Considering the possibility of borrowing his classmates' Pokémon to train Ralts's Trace Ability, Lorze opened his class group chat.
Even though it was summer vacation—the prime time for horny teenagers who had been cooped up all semester to go wild and party—the group chat was actually much livelier than usual.
The reason was simple: the mainstream topic of this world would always revolve around Pokémon. Today was the day students received their "Basic Trainer Licenses," meaning many would get their Starter Pokémon today. Naturally, the show-off teenagers immediately flooded the chat to flex their new catches.
However, scanning through the chat, Lorze noticed most people had basic shit like Oddish and Weedle. A small fraction from wealthy families who could afford Evolution Stones chose the adorable Eevee as their Starter.
But even common trash like Weedle was enough to make most people insanely jealous.
At least based on the local economy in Gui City, the vast majority of people couldn't even afford to become Trainers. Having a third of the class become Trainers was already a fucking miracle.
For everyone else, if they wanted their first Pokémon, they'd probably have to wait until they got a job and bought one with their own hard-earned wages.
Alternatively, they could go down the Breeder path, which would allow them to interact with plenty of Pokémon early on. But at the end of the day, those Pokémon weren't fucking yours.
And the Breeder path was no walk in the park either. In Hua Nation, there isn't a surplus of anything except people.
People who couldn't become Trainers were already the majority. With all these dropouts swarming into the Breeder industry, the resulting competition was a brutal, cutthroat bloodbath.
Sigh... Whatever, let's not dwell on such depressing fucking reality checks.
Back to the group chat. Unsurprisingly, the most popular Pokémon right now was an Eevee. Eevee looked like a tiny, adorable fox. It had an extremely docile temperament and was universally hailed as the ultimate pet Pokémon.
True, looking at Eevee's harmless, innocent face, you'd think it had zero combat capability. But it currently held the record for the Pokémon with the most known evolutionary branches.
Actually, Lorze initially thought about getting an Eevee too. But here's the kicker... while Eevee itself wasn't insanely expensive, Evolution Stones cost a literal fortune.
The higher the quality of the Evolution Stone, the more outrageously fucking absurd the price tag.
An Eevee evolved using a top-tier Evolution Stone would often naturally learn high-power devastating moves.
The tutorial videos for teaching those high-power moves were probably even more expensive than the stones themselves. He absolutely couldn't afford to blow money on Evolution Stones.
Of course, Lorze hadn't ruled out evolving it into Espeon or Umbreon. But again, the cost of raising a Psychic or Dark-type was on a whole different level compared to Grass or Bug-types, leaving him no choice but to reluctantly drop the idea.
"Xue, what type are you planning to evolve your Eevee into? I heard the recently discovered Glaceon is pretty badass."
The armchair Trainers in the group started theory-crafting evolution routes for the Eevee's owner.
But the Trainer named Xue thought for a moment before asking: I haven't decided yet. I was wondering, is there an evolution that's particularly good against Psychic-types?
That female classmate asked: Why specifically Psychic-types?
A male classmate chimed in: Is that even a question? Psychic and Dragon-types are basically the two massive fucking mountains crushing every Trainer out there. You obviously need a counter for them, right?
Female Classmate: Then why didn't she ask how to counter Dragon-types?
Male Classmate: Are you retarded? Glaceon literally counters Dragon-types.
Female Classmate: Heh, someone just permanently revoked their own dating privileges. I won't say who! (▼ヘ▼#)
Male Classmate: Tch! Like women are more important than my Oddish?
Female Classmate: Your Oddish is a male!
Male Classmate: Bullshit! I checked, she's a female!
Female Classmate: Tsk tsk, are there really degenerates out here trying to fuck a literal weed?
Female Classmate: @Xue, actually, every single Eeveelution can learn the Dark-type move 'Bite'. So it's not like they're completely helpless against Psychic-types. Just pick the one you like most! But whatever you do, don't pick Jolteon—it's like hugging a fucking cactus!
Xue: Yeah, I think Glaceon looks really pretty too.
Female Classmate: Right? Glaceon is the best. You can even use it as a portable AC in the summer~
Male Classmate: And it'll freeze your ass to death in the winter.
Female Classmate: Someone just revoked their dating privileges again. I won't say who. (▼ヘ▼#)
Lorze silently watched this group of people casually spitting out opinions. They all acted like professional Keyboard Trainers, talking as if they knew every damn thing.
But Lorze's expression gradually turned incredibly bizarre.
It was common fucking sense that Dark-types hard-countered Psychic-types, so using a Dark-type move like 'Bite' to deal with them made perfect sense.
