Pokemon: Reborn as a Pokemon

Chapter 297 297: 297. A Speculator’s Failure and a Hatching

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Dio carefully lifted the glass container holding the Pokémon Egg up to eye level. His dark eyes were bright with shock and excitement.

This was a deep-purple-quality Egg.

In Pokémon: World, for all its unprecedented freedom and massive scale, the new-player experience was, in another sense, the harshest the franchise had ever seen.

When you created a fresh account, you were basically forced to follow the system's guided quest route, trudging through one beginner task after another just to earn a few basic resources for raising Pokémon.

A starter Pokémon, forget it.

Yes, this next-generation Pokémon title did not let you pick a starter at all.

Everyone began at zero, The system gave you five Poké Balls, and after that, you either tried your luck in the wild, or you stayed in town, ran errands, and scraped together coins to buy an ordinary Pokémon.

That approach wasn't especially friendly to casual players, but it drew in a huge crowd that loved a challenge. The difficulty was greater than in older games, and at the same time, the sense of freedom and reward made it far more addictive.

In Dio's memory, the first Pokémon he'd gotten in his previous life was a Caterpie he happened to catch in the forest, one with unusually good potential. Even that had been considered lucky.

Despite being limited by its species and only rated at a pale-white quality, that gifted Caterpie had carried him through the beginner phase with ease.

Later, after he poured resources into it, it evolved into a Butterfree with a pale-green quality and became a core member of his team.

And now he was holding an Egg that already carried a deep-purple rating before it had even hatched.

What did that mean?

It meant the Pokémon inside had elite talent. Across the seven-tier system used on the Pokémon continent gray, white, green, blue, purple, red, and gold this Egg started in the top bracket.

And that was without even factoring in training methods, evolution paths, or long-term development.

Dio was confident, With techniques ten years ahead of the current era, he could absolutely raise this deep-purple Pokémon into red, maybe even gold.

This was the cornerstone.

The first foundation stone on his path to the top.

"Finally"

"Hah"

Inside, Dio was practically laughing himself hoarse, Ambition surged through his chest like a storm tide.

According to the forum guide he'd followed in his previous life, the main targets of this hidden quest were a premium Water Stone and a move disc containing Aqua Ring.

He hadn't expected the original poster to conceal a deep-purple Egg as an additional reward.

And now it had fallen into Dio's hands.

It made sense, too, A Pokémon of this quality would still be rare even ten years later. People didn't exactly broadcast treasures like that.

"So reborn players really do get ridiculous luck…"

The thought made him grin, and his confidence hardened into certainty.

He lifted his chin beneath the red-and-white cap and looked toward the dense forest beyond Silverbrook Town, His eyes burned with restless excitement.

In ten years of living online, he hadn't only memorized one hidden quest.

The truly important move, the one that would let him pull away from everyone else at the fastest possible speed, was still ahead.

...

Two days later.

Outer Moltenwood Forest.

Crunch. Crunch.

Dry leaves scattered across the grass were ground into fragments under his stiff shoe soles, and the soft rustling was swallowed and repeated by the dense trees.

Dio moved carefully through thick undergrowth, expression tight with caution. In his right hand was a spray can, and every so often he misted his clothes and skin.

Over the past two days, he'd taken small-town jobs and earned a pitiful amount of copper. He hadn't bought a single item meant for training Pokémon.

He'd spent every coin on Repel Spray.

Repel Spray was a consumable item in-game. It worked by releasing a scent that wild Pokémon disliked, lowering the chance of running into weaker Pokémon while traveling outdoors. It was practically essential for any Trainer who spent time in the wild.

And right now, Dio didn't even have a single Pokémon of his own yet.

The only reason he'd made it this far without being swarmed was Repel Spray's effect.

He didn't regret wasting two precious days grinding for money. For a new player, Repel Spray was expensive.

For Dio, it was the key that made everything else possible.

Only with it could he cross dangerous forest routes and reach the deeper edge of Moltenwood so early in the game.

Three more hours passed. By the time the sun had drifted toward the middle of the sky, he finally reached his destination.

It was a pitch-black cave hidden under the forest's shadow.

Silent.

Dark.

Nothing stirred inside, Thick green vines crawled along the entrance and clung to the stone, as if the place had been abandoned for ages.

"Found it."

Weariness sat in Dio's eyes, but a flicker of joy broke through. He hurried forward, tore the vines away in a few quick pulls, and slipped inside without hesitating.

Strangely, even though the cave looked long-forgotten from the outside, the interior wasn't chaotic.

The air was dry. Loose stones had been swept neatly to the sides, leaving a narrow path that led straight into the deepest darkness.

Dio drew in a deep breath, gaze set with determination, and stepped forward into the shadows.

He had come all this way because he knew the truth.

Hidden in the deeper region of Moltenwood was an ancient legendary altar.

In his previous life, a beginner who had spawned near Moltenwood had stumbled into this place through an absurd chain of coincidences, bringing along the first Pokémon they'd managed to capture.

According to what they later shared online, the mysterious altar granted them a special elemental affinity talent, making their training and raising efficiency far higher than a normal player's.

More importantly, even the official game account had replied in the comments, confirming the story was real.

The wave of players who later went hunting for the altar was one thing, but for Dio, the lucky player's tale had carved itself into his memory. That was why "Silverbrook Town" and "Moltenwood Forest" had stayed vivid in his mind for years.

Now, with all the details he had gathered over time, Dio was sure he could get even more out of it than that original lucky player ever did.

Guided by faint, unknown light along the cave walls, he soon reached the deepest chamber.

And there it was.

The legendary altar revealed itself at last.

