A little over ten minutes later, Reiji came back into the storage room from outside. Naoki had returned to report that every Pokémon had been transferred to the old man. Now they were just waiting for the payment to come through.
Naoki also brought back seventy gems, then headed out again.
Before, Naoki had been running errands for Reiji. Now he had his own plans—he wanted to catch some Pokémon in this area, especially Magikarp. Naoki had his eye on that dumb little thing.
Reiji didn't ask what he was really after. He took the seventy gems, went back to the storage room, and kept pushing Gastly's potential upward. He wasn't sure whether swallowing this batch would get Gastly to ninety.
He also didn't settle up with Naoki inside the storage room, for one simple reason: he was broke.
The old man's money wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. The 53,000,000 he'd paid out earlier came from the cash savings he'd pulled together, plus the bag Darkrai had stolen.
That bag had a little over 7,000,000 in it, plus—
From more than forty backpacks, he'd pulled out 20,230,000.
From Riku's backpack, he'd pulled out 26,440,000.
Naoki bought Krabby: 10,000,000.
After paying back 53,000,000, he had 3,670,000 left (a little over 3 million).
Add his own remaining balance: 1,988,000 (a little under 2 million).
And add the 7,300,000-plus Darkrai stole…
Remaining balance: 10,300,000.
But before boarding the ship, he'd spent 20,000 on a black hotel, another 50,000 on a ticket, and 7,000,000 on gems on Sunburst Island.
Final remaining balance: 5,930,000 (a little under 6 million).
That was why he couldn't settle up with Naoki. Seventy gems was worth over 30,000,000, and he only had about 5,000,000 on hand. There was nothing to pay with, so Naoki would have to front it for now.
Once the old man's little pile of cash hit his account tomorrow, paying Naoki back would be easy. Right now, what mattered was feeding these gems to Gastly and seeing whether Gastly could stack its potential up to ninety.
"Gastly, more gems. Come on—let's try again. After this batch, you can rest," Reiji said, waving Gastly over as he set down the seventy gems and checked their purity one by one.
He wouldn't have known if he hadn't checked. Six of the Ghost Gems in this batch were low-purity, so he picked them out to have Naoki swap them later.
After that, Gastly went through sixteen more evolution–devolution cycles, and its potential climbed to—
[Gastly (Shiny)]
[Type: Ghost + Poison]
[Gender: Male]
[Potential: 90.10%]
[Level: 8.23%]
[Ability: …]
"Finally." Reiji stared at the panel and let out a long breath. After burning through more than two hundred gems, Gastly's potential had finally climbed from eighty-five to ninety. From here, things got simpler.
He already knew evolving could also raise potential—it just became less noticeable the higher the potential went. If he pushed Gastly's potential to the limit first, then evolved it, the potential would probably fill out completely.
Getting Gastly to ninety had cost a lot, but it was worth it.
He'd been keeping accounts the whole time. From eighty potential to ninety, Gastly had consumed more than 370 gems in total—
First batch: 290 gems, total 134,000,000.
Second batch: 70 gems. Forty Poison Gems: 15,200,000. Thirty Ghost Gems: 16,500,000. Total 31,700,000.
And then there was the 7,000,000 spent on Sunburst Island—if he counted those eleven too…
From eighty potential to ninety potential, total consumed: 172,700,000.
From ninety to one hundred, he could rely on evolution to boost some of the potential. That should save him a lot of resources.
He also noticed that once Gastly hit ninety potential, raising it further got more expensive. It now took five gems just to increase potential by 0.1.
He had no idea if pushing all the way up to 99.99% would jam him up again like a Champion-tier threshold. It was seriously irritating.
And now he was out of gems, and the backpacks on the floor couldn't be swallowed anymore. "Gastly, try evolving into Gengar."
"Heh-heh-heh," Gastly cackled, celebrating with Darkrai like it had finally survived an ordeal.
Then it heard the word "evolve" and its face fell. One more time, it evolved into Haunter. This time Haunter didn't stall, and it didn't strain until its face turned red either—it evolved smoothly into Gengar.
