The sunlight was so bright that he couldn’t open his eyes.
Instinctively, Lucas raised a hand to shield his face.
Rays of light filtered through the gaps between his fingers, dancing across his eyelids.
His clothes, soaked in seawater, clung heavily to his body.
Grit and tiny shell fragments pressed against his exposed skin, making it itch and sting at the same time.
I’m…
alive?
The realization struck him like a bucket of ice water.
He bolted upright.
A wave of nausea churned in his stomach.
Turning his head, he dry-heaved several times, spitting out nothing but salty seawater.
His nose burned as though it had been scraped raw with sandpaper.
He coughed violently until his breathing finally steadied.
Then…
Memories flooded into his mind.
No.
They weren’t his memories.
His name was Lucas.
He was seventeen years old and lived near Petalburg City.
His parents both worked for the Pokémon League, though he had never known exactly what their jobs were.
The family had boarded a ship bound for Slateport City after the school term ended, planning to spend a relaxing week there together.
Then…
Fragments of memory exploded through his mind.
A loud crash echoed from beneath the ship.
Passengers screamed as they rushed onto the deck.
He was shoved by the panicked crowd and fell hard onto the wooden planks.
He heard his father’s desperate voice calling his name.
His mother’s cries were swallowed by the roaring wind.
Another violent impact shook the ship.
The deck tilted even farther.
Beneath the waves…
Countless blue fins sliced through the water.
A school of Sharpedo.
Lucas blinked.
His vision remained blurry.
Whether it was the seawater or the overwhelming flood of memories, he couldn’t tell.
He wiped his face.
As his hand passed over his forehead, a piece of half-dried seaweed peeled away.
The original Lucas…
Was already dead.
His body had somehow washed ashore.
Perhaps the waves had carried him here.
Or perhaps a Pokémon had rescued him.
Lucas preferred believing the waves had done it.
Thinking he’d been saved by a Pokémon only made his current situation feel even more unbelievable.
He lowered his gaze toward his hands.
They belonged to a seventeen-year-old boy.
Long fingers.
Visible knuckles.
Thin calluses from years of holding a pen.
These weren’t his hands.
Or rather…
They were no longer only his.
It took him nearly ten minutes to accept reality.
Not because he possessed exceptional mental strength.
Simply because refusing to accept it accomplished nothing.
After all…
He had already died once.
In his previous life, he’d been struck by a speeding truck while, as he jokingly described it, “cosplaying as a speed bump” on a highway.
He had been nothing more than an ordinary person.
An ordinary man who died…
Only to wake up again in another person’s body.
Now he stood in the world of Pokémon…
With almost nothing to his name.
Well…
Not exactly nothing.
He still had 5,000 League Currency.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out several crumpled banknotes soaked by seawater.
Their total value came to exactly five thousand.
Apart from that…
He wore a soaked white T-shirt…
Khaki shorts…
One shoe on his left foot…
And nothing on his right.
The other shoe had long since disappeared into the sea.
Lucas carefully spread the damp banknotes across the sand to dry before taking inventory of everything he possessed.
A healthy seventeen-year-old body.
No combat experience.
No survival skills.
Some knowledge of the Pokémon world gathered from games and anime in his previous life.
Meanwhile, the original Lucas’s seventeen years of memories slowly seeped into his mind.
The process felt strangely sluggish…
As though someone were pouring thick glue into his brain.
He possessed…
One shoe.
Five thousand League Currency.
And little else.
Raising his head, Lucas surveyed his surroundings.
The beach wasn’t particularly large.
It rested between low cliffs, forming a quiet crescent.
Behind him stretched a sparse forest filled with palm trees and broad-leafed plants he couldn’t identify.
The sea looked unbelievably calm.
No one would ever guess it had swallowed an entire ship only hours earlier.
The morning sun had already dried much of the beach.
There was…
No one.
No survivors.
No lifeboats.
No luggage.
Only silence.
Lucas stood.