Pale blue stone tiles—part iron, part jade—formed a complete circle. Four massive pillars, thick enough for one person to hug, stood at the edges. Across them spiraled clean white shell-like patterns that gave off a faint glow, like a mural carved in secrecy.

Mystery clung to the place like fog.

Dio pulled out a bowl from his inventory. Inside was clear water he had drawn at dawn from Purewell, the small spring at the exact center of Silverbrook's plaza.

He placed it carefully at the altar's center.

Then he lowered himself, sitting cross-legged on the ground. He raised both hands in front of his chest, forming a gesture that carried the weight of ritual.

Soft murmurs echoed through the empty chamber.

"Spirit of the north wind…"

"Pure and solemn… seeker of clean waters…"

"Gentle… spring… ruthless… ice…"

Something shifted.

With Dio's indistinct chanting, a breeze rose suddenly across the altar.

It was faint, but in the stillness of the cave, it felt wrong in the way only something unnatural could be.

A gentle blue glow, like flowing springwater, lifted from the bowl at the center.

Above the altar, a dignified shadow began to take shape, wrapped in pale ribbons that drifted like wind.

"It's working."

Dio shouted silently inside his head. Excitement surged through him like a flood.

With ten years of experience ahead of this era, everything had gone smoothly. Perfectly, exactly as planned.

And just as his long-prepared plan was about to reach its climax—

Everything went wrong.

A bizarre fluctuation burst from nowhere. The flow of time itself seemed disturbed. Space blurred and twisted.

WOMMMM.

A low, crushing hum rolled through the cave, like something awakening in a bottomless abyss.

Static crackled over it warped whispers, fractured muttering, shrieks that clawed at the mind. The noise filled Dio's ears until his thoughts rattled.

A violent dizziness hit him.

His vision dimmed, Smeared, Darkened.

Dio's plan had been flawless. He had accounted for almost every possible complication, even prepared contingencies in advance.

But there was one variable he had misjudged.

Time.

In his previous life, when that lucky player reached this altar, Pokémon: World had been live for three years.

In three years, countless unseen conditions could change.

Perhaps the legendary presence had been drawn in through repeated encounters. Perhaps the world's deeper rules had slowly shifted.

Under the game's vast, unseen framework, and the weight of endless coincidences stacking on top of one another, that higher existence had gradually extended recognition toward "players" as a special kind of being.

Everything had aligned. Naturally. Cleanly.

But now, on the fifth day after launch, Dio was trying to force open a door that wasn't meant to open yet attempting to drag a legendary being across time before the world was ready.

Even the artificial intelligence shaping and stabilizing the game's virtual structure through player activity could not have accounted for something like a "reborn" player.

In the end, Dio's reckless shortcut struck a fault line.

A hidden bug buried so deep in the system that it should never, ever have been discovered surfaced.

The cave's solid walls turned translucent. Green streams of data, made of symbols and numbers, flowed through the air like water. A black-like tear split the space itself, leading into a void that felt bottomless. From it came a powerful suction, twisting and dragging.

In an instant—only an instant—Dio's avatar body, the data shell that represented him in this world, shattered into scattered green code.

It broke apart.

Dissolved.

Reduced to garbage data outside the protected system boundaries, swept into a forgotten corner of the game's storage.

Items from his inventory burst outward, spraying across the ground. Yet because those items were system-anchored, they weren't dragged away by the tearing space or the rushing data.

They simply fell.

Still.

Quiet.

Scattered across the floor.

"Damn it!"

In the real world, Dio ripped off the VR headset and slammed it onto the ground, cursing loudly, face twisted with fury.

With his years of experience, he knew exactly what had happened.

"A bug."

"A glitch."

Days of careful preparation, an airtight plan ruined by one unexpected variable.

The rage that surged through him was sharp enough to make him want to smash the headset into pieces.

Because a full account collapse didn't just mean he couldn't log in.

It meant everything stored on that account copper coins, the Water Stone, the move disc, and the Egg became ownerless loot, abandoned somewhere out in the wild.

And since accounts were uniquely bound, even if he created a new one, he had no reason to believe he'd hit the one-in-thirty-two-thousand-eight-hundred miracle of spawning in Silverbrook Town again.

Yes, the company might offer some compensation for a system failure.

But compared to what he'd just lost, it was nothing.

His losses were catastrophic.

His furious shouting filled the room.

Meanwhile, back inside the cave.

Under the AI's suppression and emergency control, the distorted fluctuations gradually faded.

Everything returned to the way it had been before Dio arrived.

Everything—

Except for the scattered items left across the stone floor.

Then, as if the violent data wash had triggered something—

A crisp cracking sound snapped through the silence.

Crack… crack…

In the corner of the cave, the Pokémon Egg that had rolled away began to shake.

A pure white light spilled out, growing from faint to blinding, until it flooded the once-dark chamber.

Thin branch-like cracks spread downward from the top of the shell. A rich surge of life poured out, carrying the damp, warm scent of seawater. A strange humming filled the air.

Twisting. Reshaping.

Under the brilliant white glow, the oval Egg began to change, as if following some hidden law of nature.

At last—

In a shower of soft white sparkles, the life inside the Egg emerged into this new world, revealing a tiny form.

Its skin was water-blue, like the clearest spring, glossy with moisture under the light.

Its limbs were slender and adorable, and a large curved tail swayed gently behind it, as if testing the air for humidity and warmth.

A pair of bright, lively eyes blinked wide open, blue irises clear as moonlight on water.

And atop its head stood a vivid yellow, crown-like crest, fanning upward like a small, charming fin, trembling lightly with the breeze.

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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter

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For early access to advanced chapters on P-atreon:

P-atreon/iamxeno

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