Pokemon: The Game Is Real- [29/30] (Patreon)

[CH-29: Harvest]

Who is Larry?

Those three words spread across the forum and world channel like an infection within minutes of the announcement going live.

Shock and envy flooded the world channel in an unbroken stream.

Wait wait wait, who is Larry? I heard Ichiyo was there too. Shouldn't Ichiyo have taken first place?

One million League Credits and top-quality Pokémon food. I'm actually going to cry.

You people are envying the wrong thing. Credits and food you can grind for. The truly rare reward is that hidden title.

Explain.

From what I understand, titles are among the hardest things to obtain in this game. They're not just labels either. They provide actual buffs to the player, and some of them even enhance your physical condition in the real world.

Real world effects? You're not serious.

Dead serious. I've heard the national teams have already entered the game and are apparently working with other countries to organize real-world competitions based on in-game performance.

So it's basically a permanent buff?

Absolutely dying of envy right now.

Something on the leaderboard is bothering me though. Ichiyo and Dragon Ascendant both got reputation increases, positive or negative depending on which side they helped. But this player called Larry got all those rewards without gaining any reputation at all, good or bad. How does that work?

My guess is he didn't help either side. He just attacked whoever he ran into and treated every NPC as a contribution point farm.

???

That's actually genius. I'm trying that next time.

On New Island, Ichiyo had not yet left. He stood reading the world channel with a heavy expression.

He had just searched for Larry on the Trainer strength leaderboard. The name did not appear anywhere in the top thousand.

So how had this player accumulated enough contribution points to take first place in a world-scale event of this difficulty?

And throughout the entire battle, while Ichiyo had been coordinating with the League NPCs and hunting down Team Rocket remnants across the island, he had not encountered a single player matching that description.

Stranger still, no reputation change in either direction.

Had the game produced a bug?

...

Paldea region. Naranja Academy dormitory.

Naoki stared at the announcement on his panel with a complicated expression.

He had placed first in the rankings?

He worked through it quickly and the answer came together without much difficulty.

He had been the one to set the entire event in motion. He had brought the players and the Kanto League down on New Island simultaneously, dismantled Team Rocket's research facility, prevented Mewtwo from falling into Giovanni's hands the way it had in the original story, forced Giovanni's identity into the open ahead of schedule, and dealt a meaningful blow to Team Rocket's overall strength.

His contribution to the event had not come from fighting. It had come from engineering the whole thing.

The game was fair about that, Naoki thought.

Several private messages had come in while he was reading.

Kenji: Larry, did you take part in that event too? Unbelievable.

Dream: If I'm reading this correctly, the player who posted that anonymous intelligence on the forum was you, wasn't it?

Moon: Larry, you went to Kanto too?!

Naoki looked at Dream's message for a moment longer than the others. Sharp woman.

He neither confirmed nor denied anything, replied to each of them in turn, and then opened his panel to look at the reward details.

Agent of Evil (Unique): Awarded solely to player "Larry" in recognition of successfully dismantling Team Rocket's agents of evil during this event.

While this title is equipped: HP base stat +20, Defense base stat +20, Special Defense base stat +20. Player only.

Special effect: Your reputation as a natural enemy of evil precedes you. While this title is equipped, Dark-type Pokémon will instinctively hold you in reverence, significantly increasing your control over Dark-type Pokémon. Training speed for Dark-type Pokémon is greatly increased, and the probability of a Dark-type Pokémon learning new moves during training is substantially raised.

Naoki stared at the title name and felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him.

Agent of Evil. Anyone hearing that for the first time would assume he had done something genuinely terrible.

But the effects attached to it were a different matter entirely. Those he found genuinely exciting.

Increased HP, Defense, and Special Defense base stats for the player. So humans in the Pokémon world really were a kind of Pokémon themselves in some sense. Which meant that eventually, with enough development, he too could end up with the classic Pallet Town constitution, taking a direct Thunderbolt to the face and walking away without a scratch.

