The next morning, Max left his house and headed toward the Pokémon Center.
He had lived in Black Stone Town for many years, so there was no need for him to explore the town. He already knew most of its streets, shops, and important places.
Black Stone Town was a fairly ordinary town, but it was still one of the more important settlements in the surrounding area.
The town was surrounded by a tall stone wall, built to protect its residents from wild Pokémon that occasionally wandered out of the nearby forests.
Most of the buildings were made from dark stone and sturdy timber, giving the entire town its name. Narrow streets branched out from the main road, with small shops and houses packed closely together.
Early in the morning, the streets were already becoming lively.
Shopkeepers were opening their doors, farmers were pushing carts filled with vegetables, and workers were carrying supplies from one part of the town to another.
As he walked along the familiar stone-paved road, his mind drifted back to what had happened the previous night.
He had tested his body a few more times after discovering his strange recovery ability.
He had done push-ups, squats, and even some of the basic martial arts techniques he remembered from his previous life.
His body behaved normally at first.
He became tired.
His muscles ached.
When he pushed himself to his limits, his body felt exhausted just as it should.
But the moment he stopped, something unbelievable happened.
Within a matter of seconds, his fatigue disappeared.
His sore muscles recovered almost instantly, and his body returned to its normal state.
This recovery ability is really terrifying.
Max had wanted to test the limits of his ability further, but he had stopped himself.
He wasn't foolish enough to keep injuring himself just for an experiment.
I'm afraid of pain too, you know.
He had no intention of repeatedly cutting himself just to see how quickly he could recover.
This morning, however, he noticed something even stranger.
He was hungry.
But unlike normal hunger, there was no weakness accompanying it.
His body still felt energetic, almost as if it were filled with an endless supply of strength.
If my body is constantly repairing itself, shouldn't that regeneration consume a huge amount of energy?
He frowned.
But it doesn't seem like my recovery depends on my energy at all.
That raised even more questions.
What exactly is this ability? Is rapid recovery the only thing it gives me?
He had too many questions and far too few answers.
Max shook his head.
I'll figure it out slowly. For now, I need to become a Trainer.
Just thinking about becoming a Trainer reminded him how different this world was from the Pokémon world he remembered from the anime.
In the anime, becoming a Trainer looks so simple.
Feed a Pokémon.
Make friends with it.
Throw a Poké Ball.
If it breaks free, throw another.
After a few attempts, somehow, you've caught yourself a Pokémon.
Max almost laughed at the thought.
If only it were that easy here.
A single ordinary Poké Ball cost a whopping 1,000 Poké Dollars.
That alone was an enormous amount of money for an ordinary family.
But the biggest problem was that catching a Pokémon wasn't nearly as simple as throwing a Poké Ball at it.
Even if someone managed to defeat a Pokémon, there was no guarantee that the Pokémon could simply be captured.
In this world, becoming a Trainer was far more difficult.
Quasi-apprentice Pokémon were common in the fields and forests around Black Stone Town. Some weaker Pokémon, such as Rattata, had even adapted to living inside the town's sewage system.
Hell, Pokémon were even sold as food.
The town market regularly sold Pidgey meat by weight, with the price being roughly one Poké Dollar per pound.
Max wasn't particularly surprised by it anymore.
This wasn't the peaceful Pokémon world shown in the anime.
Here, Pokémon were living creatures that could be hunted, sold, and eaten.
A healthy adult man with proper physical training and a decent weapon could hunt a quasi-apprentice Pokémon.
But that was where ordinary people had to stop.
Because Pokémon didn't remain weak forever.
After several years of growth, most Pokémon would eventually advance from the quasi-apprentice stage into the true Elementary Apprentice stage.
And once a Pokémon reached that level, an ordinary human could no longer deal with it so easily .
Even if you defeated a Pokémon, you couldn't simply throw a Poké Ball at it and expect to capture it.
First, you had to infuse the Poké Ball with your own Spirit Power TO MAKE IT USABLE.
For an ordinary person, that was no easy task.
A normal person might need four or five years just to fill a single Poké Ball with enough Spirit Power to use it.
And even after doing that, there was still no guarantee of success.
A standard Poké Ball had only about a 10% chance of successfully capturing a healthy, uninjured Pokémon.
The weaker and more injured the Pokémon became, the higher the chance of capture.
There were also higher-grade Poké Balls, which offered better chances of success.
A Great Ball, for example, had roughly twice the capture rate of a normal Poké Ball—but it cost ten times as much.
For an ordinary family, that price was practically unimaginable.
And there was another risk.
If a Pokémon broke free from the Poké Ball, all the Spirit Power that had been infused into it could be wasted.
Years of effort could disappear in an instant.
Only the rich and naturally talented had an easy path toward becoming Trainers.
For someone like Max, becoming a Trainer was going to be a difficult road.
But difficult doesn't mean impossible.
As Max thought this to himself, the road ahead gradually widened.
Soon, it opened into a large plaza with spacious roads branching out in several directions. These roads led toward the wealthier areas of Black Stone Town.
At the center of the plaza stood a giant dome-shaped building with a bright red roof.
The Pokémon Center.
Max's eyes narrowed as he looked at the familiar building.
He quickened his pace and walked toward it.