Pokémon: Master of the Rain Team

Day 19 of survival on the deserted island. Clear skies.

Early in the morning, Reiji got up, ready to wake Caterpie and Poliwag—only to discover that Caterpie had evolved into Metapod.

[Metapod]

Type: Bug

Gender: Female

Potential: 62%

Level: 7.99%

Ability: Shed Skin / 0.21%

Hidden Ability: Shed Skin / 0.21%

Known Moves: (Confusion / 3.14%), (Tackle / 1.21%), (String Shot / 5.15%), (Harden / 0.23%)

Caterpie's potential had finally crossed into the Elite tier. This was his first Elite-class Pokémon. If he raised it properly, he'd be on track to becoming an Elite Trainer himself.

Sure, it was "just" a Caterpie—but with Elite-tier potential, its species didn't matter. That title wasn't just for show.

If he didn't have the proficiency panel, there's no way he would've gambled everything on a Caterpie. He'd dared to invest all his resources precisely because he had that extra information.

Otherwise, he'd be like most regular Trainers—catching random Pokémon and raising whatever came along. In the end, their progress would hit a wall. With no way to break through the potential cap, they'd either give up or burn out from the resource demands.

Wasted time, wasted effort, wasted heart. Trainers only have so many years.

Raising Pokémon with unstable potential drained way too much. Combine that with monopolized knowledge and the impatience of youth—it was no wonder so many young Trainers flamed out early.

Most people's lives don't go as planned. Not everyone gets handed a Starter from the League.

If you had money, you could buy a bred Starter from a daycare. Or even turn to the black market, if you were okay dealing with the underworld. Worst case? Just catch something random in the wild.

That's why you'd see older Trainers hit a plateau in strength—nowhere close to those who received League Starters. They simply couldn't keep up.

Some of those Trainers quietly faded into mediocrity, living forgettable lives. Others went on a desperate hunt for high-potential Pokémon. And where could you find the most high-potential Pokémon? Simple: the League or specialized breeding centers. And that demand often led to theft and crime.

That's where the "noble lie" came in. Just like how company bosses hype up dreams to their employees, the League hyped up dreams to young Trainers.

The lie? "There's no such thing as a bad Pokémon. With love and effort, any Pokémon can go beyond its limits."

Technically not wrong. But in truth, the difference between raising a high-potential Pokémon and a mediocre one—just to reach Gym Leader level or Elite level—was exponentially more costly in terms of resources.

And the stronger you got, the bigger the gap became. The cost of progress would scale geometrically.

So even just to reduce crime, the League kept pushing this lie. They'd launch stories of lucky Trainers and parade them around as proof: "See? Anyone can do it!"

Sound familiar? It's the lottery all over again. As long as someone wins now and then, the lie holds.

But by the time those young Trainers grew up and realized their dreams were false, it was too late. Time had quietly slipped away. Youth was over.

And if you're pushing forty, still showing up at tournaments with ten-year-olds, battling kids on the big stage—yeah, that's a picture.

Unless you were lucky enough to receive a professionally bred League Starter at the beginning. That was the real game-changer. League Starters were more than a privilege—they were a status symbol.

League Starters weren't just symbols, either—they came with the League's research stamp of approval, a guarantee of potential. If you trained one step-by-step, you were basically guaranteed to reach the Elite tier.

Starters from the lab were usually offspring of powerful Trainers' Pokémon—ones that had dominated tournaments. After multiple generations of selective breeding, none of them had low potential. That was the opposite of wild Pokémon, where mediocrity was the norm.

Every time Reiji thought about this, he felt a little regret. If he hadn't ended up stranded here, if there were even just one other person on this island, he might've at least tried to get a Starter. And if he could get a pseudo-legendary? Even better.

What Trainer, especially one stuck out here with no ID and no status, wouldn't want a Starter?

But… it was all just a dream.

He had the proficiency panel. He was out here in the wild. He could pick and choose any Pokémon. What more could he ask for? Thinking that way helped him let go of the regret.

High potential? No problem. He could grind for that. First was Caterpie. Then Magikarp. And then... a third high-potential Pokémon.

He had time. He could take it slow. He wasn't going to make mistakes with his training path. The proficiency panel was his confidence.

And Caterpie's evolution hadn't just raised its potential. Its level was now on the verge of eight. Metapod would evolve into Butterfree at level 10.

That meant once Metapod finished burning through the stored energy from its Caterpie stage, its experience gain would pick up naturally—and evolution would follow soon after.

This Caterpie had really turned out great. Both its potential and its move pool were solid. That minor flaw with the original 58% potential? He didn't even care anymore.

After all, this was an Elite-tier Pokémon. What more could a perfectionist possibly ask for? "Hehehe… I hit the jackpot…"

Staring at Metapod's proficiency panel, Reiji couldn't help but let out a snort that sounded like a pig.

Beneath the level section was its ability. The Shield Dust and Run Away abilities were gone—replaced with Shed Skin.

If he'd spent time training those previous abilities as Caterpie, all that work would've been wasted. What a scam. Good thing he didn't.

Thankfully, Poliwag's three-stage line always kept the same abilities.

The idea that Pokémon could only have one ability mainly came from the games.

Because if in-game Pokémon could actually use multiple abilities, that'd be super unfair to species that only got one.

But this wasn't a game. Abilities were always present. They just rarely activated. Even if a Pokémon had a strong ability, most Trainers lacked the knowledge to bring it out—so the ability got buried.

Abilities were always there. It was just a matter of whether the Trainer could develop and harness them.

The proficiency panel laid it all bare. It made unlocking abilities easier. Regular Trainers who didn't have that panel—and didn't live next door to a research lab—could never understand their Pokémon this clearly.

They had to wait for passive activations. Some were so clueless, they didn't even know abilities existed, let alone "dual abilities."

But dual abilities weren't even that rare. They weren't some big secret.

Only ancient families with proper inheritance records still remembered things like that.

[End of Chapter]

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