An Overelming Week

Day 7

Click

“Hmm hmm hmm ♫.”

As I enter my room and close the door, I can’t help but hum a song about skeletons being spooky. I start getting ready to go to bed, but then I remember something.

(Oh, right. Today is the seventh day since I woke up in this world. That means it’s time for “that”! Since this is going to be the first time, I’ll do it on the rooftops.)

I phase through the wall to go outside of the guildhall, then I float towards the building's rooftops while appreciating the gentle breeze caressing me and the moon shining bright in the sky. The best thing about being high up is the view I get of Capim illuminated by many lanterns. The gentle light from their flames is different from the electric lamps I was so used to seeing in the big human cities, as it gives me a feeling of coziness that overtakes any fear I have of being this high up.

(Alright, time to do what I came here for.)

While lying down on the roof and looking at the many stars twinkling in the sky, I place my hands together to assume a prayer position.

(Almighty Arceus, this is Elm. Thank you again for bringing me into this world. I don’t know if you really are the one bringing humans here, but I figure that if it’s not you then you must at least know who is responsible for this, and can redirect this prayer to them.)

(In any case, it’s already been a whole week since I woke up under that tree. Back in that first day I said I would offer you a prayer of gratitude once a week. Well… I didn’t say that lightly, so here I am! It sure has been an interesting week. So many things happened…)

I close my eyes as I begin to reminisce the events of this week.

Day 2 - Knowing is Half the Battle

Yawn

“Ugh, fucking Pelippers…”

I woke up still feeling sluggish. While rubbing my eyes out of habit, I tried to push away the lasting impression left by the Pelipper-related nightmare I had. I briefly thought about how I technically have only one eye now, but it felt awkward to refer to my eyes as a singular thing. Plus, I have two eyesockets! Therefore, I decided to keep referring to my eyes as plural.

I placed my headband and badge on my head, then left my room.

(This is it, my first day as a member of this guild. What should I do today? I guess the first step would be having breakfast.)

As I floated through the hallways, I tried to recall the guildhall’s layout from when I was walking with the Guildmaster in the previous night.

(Ah, that’s right. Last night I heard shouts telling someone to leave the kitchen. I think it came from the first floor…)

I went to the first floor and I could immediately tell which room was the mess hall, since I could hear a good amount of noise coming from it. Before entering, I decided to take a peek inside.

I spotted around fifteen Pokémon there, which I knew wasn’t the entire guild. I assumed the reason for that was that each member probably wakes up at different times and some might even opt to not eat anything in the morning. Still, seeing so many people inside left me anxious.

(Oh man, this feels like being a transfer student who is about to enter the classroom for the first time.)

(Maybe I should sit alone today…)

I shook my head as soon as that thought crossed my mind. (No! You gotta socialize! You are motherfucking Elm now! You’re not going to falter to something small like sitting with other people and starting a conversation.)

While I gathered my courage to go inside, I began to plan my course of action. I would grab my food, then sit on a table that only had one or two people.

(Let’s see… No, that table is too crowded… The people in that other one look like they’re about to leave… That one is- Waaait a minute. Is that a freaking MEW?! Holy crap, it is! We have legendaries in this guild? I wonder if that’s a native or a human, and if- Whoops, I’ve been peeking here for too long. If someone sees me now they’ll think I’m a creep andrumorswillspreadandthen- Oh, that table only has one person. Perfect!)

I whispered, “Target acquired.”

With my route planned, I entered the hall and headed towards the food. I noticed some of the guild members looking at me with curiosity, and some of them began to whisper among themselves. I did my best to ignore it.

I got a pancake and an apple on a wooden plate, then got myself a wooden cup with water. I couldn’t help but notice how the Munchlax serving me, who I assumed was the chef due to the dirty apron, sounded quite grumpy. Still, I wished him a good morning while getting the food.

Afterwards, I approached the target I had spotted earlier, who was an Oshawott wearing a band with a badge on his tail. “Hi, is this seat taken?”

He turned his head towards me and shook it, so I sat beside him and had a sip of water while thinking about what to say. I was half-expecting him to say something to start the conversation, but he didn’t. The result was that we both ended up silent for several seconds and it was awkward.

(Guess I’ll have to be the one who gets the conversation started.)

Gathering a bit of courage, I put on a smile and turned towards him before saying, “I’m Elm. What’s your name? I’m new here, so I’m trying to get to know my guildmates haha!”

“I’m Augustus, but call me Gus. Welcome to the guild, Elm.”

“Thanks, Gus. Nice to meet you!”

(Alright, the ice is broken! Oh wow, these pancakes are delicious!)

“So, Gus, how long have you been in the guild for? I joined just yesterday.”

“Well… I’m one of the people who were there when the Guildmaster came up with the idea of forming a guild, so you could say I’ve been here since the beginning.”

“Whoa. That means you’re one hell of a veteran!” (What kind of syrup is this?)

With a bashful tone he replied, “I… wouldn’t call myself that. I mostly go to low rank dungeons and I’m not as good as other members when it comes to fighting.”

I noticed how Gus was fidgeting with his scalchop while saying that, so I tried to cheer him up. After gulping down another mouthful of pancake, that is.

“That still makes you a veteran! Maybe I should call you Gus-senpai.”

I couldn’t help but giggle upon seeing the grimace on Gus’ face. With a scrunched-up face, he replied, “God no! Please don’t ever call me that again.”

“Bwahaha! I’m just kidding. I would die of cringe if I did that regularly.”

After that we kept talking for a couple more minutes. It was mostly us exchanging abridged versions of our first moments upon waking up in this world.

“Huh, so we both woke up in the middle of nowhere.” I said before finishing my pancake.

“Yes, and entering that mystery dungeon by accident shortly after was awful.”

“But at least you found people who guided you to Capim. I had to go through some… trouble to get here.”

Soon after that Gus finished his meal, we said goodbye to each other, and he left. As for me, I had something urgent to do.

“Chef, could I have seconds? These pancakes are delicious!”

He replied with a low grunt, but still made another pancake for me. I seriously couldn’t tell if he was angry for being given more work, or if he was happy that I liked his food. Could even have been both at the same time.

While having my seconds I tried to pay attention to the ongoing conversations the people on the other tables were having. I could only hear fragments, but I managed to piece together some conversation topics:

• One table was talking about how one of their members was having a hangover.
• Someone asked the Mew if she slept under a truck. Her annoyed groan hinted that that wasn’t the first time she heard that one.
• Something about making eggs? I couldn’t properly hear that conversation since it was coming from a distant table.
• One group was talking about how an Alakazam was a “turbocunt”.
• Another group was talking about some guy named Kris being “totally a femboy”.

I snorted upon hearing that last one and barely managed to stifle a laughter. Hearing someone say “femboy” so nonchalantly in a public space was too much for me.

(I’m already loving this guild.)

...

Having finished my breakfast, I went outside and felt the pleasant morning breeze. It was already dark when I arrived in Capim the previous day, so I couldn’t properly appreciate how lush and beautiful this town was.

(Such fresh air. So many trees. So many flowers. So many… fire hazards.) For a moment I wondered what sort of preventive measures Capim had against fires.

(Oh well. I can just ask someone later. Right now it’s time for adventure!)

(And my adventure today will be… studying!)

That’s right. Studying.

It wasn’t really an adventure, but I had to learn more about dungeons. When I was in that dungeon the day before I could identify apples and some berries, but I had no idea of what that Wonder Orb was. I had to at least learn how to identify items.

With my goal for the day set, I asked around if Capim had a library or something similar. My search led me to a small building labeled as a library. It was not as big as I would have expected from a big town, but it still had a respectable number of books that would be enough to keep someone busy for months. I greeted the librarian, who was… some kind of caterpillar with glass eyes and a bowtie?

(Man, I really need to learn the names of all these newer generations Pokémon I don’t know.)

On my way to the bookshelves, I noticed two signs on a wall. One had a list of several rules specific for Fire-types, which made sense. On the other hand, the second sign only had one thing written on it.

No human roleplaying allowed!

(What? I’m really curious as to why the hell this rule is a thing, but I feel like I’ll end up exposing myself as a human and getting into trouble if I ask the librarian.)

I browsed through the bookshelves and picked up all books I could find on dungeons and items. Unfortunately, there were no books on Pokémon species. I also borrowed some paper and a pencil from the librarian.

The first things I studied were the appearances of each orb, seed, trap, berry and wand. I was already familiar with their effects from playing the video games, but the games I played used generic graphics for many of those items. This meant that I had no idea of how to, say, differentiate a Reviver Seed from a Doom Seed, or an Escape Orb from an Itemizer Orb. Thankfully, the books had drawings to help me learn the items’ appearances.

While studying, I wrote down a quick reference sheet on how to identify each item. Some examples of the entries in my sheet were:

• Blast Seed: Spiky pineapple.
• Reviver Seed & Reviser Seed: Deku nut & kissy deku nut.
• Decoy Seed: Pink onion. Sneak it into someone’s food = lol.
• Escape Orb: Black w/ white core.
• Petrify Wand: Bondage stick.

Yes, these notes looked ridiculous, but that was the point. I’ve always had an easier time memorizing a lot of stuff at once by creating the most ridiculous mnemonics and associations I could think of. As an example, the Kanji 父 means father. When I look at it, I see two crossed axes, so I just associate it with the mad father from The Sh*ning! Isn’t that brilliant?!

Writing down the list ended up taking way longer than I expected, mostly because it was awkward to use a pencil with my new fingerless Duskull hands. Still, I was aware that several of the other former humans probably had an even harder time using writing utensils with their new bodies, so I didn’t complain. If anything, I was very grateful for still being able to write and being blessed with the ability to read this world’s weird feet-based language.

After ensuring I had memorized everything, I moved on to studying mystery dungeons. From my studies I concluded that some of them functioned in a very similar fashion to the ones in the games, but there were lots of variations and unknown factors in play to the point where one mystery dungeon could be wildly different from another.

The most important information I found was that getting knocked out by wild dungeon Pokémon doesn’t necessarily result in death, at least not in some of the dungeons classified with a low ranking. You just get booted out of those. However, severe wounds like having your heart impaled or having half of your body disintegrated by a Hyper Beam would still kill you, so caution was still needed.

(Oh, so my near-death experience yesterday might not have been near-death at all. Good to know! But geez, the dungeons are so random and different from each other that all this vague information seems almost useless.)

I also learned about the existence of a factor named “Mysteriosity” and a “Mysterious Distortion Effect” that can make a dungeon become more dangerous. But I couldn’t find detailed information on them, and it seemed like they were only relevant in more advanced dungeons, so I didn’t dwell on it.

…

By the time I finished my studies it was almost evening. Why? Because my memory is garbage, so it took me that long to memorize everything.

I returned the pencil and thanked the librarian, then I left the library. As I made my way back to the guild I saw several Fire-type Pokémon lighting up the lanterns scattered around Capim. I also spotted some Pelippers flying towards the post office, but I immediately faced the other way as I wasn’t feeling like increasing my chances of having more Pelipper-related nightmares.

Once I arrived at the guild, I spotted some guildmates returning from their adventures. Their passing conversations let me know that dinner was already being served, so I decided to have a quick look at the mess hall.

