It was well past midnight when Brock finally got added to the group. One glance at the member list was enough to send a chill down his spine.
Did I just join a chat full of Master Rank competitors?
"This lineup is absurd," Brock muttered, dead serious.
Gold, meanwhile, was hunched over a handheld console in the Breeding House, an unusually aggressive Togekiss hovering beside him.
"Togekiss!" — idiot, do you even know how to play this game?
"Poketaro, quit distracting me!"
Togekiss responded with a Double-Edge that sent Gold sprawling, then called out the window — Ambipom swung in off a nearby branch and hauled the dazed Gold onto the bed. Gold scratched his head, laughing weakly, watching Togekiss now personally coaching Pichu through the level instead.
His phone buzzed. He glanced at it and let out a startled noise.
"Squinty-eyed uncle?!"
Brock's eye twitched, a vein visibly pulsing at his temple.
"Bit late for you to be up," Gold said.
"Came looking for some breeding insight from Teacher Luke," Brock replied, straightforward as ever.
"Ha, he's probably already asleep, man. Try again tomorrow."
Brock nodded silently, scanning the sheer length of the Master Trainer roster in the member list, awe steadily building.
Just... how strong of a breeder is this guy, exactly?
______________________________
After adding Brock, Luke had gone straight to bed — right up until his buzzing phone woke him early the next morning. The chat was still buzzing about last night's "Midnight Diner" episode.
Yellow: I'm so hungry right now...
Red: My family's making breakfast, come by if you want.
Yellow: !!!?
Gold: WAIT. He's a breeder too??
Brock: Infusing genuine emotion into cooking to trigger evolution — that's a remarkably advanced breeding technique.
Lorelei: Wallace, the Water-type Champion of Hoenn, is rumored to use a similar method.
Blue frowned at his screen. He'd always subscribed firmly to survival-of-the-fittest evolution logic — emotional factors weren't his thing, tended to cloud a Trainer's judgment more than help it. Still, he couldn't deny Teacher Luke's approach seemed to actually work.
Green: Haha, Gastly evolved already?! Not even two months in!
Brock: Two months for a full evolution is genuinely rare. Teacher Luke might be operating at Master Rank breeder level.
______________________________
Luke stared at his phone, baffled.
Breeder? What breeder? Gastly evolved because it wanted a cleaner plate to lick, that's the whole story. I did nothing. Stop spreading rumors about me.
Watching the conversation spiral further, though, he didn't have the heart to interrupt.
"Whatever makes you all happy," he sighed, closing the chat.
He pulled up his creator dashboard instead — and found his subscriber count had crossed a full million overnight. A system notification chimed in right on cue.
[Achievement Unlocked: "Million-Subscriber Creator"!]
[Reward: 1x Premier Ball, 1x Skill Upgrade Coupon]
The sheer stinginess of that reward made Luke's blood run cold with rage.
"A MILLION subscribers and I get a Premier Ball?"
"Are you skimming off the top of my own rewards?!"
[Ding — To commemorate this milestone, the system is pleased to award a precious Premier Ball.]
In reality, unlike the in-game freebie tied to bulk purchases, Premier Balls were limited commemorative items issued occasionally by the Poké Ball manufacturer for special events — genuinely valuable from a collector's standpoint. Not that Luke had any intention of trading away a system item.
"This thing's just going to sit here collecting dust."
The Skill Upgrade Coupon, at least, was something new. Curious, Luke touched it — and the little card crumbled instantly to dust in his hand.
[Skill Upgrade Coupon used!]
[Select a skill to upgrade: Cooking Lv2, Clairvoyance Lv1, Pokéblock Craft Lv4, Japanese Lv3]
Practically speaking, Pokéblock Craft offered the best return — though as a non-Trainer, Lv4 already covered everything he actually needed. After a genuinely difficult internal debate, Luke sighed and picked it anyway.
"Feels like a trap somehow," he muttered.
[Ding — Upgrade successful!]
[Pokéblock Craft Lv5: Deep familiarity with Berries grants a real chance of producing perfect-quality Pokéblock. (Rivaling a Coordinator Champion.)]
Even at Lv5, perfect quality wasn't guaranteed — just upgraded from "unlikely" to "genuinely possible," and still dependent on practice to fully realize. Luke wasn't quite at Champion Wallace's level yet, sure, but he could comfortably outclass most Coordinator Masters at this point.
Given the early hour and his neighbors' patience, Luke skipped firing up the notoriously loud Berry blender — but he could still feel the skill upgrade settling in.
"Alright, you little menace, you're in for a treat," he said, heading to the next room to tease Haunter — then stopped dead.
"Kojie!"
Haunter was mid-workout, throwing punches at the living room wall.
Swish, swish, swish—
Its two spectral claws, detached fully from its body, whipped around the room, phasing into the wall and reemerging from the ceiling at completely unpredictable angles. Shadow Punch, in training.
"You're a Special attacker," Luke said, faintly exhausted. "What's the point of grinding punches with a physical stat this weak?"
"Kojie?" Haunter shot him a look. Are you actually telling me how to train right now?
"Never mind. Forget I said anything. Whatever makes you happy."
Luke crossed his arms and watched for a while, eventually settling on a conclusion: the ghost claws couldn't stray more than five meters from Haunter's body — translated to a Substitute-style range chart, that put its reach at a flat D. Precision might be EX-tier, sure, but with physical attack this weak, actual output was borderline pitiful.
"If you want to keep at it, go for it," Luke sighed. "I'll grab you a set of dumbbells sometime."
"Kojie!" Haunter's eyes lit up, nodding enthusiastically.
Luke rubbed his temples. No matter how hard you train, there's still a hard ceiling on this. Keep going like this and you're basically building a mixed-attacker Haunter nobody asked for.
Pointless as it seemed, Luke had zero intention of pushing Haunter down the competitive battling path regardless — better to let it chase its own instincts than snuff out the enthusiasm.
"Heading to class," he called out. "Want to come?"
"Kojie!" Haunter shook its head, striking a boxer's stance, throwing punches with sharp "heishou heishou" sound effects.
"Alright, alright — just don't wreck the apartment."