Reiji shot Tai a flat look, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and pulled him into the shade before explaining, “If talented Pokémon were that common, Elite Four-level Trainers would be everywhere.”

“Haha, true enough.” Tai scratched his head, embarrassed. If high-talent Pokémon really were that easy to find, there would be no room left for people like him.

“How much did you pay just now?” Reiji put away the better Magnemite, then tossed the fifty-potential one to Tai.

“Taking that Magnemite cost five hundred thousand,” Tai said at once. He knew exactly what Reiji meant. That second Magnemite had belonged to another power plant, so taking it naturally meant paying for it.

“Keep it. Its talent’s pretty good. Raise it properly and it still has a future.” Reiji smiled. Tai had paid the money and led him around all morning. He had no interest in owing favors, so he gave him the fifty-potential Magnemite.

The Magnemite line had three stages. As long as the other two Magnemite weren’t complete trash and he paired them with a high-grade Thunder Stone, Elite Four-tier potential wasn’t out of the question.

“So I can just grab any two as support for the evolution?” Tai caught the Poké Ball and tried to keep his tone casual. He knew there was always something to gain by sticking with Reiji, but knowing that and saying it out loud were two different things. Whether Reiji gave him anything or not depended entirely on Reiji’s mood.

“Of course. The only catch is the Thunder Stone. Without a high-grade one, it’s hard to say.” Reiji rubbed his chin, thought for a moment, then added, “You can also judge Magnemite by how much electricity they can store. The higher the limit, the worse their talent usually isn’t.”

“Thanks.” Tai put the Magnemite away. He had not only gotten a decent Pokémon, he had also learned a way to screen Magnemite. That alone made today worth it. With enough time, he could slowly hunt down more.

“By the way, is there anywhere nearby to send Pokémon without registering them?” Reiji had already spent enough time around Tai to know he’d be useful for this sort of thing, so he asked directly. He needed a discreet place to send his contraband to the old drunk.

This time, he had three separate batches.

The first was the loot from those three little grunts earlier: ten Pokémon, all common Water- and Grass-types. Total value, just under two million.

The second batch was bigger. It came from the dozen or so bodyguards he had dealt with the night he got off the ship. In total, there were more than thirty Pokémon. A few were decent Advanced-tier ones, but only nine had actually reached that level. The rest were all Elite-tier.

Too bad those nine Advanced-tier Pokémon were all common species. Even so, they should still sell for around twenty million, averaging roughly two million each. The other twenty-odd Elite-tier Pokémon were also ordinary species, worth maybe another five million altogether.

If any of them had been rare species or rare typings, they could have sold for several million even on Kinnow Island, especially Fighting-types, Psychic-types, and the like.

The third batch was the rich brat’s team: six so-called dragons, both real and fake—Kingdra, Flygon, Charizard, Gyarados, Ampharos, and Rhydon.

If they had fought head-on, Reiji wasn’t sure he would’ve beaten that guy. An ambush had been the safer play. The brat had probably gone to his grave furious about it.

But that was life-and-death for you. If he could stab from the shadows, why the hell would he walk out and fight fair? That was how upright Trainers did things. He wasn’t one of them. A bad guy ought to act like one.

Fairness? Between a scumbag and someone even worse? What idiot would ask for that?

Besides, once he’d already decided not to be a good person, what was the point of lecturing him about doing the right thing?.

Of those six Pokémon, Charizard was the most valuable. After that came Kingdra and Flygon. Ampharos came next, then Rhydon and Gyarados. On Kinnow Island, Ampharos was worth a lot more than those last two fake dragons.

That Charizard was one of Kanto’s starter lines, though not a League-issued one. It had probably been bred by Team Rocket. Reiji honestly didn’t know whether the old drunk would dare take something like that.

He valued Charizard at no less than fifteen million. Once it got back to a breeding house, it could keep producing Charmander hatchlings for as long as it was used as breeding stock.

Kingdra and Flygon, the two real dragons, were worth about sixteen million together. They were genuine Dragon-types, sure, but they were still ordinary dragons in the end. And Kingdra needed a Dragon Scale to evolve, which was enough to stop a huge number of Trainers cold.