It was… a mess. There were so many people inside and so much noise that I could barely discern any full sentences amidst the ongoing conversations.

(NOPE. I’ll have dinner later when this place calms down. But what should I do in the meantime?)

I began heading towards the stairs to the second floor, but then I noticed some guildmates going to a nearby hallway instead of the mess hall. (Huh? I wonder what’s there.)

(Wait, that’s right! I still haven’t explored the guildhall.)

And thus, my dungeon guildhall exploration began.

(Oh, we have a clinic. Good to know.)

(A dojo with a shooting range. I’ll probably end up using this place a lot!)

(A bathroom. Crap, that reminds me that I haven’t taken a bath yet! What am I, a professional basement dweller? How could I forget to take one?!)

After a much-needed shower, I resumed my exploration. Next was the second floor.

(They have a library here! Damn, I guess that means I didn’t have to go around town searching for one.)

(Map room… mail room… treasury… locked room…)

Most of the rooms were unstaffed, as the people in charge of them were probably having dinner. I checked the third floor too, but aside from several locked rooms the only noteworthy areas there were the Guildmaster’s office, which I had visited the day before, and an outdoor area where one could have a nice view of Capim.

I returned to the second floor and entered my room to drop my study notes on the desk. While I was there, I took the opportunity to lie down in my cotton bed and rest while I thought about what I would do on the following day.

(I’m armed with knowledge now. Tomorrow I’m taking a quest and going to a mystery dungeon for sure!)

A couple of minutes later I assumed that the mess hall would have been less crowded by then, so I went back to the first floor to have a look at it. And sure enough, it had calmed down. The number of people inside had dropped by about half compared to when first checked, which was still plenty of people, but I was already hungry and no way I was going to wait until late night to have dinner.

(Alright, let’s do the same thing I did during breakfast.) While I was in line to get the food, I did a quick scan of the room in order to find any tables with only one or two people and managed to spot a table whose right half only had a Sneasel wearing a belt with pouches. I got myself a bowl of nice-smelling vegetable soup and some bread, then headed towards my target.

Pointing towards the seat across from her, I asked, “Hi, is this seat taken?”

The Sneasel turned her head toward me and answered, “Nah, sit wherever you want.”

As soon as I sat across from her, she asked, “Haven’t seen you around here before. Are you the new guy who showed up last night?”

(So word of me has already spread around.) “Oh, you know about that? Yep, I’m that new guy. I’m Elm, nice to meet you!”

“Always nice to see new members here. Just call me Sneasel.” Then, while pointing a claw downwards, she continued, “And this is Booker, my partner.”

I was sure that she was the only one I saw there, so I was confused and muttered a single “Huh?” before my gaze followed the direction her claw was pointing. It pointed towards a tiny Pokémon sitting on the table, next to her bowl of soup.

Booker was yet another Pokémon I didn’t recognize. To me he looked like some kind of yellow butterfly wearing a fluffy brown scarf and a belt with a blue cloth attached to it. He waved at me while munching on a piece of bread that was about as big as his body.

I had to contain myself to not let out an “Awww” at that sight. (Holy crap. That’s cute as hell!)

My internal squealing was interrupted by Sneasel asking me, “Never seen a Ribombee before?”

(Dammit! I stared at Booker for too long!)

“Oh, uh… Yeah! It’s my first time seeing one. I haven’t played any of the games after Gen six, so I-”

I was interrupted by Booker shouting, “Elm! She’s a native Pokémon.”

Sneasel gave me a puzzled look while asking, “Games? Gen? What do you mean?” I immediately realized my blunder.

(CRAP! That’s right. Not everyone in the guild is a human. Who knows how a native would react if I told them that in the human world Pokémon are just fictional creatures from video-games?!)

“Uh… It’s… It’s just human slang! Yeah! Humans play a game in order to learn about Pokémon, and ‘Gen’ refers to the difficulty level of the game. The higher the Gen, the more Pokémon you know haha!”

Sneasel raised an eyebrow and gave me a look that I interpreted as “That’s bullshit, but I’ll believe it.” Still, what I said wasn’t exactly a lie.

I wasn’t feeling like inducing an existential crisis on Sneasel, so I tried to change the subject by asking the first thing that came into my mind. “So, have you two been in the guild for long?”

Booker was the one who replied. “We’re part of the group of Pokémon who formed the guild, so we’ve been here since its beginning.”

“Huh, so you two are veterans here.”

With a smirk, Sneasel said, “Veterans? Hah, I like the sound of that!”

“Coincidentally, today I met Gus, who is another ‘veteran’. Sounds like you all were there when the guild was formed.”

Upon hearing Gus’ name, Sneasel said, “So you’ve met him? He’s a nice guy.” And Booker added, “Yes, me and Gus are part of the group of humans who happened to be at the Meloetta concert that night.”

“A concert? I did hear something about that, but I don’t know the whole story on how the guild was formed. Can you two tell me how it happened?”

Sneasel and Booker both nodded in agreement and began to recount the events of that fateful night.

…

“Oh wow… It was one hell of a coincidence for so many humans to be there at the same time.”

Sneasel gulped down the last spoonful of her soup and added, “For sure. And the craziest part is that it all started with that comment from Gus.”

I dipped a piece of bread on my soup. “Still, it almost feels like it was too much of a coincidence. I’m glad it happened, though, as it resulted in this guild being formed and taking me in.”

We continued our meal for a couple more minutes until Sneasel asked me something I wasn’t expecting.

“Say, how about we have a sparring match? I don’t have much experience fighting against Ghost-types, so I’m eager to give it a go!”

I glanced at her sharp-looking claws. (NOPE! I don’t feel like being torn to shreds!)

“Uh… I’m pretty sure that if we were to fight it wouldn’t even qualify as a match. It’s only been a day since I became a Pokémon, and I still have trouble performing moves.”

Booker stood up and asked, “What kind of trouble?”

I wasn’t feeling like telling everyone about how I had to do a whole song and dance to get moves to work, so I just told him a half truth.

“Well… I have to get into a certain state of mind to use moves, which takes some time. This means that for now my moves are slow to come out and any fast opponent would wreck me…” I looked at Sneasel and continued. “Which I imagine includes you. You look pretty agile, so you’d probably beat me sneasy-peasy.”

“Heh, I do consider myself fast.” She put her hands on the table and leaned towards me. “But you said, ‘for now’. Does that mean you’re planning on doing something about it?”

There was something off about the way she asked me that. Her voice had a slightly more serious tone, and she was staring directly into my eyes in a way that almost felt menacing. It seemed like she was asking that seriously instead of trying to make small talk, so I gave her a proper answer.

“For sure! In this new life I want to get stronger and do a lot of adventuring, so I’ll train hard to solve this problem. I’m actually planning on taking an easy mission tomorrow.”

She smirked in approval. “Good answer. I’m sure you can overcome that with hard work.”

“Yeah, I won’t let myself get discouraged. Besides, my situation isn’t even that bad. The Guildmaster mentioned we have a member who couldn’t use any moves at first, so I won’t complain while others have it worse.”

Huh? Sounds like he was talking about-“ Booker cut her off by saying, “He was talking about Ross.”

She looked at him for a moment and then confirmed it. “Yeah, he was talking about Ross. He’s our insomniac Smeargle.”

Soon enough they finished their meal and excused themselves, as Sneasel was going for a target practice session. I finished my soup shortly after.

I was feeling mentally tired from my studying, and I didn’t have the best sleep due to the Pelipper nightmare, so I decided to head straight to bed so that I could wake up early to get ready for my first mission as a Clover guild member.

Once I was back in my room, I took out my headband, closed the curtains, and laid in my bed. The cotton bedding wasn’t nearly as comfortable as a good mattress from the human world, but it was cozy enough.

And so, my second day in this world came to an end. Thankfully, I didn’t have nightmares that night.

Day 3 - The Hand of the Northern Celestial Body

I woke up early, just as the sun was starting to rise. I wasn’t sure if breakfast was being served that early, so I decided to prepare the equipment for the dungeon dive before eating.

I went down into the basement, which was still one hell of a mess, and searched for a bag first. I eventually found a box containing a wide variety of bags, backpacks and pouches, and began experimenting with them.

It was then than I realized I had a problem.

(Dammit! My body is too round, and I have no waist or shoulders.)

A Duskull’s round body shape meant that wearing bags and backpacks was very awkward, as the straps kept sliding off. I tried several different designs, but all of them were prone to slipping off my body unless I fastened them tight to the point of being uncomfortable.

I also tried moving around while wearing bags filled with random junk to get a feel on how they would affect my movement. I could tell that the added bulk and poor fitting would interfere with my dodging by making me float slower, and during my first dungeon exploration I learned that dodging was very important.

While experimenting I also learned another thing about my ability to go through walls. I could go through solid objects while carrying stuff, but with heavier loads the walls would feel denser, making it hard to move in them. After a certain load diving into walls and floor felt like trying to dive in a pool of Play-Doh.

In conclusion, big bags were out of the question. So was carrying too much stuff.

After much brainstorming and experimentation, I settled on a belt with a pouch, but fastened to my left arm. The pouch was small and could hold only a few items, but it allowed for easy access to them and didn’t restrict my movement. I also picked up a regular bag.

The plan was to have important items like Escape Orbs and Reviver Seeds inside the pouch, while the bag would contain food and other items that didn’t require immediate use, like Pecha Berries. I would carry both but set the bag aside whenever a fight started.

Having settled on the bags, I began to search the storeroom for items.

(Let’s see… An Escape Orb is a given. But maybe I should carry two in case one breaks? Or maybe even four just to be really sure? Nah, one will do. One Sleep Orb. And six Reviver Seeds?)

(Nah. I’ll pick a low difficulty mission, so no need to overprepare like that. Plus, I’m assuming Reviver Seeds are very valuable, so it doesn’t feel right to take more than two at a time from the guild’s stock.)

While looking at all the boxes and labels, I had a devilish idea. I picked up a box of Reviver Seeds and scribbled “Reviver Seeds : )” over the label. I gloated at the thought of someone coming down there and stressing over whether the seeds in the box were Reviver or Reviser.

Was that a dick move? Hell no. If anything, I was doing the guild a favor there. Any competent dungeon explorer should be capable of identifying Reviser Seeds, so this might encourage them to learn how to do it. It might save their lives someday!

I finished stocking up and headed for the mess hall to have breakfast. I was excited to go on my first mission, so I didn’t feel like taking extra time to talk to someone during breakfast. I savored two pancakes, grabbed some apples and berries from the pantry for the dungeon trip, and then went to check the job board.

Some guildmates were already at the board selecting jobs. I scanned through the postings there to find something suitable.

(Escort mission… Nope. Oh, this one looks go- Nevermind, the reward is literally a bunch of rocks. Deliver an Oran Berry to… Oran Forest? Is this a troll mission?!)

Something I noticed about the quests was that there was a wide variety of them, with some not involving dungeons or fighting. As an example, one of them was requesting a babysitter for a couple of days. I had no idea of why someone would ask for a babysitter from this guild. There was also an adjacent board dedicated to posts on outlaws, like a pirate trio and a Dewott.

