Day 20 of the journey to Kanto. Overcast.

Gringey City was the only place near the coast with a Pokémon Center that Reiji had been able to find last night.

It was a coastal industrial city. Years ago, it had been packed with factories and buzzing with life. Then the wastewater and industrial runoff poisoned everything—the sky, the rivers, even the sea. Little by little, people left. What remained now was industry, pollution, and not much else.

After leaving the cave, he found a small fishing village along the shore. From there, he finally got directions to Gringey City and made the trip overnight. As soon as he arrived, he handed Riolu over to Nurse Joy at the Pokémon Center.

When he woke up there the next morning, the sky was still dark and heavy. It hadn’t stood out much when he arrived the night before, but now that he was looking through the window in daylight, he could see it clearly. Black clouds hung low over the entire city.

And that wasn’t the only problem. This was still an industrial city. Years of dumped waste and polluted water had turned the air foul enough to sting his lungs when he breathed too deeply. His body simply hadn’t adjusted yet.

He didn’t even want to think about what that kind of air had done to the people who still lived here. Nobody staying in a place like this for long could be in good shape.

He got out of bed and walked to the window. A light rain had started outside, but the raindrops looked black. By the time they ran together on the ground, they turned into streaks of dirty black water.

At that point he didn’t even dare step outside without covering his face. It wasn’t about disguise this time. Almost every pedestrian he could see below was wearing a mask over their nose and mouth. One breath of the air here was enough to make the point. This place was poison.

He knew this city from his last life. Ash had come here in the anime. Clean water was nearly impossible to find, and the stench rising out of the sewers was bad enough to make his eyes sting.

When he and Pelipper flew in last night, the air alone had nearly knocked them out of the sky. In the end, they’d had to land early and walk the rest of the way into the city.

Still, for all its filth, this place was paradise for certain Poison-types. Grimer thrived on garbage and sludge. Koffing fed on filthy gas.

There was also the tidal power plant nearby, which supposedly had Magnemite all over it. Those were exactly the kind of combination-evolution Pokémon he needed.

He planned to make the most of the trip. Before leaving Gringey City, he wanted at least a Koffing and a Magnemite.

That could wait, though. First he needed the black rain outside to stop. For now, with nothing better to do, he headed to the ward to check on Riolu.

The moment he saw Riolu lying there covered in bandages, his expression almost cracked. Before this, he had only had a vague idea of how badly that brat must have treated it. Now he knew.

“So you’re Riolu’s Trainer?” Nurse Joy walked into the room carrying medicine. The instant she saw him standing beside the bed, she marched over and demanded an answer.

“Yes,” Reiji said, turning toward her through the mask covering his face. The anger coming off her was so strong it almost threw him for a second. He had no idea what he’d done to set her off.

“How could you treat your Pokémon like this? Riolu’s injuries are this bad, and you only brought it in now? Someone like you has no right to call himself a Trainer.”

Reiji let her finish. People like Nurse Joy were idealists when it came to Pokémon. To them, Pokémon and Trainers were supposed to share trust, warmth, and all the rest of it. There was no point trying to argue while she was angry.

Once she finally calmed down, he spoke quietly. “Nurse Joy, you’ve got the wrong idea. I rescued Riolu from a Pokémon trafficker. I didn’t do that to it.”

He nodded toward the bed. “If I were the one who beat it, it wouldn’t be lying there that calmly when I walked in. It would be glaring at me or trying to attack me.”

Nurse Joy blinked, then turned back to Riolu and looked more carefully. He was right. Riolu’s face was blank, but not hostile. There wasn’t even a trace of anger there. It just didn’t want to make a sound.

“Oh…” She rubbed the back of her head and gave a sheepish laugh. “I’m sorry. I really did jump to the wrong conclusion. Please don’t take it to heart.”

“It’s fine,” Reiji said. “I understand why you reacted that way. That’s exactly why I risked my neck to get it away from those people and bring it here in the first place.”