"Haha—no gems needed." Reiji froze for a second, then laughed. He hadn't expected Gastly to evolve into Gengar without any gem assistance. Was that what high potential changed?
If that was the case, then he had to push to max potential. Mega Evolution wouldn't just be a dream.
If Gengar's Mega Evolution still required gems, he could always keep a few dozen on hand. Without a Mega Stone, gems could act as the consumable cost.
"Alright, Gengar. Swallow all the backpacks. Once I finish cleaning up, we're heading out." Reiji gathered up the three hundred-plus clear stones scattered on the floor—they were trash and would be thrown out later.
Gengar had also torn open a bunch of Pokéblock packaging boxes. Those were going too. Toss them into the furnace and burn them.
When he left the storage room, it was right around dinner time. He needed to prepare dinner for the Pokémon. Otherwise, when Naoki came back, it would be inconvenient to have them out—getting the Pokémon he used openly discovered wouldn't be ideal.
This situation wouldn't last long anyway. He'd stay here at most three days—either he burned through all the money, or he pushed Gastly's potential to the cap.
Either way, he'd leave Mandarin Island North and head for Rind Island. The island was north of Mandarin Island North and not far—about the same distance as Sunburst Island to Mandarin Island North.
He was going there because Rind Island had a Magikarp waterfall. Magikarp from the entire Orange Archipelago would swim back there, and he wanted to catch a top-tier Magikarp with fifty-nine potential.
There were millions of those dumb little things there, minimum—more like hundreds of millions. He refused to believe he couldn't roll one with fifty-nine potential.
Thinking about what he'd do after reaching Rind Island, Reiji finished preparing dinner. He let all his Pokémon out to eat. After they finished, he returned them to their Poké Balls.
But he didn't recall these four: Gengar, Spinarak, Croagunk, and Darkrai.
Naoki had already seen Gengar and the others, and Croagunk hadn't trained in days anyway. They were all part of his "spider disguise" setup, so letting Croagunk train openly didn't matter.
Zubat was still recovering in its Poké Ball. He'd already purged the poison earlier. After cutting out two poison sacs, Zubat's toxicity dropped a lot, and the poisoning symptoms didn't come back. Once the wounds healed, Zubat could resume flight training.
Then there was Ditto. Ditto stayed near him, ready at any moment—before Naoki returned, it could latch onto his face and become the "mask" for his spider disguise.
The rest were Pokémon he used openly. Better not let Naoki see them. Once he became an Elite Four-tier trainer, none of this would matter. For now, caution was safer, so Naoki's acquaintances couldn't connect dots.
After dinner, they were accompanying Croagunk while it trained. Naoki came back through the front gate, and Ditto instantly turned into a mask and disguised itself on Reiji's face.
"Boss, I'm back," Naoki said. This time he didn't drop in from the sky—he entered properly through the main entrance, then shut the villa's heavy iron gate behind him.
"It's almost ten," Reiji said, glancing at his watch. It was already past 9:40 p.m. Naoki had been gone a long time this afternoon.
"Boss, I went catching Pokémon. I didn't even have time to eat dinner," Naoki said as he set down his backpack and went straight for the tea Reiji had left on the table. He drank an entire pot before finally breathing out.
"There's food saved for you in the kitchen," Reiji said, gesturing behind him. This was Naoki's villa—he knew it better than Reiji did.
"Boss, eating can wait. Check the Pokémon first. I caught several thousand Magikarp. I hired a bunch of fishermen this afternoon to help me haul fish, and I also caught a lot of other fish Pokémon…"
"Give me the backpack. Go eat first. We'll talk while you eat," Reiji said, getting up from the folding chair. He took the backpack and started sorting through the catches.
Seeing the boss help him pick, Naoki couldn't hold back anymore. His stomach was already growling, so he hurried into the kitchen, reheated the food, and came back out with a huge bowl.