(Hmm… Ah, this one will do!)

The quest I selected was simple. The objective was to gather some mushrooms that grow at the end of a certain mystery dungeon. The dungeon in question was in the lowest difficulty rank, so it would be perfect for a first mission.

With the request registered, I stepped out of the guildhall feeling pumped up to begin my first mission as a member of the Clover guild!

(Alright. Let’s do this! Whatever danger is in this dungeon, I’m ready for it! Not that I think there will be much danger in it. It’ll probably only have a couple of weak water-types or stuff like Rattatas and other… Normal… types…)

(FUCK!)

(I can’t believe I forgot about how I only know Ghost-type moves. I can do nothing against Normal-types. At this rate if I end up facing one what would happen is…)

>Exploring a dungeon
>Suddenly everything starts flashing and sirens start blaring
>Wild RATTATA appeared!
>Go! ELM!
>ELM used SHADOW SNEAK!
>But it failed!
>ELM used ASTONISH!
>But it failed!
>Wild RATTATA used ROAR OF TIME!
>ELM fainted!
>You and your friends are dead. GAME OVER

(NO! I can’t let that happen. But… what the hell should I do?) I took a deep breath and started to think about my options.

(Hmm… should I just cancel the mission and train until I learn another move…? No, I don’t wanna have to cancel my very first mission. That would be shameful and a sour memory.)

(Should I just go for it and pray for me to not run into any Normal-types? I think I can’t be hit by Normal attacks as long as I activate my intangibility, so I could just ignore or run away from them if I do end up encountering one.)

I gave that option some consideration but ended up discarding it. (No, there’s always the possibility of them being able to use other move types besides Normal. And there’s the risk of me stumbling upon a horde of enemies while trying to run away. Getting wiped on my very first mission would be an even sourer memory.)

“Fucking normies…” I mutter under my breath.

(Oh yeah! I could just pack some Blast Seeds. I am a genius!)

I rushed back into the storeroom and searched for the box labeled “Blast Seeds”. I found it after a couple of minutes, but it was empty. “Oh no!”

(Maybe there are more in some unlabeled box? Wouldn’t be a surprise in this mess of a storeroom.)

I rummaged through some unlabeled boxes to no success. I also looked inside some of the labeled boxes just in case one of them was mislabeled and contained Blast Seeds, but all I found was that it wasn’t just the Blast Seeds box that was empty. It seemed like either the refilling process was slow, or people were lazy to warn the management when the stock ran out. Considering the state of the storeroom I imagined it was the later.

I left the storeroom pondering what options I had left. (Hmm… What if I ask someone in the guild to come with me? That sounds like a good idea. But I don’t know anyone aside from Sneasel, Booker and-)

And then the solution to my problem literally walked out of the mess hall and greeted me.

“Hi Elm.”

“GUS! You came just in time!”

“W-What?!”

I dashed towards him and held the quest paper right in front of his face. “Please come with me to this dungeon!”

He put his hands between us to push me away. “Whoa, slow down a bit! What is this about?”

“Oh, sorry. Let me explain.” And so, I told him about how I only knew Ghost moves and, in my excitement, I had forgotten about that and took on a quest. I also mentioned how he was one of the only guildmates I knew.

Having listened to my explanation, Gus began questioning me. “Okay, I get why you want someone to come with you. But why are you asking me? I think someone like Sneasel would be a better fit.”

“Well… I did consider her, but how do I say it… I think she might be too good for this. I feel like she would be offended if I were to ask her to come to such a low-level dungeon.”

“She’s not like that. At least I don’t think so. In any case you could just pack a bunch of Blast Seeds.”

“I was in the storeroom just now looking for Blast Seeds, but there were none.”

“Ugh… Someone must have taken the last ones and forgotten to warn others. Happens all the time.”

“I figured.” I tried making a pleading puppy-eyes face, though I had no idea of what that would look like as a Duskull. “So yeah, please come with me?”

Gus was avoiding looking me in the eyes now. “Uh…”

(Alright. Just one more push.) I didn’t like being pushy, but I really needed someone to come with me and I would feel awkward asking that to someone I’ve never talked to. And asking that to Gus, who I had barely talked to before, was already awkward enough.

“Or… could it be that you’ll be busy today?”

“No… I was just going to spend the day swimming at the docks.”

“Then you can join me on the dungeon! I just need someone to cover me in case there are Normal-types there. It will be fun, and I packed extra Oran Berries for safety!”

Touching his scalchop, Gus mulled it over for a couple of seconds before sighing. “Okay. I guess taking a mission with someone occasionally is a good change of pace. Besides…”

“Besides?”

“… I would feel bad for not helping out a new guildmate.”

(Score! Sorry for being so pushy, Gus. I’ll treat you sometime.)

I tapped him on the back. “Nice! Thanks Gus, you’re a lifesaver!”

“Lifesaver? That’s a bit too much!”.

With a temporary helper recruited, I went back to the pantry to stock up more food to account for Gus. After double-checking our supplies, we stepped out of the guildhall to begin our trip to the dungeon.

(This isn’t going to be my first dungeon dive, but it will be my first mission. I’m looking forward to it!)

…

(Dammit. Taking a quest before training more was a mistake…) That was all I could think while I followed Gus through the dungeon’s humid hallways.

The trip to the mystery dungeon was uneventful. However, after entering the cave and having a couple of battles against Shroomish, Buizels and Lotads, I realized something.

I underestimated how detrimental it was having to create visualizations in order to use moves.

Whenever we encountered a foe, I began preparing a Shadow Sneak. It required me to first imagine my shadow as a third arm that would follow the movements of my right one, then I had to throw a straight punch to make my shadow lurch forward, followed by a rising punch to make it shoot upwards and only then hit something.

Unfortunately, by the time I had the attack ready Gus had already dispatched the enemy with a blast of water or a scalchop attack. Most of our battles ended before I could attack.

Sometimes we encountered multiple foes at once. In these fights I got to fire Shadow Sneak, but ended up missing some of them because the attack was telegraphed and, unlike the Sewaddles in my first dungeon, the opponents were not slow crawling bugs and could dodge.

With each fight that ended before I could do anything and each Shadow Sneak miss, frustration piled up more and more inside me. At one point I even tried to use Astonish instead of Shadow Sneak on a Buizel.

“OOGA BO-“

Before I could finish the attack the Buizel fired a water blast right at my face. It hit me with so much force that it threw me against a wall. Gus dispatched the Buizel and helped me get up.

Trying to use Astonish was even worse as, aside from me having to think about how much I wanted to scare the opponent, it required me to be right at their face and shout at them. This meant that Astonish would likely only work on slow or unaware opponents, but in those cases I was better off using Shadow Sneak instead. Astonish was useless.

“Dammit…” I muttered while coughing out all the water that got into my mouth. It was demoralizing to see Gus being able to fire two or even three moves in the time it took me to use a single one.

Speaking of Gus, I held no negative feelings towards him. My frustrations were solely because of my feelings of ineptitude. During my first dungeon I felt like a protagonist of a story learning about my potential, but at that moment the only kind of protagonist I felt like was the kind that gets kicked out of an adventurer party for being “useless”. Except that in this case I really was useless.

I was so frustrated that I wanted to shout and punch the ground, but I didn’t want to lose it in front of Gus. So, I did something I was good at: I bottled up those emotions.

(Let’s not think about that crap for now. I’ll sort out these feelings later.)

It seems like Gus realized I wasn’t getting any action, as he stopped using direct attacks and moved on to only launching a freezing wind at opponents to slow them down. He also let me deal the finishing blow on the slowed down opponents. I appreciated the gesture, as it allowed me to release some frustration by hitting enemies as hard as I could without them being able to dodge.

As we explored the cave dungeon, I noticed it was a composed of a single large floor, as opposed to several floors connected by teleporting stairs. Most areas were illuminated by small openings on the ceiling letting sunlight come in, or crystals on the walls emitting a faint glow.

We eventually came across a long rocky tunnel that was slightly darker than any other part of the dungeon, as it didn’t have any glowing crystals or ceiling openings inside. I went in ahead of Gus and began to go through it, but a couple of seconds later I heard him shout, “Elm. Wait for me!”

I looked back and noticed Gus was father behind than I expected. He was also walking much slower than usual.

“Gus? Is something wrong?”

“It’s too dark in here, so I’m going slow and steady to not trip.”

I looked around the tunnel. “Dark? But this tunnel is only a bit darker than the rest of the dungeon.”

“That’s because you’re a Ghost-type. For me it is very dark and all I can see is your eye and a very faint light coming from the end of the tunnel.”

“Oh… Ooooh…” (That’s true. I’m a creature of darkness now! No edge intended.)

“Wait, you seriously didn’t know you had night vision?”

While scratching the back of my head I laughed in embarrassment. “Ehehe… Nope! I hadn’t even thought about that until now. Sorry Gus. Here, let me help you.”

I grabbed his hand and guided him through the tunnel. Thanks to this he could move faster than before, but he still stumbled on the rocky terrain sometimes.

(I should have packed a Luminous Orb. Too bad that I can’t use any Fire-type moves.)

(…)

(Wait a minute… There is one move Ghost-types can use that involves fire!)

“Hey Gus. Can we take a break for a couple of minutes? There is something I want to try.”

“In this dark tunnel?!”

“It shouldn’t take long. I’ll keep watch for incoming enemies, so don’t worry about that.”

“Uh, okay then…”

Gus sat against the wall and took the opportunity to eat an apple. Meanwhile, I began to think about how I would try to use the move. I first tried mentally shouting the move’s name.

(Will-O-Wisp!)

Nothing happened. (Figures it wouldn’t work. I guess I’ll have to try some kind of visualization for this one too.)

I positioned my right hand with the palm facing upwards, then imagined a ball of fire lighting up there. It didn’t work either.

(Hmm… Maybe I have to think about how the fire lights up? Let’s see… How does one start a fire?)

My first thought were gas stoves, so I tried to imagine gas leaking out of my palm, followed by a spark from the tip of my left hand lighting it up. A tiny flame appeared for a fraction of a second before fizzling out, letting me know that I was on the right track but not quite there yet.

The next thing that came into my mind were lighters. However, I had never smoked, so the only kind of lighter I was somewhat familiar with were those cheap plastic sparkwheel ones. I was about to begin mimicking the movements one does when pushing down the button and spinning the sparkwheel at the same time, but then I remembered something. (Oh, right. I don’t have fingers anymore. D’oh!)

I tried to imagine it anyway, but it didn’t work. (Figures. I never had a lighter at home, so when I had to light up a fire I used the stove or… matches…)

At that moment I had an epiphany. (This has to work!)

First, I imagined the tip of my right hand as the head of a match, then I imagined my left arm being coated in coarse paper like the ones found on the sides of matchboxes. With that visualization in mind, I swiped the tip of my right hand against my left arm to mimic the movement of lighting up a match.

Fwoosh

It worked! A small purple flame was hovering a couple of centimeters away from the tip of my right hand. I tried moving my hand around and the flame followed it while always staying close to the tip. The flame was small, being about the same size of a flame from a match, but I still considered that a success and was happy for it. I celebrated by doing a fist pump with my left arm. “Yes!”