“I’m sorry, Trainer Reiji. Here’s your Pokédex.” Nurse Joy took it out of her pocket and handed it back. He had registered with it the night before when he brought Riolu in.

Afterward, she had thought the whole thing over. He really had a point. If he were the one abusing Riolu, then bringing it straight to a Pokémon Center would have made no sense at all.

Since Riolu’s injuries were so severe, she had gotten suspicious the night before and checked his Trainer information to see whether he had a bad record. She’d found nothing. His file was clean. Just a Trainer with two badges to his name.

That had only made her more suspicious.

The injuries on Riolu were obvious, but it had been too late at night to keep pressing the issue. She had decided to wait until morning and ask him directly.

Instead, she ended up yelling at the wrong person.

“It’s alright,” he said as he took the Pokédex back and tucked it safely into his bag. A Pokédex was basically a Trainer’s ID. Losing it would be a nightmare. “How’s Riolu doing?”

“Riolu will be alright. Other than malnutrition and general weakness, most of the damage is external. The wounds will heal soon enough. But it’s badly run down, and it’ll need a long recovery before its body is truly back in shape.”

Reiji let out a slow breath. “Thanks.”

That part mattered. Pokémon needed real treatment from real professionals. There was only so much he could do on his own.

“It still can’t leave the bed,” Nurse Joy said. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

She looked even more embarrassed now that he hadn’t gotten angry and had thanked her instead. Staying in the room any longer would only make it worse, so she found an excuse and slipped out.

“Thanks. I’ll sit with it for a bit.”

He watched her leave, then turned back to Riolu. There wasn’t much to say. Riolu probably didn’t want to hear him talk anyway.

So he went to the window instead and stood there in silence, watching the black clouds and the dark rain ticking softly against the glass.

After a while, he set one Pokéblock and a bottle of MooMoo Milk on the bedside table.

“Rest up. And don’t go wandering off.”

That was all he said before leaving. No fake comfort. No empty reassurance. Just a simple order to recover properly.

Back in the main lobby, he got himself a free breakfast from the Pokémon Center and sat down in the rest area to eat.

As the morning went on, more and more Trainers came in with injured Pokémon. For a city that had lost most of its residents, Gringey still had no shortage of Trainers passing through—especially Poison-type Trainers.

That part stood out to him immediately.

By the time he finished eating, he’d already noticed that nearly seventy percent of the Pokémon being treated were Poison-types. Most of them were showing signs of toxin overload.

That wasn’t normal.

If he had guessed right, then a lot of the Trainers here were deliberately using poison to raise Poison-types.

The League officially banned that kind of training method. The only loophole was if the toxins were obtained legally in a way that didn’t harm Poison-type Pokémon. What a Trainer did afterward with their own Pokémon was harder to police.

If the poison itself was legal, and the Pokémon belonged to the Trainer, then the League couldn’t really interfere with whatever happened behind closed doors.

Once he finished breakfast, he went back to his room and let Poliwhirl and the others out so they could eat too. After that, he grabbed an umbrella and decided to head outside for a look around.

The streets were wet, quiet, and nearly empty. The few people he passed all wore masks, kept their heads down, and hurried on without trying to talk to anyone.

Before long, he spotted a small Pokémon food shop by the roadside and stepped inside. The shelves were lined with all kinds of brightly colored Pokémon food, each one crystal-clear and neatly packaged. The variety was enough to make his eyes blur.

Then he reached the Poison-type section.

That was where he saw them.

There were dark purple crystals on the shelf, almost like Poison Gems, except duller and rougher. Under the lights, they still gleamed beautifully.

They came in plastic cases—single pieces, pairs, all the way up to packs of ten.

“Careful, kid.” The owner hurried over the moment he noticed Reiji studying the crystals and reaching for one.

“What are these?” Reiji asked, loosening his fingers and leaving the box where it was. “They look a bit like Poison Gems, but not as clear.”

