Feebas was remarkably laid-back.
It didn’t even seem to care what was happening around it.
Worried that Feebas might suddenly turn violent and kill someone, the chubby guy warned Leon, “There’s definitely something wrong with this monster. I think there might be something wrong with its brain.”
Leon: “…”
Compared to most Pokémon, Feebas really did look a little slow.
Leon wasn’t expecting Feebas to be useful at this stage anyway.
What he wanted was to evolve it.
Only once Feebas became Milotic would he truly have what he needed to survive in this world.
Of course, that depended on Milotic accepting him as its Trainer after evolving.
If it didn’t, then everything he invested in it would have been for nothing.
But Leon knew he had to take the gamble.
He had to bet that Feebas could evolve, and that once it did, it would listen to him.
For now, though, the more immediate gamble was whether he could raise Feebas properly in the first place.
June was a woman of action.
Once she agreed to Leon’s request, she quickly had someone bring the bed over.
“When it’s time to eat, Ray will call you over the radio,” June said.
The Ray she was referring to was the chubby guy.
After setting the fish tank on the floor, Leon took out a bag of fish food.
Feebas ate fast.
It finished the entire bag in just a few minutes.
Fortunately, the aquarium had plenty of fish food in storage, and the Water-type Pokémon hadn’t discovered it yet.
Most Water-type Pokémon didn’t have particularly keen noses, so it wasn’t surprising that they hadn’t noticed the food stored inside the cabinets.
At six in the evening on the third day since the Pokémon appeared, Ray called Leon and told him to hurry over and get some dinner.
After receiving the message, Leon covered the fish tank tightly with a box before leaving the room.
He hurried to the camp and found that quite a few people were already lined up waiting for food.
Everyone stood patiently in line.
No one tried to cut ahead.
June had one strict rule in her camp: arguments were absolutely forbidden.
If people got too loud, they could attract monsters.
People generally listened when June spoke.
After all, no one was willing to gamble with their own life.
That was why the survivor camp still maintained a basic level of order, though much of that was also because June was there to keep everyone in line.
As for why so many people were willing to listen to June, the answer was simple: she had the ultimate authority left over from the old world in her hands.
A handgun might not necessarily kill a Pokémon, but it could certainly kill a person.
Since the entire world was governed by a single human federation, the wealthy elites at the top had always been wary of the people below them rising up.
Gun control was therefore extremely strict.
The food at the camp wasn’t particularly good, mainly because the ingredients were poor.
The cooks themselves were actually quite skilled, all of them at a professional level or better.
Before the disaster, they had worked as head chefs at restaurants inside the mall.
Leon carried his plate over and sat across from Ray, then wolfed down his dinner.
He noticed that Ray had a little more meat on his plate than he did.
But considering Ray was effectively one of the camp’s team leaders, it made sense that he received slightly better treatment.
With that thought, Leon quietly glanced toward the old woman and the brat not far away.
The brat sat there with his face scrunched up, looking miserable but not daring to complain.
He could only grip his spoon and shovel bite after bite into his mouth.
Beside him, the old woman ate at an unhurried pace, occasionally looking up to remind him, “Slow down.”
After dinner, Leon returned to his room.
With both the water and electricity cut off, the mall became pitch-black after nightfall.
Leon dragged the coffee table over to his bed, placed the fish tank on top of it, and started playing a little feeding game with Feebas.
He had noticed that Feebas usually stared blankly ahead, looking perpetually dazed and half-asleep.
But the moment food appeared, its eyes immediately lit up, becoming so lively that it was almost as if something had suddenly clicked inside its head.
If there was a reason Pokémon had appeared in this world, then the emergence of Trainers might also be inevitable.
Lately, Leon had been thinking about one particular question.
What role did Trainers play for Pokémon?
Now Leon had a bold theory: perhaps Trainers awakened the emotional side of wild Pokémon.
So far, Leon didn’t have much affection for the Pokémon of this world.
To him, they felt more like wild animals that happened to possess tremendous power.
The Pokémon in the anime were different.
Those Pokémon experienced the same range of emotions as humans, and in some ways their feelings were even purer.
So Leon decided to explore that possibility first.
None of the methods he had in mind would cost him much to try.
If it worked, great.
If it didn’t, the most he would lose was a little time and emotional investment.
The room was completely dark.
Leon could only tell whether Feebas had managed to eat the fish food by listening for the bubbles it released whenever it opened its mouth.
Leon kept up this little feeding game for a full hour.
After going through eight bags of fish food, he fell into thought.
These Pokémon seemed almost impossible to fill up.
Feebas had already eaten at least ten times its own body mass in food, yet it still wasn’t full.
That was strange, and Leon wanted to understand why.
But without anything to compare it against, all he could do was come up with hypotheses of his own.
His first hypothesis was that food from Terra simply wasn’t very nutritious for the Pokémon that had appeared here, forcing them to compensate by eating much larger quantities.
His other hypothesis was that the Pokémon had undergone some kind of mutation when they arrived, turning their stomachs into bottomless pits that could never truly be filled.
Leon leaned more toward the first explanation.
He thought back to the hunt he’d witnessed earlier that day.
If the second hypothesis were true, then the Pidgey should have kept hunting Caterpie nonstop instead of feeding only once or twice a day.
Unfortunately, Feebas wasn’t an omnivore, nor could it fight a Caterpie.
Otherwise, Leon could simply feed it a Caterpie and see whether that finally filled its stomach.
At around eight that evening, Leon decided to go to sleep.
The night was pitch-black, he couldn’t afford to waste his phone’s battery, and there was nothing else he could do anyway.
Going to bed early was the natural choice.
The next morning—the fourth day since the Pokémon appeared—Leon woke at 5:30.
The first thing he intended to do was wash up, but he quickly realized something rather depressing.
This wasn’t his home.
He didn’t even have any toiletries, much less anything he could use to wash his face or brush his teeth.
With no other option, Leon went back to playing the feeding game with Feebas while waiting for breakfast.
At eight, Leon arrived at the camp on time and joined the line for food.
Since he didn’t really know anyone else in the camp, he went looking for Ray again.
When Ray saw him, he smiled and greeted him.
“Morning, Leon.”
“Morning.” Leon smiled and nodded before sitting down.
As Ray ate, he said, “After breakfast, remember to come with me to see June. Sounds like she has something planned for us.”
“Just the two of us?” Leon asked.
“Of course not. Everyone who’s young and able-bodied has to go, except the children and elderly.”
Ray scraped the last of the food from his plate before adding, “Oh, and if you want to brush your teeth, you can use the restroom. I’ll take you to pick up a set of toiletries in a bit.”
Leon looked puzzled.
“Didn’t the mall lose both water and electricity?”
“Not the public restrooms. They draw water from the storage tank on the mall’s roof. No idea how much is left, but it probably won’t last very long, so we might as well make it count while we still have it.”
Leon frowned with concern.
“Isn’t that a little wasteful? There are quite a lot of people in the camp.”
In an apocalypse, not washing might be unhealthy, but it wouldn’t kill you.
Running out of water too soon absolutely could.
“There’s not much we can do about it. There are too many people here, and some of them can’t see past tomorrow. They still think the Federation is going to send someone to rescue them, so they haven’t even considered what happens when the water runs out.”
There was a note of frustrated resentment in Ray’s voice.
He genuinely believed there was no future in huddling together with some of the useless parasites in this camp.