The sudden light drew Gus’ attention. “Elm? What did you do?!”

I showed him the flame. “I tried to use Will-O-Wisp and I did it! Well, kinda.”

We both admired the purple flame for a moment. I wanted to practice more to get the flame to a size where it could actually be called a proper Will-O-Wisp, but I had no idea of how long that would take and I didn’t want to leave Gus waiting there in the dark until I got it right, so I decided to move on.

“Gus, is the light of this flame enough for you to see where you’re walking?”

“Yeah, it’s enough. Thank you, Elm.”

I outstretched my arm to the right so that my own body wouldn’t block the light from the flame for Gus. With a light source in hand (literally) we resumed the walk through the tunnel with Gus following behind me.

Soon enough we got to the end of the dark tunnel and were about to step out of it. I heard Gus sigh in relief behind me.

“Phew. I’m so glad this tunnel is finally over. Elm, you can put out that fi-“

Click

Startled by the sudden noise coming from under me, both of us looked down and spotted a square tile with an ornate pattern right below me, a tile that wasn’t visible before I hovered above it. It was a trap!

“Oh shi-“ was all I managed to blurt before a light enveloped me, followed by a feeling of vertigo. When I shook off the feeling and looked around, I realized I was in an unfamiliar part of the dungeon and Gus was nowhere to be seen.

“Shit, that was a Warp Trap! And placed right at the end of the tunnel. What kind of sick joke is this?!”

Anxiety began to build up with the sudden unexpected situation. I took a deep breath to calm myself. (Okay, calm down. All I gotta to do is proceed carefully and try to find Gus.)

I wasn’t worried for Gus’ safety, as I was painfully aware of how he could defend himself much better than me, but I still wanted to reunite as soon as I could. I noticed that the purple flame didn’t go out and was still hovering close to my hand.

(Uh… how do I put this thing out?) I tried blowing on it as if I were extinguishing a candle, and it worked. (That was easy for a change.)

I made a mental note on how I could still trigger traps despite being a floating Pokémon, then went through several rooms and hallways looking for Gus. I didn’t shout for him as I was afraid of luring enemies to me, so I just focused on trying to hear any distant sounds of battle.

In one of the rooms, I fought a lone Lowtad who dodged my first Shadow Sneak but got hit by the second one and was knocked out. It was then that my fears became a reality as a certain Pokémon entered the room.

(No… No! Why now?!)

It was a Rattata.

They immediately spotted me and began charging. I managed to activate my intangibility just as the Rattata jumped on me, resulting in them going through my body. That wasn’t the first time it happened, but feeling something go through my insides without actually touching me was still an odd sensation.

While the Rattata was recovering from the confusion of going through me, I distanced myself while preparing a Shadow Sneak and fired it. I didn’t expect it to work, but I had to confirm if Ghost moves were ineffective against Normal-types in this world. My suspicions were confirmed as the attack harmlessly passed through the Rattata, almost as if they were the ghost there. With Shadow Sneak and Astonish out of the question there was only one move left.

(Uh… Is Will-O-Wisp a Ghost move, or a Fire move? I can’t remember. Ugh, whatever. I’ll just have to give it a try!)

Once again, I imagined the tip of my right hand as the head of a match and swiped it against my left arm. A small purple flame was formed, and I approached the Rattata with it. The enemy tried to tackle me but went through my body again, so I took the opportunity to jab the flame on their back.

(Please work!)

SCREEE

A faint sizzling sound followed by a pained cry from the Rattata gave me confirmation that the attack had worked. (Yes! So it is a Fire move!)

Now that I had a way to damage my foe all the fear I had was fading away and being replaced by confidence. I looked at the Rattata in the eye and smirked. “I’m still pissed about that Warp Trap placement, so I’m gonna do some cooking to unwind!”

I approached the soon to be rat roast. They jumped on me for another tackle, but I just stretched my arm forward to place the flame between us, resulting in the Rattata going face-first into it and burning their nose.

I repeated this cycle of phasing through attacks or avoiding them and countering with a burn about a dozen times. Throughout the fight I was trying to be cautious by focusing on counterattacking rather than throwing myself at the Rattata. That was because I considered the possibility of them knowing a non-Normal move and catching me off guard.

The air was permeated with the smell of burnt fur and I could tell that the Rattata was damaged, as I could see several patches of burnt fur and skin. However, I could also tell that the damage wasn’t significant enough since my foe still had enough vigor to keep charging at me with barely any slowdown in their attacks.

(This is gonna take forever at this rate…)

I wanted to reunite with Gus as soon as I could, and if I dragged the fight on for too long there was a good chance of more enemies appearing and joining the fight, so I started being more aggressive with my fire pokes. It was going well until the Rattata dodged one by hopping backwards and then counterattacked by trying to bite my right arm.

I couldn’t pull back my arm in time, so I saw their sharp teeth being enveloped with a faint ominous dark glow and sink into my arm. The resulting pain was so intense that my vision went black for an instant, causing me to groan in pain and fly towards the ceiling, where the Rattata couldn’t reach me. My arm was starting to go numb from the pain, causing me to scramble for an Oran Berry form my pouch and gobble it up.

(I was confident I would be able to do this. But I guess I should just throw a Sleep Orb and- Ow, it hurts so much. Please heal faster.)

The pain started to gradually subside as the berry’s effect kicked in. I was relieved at first, but then I glared at the Rattata while still feeling stings of pain in my arm. At that moment the feelings of relief were pushed away to make space for something else.

Anger.

“You fucking bitch… This is personal now. Screw being careful or running away. Time to go apeshit!”

I grabbed two Oran Berries from my pouch and put them in my mouth, leaving them there instead of chewing. Next, I imagined my left hand as the head of a match and swiped it against my right arm to light it up. With flames on the tips of both of my hands, I dashed at the Rattata and began a flurry of flame jabs on them.

I poked their body while alternating between each hand. One poke with my right hand, then a poke with my left hand. The Rattata dodged most of them, but with each dodge they stepped back a bit.

(Just a bit more…)

My foe spotted a gap in my attacks and seized the opportunity to bite my left arm. The intense pain coming from it left my vision blurry, but I began chewing one of the berries in my mouth and resumed the attacks.

And then it happened. The Rattata tried to step back, only to hit something hard. They looked back and realized they had backed up against the dungeon’s wall.

(Now!)

I unleashed a mad flurry of pokes on my distracted and cornered victim, feeling even more fired up than before. My foe bit my arms again to try stopping it, but I endured the pain and began chewing on the second berry.

Each bite from the Rattata further fueled my anger, intensifying my frenzy and making me channel all my energy into jabbing as fast as I could. In the heat of the moment, I had an amusing idea and followed through with it by shouting like a madman.

“ATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA-“

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

“-TATATATATATATATATATATA-” They bit me again, but I was too pissed to care about the pain.

“-TATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA-” Another bite. My vision went dark, but one of my Reviver Seeds kicked in.

“-TATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA-” Two more bites. One more Seed.

“GET FUCKED! WATAAAAAA!!!”

I landed the final blow right between their eyes. The wild Rattata slumped on the floor while numerous plumes of smoke came out of their body. Meanwhile, I had spent almost all my energy on that berserk tactic and was left huffing.

“Huff… Huff…” My ghost body didn’t require breathing, but I was still huffing to cool down my overheating body after the exertion. I watched the Rattata twitch and try their hardest to push themselves off the ground and get up, their limbs trembling from the pain.

Between my labored breaths I pointed at the Rattata and said, “You are already dead.”

The wild Rattata finally succumbed from the burns and fainted, dissipating into a white light along with my anger. The sight washed me in a wave of relief.

“Phew, I did it. Glad that’s finally over. Now I just gotta find-“

I turned around and froze in place.

“Gus…?”

Gus was standing at one of the entrances to the room. His wide-open eyes and agape mouth let me know that he had seen at least part of my embarrassing spectacle. He further confirmed that by asking, “What did I just watch…?”

Normally I would have further embarrassed myself by panicking, trying to come up with a lame excuse, and having a hundred thoughts raging in my mind. But at that moment I was too tired to do any of that, so I just sighed and looked up to stare at the light coming from the ceiling.

…

Gus let me rest for a moment. Thankfully, he didn’t bring up the topic of my shameful display again. I made a mental note to always bring a Rollcall Orb when going into a dungeon with other people.

We located the exit after going through two rooms. When we went through it, we found ourselves in a large damp room that was about as big as the first floor of the guildhall. A small stream of water was coming out of a wall and flowing towards a hole on the opposite side.

The most striking feature of this room was that the floor had many mushrooms scattered around. All of them belonging to the same species. Gus plucked one of them and compared it with the drawing on the request paper. “Brown stem and a green cap with pink dots. Yep, this is it.”

I took an empty sack out of my bag, and we began filling it up with the mushrooms. The request asked to not gather more than one sack’s worth of mushrooms, as gathering too many could affect their regrowth.

During the mushroom picking Gus asked me something. "Hey Elm, I have been wondering this for a while, but why are you wearing one of the old guild badges?"

"Old guild badges? What do you mean?"

"Uh... We weren't an official guild at first. We only got approved by the Federation recently after going through a test, so before that we used some homemade badges. That one you're wearing is one of them."

I was overtaken by embarrassment, feeling like someone who put a shirt inside-out without noticing and went outside. "W-What?! You mean I've been wearing a bootleg badge this whole time? No one told me anything about this."

"Lliam didn't tell you?"

"...Who's Lliam?"

Gus stopped what he was doing and gave me a look of pity and concern. "The Guildmaster. You seriously didn't know his name?!"

"Ehehe... Nope~"

...

With a full sack on our hands, we left the dungeon and began our trip back home. We remained silent for a while, but that silence was causing me to think about those feelings of inferiority and frustration that I had bottled away. To counter that I distracted myself by humming some songs from the human world. Gus even joined me on a couple of them.

Around the middle of the trip Gus asked me something out of the blue.

“Hey Elm. You didn’t meet any Pokémon right after waking up in this world, right?”

“Nope. My first interactions were on that settlement I found later.”

“Do you wish you had met someone when you woke up?”

“Gus, I’m not sure of what you’re trying to ask here.”

“Oh, sorry… I’m fumbling with my words here. Let me try again.” He fidgeted with his scalchop for a moment and asked, “Do you wish you had a partner?”

“You mean like in the Mystery Dungeon games?”

“Yes! That’s what I meant.”

I put my right hand under my mouth to think. “Good question. I hadn’t thought about it before. Hmm…”

(Do I wish I had a partner…?)

Gus was being awkward when he asked me that. It felt like he wasn’t just trying to make small talk, so I thought hard about it to give him an extensive answer.

“Alright, I have my answer now.”

Gus looked at me in anticipation.

“No, I don’t wish I had met a partner when I woke up.”

My answer seemed to have surprised him, as he stopped walking and gave me a puzzled look. “Why not?”

I thought back on the experiences I had during that first day to find the right words to express myself. “When I was by myself, I ended up discovering many things and making meaningful decisions that I would never have made as a human. I decided to go into a dungeon by myself, decided to join a guild, and…” I paused for a moment. “…decided to change myself.”