Reiji didn't stop sorting just because Naoki returned. Any dumb little thing with hopeless potential got tossed into the swimming pool. Later, Naoki could release them.
Besides the Magikarp, the backpack also held Remoraid, Tentacool, Carvanha, and all kinds of other fish Pokémon…
Among them, Reiji did find one with decent talent. Unfortunately, it wasn't a Magikarp—it was a Carvanha with fifty-two potential, which was still pretty good.
"This one's not bad."
"Carvanha?" Naoki was in the middle of eating. He immediately put down his chopsticks and reached for the Poké Ball. Seeing it was a Carvanha inside, at least tonight wasn't a complete waste.
"Out of everything here, only that Carvanha has decent talent. The rest aren't worth it. Later you can release them yourself."
"Huh? Not a single Magikarp?" Naoki stared at the thousands of Poké Balls floating in the pool and sprayed rice straight out of his mouth. Three fishing boats working all day, and it was all for nothing.
"This one's okay," Reiji said, tossing him another Poké Ball. Inside was a dumb little thing with potential in the low forties.
It was about the same as the Magikarp he'd sold the old man—assuming it could evolve into Gyarados. If it couldn't evolve, then a Magikarp wasn't worth anything.
"Sigh… then I've got to keep catching," Naoki muttered. Just thinking about spending the next few days out at sea, fishing every day, made him go numb. Since when did he become a fisherman?
"Then keep catching. There are too many Magikarp. Getting one with good talent was never going to be easy," Reiji said, dusting his hands off. He set the backpack aside and leaned back into the folding chair again.
"Boss, I'll do my best these next few days to fill out both teams completely," Naoki said. He knew he was short on time. He planned to keep paying fishermen to help him haul catches.
"Do what you want. I still need those two gem types—however many you can get, get them for me first," Reiji said. He couldn't be bothered with Naoki's business when he was barely keeping up with his own.
"And these six gems are too low-purity. Don't take this kind of junk again."
Reiji didn't know where things went wrong in the chain, but he only needed to deal with Naoki. Just like in his past life—if you couldn't solve the problem, you could always solve the source of the problem.
"Got it, boss," Naoki said, staring at the six gems on the table. Only now did he realize he'd been scammed—or maybe the seller had slipped up.
Either way, it was small stuff. He'd go exchange them. If the other side refused, his fists weren't for show.
Bzzzz. Bzzzz—
A sudden vibration made both Reiji and Naoki look toward Naoki's backpack.
"Boss, it's that phone," Naoki said, putting down his bowl and chopsticks. He opened the backpack, pulled out the phone, and handed it to Reiji.
Reiji saw the caller ID—an all-too-familiar number. He answered immediately. "Old man, why are you calling?"
"That batch is fully sold, and the money's been transferred to your unregistered card. Total is 120,000,000. I took a 3% commission—3,600,000. Are you satisfied with that price?"
"You already sold it. What's the point of asking now?" Reiji laughed. Not a word before the sale, but once it's done, now he asks if it's satisfying? Was he messing with him?
Still, Reiji's estimate for the batch had been around 120,000,000, and that estimate included Krabby.
But Krabby had been sold to Naoki. Even excluding Krabby, the old man still managed to sell for that much. That meant the old fox really did put in work. Honestly, a commission of a little over 3,000,000 almost felt low.
"Hahaha. I'm sharing the joy. Over a hundred million, kid. You didn't just grab Pokémon this time, did you?"
It sounded like casual chat, but it was probing. The old man had heard rumors on the black market—there'd been turmoil at the underground market on Mandarin Island South, and some big shot had lost a backpack.
"I've got good stuff, sure. Just not sure you'd dare to move it," Reiji said, fully aware of the test. He didn't bother being polite.
"A high-grade Fire Stone?" The old man said one name, then went quiet.
"Don't joke. How would I have something like that?" Reiji shot back instantly. He wasn't admitting anything. He didn't trust that old fox's sense of ethics for even a second.