Barefoot, he walked toward the forest.
He snapped off several sturdy branches that might prove useful later and collected a handful of smooth stones polished by the waves, slipping them into his pocket.
For nearly forty minutes, he searched every corner of the beach.
Twice.
He overturned driftwood.
Checked piles of seaweed.
Examined every place where supplies might have washed ashore.
The result…
Matched his expectations.
Nothing.
No luggage.
No backpacks.
No emergency supplies.
Most likely, everything had sunk with the ship.
The only things scattered across the beach were seaweed…
Broken planks…
A fishing net beyond repair…
And an old plastic bottle that had probably floated in the ocean for years.
None of it would help him survive.
Not even for another day.
Lucas leaned against a sun-warmed rock.
He removed his remaining shoe and buried both feet in the warm sand.
Oddly enough…
He wasn’t panicking.
Even he found that surprising.
Perhaps it was because the original Lucas’s memories were gradually becoming his own.
During seventeen years in this world…
Lucas had learned how to identify edible berries from his father.
His mother had taught him how to judge a Pokémon’s emotions.
School had also covered basic wilderness survival skills.
One memory after another settled into place.
It felt as though someone were slowly filling an empty toolbox inside his mind.
But knowledge alone wasn’t enough.
He needed to leave this beach.
He needed to find civilization.
He needed to report the shipwreck…
And find Lucas’s parents.
Although…
Deep down…
He already knew they were probably gone.
The original Lucas had died.
He himself had taken over this body.
As that realization settled into his heart…
A dull ache spread through his chest.
It wasn’t entirely his own grief.
It belonged to this body’s lingering instincts.
The original Lucas still worried about his parents.
Those emotions felt even stronger than Lucas’s own shock over transmigrating.
Closing his eyes tightly, he forced those emotions back down.
Right now…
Survival came first.
He had to determine where he was.
Find a road.
Reach a town.
Locate food.
Find fresh water.
Buy another pair of shoes.
And learn whether dangerous wild Pokémon lived nearby.
There was one more thing he needed to confirm.
Something he’d been thinking about ever since waking up.
The System.
In every transmigration novel he’d ever read…
The protagonist always possessed some kind of cheat.
A System.
A Check-in System.
A Lottery System.
An Attribute Panel.
Some sort of overpowered advantage.
A transmigrator without one…
Was like a Sharpedo without teeth.
In a world as dangerous as Pokémon…
That meant almost certain death.
Lucas took a deep breath.
“System?”
Silence.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
He called out mentally.
Again.
And again.
He searched his consciousness as though repeatedly pressing a broken switch inside a pitch-black room.
Nothing happened.
No interface.
No notification.
No quest window.
No backpack.
No status panel.
He silently recited every keyword he could think of.
Attribute Panel.
Inventory.
Check-in.
Lottery.
Quest Log.
Perhaps one of them would trigger a hidden function.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Lucas remained silent for a long time.
He watched several Wingull circling above the sea.
One after another, they folded their wings and dived into the water before soaring back into the sky with their catch.
The sunlight painted golden edges along their white feathers.
It was beautiful.
Far more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen in a game.
But beauty didn’t change reality.
Reality meant walking barefoot until the soles of his feet hurt.
Reality meant an empty stomach.
Reality meant he couldn’t even recognize which nearby fruits were safe to eat.
Lucas reached into his pocket and carefully folded the now-dry banknotes before tucking them safely inside his shirt.
5,000 League Currency.
From the games, he remembered that a standard Poké Ball cost 500 League Currency.
A Potion also cost 500.
A Great Ball cost 1,000.
Five thousand sounded like a decent amount.
Enough for ten Poké Balls…
Or ten Potions…
Or five Great Balls.
But in reality…
It wouldn’t even cover a few nights at a Pokémon Center in most cities.
More importantly…
He didn’t even know where the nearest town was.
Lucas brushed the sand from his clothes.
Then, barefoot and carrying everything he owned…
He stepped into the forest.