I looked at the sky being tinted orange by the approaching dusk before continuing. “I have a lot of pride for having decided to do all that on my own. Back then, if a Pokémon had found me and followed me around, I would probably have been swept by their pace and my choices would certainly have been influenced by them. Even if I had ended up making the same choices, they wouldn’t have had the same weight they do now since I wouldn’t have made them all by myself. What I am trying to say is that not having a partner from the start allowed me to better myself.”

When I finished, Gus lowered his head. “That’s… an interesting viewpoint.”

I was curious, so I decided it was my turn to ask him something. “Gus, is there a particular reason as to why you asked me that? Could it be that you want to have a partner?”

“What? No. It’s just… Sometimes I wonder what it is like to have one. So, since you also don’t have one, I wanted to hear your thoughts on it and if you ever wished you had one.”

“Hmm… This is literally my third day in this world, so I haven’t had enough time to yearn for a partner yet. I don’t think I’ll be wanting one anytime soon, but I can just work on trying to find one if I end up changing my mind. It’s not like us having a partner or not is something set in stone.”

“You don’t want a partner? Why’s that?”

“Well… I’m just the kind of person who enjoys doing whatever comes into his mind on the spur moment and doesn’t like being tied down by anyone. Having a partner sounds cool and all, but I imagine it would be like being married, minus the romance. I’d have to make compromises and take the partner into account when making decisions. At least for now, I just want to enjoy life here solo. But hey, it’s not like I’m saying I wanna be some kind of lone wolf, I do plan on befriending other guildmates and teaming up for missions, just like I did today.”

“Huh… I see.”

After that conversation, Gus remained silent until we got close to Capim. His silence after that personal topic combined with the approaching darkness of the night made me feel like the mood was dampened. It was getting quite awkward, so I tried to light up the mood by teasing him a bit.

I bumped him with my elbow, or rather, my body’s equivalent of one. “Oh yeah Gus. You totally lied to me back in our first meeting when you said you’re not good at fighting!”

He turned to me in shock. “W-What?”

“You curb stomped everything in that dungeon! Granted it was a low rank one, but you pretty much carried me through it.”

He thought about it for a moment and gave me a smug look. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“That’s the spirit! Give yourself more credit, Gus. There’s no need for Impostor Syndrome among us!”

“Thanks Elm. I- WAIT, WHAT?!”

The sounds of my hysterical laughter must have reached Capim that afternoon. Not even the water blasts I took from Gus managed to extinguish my giggling.

…

We delivered the mushrooms and collected out reward money. I told Gus to keep most of it, but he insisted on equally splitting it between us.

I tapped him on the back. “Gus, thanks again for helping me out. Sorry for being too pushy earlier.”

“It was no big deal. I enjoyed the change of pace. Just… try to tell me earlier when you plan on inviting me to a dungeon.”

At that moment I wanted to tell him that he could call me if he wanted to go to a dungeon again, but my feelings of inferiority were leaking from their metaphorical bottle and they got the better of me, so I refrained from saying it.

It was dinnertime, but Gus said he wanted to swim a bit first, so we said out farewells and parted ways. I went back to the guildhall and had a quick shower before heading to the mess hall. I wanted to slump on my bed as soon as I could, so I faced the peak hours of the mess hall instead of waiting like in the previous night. I grabbed a plate of spaghetti and a bowl of roasted seeds, and savored my meal in silence on the first free seat I could find.

Afterwards I went straight to my room feeling exhausted from the day’s ordeals. I set my bag and scarf on the desk, closed the curtains and the door, and ensured it was properly locked. It was finally time to unbottle those feelings and sort them out, so I laid on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

(Turns out I really suck at fighting. I didn’t expect the whole visualization requirement to end up being so detrimental. I had to use 3 Oran Berries and 2 Reviver Seeds just to deal with a fucking Rattata. That was pathetic and I bet Gus would have finished the fight in five seconds if it was him.)

I sighed. (Can I even overcome that requirement? What if that is some kind of disability and I’ll have to spend the rest of my life here dealing with that…?)

(If that is the case, then even if I train hard I will still be behind other people. Would anyone want to team up with a guy who needs extra time to use moves and is not even accurate with them? I was so useless today, and maybe Gus thought the same thing since he did almost all the work. I pretty much dragged him into the dungeon and then he ended up doing all the work, there’s no way he doesn’t think I’m useless.)

I covered my whole body with the blanket and closed my eyes, as if I was trying to hide from the world. (I said I was going to be an explorer and go on many adventures, but at this rate I’ll be stuck with low rank missions for the rest of my life and become a running joke in the guild.)

(…)

(Should I give up on that goal…? I could open up a business in Capim, like a bank, and go for the quiet life route.)

Yawn

(…Heh, look at me. I gave Gus a whole speech on how I changed myself in this world, and yet here I am acting just like the pathetic human I used to be.)

That day ended in a way I hoped I would never experience again. It ended with me feeling sorry for myself until I was freed from it by the sweet embrace of slumber.

Day 4 - Sweet Respite

”I have to prove to myself that I am not useless!”

That was the thought that led me to accept Sneasel and Booker’s invitation to help them with a mission to capture an outlaw in Somnus Cave. We embarked on our journey and managed to reach the deepest parts of the dungeon, where we got ambushed by three opponents who surrounded us.

All three opponents looked the same, but I couldn’t identify them. They had tall humanoid shapes, and their limbs and face were enveloped by a black smoke that obscured any notable features. I assumed they were one of the newer generation Pokémon I wasn’t familiar with.

Sneasel shouted, “Elm! Take care of the guy in front of us, me and Booker will deal with the two behind us!”

“Got it!” I moved to intercept the approaching shrouded opponent, preparing a Shadow Sneak while the sounds of claws clashing echoed behind me.

I sent my shadow lurching forward, but before I could perform the rising punch motion my opponent sidestepped it and his movement suddenly sped up. He crossed the distance between us so fast that I only had time to mutter a “Huh?!” before I got kicked on the side of my head and was sent flying towards a wall.

The impact from the kick was so intense that my vision went blurry, and it left me dazed with my face on the dirt floor. The sounds of Sneasel and Booker screaming were what snapped me out of the stupor, prompting me to push myself off the floor and look at what happened to them.

What I saw was a harrowing scene. Both Sneasel and Booker were lying face-down on the ground, motionless. Only a single smoke opponent remained, and he was standing beside them with his left foot stepping over Sneasel’s head.

”No… SNEASEL! BOOKER!”

He turned his head towards me and let out a sinister laughter that sent shivers down my body. “What a pity. These two managed to defeat their opponents, but you failed to stop me and gave me the chance to strike their backs and take them out.”

“You bastard!” I tried to get up to attack him, but he reached me in a second and grabbed me with his right hand. Before I could try to free myself he slammed me against a wall and pinned me there, then he also pinned my right arm with his free hand.

“Weeeeak! You’re never gonna hit me like this. You say you’ve changed yourself? Bullshit. You’re still that pathetic human and all you did was put on a mask!”

His words struck a nerve and made me struggle harder to try freeing myself from his grasp. “You asshole! Who the hell are you?!”

“Oh, you know very well who I am!” At that moment the smoke surrounding his body began to dissipate. He got his face close to mine before the smoke cleared from it, letting me see his identity.

It was me. Or rather, my old human self.

”That’s right. I am you! Did you really think you could just get rid of me with a little speech in front of a mirror? Pathetic! You and your incompetence killed those two guildmates! They trusted you to watch their backs, but you failed them!”

Faced with that horrifying scene playing before my eyes, there was only one thing I could say.

”S… So…”

”…So this is all just a nightmare. Phew, I’m so relieved!”

“What?!”

”You had me good until that face reveal haha!”

As soon as I said that, the distorted version of me dissipated into black smoke and was gone. Free from his grasp, I let out another sigh of relief before hearing Sneasel and Booker’s voices calling out my name. I looked at the direction of their voices to check on their condition.

”Are you two o-“

”-kay…?”

Sneasel began shouting at me. “Elm! What the hell are you trying to accomplish by feeling sorry for yourself?”

”Boo booker book!”

”Booker is right. Elm, didn’t you tell me you would train hard to overcome your problem?! Were you lying to me?!“

”No! It’s just…”

”It’s just what?! You barely started your life here. The hell are yo already acting like a pussy ass bitch for?!”

”Booker boo boo book, boo bo boooker boo. Boooo book, booker bo booker!”

”You tell him, Booker!”

Their words were harsh, but they were something I had to hear. “I… You’re right, Booker! I didn’t even try doing any serious training yet! Why am I already thinking about giving up?!”

“Now get yo bitch ass in the god damn training dojo before I beat yo motha fucking ass! Booker, do it!”

Smiling, Booker approached me and put a hand on top of my head. “Booker? What are you do-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”

Still grabbing me, he jumped high up and turned me upside down before performing a piledriver. My vision went white the moment my head crashed into the floor.

…

Yawn

I rubbed my eyes and took off the blanket covering my body. Small rays of light were escaping through a gap in the curtains and illuminating my room, letting me know that it was already morning. I pushed myself off my bed to assume a sitting position and began recalling the peculiar dream I had.

“… What the heck was in yesterday’s spaghetti sauce?!”

…

Sitting by myself at one of the mess hall’s tables, I reflected on the dream while having breakfast.

(It’s amazing how a good night of sleep can help you organize your mind. I don’t know why I was being so gloomy when I haven’t even done a training session yet. Sneasel and Booker were right, I better get my ass on the training dojo today.)

(…Or rather, Dream-Sneasel and Dream-Booker. Because they sure were different from the real ones. God, I just want to wipe away the memories of those fucked up dream versions.)

(But on the other hand, they did help me get my shit together, so I guess I should be thankful to them. Thank you Dream-Sneasel! Thank you Dream-Booker!)

Having finished my three pancakes, I left the mess hall and went towards the training dojo in order to begin my training. My plans were interrupted when I saw a familiar trail of fresh green “paint” coming out of the bathrooms and going up the stairs to the second floor.

(Oh geez. This must be the work of that Ross I heard about. He must have forgotten to lift his tail just like in my first night.)

“…”

(Let’s follow the trail. Someone has to warn him about the mess he’s leaving behind, and I’m totally not doing this to procrastinate on training!)

I went to the second floor and spotted the culprit walking towards the library.

“Hey Ross. Your tail is dragging on the floor.”

He didn’t answer me and continued his march. I assumed that he didn’t hear me, so I got in front of him to call his attention. That was when I noticed his eyes were closed.

(Is this guy… sleeping?!)

He kept walking towards me, but suddenly turned around to walk in another direction as if he knew I was in his path. I was dumbfounded watching him while wondering how a case of sleepwalking could get this bad.

“Never seen Ross doin’ that before?”

I turned to see who said that. It was… a grey Meowth?

“No, I joined the guild a couple of days ago, so this is my first time seeing him. Is that something normal around here?”

“It’s not common, but it already happened a couple of times.”

“Shouldn’t we wake him up? That looks dangerous.”

The grey Meowth looked at the sleepwalking Smeargle with a hint of pity on his face. “Nope, just leave him. Poor guy has severe insomnia and doesn’t get many chances to sleep.”