"Kid, you're playing big. Do you know how much the underground market's bounty is?"
"Old man, what are you talking about? I don't understand a word…"
The old man knew Reiji was playing dumb, so he answered himself. "Fifty million. Someone put up fifty million to recover a stolen backpack…"
"Fifty million bounty on who?" Reiji said it loudly for Naoki's benefit, and glanced his way. Naoki nodded—fifty million was real. He'd seen the notice at the black market here too.
With that confirmation, Reiji kept talking nonsense with the old man. "Old man, I only picked up a little stuff on the edge of the battlefield. That kind of hot item—if I handed it to you, would you even dare take it?"
"Heh. Just watch yourself, kid. Keep in touch if anything comes up."
The old man knew Reiji was a little fox. Even if he really had gotten something incredible, he'd never admit it. And the old man wasn't about to report him either.
This mess was like punching a hole in the sky. Even he didn't dare provoke a black ship—especially one with two Elite Four-tier trainers on board.
Outside the League, black ships ran the Orange Archipelago like they owned it. If he leaked anything about Reiji, the first person to suffer would be him.
Forget getting a bounty for "providing information." He and his grandson would more likely get dragged away, tortured for every detail Reiji ever touched, and then vanish.
Reiji was right: even if Reiji handed him contraband, he still wouldn't dare handle it. It would only drag disaster onto his head.
…
The call ended with a dead tone. Reiji knew the old man had hung up, and he also knew the old man probably guessed something.
So what? As long as Reiji didn't admit anything, it wasn't him. No one could accuse him based on a guess.
If the black market ever posted a wanted portrait of him, then he'd know the old man had stabbed him in the back—but Reiji didn't think it was likely.
If the old man really wanted to sell him out, he wouldn't have transferred the 120,000,000 at all. He'd have kept it, then reported him.
He'd find out soon enough. That was the risk of having someone else move goods. He could reduce the risk, but he couldn't eliminate it. Even if he sold everything himself, it would be the same story.
"Naoki, are you going out again?" Reiji asked, putting the phone down and looking at Naoki, who had already finished eating.
"Yes, boss. Any orders?" Naoki answered. He'd heard every word clearly. He'd even spoken to the old man today—the old man had tried to fish for information, but Naoki hadn't said anything. He just didn't know what Reiji wanted him to do now.
"There's over a hundred million on this card. Withdraw it all after fees—you'll have 115,000,000-plus left. Pay yourself back your 31,700,000. That leaves 83,500,000-plus. Convert all of it into those two types of gems for me."
Bank card remaining balance: 83,536,000…
"Understood, boss," Naoki said. He took the bank card, grabbed the six gems from the table, and pocketed the Poké Balls for Carvanha and Magikarp. Then he turned and flew out on Flygon.
He had no idea why the boss needed that many gems. It wasn't his place to ask. But he could tell Reiji was in a hurry, and that made him hurry too.
Before Reiji finished what he needed to do and left, Naoki had to catch every wild Pokémon he could. Once Reiji was gone, Naoki wouldn't have a chance to secure high-talent catches.
For the next few days, he didn't plan to sleep. He'd fish all night until he got the Magikarp he wanted.
As for the Poké Balls soaking in the pool, he didn't have time to deal with them now. Releasing them later was fine. The Carvanha was worth raising. The Magikarp? Maybe.
If it could evolve, he'd sell it. If it couldn't, he'd release it. A Magikarp that couldn't evolve was worthless—there were too many of them, more than anyone could ever use.
After Naoki left, Reiji prepared to sleep. Tomorrow, when Naoki brought back the gems, he'd keep pushing Gastly's potential higher.
That 83,000,000-plus would only buy around 160 gems. For what Gastly still needed, that was nowhere near enough. He needed more gems and more training resources.
The goods from more than forty backpacks were basically all sold. Next, he needed to move Riku's stash.
Riku had too many valuable items. Before sleeping, Reiji still had work to do—he needed to think carefully about what he should sell, and what he should keep.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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