The brief rush of excitement passed and he settled back down quickly.

This title increased his odds of surviving in this world. That alone made it valuable.

Beyond that, the special effect read as though it had been written specifically for him. Greatly increased training speed for Dark-type Pokémon.

He happened to have a Dark-type Pokémon sleeping right beside him.

He moved on to the second reward.

Mewtwo's Karma: Special item. Mewtwo's fate was changed by your actions, and the threads of your destinies have become entangled in ways neither of you fully understands.

I see you, schemer in the shadows. — Mewtwo.

Naoki blinked at the screen.

He understood the fate entanglement. He had altered Mewtwo's destiny, so a karmic connection between them made a certain kind of sense.

But Mewtwo had seen him?

He took a breath and thought it through carefully.

One possibility surfaced quickly and it was the most likely explanation. During the battle on New Island, Mewtwo had used its psychic ability to read the minds of the players present. From those memories it had pieced together the anonymous forum post and traced the chain back to whoever had set everything in motion.

But would Mewtwo actually go to the trouble of traveling to Paldea to expose him specifically?

That seemed unlikely. His forum posts had all been anonymous. Even with Mewtwo's intelligence, identifying him through that alone would be extraordinarily difficult.

Naoki let out a slow, quiet breath.

On the financial side, Dream had apparently verified the existence of both Zapdos and the giant Dragonite through some means of her own, and the remaining six million League Credits from that transaction had cleared in full.

Combined with the revenue from the paid forum post and the event rewards, his total assets had reached eighteen million League Credits.

Money would not be a problem for the foreseeable future.

Beyond the currency, the rewards included one hundred boxes of top-quality Pokémon food and fifty Ultra Balls.

Naoki looked at Zorua sleeping soundly beside him, worn out from a full day of solo training in the gravity chamber.

The timing was perfect. The Pokémon food would cover everything she needed for growth and recovery.

And with the special effect of the Agent of Evil title now active, the pace of Zorua's development was about to take a significant leap forward.

...

[CH-30: The Overpowered Effect of the Title]

Speaking of the giant Dragonite and Zapdos, Naoki opened his private messages and sent Dream a quick line.

Larry: Did you manage to catch either of them?

Her reply came back quickly.

Dream: ...

Larry: ?

Dream: The giant Dragonite sent everyone I had flying and then disappeared into the open ocean. Zapdos was a different story. We actually found it, but another guild got there first.

Dream: It decided we were both invading its territory and attacked both guilds simultaneously.

Dream: We combined forces and managed to wear it down, but it turned out to be a coward. The moment it realized it couldn't win, it turned and fled.

Larry: ...

Four million League Credits spent with nothing to show for it. Dream felt the sting of that, even if only briefly.

She adjusted quickly. If other players were no longer willing to trade League Credits for real money, she would simply build her own financial operation inside the game. She ran a publicly listed company in the real world. Money was a tool she knew how to use. Enough of it and there would always be Trainers willing to work for her. What Pokémon could not be obtained that way?

One hundred thousand if that was not enough. One million. Ten million. One hundred million if it came to that.

The ambition in her was entirely undimmed. Someday she was going to build a commercial empire inside this world.

Naoki felt a twinge of guilt reading through it.

He had known perfectly well that no player at the current stage of the game stood any chance of catching the giant Dragonite or Zapdos. He had sold the information anyway.

Though rare Pokémon of that caliber were genuinely scarce in Kanto and Johto. The Hoenn region was a different matter entirely, with Latias, Latios, and the Legendary Beasts all present alongside other powerful Pokémon.

He would make it up to her when the next worthwhile piece of information came along.

The following morning Naoki took out the top-quality Pokémon food from the previous night's rewards and began feeding it to Zorua.

"Zorua," he said while she ate, "do I seem any different to you today?"

"Wuu?"

Zorua picked up a piece of food, tipped her head back to swallow it, and looked at him with complete incomprehension.