At that moment I noticed Ross was heading straight to the stairs down. I began rushing towards him while shouting “Watch o-“, but the Meowth stopped me by grabbing my arm.

“It’ll be fine. Just watch.”

I apprehensively watched Ross approach the steps, but to my surprise he went down them just fine. I couldn’t help but be amazed at how he could sense his surroundings while sleeping. “Wow…”

“See? He’ll be fine.”

A Vulpix and a Shinx passed by Ross on the stairs but didn’t give him more than a passing glance. It seemed like the guild members were used to the sight of the sleepwalking Smeargle.

“What if he walks out of the guildhall?”

“Hasn’t happened yet.”

“Huh, if you say so…”

“I’m Kaiji, by the way. You can seek me out if you need anything business related.” He said while extending a hand.

I did a handshake and introduced myself. “Nice to meet you Kaiji. I’m Elm.”

For a moment I considered the idea of going after Ross and using his tail brush to draw something funny on his back, but I had already procrastinated enough on training, so I decided to leave that idea for another day.

(Now that the “mystery of the green trail” is solved, I better get my ass on the training dojo or else Dream-Sneasel might pay me a visit again. But first…)

“Hey Kaiji, does this guild have any Ghost-types besides me? I’m looking for someone who can give me some pointers on using Ghost moves.”

Kaiji spent a few seconds thinking before giving me an answer. “We have a human who became a Sableye, but I doubt she can help you as she’s not a fighter and I have yet to see her come out of her lab. We also have a Gimmighoul, but he must be on a mission since it’s been a while since I last saw him around.”

(Gimmi…Go? Bummer. Guess I’m on my own then.)

I was about to thank Kaiji and head to the dojo, but I remembered something important.

“Hey Kaiji, do you know where I can get an official guild badge?”

…

No longer parading around with a bootleg badge, I headed to the dojo. It was spacious and more well-kept than the other public spaces in the guild, with a good amount of training dummies and boards with targets painted on them. It also had several weights lined up and a marked space dedicated to sparring. I imagined around ten people could comfortably train at the same time there.

For a moment I thought about how dangerous it was to train Fire moves in a guildhall that was essentially a giant tree trunk, but I assumed that the construction of the room accounted for that as the walls had a texture that was different from the ones in the other rooms. There was also a box filled with Rainy Orbs near the entrance to act as emergency fire extinguishers.

The only people inside were: Sneasel, who was doing some target practice while firing ice shards; a Phanpy watching a Torchic spitting fireballs; and Booker, who seemed to be receiving some instructions from a Combusken wearing an eyepatch on his left eye and a long red and white striped scarf. Not wanting to interrupt their training, I greeted the people there with a simple hand wave.

(Alright, let’s get down to training. I think I’ll focus on Shadow Sneak first since it is my main attack.)

(Hmm… The main problem with it is that, between the straight punch sending my shadow forward and the rising punch making the actual attack happen, there is ample time for the opponent to sidestep and dodge the attack. I should focus on trying to make it faster.)

I used Shadow Sneak while paying attention to how much time the attack needed to hit the target. With that time in mind, the first thing I did was use the attack over and over to try forming the mental images faster, followed by a short break.

The second thing I tried was to throw a second Shadow Sneak while my shadow was still stretched forward, which would be very useful for when the first one missed. I made several attempts, but unfortunately it didn’t work. I concluded that after a Shadow Sneak was fired, I had to wait for my shadow to come back to me before firing another one.

The third thing I tried was throwing punches in a 45-degree angle instead of straight ahead to see if the shadow would also lurch forward while rising in a 45-degree angle, eliminating the need for the rising punch. After several attempts I noticed the shadow did rise a bit, but it was still too low to the point where it would only hit opponents who moved by crawling. For regular opponents it would at best trip them. After this I took a break to eat an apple.

The last thing I tried was punch with both of my arms at the same time to see if I could fire two Shadow Sneaks at once. Many attempts later, I did manage to make my shadow stretch out in two different directions at once. It seemed good at first, but the speed the shadows moved at was cut in half, so the attack would be even easier to dodge. Therefore, that ended up being yet another scrapped idea.

Around the time I was executing that last idea I started feeling a bit lightheaded. I didn’t think much of it at first, so I sat on a nearby bench for a couple of minutes and then resumed my training. But later I also started feeling dizzy to the point where I had to lie down on the spot. The Combusken noticed me and helped me get on a nearby stone bench while saying something. I was too dizzy to pay full attention to what he was saying, but I from what I managed to hear it seemed like my body wasn’t used to performing moves so many times in a single day, and that I should refrain from training any more for the rest of the day.

(Uuurgh, everything is spinning, and I feel like crap. Almost feels like those times when I had low blood pressure. Is this what being out of PP feels like?)

While resting on the bench I thought about how much progress I had made for the day. All the ideas I had to improve Shadow Sneak were a bust, but I felt like I had managed to shave off a fraction of a second from the time I needed to execute the move. It was hard to tell for sure without a stopwatch, though.

(I barely made any progress today… I know it’s unrealistic to expect big results from a single training session, but it’s hard to not feel at least a bit disappointed. Still, I’m not giving up just yet.)

I rested on that bench until I felt I could move around normally. Not wanting to push my luck, I decided to do as the Combusken told me and end my training for the day, leaving the dojo. It was still early in the afternoon, so I spent some time thinking about how I would spend the rest of the day.

(Maybe I should have a walk around Capim to explore the town… Oh, that’s right! I have the money I got from the mission with Gus. I doubt it is much money since it was from a low rank mission and split with Gus, but it might be enough to buy one thing or two.)

After going back to my room to fetch my purse, I went for a stroll around Capim. I had a look at the wares in every store I could find in order to have an idea of the money value of items, food and other goods in this world. As I suspected there wasn’t much that I could afford with the money I had, but window-shopping was an activity I always enjoyed. In particular, I spent quite some time looking at trinkets and stuff that could be used to decorate my very empty room.

(I wonder what I should buy. Well, it’s not like I HAVE to buy something today. I could always- Hmm?)

While glancing over at a row of shops, a single word on a sign immediately caught my attention and prompted me to rush to the shop’s interior to double-check if I had read the sign right. A big smile formed on my face when I confirmed that it was indeed the kind of shop I expected, and that I had enough money to afford some of their product.

Excited, I made my purchase, which cost almost all the money I had, and waited on a table outside while the Alcremie running the shop picked up my order and brought it over to me on a plate.

It was a big slice of cake.

Yes, I blew pretty much all my money on cake.

No, I did not regret it.

Yes, I have one hell of a sweet tooth.

The cake was fairly simple, consisting of two layers of sponge sandwiching a layer of cream with chopped berries mixed in. All with a generous amount of frosting on the outside and a single Cheri Berry on top of the slice. I picked up a spoon and tried out a small piece of the cake.

(So yummy!)

It wasn’t among the best cakes I ever had, but it was delicious in its own right with a good amount of sweetness balanced by the natural sourness of the berries. And the fact that the flavors of this world’s ingredients were still new to me further enhanced the experience.

I savored my treat slowly while watching the hustle and bustle of Capim’s center and the approaching sunset. Relaxing while eating something delicious after spending time leisurely window-shopping was truly one of my simpler pleasures in life. The moment was so enjoyable that I didn’t even bother thinking about the origin of the eggs, milk, and cream that went into the cake.

With me being caked with satisfaction and having almost no money left, I decided to end my Capim exploration and head back to the guild before it got dark. It was still too early for dinner, so I had a quick shower and flew to the guildhall’s rooftops while doing my best to not look down during the ascension. Once there, I spent about an hour just sitting and appreciating the view of Capim as the darkness of the night covered the town and was fought back by the warm lights of several lanterns. It was my first time seeing the view, and at that moment I knew I would be coming back there for that sight many more times.

…

Having killed enough time, I went back to the first floor and faced the busy dinner hours by picking up my food and sitting on the first free seat I could find. That night’s dinner consisted of some kind of porridge with roasted vegetables on the side.

(I’m only realizing this now, but every meal I had so far was vegetarian. That makes sense, after all where would the meat even come from if it was a normal part of this world’s cuisine? That would be pretty morbid.)

(Although… I would be lying if I said I wasn’t missing a nice steak or some crispy karaage at least a little bit.)

(What would I do if I came here for dinner one night and saw that Tauros steak was on the menu? Would I eat it?)

(…)

(No no no. I might not be human anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost my humanity. So no, I wouldn’t eat it.)

(...)

(But I would be curious about the taste, so I would at least have one bite. Just one bite, for science!)

(…)

(But having only one bite of the steak would be a waste of food, so I would eat the whole dish. I’d only have it once, though!)

(…)

(But if it turned out to be delicious, I’d maybe have it on some rare occasions. Maybe during celebrations. Only sometimes, though!)

(…Okay, FINE! Maybe I have become an undead monster of darkness who would feast on the flesh of innocent sentient beings. In any case, it’s not like there’ll be meat here, so let’s just not think about that matter again. Thankfully the food here is tasty enough to satisfy me, and as long as can get my share of pancakes, cakes, and whatever other delicious sweets this world has to offer it’ll be enough for me.)

(I wonder if this world has chocolate.)

…

Having finished my dinner, I thought about how I probably had recovered enough energy to do some light training before calling it a day, so I went to the training dojo. My plan was aborted when I peeked inside and saw that the Combusken who had helped me earlier was inside.

(He told me to not use more moves for the day, so I might get reprimanded if he sees me sneaking in some extra training. Welp, I guess that’ll be all for today.)

…

I spent the rest of my night in the map room studying the geography of the continent, focusing on landmarks and the location of the known mystery dungeons. When I started feeling sleepy, I picked up a copy of the continent’s map for myself and headed back to my room.

While lying on my bed waiting for sleep to come, I thought about what my plans for the following day would be.

(Hmm… I think I’ll try doing a low rank request by myself tomorrow, and I’ll make sure to pick a mission in a dungeon that has no normies this time! It’ll be good as training… and I could always use more money for cake.)

Yawn

Fortunately, Dream-Sneasel and Dream-Booker did not visit me again.

Day 5 - The Wanderer, the Devil, and the Fast Food

I got up from bed, ready to face another day and determined to take on a request. I put on my headband and arm pouch, grabbed my bag, and left my room to head to the mess hall.

On my way there I crossed paths with a feminine-looking Absol who had a broken horn. I greeted him with a simple “Good morning” and kept going on my way, but suddenly I heard a voice from behind me.

“You!”

Startled, I turned back and saw that the one who said that was the Absol I had just passed by. I asked him, “Yes…?”

He slowly approached me with an intense glare that felt menacing. My mind was in turmoil as I kept wondering what the hell he wanted with me, until he began speaking in a serious tone.

“The Devil will set his sights on you! With sweet words he will lower your guard, and then he will fiercely strike you down to coerce and corrupt your very being! When that time comes you must wield the spear of deceit and strike true at the heart of the evil!”

As soon as he finished saying that, a familiar grey Meowth entered the room saying, “There you are Kris! Come on, we have work to do. Hi Elm, sorry if he bothered you.”