That was the funny part. Some true dragons sold for less than a Charizard.

Then came Ampharos at six million. Rhydon and Gyarados together were worth about five million. That was how much typing mattered.

Gyarados was the cheapest of the lot. If not for the fact that it was already Advanced tier, it wouldn’t have been worth much at all.

Other than those three batches of contraband, he also had two Pokémon he had no intention of selling. One was Riolu. The other was a Feebas, an unexpected bonus he had found in the rich brat’s room.

The brat had clearly known Feebas could evolve into Milotic. Since they spent their lives at sea, he had probably planned to raise one himself. In the end, Spinarak dragged it out anyway.

That Feebas had pretty good talent too, with fifty-four potential. Its parentage was probably known, otherwise the rich brat never would have gone out of his way to keep it.

Reiji already had a Prism Scale. Evolution could wait. Right now, the important thing was moving the contraband in his hands.

“All these power plants have Pokémon transporters. Pay the plant a fee and you can send Pokémon through them,” Tai said, turning and leading him right back inside.

Once they were in, Tai found someone he knew and quietly slipped him some cash. After that, borrowing a transporter was easy. These machines were normally used by the plant to move Electric-type Pokémon in emergencies.

Once he had a transporter room to himself, Reiji took out his phone and called the old drunk.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Brat, you finally remembered how to make a phone call?”

“Old drunk, is your side safe?” Reiji still had his face disguised and his mask on. He had no idea what the old man’s situation looked like on the other end.

Still, the moment he heard that “brat,” black lines practically crossed his forehead. The old man really was asking to get punched.

“Brat, what’s wrong with your voice?”

“No shit. I’m making sure this is safe first.” Reiji was just as helpless about it. He couldn’t be certain the power plant was secure, so he had covered his face and altered his voice.

“Fine. Send it over. Let me see the goods first.”

“First batch. Ten Pokémon. Two million.” Reiji keyed in the transfer coordinates the old man had given him earlier and sent the Poké Balls over one by one.

Half a minute later, after checking the quality, the old man replied, “Got them. Two million works.”

“You’re not haggling?” Reiji blinked. Coming from that stingy old bastard, it almost felt unnatural. He had been ready for a whole round of arguing.

“Heh. If there’s enough profit in it, why bother haggling? Got more? Keep going.”

“The second batch is a lot bigger. The good ones are worth twenty million, and the rest another five million.”

This time the old man took a few minutes before answering. “Quality’s good. I’ll take them. Anything else?”

“One last batch. There’s a Charizard in it, one of the starter lines. Dare to take it?”

“Any identifying mark? What level of strength?”

“No mark. Advanced-tier strength.” As he said it, Reiji couldn’t help thinking the rich brat really should have worked harder. If he had, that Charizard might have made quasi–Elite Four tier, and Reiji could have sold it for even more.

As for their potential, that part barely mattered. These were all Pokémon that had already gone through full three-stage evolution lines. Even if they had Elite Four-tier potential, it didn’t mean much now.

First, they still carried the traces of a former Trainer, so nobody could really pass them off as fresh captures. Second, he had no way to prove their talent to a buyer. Third, most of that potential had already been spent. There wasn’t much left to cultivate.

“No mark helps. Male or female? What price?”

“Male or female? That matters too?” Reiji thought of livestock from his old world. When it came to breeding, gender definitely changed the price.

“For ordinary Pokémon, no. For Charizard, yes. If it’s a breeding male, especially one with dragon blood and Dragon-type moves, then the value changes completely.”

Heh. The old fox had said all that, but still hadn’t mentioned how big the gap actually was. Reiji was speechless.

“Male. Knows three Dragon-type moves. Fifteen million. How’s that?”

“Male, and three Dragon moves? Not bad. Breed that Charizard with a real dragon and you could get some fine Charmander hatchlings out of it… Still, fifteen million is too much. Thirteen million.”

“No. It’s still a starter.”

“Yeah, yeah. At most I’ll go to fourteen million. Not one cent more. Your dragon’s only Advanced tier. There’s still risk when I move it. Then there’s the breeder’s screening, the egg incubation, the cost of raising hatchlings, failed eggs, low survival rates… the markup won’t be that big. A clean one-time sale is already convenient for you. The breeding house has to make money too.”

