The sky was a deep, spotless blue, the sunlight bright and clear.
It was the kind of beautiful day without a cloud in sight.
If not for the catastrophe three days ago, it would have been a perfect day to relax.
Instead, all that brightness hung over a world shrouded in the gloom of the apocalypse.
Leon pulled open the curtains.
Beneath the cloudless sky, high-rises belched black smoke over deserted streets.
Three days ago, strange creatures believed to have come from a higher dimension had appeared on this planet known as Terra.
Possessing terrifying destructive power, these creatures had dealt the world a near-catastrophic blow from the moment they arrived.
In just three days, the industrial civilization humanity had taken such pride in collapsed, and social order ceased to exist.
It was also three days ago that Leon awakened memories of his previous life and realized he had been reborn on this planet called Terra.
People had named these strange creatures monsters, but as a transmigrator, Leon knew they had other names.
Pokémon.
Pocket Monsters.
Creatures.
But in this world, calling them monsters wasn’t some misunderstanding on humanity’s part.
Their actions more than justified the name.
Ecologists called it one ecosystem crushing another from a higher dimension.
Biologists called it an extreme form of predation: higher-dimensional creatures trampling lower-dimensional life to death.
When the Pokémon first appeared, Leon could still occasionally find news online about what was happening elsewhere.
Human Federation military bases had been attacked by Ghost-type monsters, for instance, with armies numbering in the tens of millions devoured as food.
On the second day after the Pokémon appeared, humanity lost the skies forever.
Every satellite vanished overnight, leaving remote regions completely cut off from the rest of the world.
And now it was the third day.
Today.
Leon took out his phone.
The screen showed nothing but the lifeless no-signal icon.
He lived in one of the country’s most expensive major cities, which meant the undersea cables and ground-based cell towers had also been destroyed.
Then there was the water.
That had stopped running this morning.
The electricity had gone out last night.
Just as that ecologist had said, this was one ecosystem crushing another.
Humanity had never been the sole victim of this disaster.
They were merely one species among countless others being inadvertently trampled beneath the Pokémon that had appeared in this world.
The problem Leon faced now was that although he knew the Pokémon that had appeared, the Pokémon of the real world were somewhat different from the ones he remembered.
He had seen a video online of a Caterpie using Tackle and completely wrecking a speeding car.
A massive Onix had swept its tail through a building and brought the entire structure crashing down.
Most horrifying of all, Leon had even seen footage of Spearow hunting humans.
That was when Leon realized something.
These Pokémon were nothing like the ones he knew.
If Pokémon had lost their gentler nature and were driven primarily by animal instinct, then perhaps calling them monsters wasn’t wrong after all.
If he had any choice, Leon would have preferred to hole up at home and wait for the authorities to rescue him—or for the obligatory transmigrator cheat to finally awaken.
Unfortunately, he had a problem he couldn’t ignore.
He was out of food.
Staring down at the deserted, deathly silent street below, Leon gritted his teeth, turned around, and dug the baseball bat he’d bought some time ago out of the storage room.
Wearing a blue-and-white six-panel cap and carrying the baseball bat, Leon cautiously opened his apartment door.
He poked his head out and checked the hallway.
It was completely empty and utterly silent.
Only after making sure there was no danger did he force himself out of the apartment.
He locked the door behind him and quickly headed toward the emergency stairwell at the end of the hall.
As he passed one of the apartments, a faint sobbing sound, barely louder than a mosquito’s buzz, reached his ears.
Leon stopped.
He listened for a moment, then shook his head and continued walking.
He didn’t know why the person inside was crying, but this wasn’t the time to get involved in someone else’s problems.
He was nearly starving himself.
He had no energy to spare worrying about whether other people lived or died.
There were quite a few survivors in the building.
Their residential complex was relatively isolated and didn’t see much foot traffic, so it hadn’t yet been attacked by Ghost-type Pokémon.
Leon descended the stairs slowly, placing every step lightly near the edge of each stair for fear that the slightest noise might attract a Pokémon.
Even an ordinary Raticate could kill him.
In his current state, encountering a rampaging Pokémon meant almost certain death.
He made it downstairs without incident and headed straight for the convenience store on the first floor.
But the moment he reached the entrance and saw what was inside, he froze.
Every shelf was completely empty.
Forget food.
Whoever had come before him hadn’t even left a crumb behind.
Leon’s expression darkened, but since he’d already come this far, he had no choice but to rethink his plan.
He had to find supplies today.
There was a large shopping mall across from the residential complex.
Maybe there was still something left inside worth taking.
Having made up his mind, Leon gritted his teeth and forced himself onward toward the more distant mall.
He knew perfectly well that the farther he went, the more dangerous the journey would become.
When Leon reached the roadside, he spotted the landscaped median in the middle of the street.
His heart nearly stopped.
The foot he’d just extended immediately pulled back.
Oddish after Oddish had buried half their bodies in the soil of the median and were quietly basking in the sunlight.
Leon had no idea whether Oddish were territorial, but he wasn’t about to gamble his life on it.
According to the Pokédex, Oddish fed by absorbing nutrients from the soil through their bodies.
But what if these Oddish were omnivores?
What if they occasionally ate meat?
Back when the internet still worked, the authorities had classified Oddish as one of the most dangerous plant-type monsters.
The poisonous powder they released could quickly suffocate a person to death, while some individual Oddish could even spit highly corrosive liquid capable of dissolving alloy steel plates.
As a transmigrator, Leon knew the poisonous powder was simply a move called Poison Powder, while that corrosive liquid was actually Acid.
But so what?
Knowing their names wouldn’t make him dissolve any slower if he got hit by Acid, nor did that knowledge give him resistance to poison.
So Leon chose another route.
He had barely taken two steps after deciding to avoid the median when he stopped again.
Several Caterpie were steadily munching through the leaves of the trees lining the street.
Several nearby trees had already been stripped completely bare.
Leon’s expression darkened once more.
According to the official information released before communications went down, Caterpie weren’t considered as dangerous as Oddish, and their means of attack were relatively limited.
But after seeing that video of a Caterpie sending a car flying, Leon wasn’t about to underestimate a Pokémon that sat near the bottom of the food chain.
If a human’s fragile body took a direct Tackle from one, there probably wouldn’t be enough left intact to call it a body.
Still, compared to the Oddish, the Caterpie preoccupied with eating were clearly the safer option.
Leon had also noticed something strange.
The Pokémon that had appeared in this world seemed to be suffering from some bizarre, overwhelming hunger.
Ever since their arrival, they had been constantly eating to replenish their energy.
These Caterpie were no exception.
In only two days, the handful of Caterpie here had completely devoured the leaves from eight large trees.
The trees they’d fed on had been reduced to bare trunks.
One look was enough to tell they wouldn’t survive much longer.
The damage Pokémon could inflict on an ecosystem was dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of times greater than humanity’s.
Just as that ecologist had said, these monsters were already reshaping the ecology of this world.