog. If he started using it properly in battle, he might tear the roof apart, and then the blame would absolutely land on him.

So fine. He lost.

Venusaur was clearly stronger too, probably already in the Advanced tier, while Gyarados still hadn’t crossed into that level. There was no shame in losing to that.

Tania’s command was sharp as well.

Sharp, and dirty.

He had been outplayed cleanly.

Who exactly was the transmigrator here? Somehow he, the actual transmigrator, had just been buried under a pile of grimy tactics by an anime girl.

Then again, maybe that was the real lesson.

Never look down on anyone.

Not even fictional characters.

Dirty tactics were not something exclusive to game players. Old families that had stood for centuries had endless accumulated knowledge behind them. Given enough time, of course someone would come up with methods like this.

“Fire old man, your boy doesn’t look like much after all,” Agatha said flatly, once Gyarados went down. From her perspective, the rest of the match barely mattered now. Reiji had been fighting uphill, yes, but the battle itself had been messy, and his command had not looked particularly impressive.

Blaine just laughed awkwardly and said nothing. The kid had looked plenty capable when battling him, so how had he turned into this here? Was it really because Tania was pretty and he had held back? The thought crossed Blaine’s mind whether he wanted it to or not.

Reiji recalled Gyarados and threw his second Poké Ball.

“You’re up, Scyther.”

Scyther appeared and immediately scraped its blades together, eager to fight. It liked strong opponents, and this one was definitely strong enough.

“Scyther…” Tania looked at Venusaur and immediately understood the problem. Venusaur might have won cleanly enough, but it was in no shape to stop a fresh Scyther. That last Ice Fang had hurt, and now Flying-type attacks were a huge threat on top of it.

Too bad this wasn’t a format where she could switch.

Otherwise, she would never have been pushed into a corner this badly.

Still, winning the first round was a good start.

Reiji had chosen Scyther for the obvious reason—it had the typing advantage.

Ever since joining the Gym, he had not checked Scyther’s panel in over a month. But even a month ago, Scyther had already stepped into the Advanced tier.

And after another full month…

[Scyther]

[Type: Bug + Flying]

[Gender: Male]

[Potential: 54.77%]

[Level: 46.82%]

[Ability: Swarm/38.23%] [Hidden Ability: Steadfast/36.33%]

Bug-type [Moves: (X-Scissor/40.82%) (Fury Cutter/38.45%) (Bug Buzz/13.35%) (Defog/15.33%) (Bug Bite/41.16%)]

Flying-type [(Acrobatics/38.22%) (Tailwind/42.35%) (Wing Attack/36.25%) (Air Slash/35.61%) (Air Cutter/15.61%)]

Normal-type [(Swords Dance/38.88%) (Focus Energy/41.95%) (Double Team/36.24%) (Protect/38.83%) (Leer/25.11%) (Baton Pass/16.65%) (Slash/33.84%) (Quick Attack/42.91%) (Double Hit/13.24%) (Razor Wind/17.58%)]

Fighting-type [(Brick Break/30.68%) (Close Combat/11.24%)]

Other: [(Agility/43.73%) (Steel Wing/37.81%) (Night Slash/29.64%) (Cross Poison/14.74%)]

The boosted critical-hit-rate moves are Slash, Night Slash, Cross Poison, Razor Wind, and Air Cutter.

[End of chapter]

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