But the real problem was...
Lorze casually typed out a message: Wait, are you guys mentally defective or something? If you want to counter Psychic-types, why the fuck wouldn't you just pick Umbreon?
Lorze originally assumed the fact that nobody had even mentioned Umbreon was just some obscure inside Pokémon meme they were all playing along with.
But to his absolute shock, the moment the word "Umbreon" was sent, the entire chat went dead silent for a second, before completely blowing up with a barrage of question marks.
Male Classmate: ???
Female Classmate: ???
Random Bystanders: ???
Xue hurriedly asked: @Lorze What is an Umbreon?
Male Classmate: What the hell is an Umbreon? You mean Leafeon, right?
Lorze: ???
Lorze: What the fuck does Leafeon have to do with this?
Lorze: Am I having a stroke, or are you guys completely fucking stupid?
Male Classmate: I'm pretty sure you're the one with brain damage.
Lorze: Someone just revoked their... forget it, just pretend I didn't say shit.
Xue: ???
Xue: Why pretend you didn't say anything?
Xue: So what exactly does Umbreon mean?
Male Classmate: Ignore him, he probably just made a typo. By the way, Lorze, I remember you took the Basic Trainer Certification exam too, right? Did you pass?
Lorze: Uh... was it supposed to be hard?
Male Classmate: Nice, I fucking love that cocky attitude! So, have you picked out your Starter yet?
Lorze: Well, obviously it's a Ralts!
Male Classmate: RIP, we lost another one to insanity. Did you accidentally pick a Gamble Fish and are too embarrassed to admit it?
Lorze: Did a Gamble Fish eat your family's fucking rice or something?!
Lorze instantly muted the group chat!
People these days. Just because they can't get something themselves, they refuse to believe anyone else could, huh?
Why won't anyone believe him when he tells the honest fucking truth?
Granted, he knew full well no one would believe him, which was exactly why he deliberately said it out loud.
Whatever, he couldn't be bothered wasting breath on these NPCs. More importantly, Lorze now had something much more pressing on his mind: he realized these people genuinely didn't know what an Umbreon was.
Logically speaking, any Trainer worth their salt should be able to list all of Eevee's evolutions, right?
Were they all just coordinating to troll the shit out of him, or what?
Or could it be...
As if hit by a sudden realization, Lorze quickly closed the chat app and booted up the Pokédex App.
This Pokédex App was developed by the [Snowhide] Corporation. Currently, it strictly logged around 800 Pokémon, along with only a portion of their Abilities.
Yes, only a portion. There were still tons of Abilities that humanity hadn't discovered yet.
Just like how they hadn't figured out how to evolve Feebas yet.
Did that mean the reason his classmates didn't know about Umbreon was because the Umbreon evolution literally hadn't been discovered in this world yet?!
Was that even fucking possible?
Normally, Espeon and Umbreon were the absolute easiest evolutions to trigger, right?
You didn't even need Evolution Stones. All you had to do was max out their friendship and level them up during the day or night.
How the hell had nobody discovered this yet?
However, the stark reality was: they really hadn't been discovered yet.
Lorze searched up all of Eevee's evolutions on the Pokédex App. Currently, the only known types were Fire, Water, Electric, Grass, and Ice—just those five.
Whether it was Espeon, Umbreon, or the currently dormant Fairy-type Sylveon—none of them were recorded on file.
This... this didn't make any damn sense. It was understandable that Sylveon hadn't been discovered, since many Fairy-type Pokémon were currently still classified as Normal-types.
But shouldn't Umbreon be incredibly easy to stumble across?
Could there be some other hidden condition besides max friendship and nighttime leveling?
There shouldn't be, right?
So far, the Pokémon existing on Star weren't drastically different from the games. At most, their appearances were slightly more realistic and fleshed out. He highly doubted the rules magically changed just for Umbreon.
Maybe there wasn't a hidden condition. Maybe the threshold requirements for friendship and Lunar Energy were just much stricter here?
After all, both Espeon and Umbreon were generally stronger in combat than the other Eeveelutions. It would be weird if their evolution conditions were actually easier to trigger than the rest.
Regardless, Lorze had just struck gold on a massive money-making scheme.
Just like the secret to evolving Feebas, if he could map out the exact evolution methods for Espeon and Umbreon and publish the research, it would undoubtedly rake in an absolute fortune.
Of course, the prerequisite was that he actually had the spare cash to raise an Eevee in the first place. Otherwise, it was all just empty talk.
If you can't even afford an Eevee, what the fuck are you going to research?