"Do I look more intimidating than usual?" Naoki asked.

The Agent of Evil title was supposed to make Dark-type Pokémon instinctively feel reverence toward him when he was wearing it. It was also meant to enhance his control over Dark-types.

He could not see any sign of reverence from Zorua whatsoever.

Perhaps they knew each other too well for the effect to register.

As expected, Zorua shook her head. She narrowed her eyes and let out a cheerful sound.

Not even slightly intimidating.

The effect probably only worked on Dark-types that did not already know him.

It was the weekend. The HR department had the day off and Naoki had nowhere to be.

After finishing breakfast he took Zorua to the training room and supervised her session directly, offering guidance on technique and focus as she worked through her drills.

Zorua ran, jumped, practiced targeting, and sharpened her claws with the same quiet determination she always brought. Naoki watched from the side and called out tips when something needed correcting.

At some point during the session, Zorua became aware of something she could not quite account for. The training felt more effective than usual, as though the same effort was producing noticeably better results.

Wuu? Was she imagining it?

She filed the question away and kept working.

Time passed.

Then something shifted in her mind. An instinct, sudden and clear.

She drew the Dark-type energy inside her together, channeled it to her mouth, shaped it into a wave dense with malicious intent, and released it forward.

Naoki watched from the side and went very still.

A new move.

Dark Pulse: Dark-type move. The user releases a wave of aura filled with dark thoughts. It may also cause the target to flinch.

"Zorua," Naoki started, intending to call a pause.

But Zorua had entered a state of deep focus, almost like a trance. She moved from one move to the next without stopping, drilling each technique repeatedly, sharpening her feel for each one through continuous repetition.

Naoki stopped and stayed quietly at her side.

The state lasted roughly twenty minutes. Brief as it was, the effect was substantial.

In those twenty minutes of continuous drilling, Zorua's control over Dark Pulse had gone from a first attempt directly to a proficient level. The dark wave of malicious energy flowed in and out without the sluggishness of something newly learned, and the speed at which she could gather the energy had more than doubled.

When the focused state finally lifted, Zorua stopped moving and breathed hard, her bright eyes dancing with excitement as she looked up at Naoki and called out repeatedly.

"Wuu!" She could feel it clearly. She was stronger.

Naoki walked over and ruffled her head.

"You did well."

The Agent of Evil title's effect was more significant than he had anticipated.

If Zorua could sustain that focused state consistently, combined with the top-quality Pokémon food, her growth rate would be something he could barely calculate.

He looked at her and felt a quiet certainty forming. At this pace, it would not take more than a few days for Zorua to advance from Beginner to Veteran level.

From what he had gathered over his time in this world, Pokémon strength was divided into the following tiers:

Beginner, Veteran, Elite, Gym Leader, Near-Elite Four, Elite Four, Near-Champion, Champion, Master, and above that the domain of Legendary Pokémon.

Naoki nodded to himself. The value of a Legendary-tier title went far beyond what its description on the panel had suggested.

With that breakthrough as a foundation, the rest of the morning's training flowed considerably more smoothly. Naoki put together a focused session plan and had Zorua work on integrating Return, Extrasensory, Leer, and the newly learned Dark Pulse into connected combinations, building rhythm between the moves.

Through the entire morning the training room was full of Zorua's dark, fluid movements.

It was not until midday light came through the window that Zorua finally stopped.

Her body was exhausted, but her spirit and focus had never been sharper, and the Dark-type energy surrounding her had become noticeably more refined and concentrated.

In a single morning she had entered the focused state three times, each lasting roughly twenty minutes.

The improvement was visible to the naked eye.

Watching it all, Naoki found himself genuinely considering whether to build an entire team around Dark-type Pokémon and use the Agent of Evil title's effect to its fullest potential.

Which Dark-types were worth building around?

He ran through them carefully.

Weavile. Hydreigon. Greninja. Absol. Darkrai. Incineroar. Pangoro. Meowscarada.