Chapter 64: Transaction with Brock (Patreon)

Rota City sits at the one o'clock position from Pewter City on the map.

It's a city that never officially appeared in the anime of his previous life.

Even so, it's quite famous in the Kanto region.

Many people grew up reading the story of Aura Braver Aaron as a picture book, and that story takes place in a self-governing kingdom north of Rota City called Cameran Palace.

That's right. It's the very same Cameran Palace from the Aura Braver movie Renan had watched in his previous life.

Queen Ilene, the current ruler of Cameran Palace, is a shrewd manager. Every year she holds a half-month-long battle festival commemorating Aaron.

The League took the opportunity to strike while the iron was hot and established a Fighting-type Gym in Rota City, the closest town to Cameran Palace.

Its signature Pokémon, naturally, are Aaron's companions from the legend, Lucario and its pre-evolution, Riolu.

And to bring in more visitors, the Rota Gym, much like the Pewter Gym and the Cerulean Gym, places no limit on how many badges a challenger may hold.

While the battle festival is on, plenty of tourists go to challenge the Gym just to tick it off a list or join the fun.

The current Rota Gym Leader is also very good with people. When a tourist comes in just to play around, the Leader puts on a "hard-fought" battle, wraps it up with a draw or a narrow win, then hands over a badge on some flimsy excuse.

Only when a Trainer aiming for the Indigo League shows up does the Leader get serious.

Even then, the Leader still follows the League's Gym challenge rules.

Renan had no plans to challenge the Saffron Gym, so the comparatively easy Rota Badge became his next target.

Brock's face showed envy when he heard that.

He actually wanted to travel and broaden his horizons too. If possible, he even hoped for a sweet encounter along the way.

But his parents had no sense of responsibility at all. Apart from giving him a whole houseful of younger siblings, they were never home.

Once he turned ten, they dumped all the Gym Leader's duties on him, announced they were going off to train, and vanished.

It was only because Brock's talent as both a Trainer and a Breeder was far from low that the weakest Gym in Kanto hadn't long since changed from the Cerulean Gym to the Pewter Gym.

Renan had watched the anime in his previous life and now possessed Telepathy, so he could naturally read the young man's true thoughts from his mental fluctuations.

Still, he had no interest in meddling in a stranger's family affairs.

In fact, if he didn't need the eight badges for the League tournament, a person like Renan would honestly prefer to stay in one place as a homebody.

What's more, unlike those travel-school Trainers, his former self had come out of Viridian Academy, an academy-school Trainer. He knew well that to be a good Trainer, you had to pour enormous amounts of time into raising your Pokémon.

Why is Leon of the Galar region called the strongest Champion at the World Championships?

The reason is actually quite simple. The Champions of other regions all have side jobs to keep them busy, and some even run around chasing their own hobbies.

Only he has treated being a Trainer as his one and only job from start to finish.

One side trains every single day, while the other works on and off.

Everyone's Pokémon have about the same potential, so what's left to compete on, in the end, but the time spent building strength?

As for performing miracles through the bond between Trainer and Pokémon… that stuff is nice to hear and nothing more. Apart from a few people who love catching powerful Pokémon, whose main Pokémon wasn't raised bit by bit from infancy?

In game terms, their friendship was maxed out long ago.

As these thoughts flashed through his mind, Renan's expression turned serious.

"Gym Leader Brock, do you happen to have any high-quality Metal Coats? If you do, I'd like to trade you a high-quality Moon Stone for one."

Brock froze for a moment when he heard that.

He had fought Renan's Nidorino earlier that day and found it genuinely good. He was already weighing whether to raise one himself as a member of his team for the Masters tournament.

After all, Nidorino's final form, Nidoking, is a dual Poison and Ground type, and Rock, Ground, and Steel have always been practically inseparable, in a sense.

Originally, Brock had planned to spend the points he'd earned as Gym Leader to redeem a high-quality Moon Stone.

Now that he could get the real thing from Renan, he certainly wasn't going to take the long way around.

As for high-quality Metal Coats, the family had quite a few. They'd been stockpiled bit by bit since his great-grandfather, the first Pewter Gym Leader.

Giving up one or two wouldn't slow the raising of his own Pokémon, or his younger siblings' Pokémon down the line.

So he nodded. "Deal."

Brock truly lived up to his reputation as the anime's "mom" of the group. During the trade, he even went out of his way to explain in detail how to use the Metal Coat and what to watch out for.

Renan, hearing that Brock meant to raise a Nidorino too, returned the favor by sharing the strategy he'd used with Nidoking in the games of his previous life.

"I see. You use a move with built-in extra effects, then rely on Sheer Force to cancel out the HP loss from Life Orb. I really did learn something new there."

Renan was a League-certified novice Breeder, and in his previous life he'd played the games and watched plenty of matches by online strategy gurus. Brock, for his part, was too busy looking after his siblings to research things himself, but his experience as a Breeder was still immense.

Before they knew it, their conversation had moved from using held items to mixing Pokémon food, and then to which methods to choose when raising Pokémon.

Of the three people present, Brock and Renan were clearly having a blast. Misty stood to the side, unable to get a word in, but she was visibly picking up plenty too.

By the end, Brock went so far as to invite Renan to stay at the Pewter Gym for a few days so they could trade notes on raising Pokémon.

Renan already intended to raise his partners to Elite Four level, even Champion level, in the future, so naturally he didn't turn the invitation down.

That night.

After dinner, Renan went into the guest room Brock had prepared for him.

The second transmigration authority is already in my hands, and my strength has most likely hit its potential cap. In that case, I'll head back to the DanMachi world for a while.

With that thought, the black-haired boy flopped onto the bed, closed his eyes, and lightly brushed his consciousness against the lone golden star deep in his mind.

The next instant!

The experience from when he'd transmigrated to the Pokémon world played out again.

Rings upon rings of golden vortex ripples appeared out of nowhere around the star and swept up Renan's entire consciousness in a heartbeat.

Darkness fell.

When he came back to his senses, he found he had already returned to the DanMachi world, in his own villa.