Just as quickly as Kaiji entered the room, he left it while pushing the Absol, who protested. “Wait! He's in danger!”

“The only danger here is you scaring the newcomer… And all the Mystery Box sales we’ll miss if we are late to opening business!”

I was left standing there dumbfounded.

“…Oookay then? What the heck was that about?”

At first, I dismissed it as the Absol trying to mess with me by saying random nonsense, but then I remembered something while going down the stairs. (Wait, isn’t Absol a Pokémon known for predicting disasters? Oh shit, I guess I should keep those words in mind and be on the lookout for this “Devil”.)

With that mental note made I resumed my trip to the mess hall to get breakfast. While having my four pancakes I overheard a conversation between three people on a table behind me.

“Today I’ll throw some Grimy Food at a Pelipper.”
“Based.”
“Based.”

“And today I’ll help Delibird Deliveries with a special delivery for a Pelipper.”
“Based.”
“Based.”

“And I’ll graffiti ‘TPD’ on their post office.”
“Based.”
“Basado.”

Upon hearing that exchange I let out a small chuckle and whispered, “Based.”

…

Having finished my breakfast, I went to the job board to find a suitable mission. While looking at the jobs available I heard a familiar peppy voice beside me.

“Hey, it’s you!”

I looked at the source of the voice and saw a blue creature who had caused a mental breakdown on me during my first day here. A Wooper.

“Oh… H-Hi there.” I was still a bit on the edge from remembering that shameful display I did in front of him.

“Yay, you ended up joining our guild! What’s your name? You can call me Wooper! Have you gone on any missions yet? How are you liking the gui-“

“Wooper! You’re overwhelming the poor guy.”

The person who stopped the Wooper’s barrage of questions was a Chespin. “Hi, sorry if my partner bothered you. I heard about what happened during your first meeting with him.”

“Uh, it’s fine. That encounter did end up pushing me towards joining this guild, and I’m glad for that.”

“Good to hear! I’m Chespin, and this is Wooper. Together we are Team Cozy!”

“Nice to meet you, Team Cozy. I’m Elm.”

(Oh right, since they are here…)

“Hey Chespin, do you know if any of the lowest rank missions on the board are in a dungeon with no Normal-types?”

Chespin looked at the several job papers pinned on the board, then extended a vine from his arm to grab one. “Here, the dungeon in this one didn’t have any Normal-types when we went there.”

I took the paper from his vine and had a quick look. It was a simple mission to pick up some “pretty stones” from a forest dungeon. “Yes, this one is perfect. Thank you Chespin.”

Wooper asked, “Why do you want a dungeon with no Normal-types?”

“Uh… It’s kinda embarrassing, but I only know Ghost moves for now, so I can’t hurt them.”

He replied, “You could just use the ancient human battle technique of smashing a bo-“

“A big rock on their heads!” Interjected the Chespin.

“Oh… That… certainly would work.” (Dammit! Why didn’t I think of that before?!)

“Well, we’re heading out now. Good luck with your mission Elm!”

I thanked Team Cozy again for picking up a mission for me and we parted ways. After checking the location of the dungeon on a map I stocked up on food at the pantry and picked up some items at the storeroom.

I double-checked my supplies, checked out the location of the dungeon on my map, and set off for my destination. I hoped that this second mission would go better than the first one.

…

There wasn’t much to be said about the dungeon exploration. It went smoothly with the dungeon being a big forest containing a bunch of Oddish, Tangelas, and Bulbassaurs. The Oddish and Tangelas were easy to hit and were dispatched with a single Shadow Sneak each, while the Bulbassaurs provided more challenge by dodging my attacks and forcing me to lure them into tight areas in order to be able to hit them reliably.

The real challenge in the dungeon was when I encountered a Noibat who stayed airborne for the entire fight, making it difficult for me to hit them with Shadow Sneak as it is an attack that comes out of the floor. They periodically swooped down to hit me with their wings or with strong gusts of wind, all while dodging my attacks with ease.

(Damn, this isn’t working. Should I just use a Wonder Orb…?)

(No, I should think of this as training and avoid relying on items unless it gets dangerous. I can still fight for a while.)

I tried firing another Shadow Sneak, but the Noibat dodged it and took the opening to hit me with a Wing Attack. After that I started focusing on dodging while thinking about what else I could try.

(Hmm… Let’s try that “ancient human battle technique”.)

I waited for the Noibat to create a gust that lifted dirt into the air, blocking his vision of me. I took the opportunity to pick up a rock and hold it behind me with one hand to hide it. I waited for my opponent to swoop down at me for a Wing Attack and then…

WHACK

I slammed the rock onto them, missing the head but managing to hit the side of the torso. It wasn’t enough to defeat my opponent, but it did cause them to crash on the ground and be an easy target. I ended the fight with a Shadow Sneak while they were still down.

(Well, that was neat! Although I don’t think it’s something I should rely on.)

With the battle finished I took a moment to eat an Oran Berry and heal my wounds. That was when I noticed the Noibat had left something on the floor after their body dissipated. It was an item I was familiar with from playing the games and studying at the library, but it was my first time seeing it in person.

(A wand! Lucky! Based on its appearance this is a Switcher Wand. I can’t see myself using the effect much, but it is still a nice find. Now let’s try that thing that was written on the book…)

I held the wand firmly and focused on the sensations in my hand in order to determine how much energy it had. The explanation in the library book was convoluted and confusing as hell, but it made sense to me when I held the wand. If I were to explain the sensation, I would say that is similar to when you pick up a non-transparent bottle. You can’t see the bottle’s interior, but based on factors like the weight and the movements inside the bottle you can have a rough estimate of how much liquid there is inside.

(Hmm… I don’t know how many shots this one can fire, but I can tell that it has very little energy in it. I would be surprised if it can fire more than 3 shots. Oh well, that’s disappointing, but I guess I can at least use this as a decoration for my very empty room.)

I put the wand inside my bag and resumed the exploration. Throughout the dungeon I found the requested stones, which were just brown oval stones with a smooth surface and no edges. Once I had collected the requested amount I considered continuing through the dungeon until I reached the end, but I already had what I needed and concluded that there was no merit in going further in and risk getting knocked out and losing the stones, so I used an Escape Orb.

…

With the stones delivered and the reward money in my purse, I went back to the guild and dropped my stuff in my room. Taking the Switcher Wand out of the bag and leaning it against the wall on the side of a big chest.

(Maybe I can look for some nails and rope later and hang the wand on the wall.)

I left my room and thought about what I would do next. The dungeon was close to Capim and I didn’t fully explore it, so I finished the mission early and it wasn’t dinner time yet.

I decided to go to the dojo for a short training session. The only person there was the Combusken who helped me the last time. He was sitting with his eye closed, seemingly focusing on something, so I opted to not bother him with a greeting and started thinking about how I would train.

(Let’s try to work on Will-o-Wisp today. Maybe I’ll have better luck with it.)

I imagined my right hand as the tip of a match and swiped it against my left arm, making a small purple flame appear on the tip of my hand. I stared at the puny flame while thinking about how I could improve it.

(Hmm… I guess the first step would be trying to make it bigger. How does one make a fire bigger…?)

(By adding more fuel?)

I imagined some gasoline being sprayed on my match-hand. The flame got bigger for a second and then returned to its original size.

(Maybe if I add a lot of “fuel” at once?)

I imagined a cup of gasoline on my left hand and poured the imaginary liquid on top of the flame.

That was a mistake.

What happens when you pour a whole cup of liquid on your hand at once? It splashes and covers your hand and then, depending on the angle your arm is at, the liquid slides to it. That’s common sense and I knew that, so when I imagined myself pouring gasoline on my hand, I also unintentionally imagined it sliding to my arm. The result of that was my entire arm being engulfed by the purple flame.

I took me a whole second for me to register what had just happened and how much I had screwed up. I dashed towards the box of Rainy Orbs while flailing my arms around. I was about to scream something like “I’M ON FIREEEEEEEEE!!!”, but I noticed that the fire wasn’t actually hurting me and I calmed down. The flame went out on its own a second after that.

(Thank God I noticed this before going around screaming like a madman. I guess that it not hurting me makes sense when you consider how moves like Fire Punch and Thunder Punch don’t hurt the user’s hand and-)

I noticed that the Combusken was staring at me with a worried expression, having probably seen my shameful display. My body was okay, but my mind got damaged by the embarrassment.

“I-I’m okay!” I said.

Having recomposed myself, I resumed my training. (Maybe the problem is that I’m imagining my hand as a match. Matches only produce small flames after all. Let’s see, what object produces a bigger flame…?)

While thinking, I had a look around the room in case anything there helped me come up with any ideas, which happened when I looked at a lantern on the wall.

(A lantern? Nah, the fire isn’t that much bigger than the one from a match. But maybe a torch?)

I lit up a flame on my left hand, then with my right hand I formed the closest thing I could to a closed fist and imagined my right arm as a torch. With that visualization in mind, I gently moved my left hand’s flame until it touched the tip of the imaginary arm-torch.

It worked… somewhat. A bigger flame appeared on my imaginary arm-torch, but it was unstable, constantly flickering and looking like it could go out at any moment.

(Damn, it’s still progress, but I thought this would work for sure. Could the problem be that imagining this floppy Duskull arm as a torch is awkward? The match visualization is somewhat awkward too, but it is simpler and there’s the swiping motion to help.)

Disappointed, I put out the fire. (I thought Will-o-Wisp would be easier to improve, but so far it is not going well, and I even managed to set myself on fire by accident. Could it be that it’s because Will-o-Wisp is a Fire-type move rather than a Ghost-type, so there’s an extra layer of difficulty to perform it? Ugh, I might have to ask someone for tips on this.)

(Let’s see, have I met any Fire-types in the guild…?)

After a couple of seconds of thinking, I realized something and did a mental facepalm. (Holy crap, I’m a dumbass! Why am I thinking about that when there’s a fire chicken in the same room as me?!)

I approached the Combusken while having a good look at the potential teacher. No matter how I looked at him he exuded an air of “badass veteran warrior”, which was further emphasized by the eyepatch and ragged scarf he was wearing. It made me think, (Oh wow, this guy must have decades of experience.)

He noticed my approach and turned to face me, so I greeted him. “Hi, do you have a moment?”

“Sure. Do you need something?”

“Uh… Thanks for the help yesterday. I was too zoned out to properly thank you back then.”

“It was no problem. Just remember to take it easy since you still don’t know the limits of your new body.”

(Huh, how does he know I’m a human? Lucky guess? Just assuming?) “Haha, yeah. This is only my fifth day as a Pokémon, so I’m still learning. My name is Elm, nice to meet you.”

"Nice to meet you too, Elm. I'm KFC."

My cheeks puffed from the laugh I barely managed to hold in my mouth. (Interesting nickname! This guy is a former human for sure.)

“So, KFC. As you might have seen from my display earlier, I’m trying to use Will-o-Wisp but it’s not going well. It is a Fire move, so I’m wondering if you have any tips on what you do or think about when you use Fire moves.”

For a second his face changed into a conflicted expression, with his eye narrowing and darting to the side. Was it sadness? Anger? I couldn’t tell. After an awkward pause he replied, “I’m sorry, but I am incapable of using Fire moves, so I won’t be able to give you any specific advice.”

