“June? June!”
“Leon… Leon! Wake up!”
Emerging from his daze, Leon stared blankly at the people gathered around him.
He pinched his thigh hard, and only when a sharp jolt of pain came through did he finally confirm that the people in front of him weren’t hallucinations.
June, who had also come to her senses, looked around in confusion and asked, “How did I get here?”
“Phew, June, you’re finally responding.” Ray let out a breath of relief.
“You two just walked in from outside with these blank looks on your faces. No matter how much we called you, neither of you reacted. Those old folks were even saying you’d been possessed.” Ray rambled on, complaining all the while, but also more or less filling them in on what had happened.
Seeing that June still looked somewhat dazed, Ray leaned closer with concern.
“June, are you okay now?”
“June, nothing can happen to you! If something happens to you, what’s the camp supposed to do?” a middle-aged man shamelessly cried out.
Hearing this from the side, Leon couldn’t help the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
This old guy was easily old enough to be June’s father, yet here he was calling her “June” over and over as if they were the closest of friends.
“Exactly! You shouldn’t have gone and taken that risk in the first place.”
The people around them were getting more and more carried away, and if they kept going, they’d soon drag Leon into it too.
June finally came fully back to her senses.
With a serious expression, June assured them, “Everyone, I’m fine. You don’t need to worry.”
“That’s good. That’s good.”
Seeing that June looked perfectly normal and didn’t seem to be suffering from anything, everyone finally breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Pushed off to the side, Leon’s thoughts returned to what had happened a few minutes earlier.
‘That strange pink light…
was that Confuse Ray?’
Leon pondered the possibility.
The fact that the Mimikyu could use Confuse Ray was enough to show that it wasn’t weak and that it had considerable talent when it came to Ghost-type abilities.
Having such a powerful ally nearby was undoubtedly a blessing for this camp, which was already teetering on the brink.
But…
Leon thought about the Mimikyu’s attitude toward him.
Among all Pokémon, Mimikyu was one of the species relatively willing to get close to humans.
Yet the way this Mimikyu had treated him had chilled his enthusiasm considerably.
Leon had also realized something both incredibly cruel and terrifying.
The humans of this world really were different from the humans of the Pokémon world.
If he were someone from the Pokémon world, that Mimikyu probably would have been happy to play with him.
Instead, it had actually shown some resistance and even distaste toward him.
The way Pokémon viewed the humans of this world was probably similar to how dogs, humanity’s good friends, viewed apes.
That was not good news, because it meant the difficulty of humans becoming Trainers had just gone straight from hard mode to hell mode.
At that moment, June also noticed Leon’s distracted expression and asked with concern, “Leon, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Leon gently shook his head.
“Did something get us back there?” June asked.
Leon discreetly swept his gaze over the people around them before explaining with a perfectly serious expression, “This is actually good news. That Ghost monster probably just wanted us to leave. It didn’t try to kill us outright. Instead, it used that kind of control to make us leave.”
“What does that tell us?”
“It tells us that Ghost monster doesn’t kill people,” Ray chimed in from the side.
Leon nodded, looking as though Ray was a promising student who had finally grasped the lesson.
“It’s not that it doesn’t kill people. It’s that… it accepted our terms,” Leon announced, feigning excitement.
The crowd reacted with mixed expressions.
Some were filled with fear and uncertainty about the future, but even more of them let out long breaths of relief.
Ghost monsters were practically walking natural disasters.
After all, when Pokémon had first descended upon the world, one of the most common stories on television had been about some Ghost monster wiping out every single person in an entire city or military base overnight.
Leon deliberately added, “And you could say we’re being kept as livestock by that Ghost monster now. As long as nothing goes wrong with our sacrifices, that monster might even step in and help us if we’re ever facing total destruction.”
He said this partly to emphasize the importance of the sacrifice plan, and partly because it was easy to be generous with other people’s lives.
Sacrificing the other people in the camp to earn Mimikyu’s favor might be somewhat despicable, but how was that not a win-win?
Yeah!
By win-win, he meant he won twice.
By sacrificing the other people in the camp, he could both earn Mimikyu’s favor and give the camp an extra layer of protection.
All he had to do from now on was wait until Mimikyu had eaten its fill each time, then head over and make himself familiar.
If they ever really ran into danger in the future, he could simply lead everyone straight to the arcade.
And just like that, the plan was complete.
Leon instantly had everything for the future mapped out perfectly.
June dismissed the others, then took Leon back to the office.
Sitting in her office chair, June asked solemnly, “You spoke to that Ghost monster while you were in there?”
Leon nodded.
“I’m not sure whether it understood what I said, but I definitely said a few things to it. Judging by its reaction, it probably agreed.”
Hearing that, June finally let out a heavy breath.
“Phew.”
“It finally feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest. Thank you for this. You’ve helped me again.” June looked at Leon with genuine gratitude.
“It’s what I should do. Besides, I benefited from it too, didn’t I?” Leon smiled and shook his head.
The benefit he meant, of course, was that he was no longer on the sacrifice list.
June said with complete seriousness, “What I said before still stands. Starting today, you’re my deputy.”
“I’d rather not handle the camp’s day-to-day management. I still need to study the monsters and a few other things.” Leon didn’t refuse the position of deputy, but neither did he fully commit to it.
June nodded in understanding.
In truth, she would rather have Leon focus on studying the monsters anyway.
There were plenty of people who could take over managing the camp, but when it came to studying monsters, Leon was the only one who could do it.
At least for now, Leon truly seemed uniquely gifted in that regard.
“If there’s nothing else, I’ll head back. What happened just now was a little… unusual. I need some time to process it properly,” Leon said.
Naturally, he was referring to the awkward experience of the two of them being controlled by Confuse Ray.
June rolled her eyes at him and complained, “There’s nothing unusual in a good way about being controlled. I definitely don’t want that happening a second time.”
Leon merely gave a soft chuckle without commenting.
After returning to his room, Leon continued feeding Feebas while showering it with praise.
His exchange with Mimikyu had confirmed one thing for him: the Pokémon that had descended into this world could be communicated with.
At the very least, they could probably understand human speech to some extent.
That was good news for Leon.
What he needed to do next was learn how to understand Feebas’s “language.”
As for Pokémon seeing humans as gorillas?
That wasn’t necessarily a dead end.
With enough individuals, there were bound to be all kinds of preferences.
Maybe the Pokémon world was the same way.