Naoki scrolled through the forum posts one after another, and as he read, a strange feeling settled over him.
It was as though every player on this forum had entered a game called Pokémon with absolutely no prior knowledge of what Pokémon even were.
They did not know that Magikarp could evolve into Gyarados.
They did not know that Ash was the protagonist of the anime.
Some of them did not even understand basic type matchups.
That left only one possibility.
A bold conjecture surfaced in Naoki’s mind.
This world called Lam Star had no Pokémon anime, no Pokémon games, nothing of the sort.
The franchise simply did not exist here.
Every player who had entered this game had done so completely blind, without the faintest prior exposure to anything Pokémon-related.
What sealed his conviction was a single post near the top of the page.
Does anyone know what this stone item does?
[image.jpg]
So yesterday I helped a roadside NPC find his missing Pokémon, and he gave me this stone as a reward.
He said it was supposed to be pretty rare, but I have no idea what it actually does.
Naoki’s eyes moved to the attached image.
It showed a stone with a clear, translucent texture, orange-yellow in color, with faint flame patterns visible inside.
He recognized it immediately.
A Fire Stone.
An evolution item that triggered the evolution of certain Pokémon.
He scanned the replies beneath the post.
There were fewer than ten of them, and not a single person had identified it correctly.
For any player with even passing familiarity with the Pokémon games, that was simply impossible.
The realization hit him like a jolt.
If this was truly the case, then his knowledge of the Pokémon anime and games, every plot detail, every mechanic, every secret, was the greatest advantage he could possibly have in this world.
An advantage that belonged to him alone.
If he could put that knowledge to good use…
Though, he reminded himself, this might simply be a matter of the game having just launched.
Given enough time, most of that information would stop being a secret.
Naoki pushed the excitement back down and closed the forum.
His first instinct was to leave the inn and get a proper look at this Pokémon world outside.
But then something stopped him.
The logout button.
He searched for it.
He checked the floating screen before him, combed through every menu he could find, and turned up nothing.
There was no logout option anywhere.
‘What was going on?’
Had he actually crossed over into this world?
Or was he an NPC who happened to have a player interface?
Confusion rose in him like a tide.
His eyes moved back and forth across the translucent screen as he worked through every tab one by one.
Settings, profile, function menu, all of it.
From the leaderboards to the trading market, from the world channel to the built-in forum, every feature a game could offer was present and accounted for.
But from start to finish, there was no logout button to be found.
No way back to reality.
No option to disconnect.
Which meant that whatever this so-called game was, it was not simply a game.
Not for him.
The brief panic passed.
Years of grinding through office life had honed in him a certain steadiness, and it reasserted itself now.
What was done was done.
Dwelling on it served no purpose.
What mattered was understanding his situation clearly and finding a way to live in this world.
Drawing on the starting identity information the game had given him, Naoki sorted through his circumstances.
He was currently in Mesagoza, the central city of the Paldea region, employed as a low-ranking staff member in the Paldea League’s administrative division.
Both his parents had died when he was young.
That experience had left him with a deep-seated fear of Pokémon that had never fully left him.
He had never caught a single Pokémon, never had a partner of his own.
His salary was modest.
He lived alone.
His days were swallowed by endless paperwork and overtime.
He was, in every sense, a textbook wage slave.
Still, compared to the players on the forum whose starting identities listed them as Bug Catchers, Shorts Kids, and bottom-rung Trainers, a League civil servant at least came with a steady income.
He had just seen a few posts from players who had spawned as Bug Catchers complaining they could not find any real work and were scraping by selling caught Bug-type Pokémon to other players just to get by.
More importantly, from what Naoki knew, the Paldea League was not the kind of organization that ground its employees into dust without a second thought.
If you had the talent and the drive, the Paldea League would pay you for it.
Bonuses included.
The current top Champion, Geeta, was famously hungry for capable people, and the League’s treatment of Trainers ranked among the best in the world by any measure.
Naoki drew a slow breath.
The frustration that had been building over the missing logout button loosened its grip, replaced by a quiet, sharp-edged excitement.
His eyes drifted to the map of Paldea pinned on the wall, then dropped to the League staff ID sitting on the desk.
Administrative work looked dull on the surface, but the Paldea League was a vast machine, and its departments were all interconnected.
Elite Four member Rika ran the business division.
Dragon-type master Hassel oversaw assessment affairs.
Geeta held the highest authority in the League.
Being on the inside put him close to the people who actually mattered in this region.
Compared to wandering the world with no direction, this position came with access to resources and information that most people could never reach.
More importantly, the Paldea League was tied to something far more significant.
The Great Crater of Paldea.
And the Paradox Pokémon, summoned from the past and future by two professors through a time machine.
“Since I’m starting as a League employee, I’ll work with what I have and learn this world from the inside.”
Naoki steadied himself and set the excitement aside.
The most pressing matter right now was finding a Pokémon to catch and raise.
He was in the Pokémon world.
Going without one simply was not an option.
Though…
He checked his current savings.
Balance: 50,000 League Credits.
At his current position, his monthly salary came to roughly 250,000 Credits.
It sounded like a reasonable sum until he reminded himself that League Credits carried roughly the same purchasing power as Japanese yen from his previous life.
To make things worse, the character background displayed on his profile showed that this version of Naoki sent half his salary to the orphanage every month after payday.
That barely left enough to support himself, let alone feed and raise multiple Pokémon.
“Well.
Regardless, I should go outside and get a proper look at this world first.”
Naoki straightened his plain work clothes and pushed open the door.
Sunlight spilled across the street outside, and a scene unmistakably alive with the spirit of the Pokémon world spread out before him.
Pedestrians walked alongside their Pokémon everywhere he looked.
An old man strolled unhurriedly with a Yamper at his side.
A young woman hurried past clutching a Flabébé.
A Mabosstiff wagged its tail eagerly at the sight of its returning owner.
A Trainer shot through the narrow street on the back of a Cyclizar, headed for the wilds with restless energy.
Cafes and food stalls along the roadside were packed.
Shop owners called out to customers while the smell of freshly prepared food drifted through the air and pulled at his appetite.
At one table, a group of Trainers sat together swapping battle stories with evident enthusiasm.
At another, ordinary office workers nursed their coffees through a break, chatting idly.
And moving briskly along the pavement, dressed in the same League uniform as him, were colleagues already on their way to work.
Then one of them spotted him.
A man in a checked shirt and black-framed glasses, his eyes going wide the moment they landed on Naoki.
“Naoki, what are you just standing there for?” His voice was tight with urgency.
“We’re about to be late for work.
If we miss the clock-in, Sato is going to dock our pay and he won’t lose any sleep over it!”
Naoki’s eyes narrowed slightly.
The tutorial NPC.
Right on cue.