“They’re toxin crystals,” the owner said. “Grimer and Muk form them inside their bodies after eating enough garbage. You can think of them as lumps of concentrated poison. Touch one directly and you’ll be poisoned. Some people have studied them and think they might be the raw form of Poison Gems. Buried underground or deep on the seafloor long enough, they may eventually become true Poison Gems.”

“That’s actually incredible.” Reiji really hadn’t known these existed. If he had, raising Gengar back then might have cost him a lot less.

“How much are they?”

“Not much. They’re too toxic for most people to touch, so the only regular buyers are pharmaceutical and food-processing plants. They dilute the poison and use it in Poison-type feed. Toxin crystals are common in Gringey City. Some come from Grimer that are raised for them, and some are just shed by wild Grimer. One piece only costs a few tens of thousands.”

“I see.” Reiji thought back to the scene in the Pokémon Center and asked, “Then why are there so many poisoned Poison-types in the Pokémon Center?”

“That?” The owner tossed a book onto the counter in front of him. “Read this and you’ll understand.”

Then he went on. “No idea who started it, but somebody put that book out there. It claims feeding poison to Poison-types can make them stronger. A whole crowd of Trainers started copying it.”

“That isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is that some people followed the book exactly and actually got results. Their Poison-types mutated. Stronger toxins. Stronger output. That only convinced the others the method worked, so they got even crazier.”

Reiji flipped the book open while listening. He only had to read a page or two before he understood exactly what it was.

So it was that theory again.

Fight poison with poison. Feed poison to Poison-types to raise their damage output.

The idea itself wasn’t entirely wrong. The real trick was that the book carefully avoided spelling out which Poison-types the method actually worked on.

Anyone with even a little education should know better than to shove heavy toxins into an ordinary flesh-and-blood body. There was always a limit. Once you crossed it, the Pokémon’s body would fail.

But Koffing was a poison gas Pokémon.

Grimer was living sludge.

Gastly was basically poisonous gas too.

For species like those, poison wasn’t just something they used. It was what they were.

So what happened if you poisoned poison?

You didn’t cancel it out. You only stacked one toxin on top of another and made the final mix nastier, more complex, and harder to cure.

That was what made the book so dangerous.

To Reiji, it looked suspiciously similar to that other Poison-type breeding method built around forcing poisonous creatures together. He’d bet both came from the same deeply obsessive Poison-type researcher.

And the fact that this book was circulating here told him something important. There had to be plenty of toxin crystals in the city.

If there were plenty of toxin crystals, then there had to be plenty of Grimer.

No wonder the sewers smelled like something had died in them years ago and never stopped rotting.

Add in the industrial pollution, and Gringey City was the perfect breeding ground for Grimer and Koffing. Food was everywhere. Sludge for one, polluted gas for the other. The factories were basically feeding them for free.

Industrial waste was eaten by Grimer.

Industrial fumes were eaten by Koffing.

The whole rotten system closed in a perfect circle.

The more Reiji thought about it, the more promising the place looked. At the very least, he could probably catch a pair of solid Koffing here and test whether Koffing combination evolution was actually feasible.

If it worked, then with all the Poison-type resources in this city, he might be able to push a Weezing’s potential all the way to Champion tier and save himself two hundred million in the process.

That was the real draw.

Grimer. Koffing. Waste. Gas. Poison everywhere.

In a city this large, there had to be toxin crystals buried in places other Trainers had missed—down in the deeper sewer corners, maybe even in trenches along the seafloor.

“Does this city have a Gym?” he asked at last.

The owner snorted. “A Gym? In a place like this? I can barely keep this shop running. I’m thinking about leaving myself.”

He looked out at the drizzle beyond the door and shook his head. Stay in a city like this too long and it would shave years off your life.

“Thanks.”

It had only been a test question anyway. If there had been a Gym here, it probably would have been Poison-type, which would have overlapped too much with Koga’s Fuchsia Gym. No Gym at all made just as much sense.

[End of chapter]

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