Chapter 89: Mega Evolution, but the Trainer Evolves (Patreon)

The next morning, bright and early.

Renan and Misty found Queen Ilene in her office, working through paperwork.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Riley was there too.

They had arranged the meeting ahead of time, so Queen Ilene wasn't surprised to see Renan. She simply pointed at the staff resting on the weapon rack in the corner of the room.

"All of your research into the Braver's Staff from now on must be done in this room," she said.

Renan nodded. "Understood."

With that, he walked over, carefully drew the staff from the rack, and found an empty spot in the middle of the room, where he sat down cross-legged.

Then, gripping the staff in his right hand, he gave his left wrist a slight shake and caught the Key Stone hanging from his bracelet in his palm.

Off to the side, Riley, whom Ilene had asked to keep watch, froze. Soon after Renan sat down, the Aura around him began to fluctuate noticeably.

Thinking something had happened to the boy, Riley was about to step forward and help when a telepathy surfaced quietly in his mind: [I'm fine. Don't worry.]

Riley: "…"

Renan kept his eyes half closed.

Was this what you'd expect from the staff of Aaron, the Aura Braver who once stopped a war?

Even after hundreds, even thousands of years, the Aura lingering in it could still give its wielder an enormous boost.

At the very least, Renan, who could previously only nudge his mana fluctuations slightly by changing his breathing rhythm, could now skip the breathing step entirely and manipulate the mana in his body directly through the staff.

And the result was exactly what Riley had sensed: Renan's Aura, or rather his mana, had begun to tremble violently.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds…

A quarter of an hour. Half an hour. Fifty minutes…

Around noon.

In the real world, a breeze appeared out of nowhere inside the office.

It quickly swelled into a gale visible to the naked eye and, in an instant, wrapped itself around the cross-legged boy.

Misty, Ilene, and Riley: "!!!"

Fortunately, the disturbance didn't last long. From the first breeze to the roaring wind, then to some unknown force bursting out of the eye of the gale and finally calming the storm, it took only seven seconds in total.

Yet the Renan who reappeared before the three of them felt completely different from before.

His appearance hadn't changed at all, but somehow Riley, Ilene, and Misty alike couldn't help being drawn in by the bewitching aura that now surrounded him.

Misty, the person closest to Renan, even blushed bright red.

Luckily, Renan, who was hovering in midair, held up by his psychic power, seemed to notice something. The presence leaking from his body gradually drew back under his deliberate control.

Only then did the other three in the room come back to themselves.

Silence quietly settled over the room.

After a moment, Misty was the first to speak. "Renan, what's going on with you right now?"

Renan smiled. He opened his eyes, and blue and pink light shone together in his pupils.

He raised the staff in his right hand and said lightly, "With the Braver's Staff's help, I finally mastered a secret art I couldn't get a grip on before. While it's active, I can temporarily raise my psychic power by half a tier."

That was the truth, but not the whole truth.

It wasn't only his psychic power. His physique was now also the equivalent of adding the strength of four ordinary people on top of what he already had.

Converted into Pokémon world levels, that took him from just over Lv43 straight up to Lv48.

It might not sound like much, but he hadn't forgotten that this change was, at its core, Mega Evolution. On top of it, Renan could stack three layers of Meditate, boosting his psychic power by another 1.5x!

He could already temporarily match the mental power of a Lv5 adventurer, which in Pokémon world terms was near Elite Four level.

Now that he'd received yet another boost, reaching Elite Four level was entirely within reach!

An Elite Four–level psychic, even a fake one who got there through a temporary boost, was already an absolute top-tier existence in the League. In reality, they were the ones who went around provoking people. No one ever dared to poke at them.

The most obvious example was Sabrina, the Saffron Gym Leader. By League law, the things she got up to in her Gym should have cost her the Gym Leader post long ago and landed her in prison to reflect on her actions. In practice, even the most righteous investigators and Officer Jennys rarely went near her.

The reason was simple: they couldn't beat her.

The Pokémon world looked like a utopia, but at its core, it still had everything to do with the strong preying on the weak.

And now Renan, too, had the right to say no to ninety-nine out of a hundred people in this world.

How could that not thrill him?

What's more…

Having withdrawn from his Mega Evolution form, Renan sensed the orb-shaped lump of condensed mana still sitting in his mind, and the corners of his mouth curled up a little more.

He didn't know whether anyone had ever managed to Mega Evolve before him.

But he might well be the first human to achieve evolution as a Fairy type + Psychic type, or perhaps there was some other reason nobody had yet uncovered. Either way, after he'd used the Braver's Staff's boost to bring the mana in his body into resonance with the Key Stone, all of his mana had surged uncontrollably to the center of his brow. On its own, it had condensed from an energy mass into mist, then liquefied from mist into droplets of water, and finally those droplets had gathered and solidified into a Mega Stone that belonged to him alone.

Renan was no fool. He understood perfectly what that meant.

Even if he returned the Braver's Staff to Queen Ilene later, with the Mega Stone in his head and the Key Stone on his wrist, he could trigger Mega Evolution any time he wanted.

As for what to do once he left the Pokémon world… that wasn't something Renan needed to worry about right now.

With those thoughts flickering through his mind, the black-haired boy gripped the staff in both hands, ready to put it back on the weapon rack.

But just then.

Perhaps borrowing the trace of Aura Aaron had left in the staff had opened a few cracks in the seal inside the crystal.

Or perhaps it was because the room now held both an Aura Guardian and a pseudo-Aura Guardian.

A telepathic voice suddenly rang in everyone's ears: [Why?]

The Braver's Staff shook violently, as if trying to break free of his grip. But Renan was hardly a frail boy without the strength to truck a chicken. His arm muscles bulged slightly, and he had the staff under control again.

Even so, having watched the Aura Braver movie in his previous life, he let out a sigh. He knew he was probably about to get dragged into some serious trouble.

Sure enough.

The next second, the crystal at the tip of the Braver's Staff released a dazzling ball of white light straight ahead. When it landed, it took the form of a canine, humanoid Pokémon.

It was none other than the standard partner of an Aura Guardian: Lucario!