Chapter Eighty-Nine: Illusory Realm

Just as Professor Oak was deciding to dump this little girl on Chen Ou, Chen Ou, who had been hypnotized by Gengar, finally came to with slow, groggy awareness.

What he saw was a landscape of shattered walls and broken ruins.

The sky was leaden, black clouds hanging so low they seemed about to crush the earth. The ruined town lay in utter silence, save for the shrill howling of the wind. In the air drifted a scent of decay.

Not the reek of rot, but something more like the smell of dead, withered wood.

It was, in fact, a very familiar smell. Chen Ou had encountered it not long ago.

It was the odor of people whose souls and life force had been devoured. Put simply... the smell of corpses.

His heart plunged as though a massive stone had suddenly been dropped onto it. But it only sank for an instant; after that, Chen Ou was more or less fully awake.

He did not know what the old lady meant by this. But this illusion was far less heavy-handed than before. No more dark, damp room. No more blood dripping from the ceiling. No more severed limbs within reach wherever he touched...

So Granny had switched from Western horror to Eastern horror?

Once that dawned on him, Chen Ou rubbed his head and thought helplessly. As for why Granny Chrysanthemum was tormenting him with illusions, he could more or less guess.

His earlier performance had truly been pathetic.

This world allowed children to set out on journeys at the age of ten. Though ordinarily, most parents would not let someone so young travel alone. Even Green and Red had both been seventeen when they went on their journeys.

But there were still broad-minded parents who allowed ten-year-olds to travel.

And those children had to shoulder the responsibilities proper to a trainer all the same. In other words, there were by no means few trainer corpses that had been sent back by ten-year-old children.

No, in a certain sense, there were also not a few corpses of ten-year-old children who had themselves been sent back.

But in any case, so long as Chen Ou stayed here honestly and did not move, this illusion could do nothing to him. That was the lesson he had learned from being messed with by Granny Chrysanthemum all these years.

As long as I lie flat, no one can knock me down.

So Chen Ou simply sat down where he was, radiating the air of a dead pig unafraid of boiling water.

And just as he sat there on the ground, humming a cheerful tune under his breath, a female voice came from the distance. Sharp and fiery, even by sound alone.

"Gengar! Shadow Ball!"

Then came the roar of a monster.

Chen Ou sprang to his feet in an instant, quick as lightning.

Now he was truly baffled. Why did that voice sound a little like Granny Chrysanthemum's?

All kinds of thoughts surged and flashed through his mind, only to sink into silence all at once.

Chen Ou let out a long breath, then walked toward the source of the voice.

No matter what, whether this was an illusion or a crossing through time, since someone familiar was nearby, he could not simply stand by and watch.

As he walked, he groped at his waist. There were no Poké Balls on his belt. But the good news was that his abilities were still with him.

Thank goodness. Otherwise, Chen Ou would have been certain he was still inside an illusion.

Come to think of it, whenever Granny Chrysanthemum played these illusion games, she would usually leave Chen Ou's powers intact, then let him get so frightened inside the illusion that he hurled fireballs everywhere. Fortunately, what happened in an illusion did not truly carry over into reality. That had been fine before, but after more than two months of traveling, Chen Ou's abilities were no longer what they once had been.

If, before, he had still felt he could not compare to Ace and Sabo from the original Pirate King story, now he was fully confident that in terms of powers alone he could beat both of them senseless.

As for awakening his power, however, he still had no clue whatsoever...

Then again, when you were born with cheats, who needed a clue? Let the process run its course. Chen Ou estimated that by the time he had caught six Pokémon, he would probably be able to awaken.

Such was the ferocity of a life rigged in one's favor. If Chen Ou had not always adhered to the principle of quality over quantity when catching Pokémon, he might already have been able to exchange a few blows with Red.

He had not gone far before he saw, from a distance, a golden-haired girl commanding a Gengar in battle against an enormous Chandelure.

It was clear that this Chandelure was the ghost king of a certain region.

Their bodily changes were not like the Totem Pokémon of the Alola region. Their transformations came from devouring vast numbers of souls and life force; the mixed and impure power within them could not be fully absorbed, so it accumulated in their bodies and caused them to grow larger.

It was similar to that first Muk. Which only went to show that feeding on poison and swallowing souls were both crooked methods of training...

And Chen Ou also understood the source of that withered scent.

Behind the Chandelure, around thirty corpses lay quietly on the ground. There was no terror on their faces; instead they looked as though they were merely sleeping in peace. Most likely their souls and life force had been devoured in their sleep.

Chen Ou looked toward the Chandelure, which was being beaten back step by step, and a cold light surfaced in his eyes.

A Pokémon like this could no longer be called a Pokémon.

This was a fiend.

Killing intent rose in Chen Ou's eyes. But when he threw a punch, the space around Chandelure rippled like the surface of water, and then the flames vanished.

No one noticed him.

Neither the Chandelure, currently being thrashed and on the verge of collapse, nor the girl and Gengar who were relentlessly beating it down, saw him at all.

Chen Ou was like a passerby.

He lowered his hand and simply watched in silence. He was now eighty percent certain that this was one of Granny Chrysanthemum's illusions.

She really used the story of her own youth to try to enlighten me?

A wry smile appeared on Chen Ou's face, yet with it came a trace of ease.

To be honest, it had been a long time since he had felt this sort of comfort, this sense of not having to bear too much on his own, of having an elder standing behind him to catch him if he fell.

Professor Oak preferred to cultivate their sense of independence, and as a rule, none of them would do anything that would trouble him.

So conduct like Granny Chrysanthemum's—guiding them, enlightening them, taking responsibility for them—was truly rare. In a certain sense, she genuinely doted on Chen Ou to an extraordinary degree.

And this was only because Chen Ou was not skilled with Ghost-types. Otherwise, he suspected Granny Chrysanthemum might have snatched him away from Professor Oak and made him inherit her legacy.

So although Chen Ou was afraid of her, it was more the kind of fear one had toward a stern elder in the family, rather than anything else.

He had always been perfectly clear on who treated him well and who treated him badly.

Chen Ou looked at the passionate young Chrysanthemum before him, directing the battle with spirited intensity, and stroked his chin.

So when Granny was young, this was her style as a trainer.

He studied the beautiful girl before him with keen interest.

No wonder Professor Oak has never forgotten her. With looks like that, she's only a tiny bit behind my Cabbage.

Cabbage is the most beautiful, and no objections are accepted.