Chapter 32: Destroying the Corpse and Erasing Traces (Patreon)

For a Pokémon, Ekans wasn't especially high-level, but its reflexes were clearly sharper than its trainer's.

The moment Renan grabbed it, the creature started to fight back.

A layer of dark purple light flickered back to life on its rustling tail. It meant to repeat its earlier trick and hit Renan with Poison Sting.

Unfortunately for it, Renan wasn't the original owner of this body, who had died to an ambush. With Thunder Breathing active, his combat strength, converted into Pokémon-world terms, was equal to a level 30+ Fighting-type at the very least.

Ekans, on the other hand, had clearly received a fair amount of training, but its natural talent was what it was. Going by the power of its moves, it was around level 15.

By the time it had gathered its Poison Sting, Renan had already finished off its trainer in retaliation.

At the same instant, his right hand whipped forward and hurled Ekans into the air.

In the next second, he pulled the three Poké Balls from his waist and enlarged them.

"Charmander, Pidgey, Nidoran, the coming fight is up to you."

"Gyaou!" "Pii!" "Nido!"

While inside their Poké Balls, the three Pokémon had actually "seen" their trainer get ambushed. But the original owner wasn't a self-taught wild type like Renan. Raised in the city and half a textbook academy trainer, he had instinctively locked the Poké Balls.

Which was exactly why, now that they were out, the three little ones' hatred for the Ekans in the distance had hit its limit.

Charmander, who had been with the original owner for over half a month, was the worst of them. It leaped up on the spot and began a mysterious dance, Dragon-type power gathering around its body without pause.

Ekans had just landed on the ground. Seeing three Pokémon appear, its bullying streak, the instinct to prey on the weak, showed itself at once.

Its first instinct was to turn and flee, but would Renan ever give his enemy a chance to live?

"Pidgey, close in with Quick Attack, then use Sand Attack to lock down its footing."

"Nidoran, Leer."

"Charmander, Dragon Rush."

"Pii!" "Nido!" "Gyaou!"

The original owner had trained the three little ones decently well. They hadn't evolved, but their proficiency with their moves was far from low.

Charmander in particular. When the original owner first collected it from Nurse Joy, the Pokédex revealed that it had inherited both Dragon Dance and Dragon Rush.

He had scrapped his original plan for a special attacker and shifted toward a mixed-attacker build instead.

As for Pidgey and Nidoran, they'd been lured… ahem, invited to join the team in the wild forest outside Celadon City with Pokéblocks.

Once Renan gave the orders, Nidoran moved first. Its eyes narrowed slightly, and a glint of light seemed to flash within them.

Pidgey followed. Wrapped in a streak of white light, it wasn't as fast as Renan with Thunderclap and Flash, but it still closed the distance to Ekans in a little over a second.

As for Charmander, the main attacker, it charged forward in big strides, a deep blue, ghostly dragon silhouette rising from its body.

Then, with Nidoran's Leer and Pidgey's Sand Attack pinning Ekans down, the attack landed with almost no effort.

The level gap between the two sides was small to begin with. Ekans had also just taken a defense-lowering Leer, then a Dragon Rush with a base power of 100, and its HP hadn't been full to start with.

The result went without saying. The whole snake flopped onto its back on the ground, completely knocked out.

In an ordinary capture battle or wild encounter, this would be the point where the original owner, or Renan, would stop. They'd either let Ekans go or throw a Poké Ball.

But Renan hadn't forgotten that although this creature had only followed its trainer's orders, it had in fact helped kill the original owner.

And Renan wasn't generous enough to forgive a murder.

So.

"Charmander, one more Dragon Rush. Send this guy off to meet its trainer."

Renan's tone was calm, but his words made the three little ones visibly freeze for a moment.

Still, Pokémon lived by the iron law of the strong preying on the weak.

Besides, the three of them were bottling up anger of their own, so none of them refused. It wasn't only Charmander. Pidgey and Nidoran also struck the unconscious Ekans in turn, each landing a hit of their own accord.

Its life dropped to zero, and it became a dead snake.

Only when the battle was completely over did Renan let out a long, murky breath.

Then he turned his gaze to the Ekans's trainer, who had been dead for a while now, lying nearby.

The man wore a black uniform with a letter "R" marked across the chest and back.

In his previous life, Renan had watched the Pokémon anime and read the Special manga as a student.

How could he not recognize the standard look of a Team Rocket grunt?

He spat inwardly: 'Heh. Now I don't even need to look for a reason to wipe out Team Rocket.'

With that thought flashing past, he bent down and started looting the body.

A grunt was a grunt. There was nothing truly valuable on him.

Just a few bottles of Potion and some Antidotes. Not even a single berry.

After stuffing all the loot into his spatial backpack, Renan clapped the dust off his hands, then kicked, shoving the bodies of the trainer and the Ekans into one pile.

Then he looked at his starter Pokémon. "Charmander, sorry to trouble you again. Use Ember to burn the bodies."

It had already killed a Pokémon, so destroying the evidence was nothing Charmander would refuse.

With a "Gyaou," it spat out bloom after bloom of orange-red flame and successfully set the two corpses alight.

Renan watched the fire in front of him, his face showing neither grief nor joy.

He and the original owner shared a common origin, but being born into different worlds had shaped them, in the end, into different people.

Just then, a warm little claw slipped into Renan's palm.

He looked down. Charmander had come up beside him and was gazing up at him with worry.

He smiled and stroked its head.

"Don't worry, I'm fine. This fight just helped me work through a few things."

"Gyaou?" Charmander tilted its head. For someone only recently hatched, Renan's words were clearly a bit too deep.

Pidgey and Nidoran came over to their trainer's side as well.

A human and three little ones stood quietly together, watching the bonfire burn until the Team Rocket grunt and the Ekans were nothing but black charcoal.

Renan wasn't worried about passing trainers or Officer Jenny seeing what he'd done.

The reason was simple. Three days ago, while the original owner was waiting at the Celadon City Pokémon Center for the three little ones to recover, he had overheard a passing trainer say that a Ralts had apparently been spotted deep in the forest on Route 7.

In the Pokémon world, Psychic-type Pokémon were relatively rare. Never mind the original owner. Any trainer hoping to do well at the Pokémon League tournament would have been unable to ignore news like that.

But working backward from the ambush, there was also a good chance the Ralts sighting was false. Or rather, that it was bait deliberately put out by the Team Rocket grunt he'd just killed, or by whatever accomplices he might have had.

As for what the truth was…