“And you think I don’t know that? In the underground market, any starter goes for twenty million and up. If two hatchlings survive, the breeder’s already made the money back.”

Reiji had known in his last life that breeding was a gold mine. Of course, people without money couldn’t get into that business in the first place.

“Sure, if two survive. That’s still the small part of the problem. The real issue is that Charizard is from a starter line. Ordinary breeding houses don’t dare touch something like that.”

“It doesn’t even have a mark,” Reiji muttered, already sick of the old man forcing the price down.

“Brat, are you really stupid or just pretending? Even without a mark, breeding and selling starter Pokémon is illegal. If the League finds out, they confiscate the whole lot. Why do you think the League hands out starters to rookies every year? Where do you think they get so many?”

“After you left, the black market stayed shut for a long time before it reopened. The League swept through every Pokémon trade they could find. Ordinary Pokémon were released. Every starter they found was confiscated.”

“They can do that?” Reiji was genuinely stunned. So selling starter Pokémon was that risky.

Which meant the League was basically fattening the black market, then harvesting it again and again. Black-market bosses did all the work, and the League came in at the end to collect for free. Hell of a racket.

No wonder the League always had starters on hand and kept using them as tournament prizes and rookie rewards. It wasn’t because they were absurdly rich. It was because the starters they got for free didn’t cost them anything. Stamp them, register them, then hand them out as starter Pokémon.

“And not just the black market. The breeding houses inside the city got cleaned out too. Every illegal Pokémon they had was confiscated. Even the stud dragons kept by those big families got seized. The League cut the floor out from under all of them before they even saw it coming.”

“They even seized the stud dragons?” Reiji still had no idea what kind of dirt Kinnow City’s mayor had handed over to Lance, but one thing was obvious: ever since that crackdown on Kinnow Island’s black market, the breeding business had never fully recovered.

“Brat, stop overthinking it. Those families have deep channels. They already brought in new breeding stock and restarted their hatcheries. They’re just a lot more careful now.”

“Fine. One-shot deal, then. Saves me the risk, too. We’ll go with that price.” Reiji thought it over and let it go. Last time Lance had probably hauled off hundreds of starters from Kinnow Island.

The total value was hard to estimate. There were too many zeroes in it. Tens of billions lost, maybe even more than a hundred billion.

If he ever climbed high enough in the League and grabbed an investigator’s post, he could feast just by shaving a little off those obscenely rich families.

Pocket a bit of extra profit during an inspection and the League would never notice. Just thinking about how much graft there was in that line of work made his mouth water.

“Fourteen million?”

“Quit acting coy and take the deal,” Reiji said. The old drunk was probably grinning from ear to ear on the other end already.

“Heh.” The old man didn’t even bother pretending otherwise. “This batch is good. Anything else?”

“Two more Dragon-types. Kingdra and Flygon. Eight million each. Sixteen million total.”

“Kingdra isn’t worth that much… but forget it. I won’t haggle.”

“Why?” Reiji actually was curious. That was a real dragon. Why was it undervalued?

“Don’t you know already? You think Dragon Scales are easy to get? Anything related to Dragon-types is expensive. Sometimes the scale costs more than the Pokémon. And if you can get the scale in the first place, why would you buy a Kingdra hatchling?”

Reiji had no answer to that. So it was awkward merchandise after all. If the scale cost more than the Pokémon, then Kingdra’s value really did come down to the scale itself. Other than breeding it for hatchlings, the only other use was probably harvesting Dragon Scales off it.

“There’s also an Ampharos. Six million. Gyarados and Rhydon together for five.”

“An Exeggutor only goes for around five million, and you want six for Ampharos?”

“Old drunk, both Ampharos and Gyarados have dragon blood, and they know one or two Dragon-type moves. So are you taking them or not?”

“Fine, fine. No haggling.”

“Good. Sending them over.” Reiji transferred the last six Advanced-tier Pokémon across. With that, the whole batch of contraband was finally off his hands.

[End of chapter]

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