“O-Oh… Sorry, I had no idea.” (I’m only a few seconds into the conversation and I already managed to make it awkward. Good fucking job, Elm!)

“It’s fine. I might not be able to help you with Fire moves specifically, but you can seek me if you need help with anything related to Aura.”

“Aura? That Lucario thing?”

Immediately after I said “Lucario” there was a subtle twitch in KFC’s hands, which was followed by him looking downwards and closing his eye. He remained like that for a couple of seconds, leaving me confused.

(Oh crap, was it something I said? Did I screw up yet again?!)

I was about to ask KFC what was wrong, but he suddenly said, “Sorry, I was reminiscing about my late master.” KFC put his right hand over his scarf before continuing. “He was a Lucario, and the person who originally taught me about aura... About a lot of things actually...”

Before I could apologize for bringing up the touchy subject, he resumed his explanation. Not wanting to make things even more awkward, I went along with it.

“Lucarios are prominent users of Aura, but it is far from being exclusive to them. To put it simply, Aura is a form of spiritual energy that is the essence of every living thing. We all have Aura, but it takes intense training to manipulate that energy.”

“Every living thing… Does that include Ghost-types?” (I am alive, r-right?)

“Yes, Ghost-types are still living beings and emit aura.”

(Oh, good to know. I gotta say, this guy seems passionate about Aura.)

“Interesting, so Aura is kinda like Chi?”

He seemed intrigued by my question. “Chi? What’s that?”

“You know, that Chinese martial arts energy stuff.”

His face contorted into an even more puzzled look. “Chinese?”

With that reply I was the one who got confused. “Wait… Are you not a former human?”

“No, I was born a Torchic.”

“Oh… Sorry, I assumed wrong!” (Jesus effing Christ, that was the third strike! Just how much more am I going to screw up in this conversation?!)

“It’s fine. In any case, are you interested in hearing more about Aura?”

(Hmm… I am somewhat interested, and maybe learning a bit about it will help me in the future. Plus, I get the feeling he likes talking about that.)

“Sure! What sort of thing can be done with Aura?”

“The first step in Aura training is usually Aura sensing, which allows someone to sense aura in others and in the environment. The next step is to then learn Aura Expression, which allows someone to channel it into a projectile for offensive use.”

(I’m assuming Aura Expression includes something like Aura Sphere. Wait, “channel it into a projectile”… Isn’t that similar to what I’m trying to do with Will-o-Wisp?)

“Hey KFC, could you please do a demonstration of Aura Expression for me? I think seeing it might help me figure things out.”

He nodded and changed his stance, placing his left arm on his right side with his palm facing up. Then, he put his right palm facing down over his left palm with about eight inches of space separating them. Suddenly a small blue orb started to form in the center of that space, it grew bigger and bigger until it filled the empty space completely.

He quickly shifted his stance by moving left leg forward and his right leg back, and thrust both arms forward until they were outstretched in front of his chest with both palms two inches apart facing away from his body. The aura ball launched out of his palms, striking a nearby hay training dummy with so much power that the upper half of the poor thing was ripped out and torn to shreds.

“Whoa… That was amazing!” (I sure hope I never get hit by something like that.)

"This is the most basic form of Aura Expression. However, in your case you'll also need to convert that aura into fire energy."

I thought about all the movements KFC did to perform the Aura Sphere and began planning how I could adapt them for my body and Will-o-Wisp. Aura Sphere and Will-o-Wisp are completely different moves, but anything was worth trying at that point. I swiped my left hand against my right arm to produce a small purple flame, then mimicked the pose KFC did with my arms positioned on the right side of my body and the flame hovering above my left hand and below my right hand.

“Uh… What should I think about while trying to channel Aura?”

“Try to relax your mind and focus your energy. Imagine the energy in your core, then force it outward using your muscles, and finally imagine that energy building heat in your hands.”

I closed my eyes and tried to relax, trying to think about this vague source of energy inside me. I imagined a heart, pumping energy through my veins and blood.

(Hold on, do Ghost-types have veins and blood…? Ugh, forget about that for now and just focus!)

I imagined this heart pumping energy through my metaphorical veins and pushing it all the way to my hands, and that was when I applied the adaptations I came up with. Instead of focusing this energy into a ball, I imagined it as fuel feeding the flame between my hands. I still had my eyes closed and couldn’t see what was happening with the flame, so I just imagined it growing bigger and hotter. I kept focusing on that mental image for about five seconds, then I opened my eyes and did the same movement as KFC by thrusting my arms forward and imagining my hands pushing the flame outward.

Poof

A pathetic plume of purple fire shot out of my hands, about as big and powerful as a fart on a lighter and lasting only a fraction of a second before disappearing.

I sighed. (Ugh, yet another failure…)

Sensing my frustration, KFC said, “Not bad for a first attempt. If it's any consolation, you control fire better than I can. Try it again.”

(Right… I can’t expect to do it perfectly on a first attempt.) I complied, lighting up my hand again and repeating the position. For the next attempt I decided to try focusing the energy for a longer amount of time, and so I stood there while thinking about the metaphorical heart and veins channeling energy… until I was distracted by a stray thought.

(Hold on… Isn’t this position the same one used for a H*douken? Oh man, I have some fond memories of playing that game as a kid and- Ugh, I’m getting distracted!)

(Although… I did think of something similar when I learned how to use Shadow Sneak. Oh what the hell, it’s worth a shot!)

I regained my focus and repeated the process of imagining my internal energy being channeled into my hands and fed to the fire. Once I judged I had done that enough I opened my eyes and once again thrust my arms forward to push the energy outward, but for this attempt I mentally shouted, (H*DOUKEN!)

Fwoosh

A plume of purple fire shot out of my hands, still small but bigger than the one from the previous attempt. Its size and reach reminded me of a flame produced by lighting up a jet of hairspray.

(I can’t believe that improved it! It’s still far from being viable as an attack, but it’s progress.)

“Looks like you tried something different. That attempt showed great improvement,” commented KFC.

“Oh, yeah. I just focused more this time haha.” (No way I’m telling him what I did different.)

I kept trying for a couple more times, with KFC sometimes intervening to correct my posture, but I was unable to improve it further and soon enough I got a familiar feeling of being lightheaded.

(Already? I haven’t been training for that lo- Ah, right, I already used plenty of moves in that dungeon today. Guess this is the end of today’s training.)

“Hey KFC, I’ve hit my limit on move usage for today, so I’m calling it a day.”

He nodded. “I see that you’ve learned the current limits of your body. From my point of view, you had good progress for today, so don’t feel discouraged.”

(That’s true. I shouldn’t expect much from a short training session…)

“Thanks KFC, you really helped me out today! I hope I didn’t take too much of your time.”

“It was no trouble, after all, I believe it is important to help others try to better themselves. In fact, you are not the first guild member I’ve helped in training.”

I was about to leave the dojo, but then KFC said, “Hey Elm, next time we meet can you tell me more about this ‘chi’ you mentioned earlier?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at his request. “Sure! I’m no expert on it, but I’ll be sure to tell you everything I know next time.”

…

After leaving the dojo, I was greeted by the familiar sight of several guild members entering the mess hall, letting me know that dinner was already being served. I was feeling very hungry due to the exertion from the mission and the training session, so I opted to face the peak dinner hours rather than waiting.

That night’s dinner was salad and some kind of pie filled with minced savory berries. While eating it, I overheard some people on another table refer to the food as “goyslop”. Sure, the food here wasn’t super amazing (aside from the pancakes), but it was tasty enough. Their expectations were too high for free meals in a guild that doesn’t tax you to hell!

Having finished my meal, I went to the bathroom for a quick shower. After that I was about to go up the stairs to the second floor, but I was stopped by a voice coming from behind me.

“Oh baby, looks like we have a fresh soul in the guild!”

I turned around and saw that the voice belonged to a Cyndaquil. Confused, I asked him, “Uh… Are you talking about me?”

He smirked and replied, “Sure am. You’re the only cute ghost here!”

“Are you flirting with me? You know I am a guy, right?”

“Gender doesn’t matter. There are no barriers in love! Even love between the living and the dead is possible!”

“…”

The Cyndaquil was seriously creeping me out, making me grimace. On the other hand, I also felt somewhat flattered since it was the first time someone had complimented my appearance in this new body. I also couldn’t remember the last time my appearance was complimented when I was a human.

Seeing my lack of answers, the Cyndaquil continued. “By the way, there’s something I’ve been wondering, and the last guy I asked this question didn’t give me an answer: How do ghosts reproduce? Like, do you have a Duskussy?”

Aaaaand just like that, all traces of my feelings of flattery were obliterated and replaced by a mountain of disgust. I couldn’t see my own facial expression at that moment, but I’m pretty sure that it would have scored at least top 3 in my “best faces of disgust” list.

(Oh well, I’ve been meaning to test something, and this guy is a perfect test subject for that.)

While feigning interest, I tried to go with a “sensual” tone and said, “Oh my, you sure are forward about it. I like bold people~.”

The Cyndaquil seemed surprised by my (fake) positive reply. “O-Oh, that’s r-right. I am a very bold and spirited man!”

“How cool! But you see, before we go any further, there’s a little secret I need to share with you~.”

“Oooh, I l-love secrets. Especially the k-kinky ones.”

I slowly approached the Cyndaquil while placing my open left hand on the left of my mouth to make a whispering pose. I got close to him while gazing into his eyes, until I was only about four inches away from his face. He was trembling and his eyes were darting from side to side while avoiding my gaze, I could also sense a faint smell of spaghetti in the air.

With my preparations complete, I whispered, “I looooove donuts~.”

A single “W-What?” was all the oblivious Cyndaquil managed to say before I thrust my right arm right into his chest.

My arm went through his body and came out of his back. He gasped in surprise before I pulled my arm back, causing him to collapse on the floor.

He laid there while twitching, and said, “T-That was awesome! I got chills all over my body. This is way better than rubbing ice cubes!”

I ignored his atrocious comment and checked my hand. (It’s just how I expected. I can phase through other types of Pokémon besides Normal-types, and seems like when I phase through someone, they feel chills and don’t get hurt. Good to know!)

I glanced at the Cyndaquil and said, “Never try to flirt with me again.”

I resumed my walk towards my room, hearing him say “Worth it” before I went up the stairs.

…

Back in my room, I let out a yawn.

(Looks like the dungeon trip and the training session got me tired. Guess I’m going to bed early tonight.)

While lying on my bed waiting for sleep to come, I thought about the events of the day.

(The dungeon mission went better than I expected. I didn’t have much progress on improving my moves today, but KFC’s help was nice and maybe what he taught me will be useful later. I also got to meet several guildmates and they all seemed to be nice and fun people. Well, maybe not so much that Cyndaquil, but I guess at least he should be fun to watch.)

(Oh, I completely forgot about that Absol’s weird prediction. What was it again…? Something about a corrupting devil who I had to deceive and strike at the heart?)

“…”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. The prediction was about that weirdo Cyndaquil?!”

And so, that eventful day filled with meetings came to an end. Hopefully with many other similar days to come.

Day 6

Day 7