When the second vision finally released him, Felix found himself standing inside the internet café once more.
The meaning of the golden markings on the newly discovered fragment surfaced naturally in his mind.
[At the dawn of creation, when heaven and earth first took form, dragon was among the powers born…]
The inscription ended there.
Like the Ghost-type Plate fragment, this piece was broken and incomplete.
Judging by the placement of the text, both fragments seemed to come from the upper-left portion of their respective Plates.
As for this one…
It seemed to be Dragon-type.
Felix considered it briefly.
The Ghost-type fragment was obviously useful to Gengar, so taking it would accomplish very little.
This Dragon-type fragment, however, was another matter.
He could accept this one.
“Did you find this at the same place as the other fragment?”
Felix tucked the stone away and turned toward Gengar.
Gengar looked delighted that he had finally accepted something from its collection, but quickly shook its head.
“Gengar, gengar!”
[No.
I found this one somewhere else…
I think it was inside an abandoned temple.
That’s what those places are called, right?]
Felix raised an eyebrow.
Apparently Mount Coronet was absolutely littered with valuable things.
Now that he had Gengar around, traveling through the mountain would also be much safer.
It might be worth exploring more often whenever he had the chance.
The Berry drink dispenser seemed to require increasingly rare and high-quality Berries to produce better beverages as well, so searching farther into the mountain could benefit the café in more ways than one.
While Felix was making a mental note of that, Gengar picked up its enormous suitcase and shuffled over.
“Gengar?”
[Where should I put this?]
“Behind the counter is fine.”
Felix glanced at the suitcase, then remembered something.
“You pulled that gold coin out of your body earlier.
Why don’t you just store the suitcase inside yourself too?”
“Gen…
gar…”
Gengar scratched its head awkwardly.
[It…
doesn’t fit.]
Fair enough.
Felix took the suitcase from it, placed it behind the counter, and looked back at Gengar.
The Pokémon had returned to its chair and was sitting perfectly upright, watching him with almost comical obedience.
It still held the white can of Voice of All Things in both hands and carefully took the tiniest sip every few seconds.
Its thoughts drifted into Felix’s mind.
[Happy.]
[Yummy!]
Felix sighed.
Weren’t Ghost-type Pokémon supposed to be mischievous, cunning little troublemakers?
This one seemed almost excessively well-behaved.
As he was thinking about it, Felix noticed several notifications lingering along the left side of his system interface.
[Potentially dangerous guest detected approaching the internet café.
Defensive Mode activated.
The identified entity has been denied entry.]
[Host has voluntarily invited the identified entity into the internet café.
Threat status cleared.
Defensive Mode suspended.]
[The internet café’s security system remains active.
Powers below Legendary class cannot be used offensively within the premises.]
Felix read through the notifications and raised his eyebrows.
So the café really did have its own security measures.
That was reassuring.
At the very least, he did not need to worry too much about his personal safety while he was inside the building.
Still…
Felix glanced at Gengar, who was sitting behind the counter contentedly sipping its drink.
‘You’re sure this guy counts as a dangerous guest?’
Dangerous….
how?
…
Once the Gengar situation had settled down, Felix returned to his seat behind the counter and waited for Cynthia’s guest to arrive.
Then something in the system interface caught his attention.
Hold on.
The system had classified Gengar as a guest.
Did that mean Pokémon were eligible customers too?
If so, perhaps Felix did not need to wait for the person Cynthia had invited before fulfilling the second-customer requirement of his mission.
He had already tested whether he could count himself as a customer that morning.
Unsurprisingly, the system had refused.
But Gengar was different.
There was no harm in trying.
Felix stood and walked over.
“Come with me for a second, Gengar.”
“Gengar?”
Still clutching its drink, Gengar obediently got up and followed him to one of the computers.
“Sit here.”
Felix pointed at the chair.
Gengar climbed onto it.
The computer immediately powered on.
In the upper-right corner of the screen, the available session time appeared.
[1 hour.]
Felix raised an eyebrow and quickly checked his mission panel.
Sure enough, the requirement for 2 unique customers was now marked complete.
“It actually works?”
That solved one problem surprisingly easily.
Unfortunately, another problem became obvious almost immediately.
The desks and chairs had been designed for humans.
With Gengar’s stubby arms and legs, it could not comfortably reach either the keyboard or the mouse.
It ended up wedged awkwardly between the chair and desk, still hugging its drink and staring at Felix with an innocent expression.
Felix looked at it for a moment before giving up.
“…Whatever.
This is fine.
At least you can contribute an hour of playtime to the mission.”
“Just stay here for now.
I’ll come get you when the hour is over.”
He glanced at the can in Gengar’s hands.
“And you don’t have to ration that drink one sip at a time.
If you want more, I can make you other drinks later.”
“Gengar.”
Gengar nodded obediently, raised the can, took another tiny sip anyway, and settled back into the chair with the absolute stillness of a statue.
Felix stared at it.
“…”
Given how much Gengar liked the drinks, he really needed to find a way to upgrade the Berry dispenser.
A limit of three servings per day suddenly felt far too restrictive!
…
After getting Gengar situated, Felix returned to the counter and wrote down the three new Berry drink recipes he had discovered that day.
He paid particular attention to Voice of All Things.
Being able to communicate freely with unfamiliar Pokémon was too useful to ignore, so he would need to remember exactly which Berries produced it whenever he found more.
What Felix did not notice was that, while he was recording the recipes, the camera mounted above Gengar’s monitor quietly activated.
A livestream window appeared in the upper-right corner of the screen.
…
Meanwhile, on Earth, the same young man from before was standing beside his computer desk and stretching after a long video conference.
“Seriously…
who schedules video meetings on the weekend?”
At least it was finally over.
He carried over a steaming cup of instant noodles, dropped into his chair, and set the food beside the keyboard.
“Now, what am I watching while I eat?”
He opened the livestreaming site.
The channel he had followed before—Sinnoh Champion Cynthia—was offline.
According to the status indicator, the streamer had ended her broadcast three hours earlier.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!
She already stopped streaming again?
She barely goes live for two hours a day.
Does this woman have absolutely no interest in making money?”
Grumbling, he moved his mouse through the livestream directory in search of something else to watch.
Then his cursor stopped.
One title used a format that looked extremely familiar.
[Wild White Shiny Gengar of the Sinnoh Region — Livestream]
The young man stared at it.
“…What?”
The Cynthia cosplayer had already been strange enough.
Now what was this supposed to be?
Someone cosplaying as Gengar?
And since when was Shiny Gengar white?
His curiosity immediately won.
He clicked into the stream.
…
At the foot of Mount Coronet, an orange figure descended from the sky and landed firmly on the ground.
It was a Dragonite.
Unlike the gentle, almost cuddly appearance commonly associated with the species, this particular Dragonite had a hard, focused gaze and an unmistakably aggressive bearing.
Powerful pressure rolled from its body even while it stood still.
A red-haired man jumped down from its back.
Lance looked around at the surrounding wilderness, then checked the coordinates on his phone again.
His brow slowly furrowed.
There was still that much farther to go?
Something about this did not seem right.
He looked from the coordinates to the mountain towering ahead of him.
Cynthia had said this was an internet café.
Surely she had not meant that literally enough for someone to build the place deep inside Mount Coronet.