Pokémon: Trail of Ultimate Champion

After earning a large sum of money, Toshi planned to treat himself well, especially since he hadn't had a proper meal since yesterday.

Fortunately, there was a restaurant in the department store. After ordering a few dishes, Toshi was ready to dig in, while Butterfree enjoyed the nutrition products Toshi had just bought for it.

At that moment, three youths around Toshi's age walked into the restaurant.

One of them, wearing a white t-shirt, continuously praised the youth in the red t-shirt in front of him. "Sawyer, your Torkoal is amazing!"

The red-clad youth named Sawyer wore a proud expression.

"Hehe, you've got good taste, kid! In this Newcomer Trainer Competition, I, Sawyer, will definitely make a name for myself!"

Another youth in a black t-shirt who was following Sawyer quickly added, "Of course! Just now, Sawyer's Torkoal used Flamethrower and made that guy's Surskit lose the ability to fight! That guy was crying his eyes out!"

Sawyer waved for his two friends to sit down.

"Waiter, bring us the best food and drinks! Hurry up! I'm in a good mood today, and I might even tip you a little, haha."

"By the way, big brother, how many more matches are you planning to fight? With big brother's Torkoal's strength, you should easily win ten in a row and get the first batch of rewards!"

Sawyer waved his hand proudly. "No need to rush. Let's eat first. If I want to win consecutively, that'll be a piece of cake!"

"Big brother is right! Kawamura, how can you say big brother will only win ten matches? Even if big brother takes first place in this competition, that should be more than enough, right, big brother?"

Listening to their flattery, Sawyer felt quite pleased, but he also knew he needed to be a bit modest. So even though he acted proud, he kept saying he wanted to stay low-key.

Toshi quickly realized from the conversation that these individuals must be from the Trainer Academy, and the one named Sawyer had apparently just won the first match of the Newcomer Trainer Competition with Torkoal.

This grand contest was indeed the competition that Shoji had invited him to participate in not long ago.

Although he couldn't join due to objective reasons, he was still quite familiar with the competition format since it was held every year.

This competition differed from a typical elimination system and followed a tournament system. Each winner had to stay on the platform and face challengers until they were defeated. Of course, they were allowed to let their Pokémon recover before entering the ring again.

Each participant is only allowed to enter once; if they wish to participate again, they must pay a registration fee of 200 yen.

Of that, 100 yen goes to the winning side as a reward, while the other 100 yen is added to the prize pool. However, for the victor to claim the reward, they must win at least ten consecutive matches. If they do not achieve that, they won't earn a single penny, and that money will naturally go into the prize pool.

Those who win more than ten times will enter a one-on-one elimination round, and the final winner will take home all the money from the prize pool.

This amount is considerable. Based on past experiences, the final winner usually earns at least 50,000 yen or more, which is equivalent to the compensation for completing a high-level task, so it's quite appealing.

To be honest, Toshi was a bit envious, but his Ponyta hadn't hatched yet. Even if it did hatch, the newborn Pokémon definitely wouldn't be able to participate in such a competition, so he had no choice but to give up.

Ten minutes later, after finishing his meal, Toshi prepared to settle the bill and leave, while the three individuals were still caught up in their conversation.

Afterward, Toshi returned to his dormitory.

The reason for coming back was that he wanted to take a good look at the spoils he had obtained last night after taking great risks, including taking a life—the perfect quality Pokémon egg!

Toshi excitedly took out the box containing the Pokémon egg from his backpack.

At that moment, the box was still locked, but fortunately, he had Butterfree.

Toshi said, "Butterfree, please use Confusion to carefully unlock this."

Butterfree nodded and then used a surge of Confusion to penetrate the lock's interior.

Toshi heard a "bang" as the lock clicked open.

He couldn't help but praise, "Well done, Butterfree!"

"Butterfree!"

Butterfree smiled and settled on his shoulder.

Now, Toshi finally had time to admire this extremely precious Pokémon egg.

It was a red and purple Pokémon egg, one that Toshi had never seen before, though he hadn't seen many Pokémon eggs in general.

"I heard those people say this Pokémon egg came from the Unova region, and it was requested by the Eguchi family. Since the Eguchi family specializes in Fire-type Pokémon, this egg is likely also a Fire-type Pokémon from the Unova region..."

As he reached this point, Toshi fell into deep thought.

The only Unova region Fire-type Pokémon he could think of were Tepig, one of the three starters, along with Pansear and Darumaka, which appeared quite frequently in the anime.

Of these three, he leaned towards Tepig from the three starters because only League-cultivated starters had a greater chance of being perfect quality.

"So, does that mean this Pokémon egg will most likely hatch into a Tepig?"

While Toshi felt excited, he was also somewhat worried.

Because if that were the case, it meant he couldn't let others see this Pokémon easily. After all, as someone who had never been to Unova and wasn't a direct Trainer of the League, how could he have obtained one of Unova's three starters?

Anyone with a discerning eye would know something was off.

Moreover, if the Eguchi family found out, they would surely suspect that he had stolen their Pokémon, leading to retaliation or even worse.

"I can't let others see it, which means I can't use it. That's quite a significant problem."

Toshi furrowed his brow but quickly thought it through.

So what if he couldn't use it now? After all, this could be a Pokémon that has the potential to become an Ultimate Champion strength Pokémon. There was no way he would give up! He could always find an opportunity to visit Unova in the future and say he encountered it in the wilderness. That would solve the problem, right?

"Hmm? What's this?"

After taking the Pokémon egg out of the box, Toshi found something underneath it.

He pulled it out and muttered, "Why is there a USB drive here?"

After thinking for a moment, he wondered, "Could it be that this USB drive contains the cultivation data for this Pokémon?! The Eguchi family really went all out!"

If the value of the Pokémon egg is 1, then saying the value of the cultivation data is 100 is not an exaggeration. With this, he could cultivate many more Excellent Pokémon in the future; this was a crucial cornerstone for the family legacy!

Toshi was extremely excited and immediately took out his phone to plug in the USB drive.

Yes, in this world, phones could directly read the contents of a USB drive without needing a computer.

He anxiously waited for his phone to read the data.

Once the reading was complete, a line of text popped up in front of him:

"Please enter password!"