After thinking for a long time, Evan Lane still decided that from now on, he would keep buying Snivy the premium set meal.
No matter who had to suffer, it could not be his own child!
Besides, that $5,000 prize had been earned through Snivy’s own hard work.
What right did he have to cut corners on her food?
With that thought, Evan ordered one premium Grass-type set meal and casually added a breakfast roll for himself.
As the card reader beeped, Evan’s throat moved slowly, and he swallowed.
Just now, he had ordered the most expensive breakfast of his entire life.
No contest.
However, seeing Snivy’s eyes shine as she ate, Evan could only smile helplessly.
The last time he had seen Snivy like this was when she first tasted the honey-glazed pork his mother had made.
Although Evan still did not understand why a Grass-type snake liked eating glazed pork so much.
Very soon, the food in the bowl was gone.
Snivy licked her lips in satisfaction, then looked across the table at Evan, who was holding his breakfast roll.
She looked at the food in front of her, then at the roll in Evan’s hand.
After hesitating for a moment, a Vine Whip flew out beside Snivy and pushed the Moomoo Milk in front of Evan.
“Sni, Sni~” “You’re saying I can drink it?” Evan rubbed Snivy’s little head, took a symbolic sip, then handed the cup back.
His Snivy had always been like this since birth.
She would not throw herself at her Trainer and act spoiled like other Pokémon.
When facing Evan, she always liked turning her head away and avoiding eye contact.
But the trust and burning emotion Snivy held toward Evan could be felt by any Trainer who had battled them.
It was just that Snivy was better at expressing it through harsh training and victory after victory.
“Hurry and eat.
You’re not far from evolving now, so this is exactly when you need nutrition.” Speaking of which, there was still some Moomoo Milk left from the batch Evan had ordered for Snivy.
But since the school cafeteria could provide it, the remaining milk could now be used as emergency nutrition during regular training.
Snivy no longer acted awkward.
She quickly finished all the food on the table, then followed Evan toward one of the rooms in the training area.
This special room was originally used to train a Pokémon’s reaction speed.
Machines were arranged all around the room, and in the center was a circular platform that was wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.
As the difficulty level increased, the speed of the tennis balls fired by the machines would gradually rise.
The Pokémon needed to stay within the lower area and dodge attacks coming from all directions.
Snivy’s reaction speed was already quite outstanding.
To train Snivy’s perception and sense of smell when her vision was blocked, Evan not only put a blindfold on her, but also coated the tennis balls with Berry juices of various scents.
He had once consulted Elena Greenhill, a Professional Trainer, about this method.
She had instead recommended using Ghost-type Pokémon to create illusion attacks with different scents for training.
Because his conditions were limited and he could not temporarily find a Ghost-type Pokémon with that kind of strength, Evan had no choice but to settle for the next best thing and use the school’s facilities to achieve a similar effect.
As Evan pressed the switch, the machines inside the room began operating.
From every direction, tennis balls occasionally shot toward Snivy in the center.
At first, the speed was slow.
Although Snivy kept dodging with agile movements, she had relied on vision in the past, so she was still struck by tennis balls again and again.
Originally, Evan had thought that with a Pokémon’s physical fitness, being hit by tennis balls should not be a big deal.
But as Snivy was struck repeatedly, many of the scales on her body began twisting out of shape.
Watching it made Evan’s heart ache.
It was like being cut with a dull knife.
If someone stabbed you sharply with a needle, even if you bled, you might not feel much.
But if a door lightly pinched your finger, anyone who had experienced that kind of sour pain would understand.
“Try using the scent to identify the direction of the attack!” Standing outside the field, Evan could not help reminding her.
Evan had also considered letting Snivy train without a blindfold first.
But after thinking that doing so would only train perception and reaction, not smell, he had decisively given up on the idea.
Training, of course, meant choosing whichever method had the better effect.
This was also Snivy’s own choice.
Seeing Snivy gradually get on the right track, Evan finally relaxed.
He walked to the rack in the corner of the room and began putting on the weighted sandbags hanging there.
These had originally been prepared for Pokémon training their reaction speed.
Since Snivy was still in her initial stage and clearly could not use them yet, Evan simply used them to train his own stamina.
Snivy was working that hard, so of course he could not fall behind.
He did not need to become some superhuman from Pallet Town who could directly tank Thunderbolt, but he at least had to build enough stamina.
If he later encountered a Pokémon he wanted and could not even throw the Poké Ball far enough, that would be way too embarrassing.
As time passed, afternoon quickly arrived.
Snivy had already been sent for treatment.
Evan sat on the floor, wiping sweat from his body while thinking about Lucas.
For some reason, the whole situation felt strange.
Logically speaking, a living high school student had vanished in the black market.
Even if the black market was already an unlawful place, why had there been no news at all from the Mapleford Trainer Association after an entire day?
With all kinds of doubts in mind, Evan retrieved Snivy’s Poké Ball from the treatment machine and hurried toward Lucas’s home.
When he passed the school gate, the old security guard only glanced at him before ignoring him.
Clearly, he had already been informed in advance that Evan would be leaving campus.
Soon, Evan stopped in front of an old apartment building.
He skillfully climbed to the third floor, knocked three times on the door, and waited to the side.
Before long, a pale-faced woman opened the door.
When she saw Evan outside, a trace of joy appeared on her face.
“So it’s Evan.
Lucas and I were just talking about you.” Hearing the woman’s words, Evan felt as if his heart had skipped a beat.
He froze in place.
“Lucas…
he’s already back?
I wanted to find him at school today for a battle, but I didn’t see him anywhere, so I came to ask whether he’d already gone home.” “We usually train together in the afternoon.
I got a little worried when I didn’t see him today.” Evan truly could not figure out what was going on right now, but he also could not directly explain everything to Lucas’s mother.
What exactly was happening?
Lucas did not seem like the kind of person who would joke about something like this.
“Sorry for making you worry, Evan.
Lucas didn’t come home last night.
I thought he was training at school, so I called the school.
But they told me he had left after the assessment ended in the morning.
I was terrified.” As Mrs.
Ember spoke, she invited Evan inside and had him sit on the sofa.
“After that, I couldn’t reach his phone either, so I called the police.
The police said he had last appeared in the black market and that they still needed to search.” “I spent the whole day sick with worry.
But just now, Lucas came back and said he had taken a Professional Trainer as his teacher, so he doesn’t need to go to school anymore.
He also said the loans we took out for his schooling can be paid off now, and we don’t need to be under so much pressure anymore.” As she spoke, the smile on Mrs.
Ember’s face grew even brighter.
Their family had already been extremely tight on money, and Lucas’s father had always been unwilling to let his son become a Trainer.
But Mrs.
Ember did not want her illness to drag down her son’s dream.
In truth, when Lucas had seen his mother’s pale face as she smiled and said, “Even if I have to borrow the money, I’ll make sure you can attend Trainer school,” tears had already flooded his eyes.
He had cried as he hugged his mother’s thin body, shouting that he would not become a Trainer anymore, that he would work hard and earn money in the future.
But his mother had patted his back the same way she did when he was little and said softly, “Silly child.
If you did that, your mother would feel guilty for the rest of her life…”