Pokémon: Chronicles of Freedom

Cain's goal in entering the forest was clear: train his Pokémon, increase their strength, and capture more Pokémon.

This time, Cain carried several hundred Poké Balls with him—not only to boost his score as a hunter but also to prepare for the future addition of many new members to his team.

Instead of purchasing Pokémon from the Hunter Guild, he preferred to capture them himself to assign them directly.

Had he known this earlier, Cain would have captured Pokémon en masse during his time on the Trial Island, where the overall quality of Pokémon was much higher. But there was no turning back now.

Fortunately, with Cain's system, identifying the quality of Pokémon was far easier than for others. After an hour of initial exploration, Cain conducted a simple survey of the Pokémon distribution in the mountain at the back.

There were three main groups.

The most numerous by far were the Wurmple and their two evolutionary lines: Dustox and Beautifly. These two groups had the largest number of Pokémon, which pleased Cain.

Bug-type Pokémon didn't have a high growth ceiling, but their advantage was their rapid evolution. With a little training, they could quickly become battle-ready. For this reason, Cain planned to sweep through all the Wurmple in both groups.

Another advantage of Bug-types was their sheer numbers, which increased the likelihood of finding high-quality individuals. If the Wurmple were managed and trained properly, they could become a consistent source of useful Pokémon.

Inspired by the Wurmple, Cain also considered the idea of bringing Weedle and Caterpie from the Kanto region. With good management and training, these Pokémon could be just as effective as Dustox and Beautifly.

In terms of attack potential, Beedrill had the highest offensive capability among the four species.

"It seems we shouldn't waste the resources of this mountain. I'll have to ask Skye to gather some people to organize the area and turn it into a training ground for internal use," Cain thought.

If a group relied entirely on purchasing Pokémon externally, it wouldn't be sustainable in the long term. The ideal solution was to have their own source of Pokémon, and the Bug-types from this mountain were a solid option.

Using his system, Cain could filter out low-quality Pokémon, and over time, the average quality would significantly improve.

Aside from these two groups, there was another major one: the Slakoth in the Slakoth Forest. Upon seeing this group, Cain was quite surprised.

Cain was well-acquainted with Slaking, the final evolution of Slakoth. This Pokémon had battle stats comparable to those of legendaries, but its ability Truant severely limited it.

Many Pokémon abilities didn't add much, but they didn't hinder the Pokémon either. Slaking was different: with excellent innate stats and being a Normal-type, it could learn a wide variety of moves and take on any opponent.

But its Truant ability drastically reduced its potential by half.

Perhaps the creator of the Pokémon world decided that Slaking was too strong and gave it that ability to limit it. After all, without that limitation, even legendary Pokémon would struggle against it.

Cain had an idea for Slaking: use the move Skill Swap to replace Slaking's Truant ability with another. It didn't need to be an especially powerful ability; simply removing Truant would suffice. This would exponentially increase Slaking's strength.

However, the move Skill Swap wasn't permanent; eventually, abilities reverted to their original states. This posed a problem: a lazy Pokémon suddenly forced to move—could it adapt physically and mentally to this change? Probably not.

Even with its natural talent, Slaking would need basic training.

Ideally, three different Pokémon would use Skill Swap on Slaking continuously to keep it free of the Truant ability, allowing it to adjust to being active both in training and battle.

If trained from its Slakoth stage, by the time it evolved into Vigoroth, Skill Swap might no longer be necessary. However, once it became a Slaking, it would require this support for the rest of its life.

In summary, training a fully functional Slaking would require at least three additional Pokémon capable of using Skill Swap and always being by its side. The training cost would skyrocket.

If successful, it would be worth it, as Slaking would be more powerful than legendary Pokémon. But if it failed, the investment would be a total loss.

For now, Cain saw this as merely an experiment, with no plans to seriously capture and train a Slaking.

The Slakoth Forest was aptly named. Upon entering, Cain saw many Slakoth sprawled on trees or the ground, not even bothering to reach for nearby berries. Only when extremely hungry would they make the effort to move the berries to their mouths.

They paid no attention to Cain, as if inviting him to capture them. Had Cain seen any Slakoth of particularly good quality, he might have been tempted to capture a few, at least for his subordinates to use as trump cards.

But that wasn't the case in the Slakoth Forest, where most Slakoth were of generally low quality, ranging from yellow to the occasional light green. For now, Cain wasn't interested in capturing them.

Slakoth had little value, primarily because they were extremely lazy. Their levels could only increase slowly over time with daily feeding.

Few people had the patience to endure this process. And for those who did, when Slakoth finally evolved into Vigoroth, its strength was considerable, but in time, it would evolve into Slaking, returning to being a lazy Pokémon.

After a brief walk through the Slakoth Forest, Cain noticed some signs of Vigoroth and decided not to venture further. The forest could be a hidden treasure worth exploring in the future, but for now, his priority was to train and strengthen his Pokémon.

(End of Chapter)