Pokémon: Starting with a Dragon Dance Gible [8]

To be honest, raising a Pokémon—
Especially raising one well—
Wasn’t an easy task.

Of course, if you just let it roam free, raised it passively with no real care or attention...

That’d be another story entirely.

But Trainers like that were nothing less than failures.

They’d never earn their Pokémon’s respect.

If someone came into the Pokémon world wanting to play capitalist overlord—trying to squeeze value from their Pokémon under harsh, exploitative conditions—

They wouldn’t end up getting rich off “surplus value.”

They’d either be abandoned by their Pokémon...

Or receive a swift Justice Dropkick from Officer Jenny herself.

What, you thought Poké Balls came with brainwashing or hypnosis built-in?
Yeah, no. Not a thing.

Pokémon were simply born kindhearted.
They had a natural desire to help humans—especially the weak and vulnerable.

That’s why, once they were caught, wild Pokémon were often so willing to obey human commands.

There’s even a legend from the Hisui region:
To help humans more directly, Pokémon began emerging from tall grass on their own—
revealing themselves to those who entered the wild.

So the wild Pokémon you think are “ambushing” you?

According to the lore, they’re not attacking at all.
They’re just trying to help.

These Pokémon… they’re freaking angels.
Literal, sweet, helping angels. TMD.

“Still…”

“Game mechanics are one thing. Real life is another.”

“If you actually treat your Pokémon like disposable tools, you might as well skip to the part where you choose which lamppost you’re gonna hang from.”

Kaiba knew all too well:
The only way to raise a good Pokémon was to put your whole heart into it.

Back in his old world, even people who couldn’t care properly for cats and dogs were seen as unfit pet owners.

Kaiba wasn’t some hardcore “cat slave” or “dog simp.”

But when a little life placed its trust and strength in you completely, when it gave itself over to your care—

Wasn’t it only right to give it your best in return?

That’s what people meant when they talked about the bond between Trainer and Pokémon.

“That said… if I really want to raise Gible properly, I can’t just talk about dedication. I’ve got to act on it.”

Kaiba rubbed his chin, a serious look in his eyes.

“Ababaaa~~~”

Meanwhile, his derpy land shark, thoroughly full and thoroughly worn out, had already entered mental hibernation. Gaze unfocused. Soul in another dimension.

But Kaiba couldn’t afford to zone out too.

If he wanted to budget enough money out of his meager college allowance to raise a pseudo-legendary, he only had two options:

Cut costs and create income.

He’d already cut costs. As much as he could.

Whatever he ate, Gible ate too.

In fact, Gible might even be eating better than him lately.

What else was he supposed to cut?

Was he supposed to live for months on pickled vegetables and dry steamed buns, wash it down with cold water and call it soup—

Just to scrape together the money to buy Gible more milk?

That… felt a bit much.

“You useless excuse of a [Pokémon Editor System]... couldn’t you at least have come with a few extra plug-ins?”

“What about a game dev script? A library of novels? Movie scores? Film production software?”

Kaiba groaned, rubbing his temples as frustration set in.

He’d read enough webnovels in his day to know the usual tropes—
The transmigrator becomes a “plagiarist savant,” a “game dev prodigy,” a “filmmaker genius.”

Classic urban rebirth plays.

But those success stories all had one thing in common—
Their cheat systems came preloaded with data.

They could pull from a massive internal archive.
Copy content at inhuman speed.
“Borrow” from other worlds with pinpoint accuracy.

Without that kind of backup?

All you had was whatever scraps you remembered from your past life.

And that wasn’t nearly enough to reconstruct a bestselling novel or billion-dollar movie franchise.

And the most ridiculous systems?

Those were the [Reverse Finance System] or the [Bankruptcy Reward Multipliers].

The more money you lost, the richer you got.

That level of absurdity?
Yeah, it was kind of fun to read—

But only if you left your brain outside the room first.

Try thinking about it logically and the whole plot collapsed instantly.

Now that he was calming down a bit, Kaiba couldn’t help but reassess his own transmigrator system.

This [Pokémon Editor] cheat?

It really wasn’t that broken.

Especially not when half its features were still locked behind a progress wall—
Like stat editing, ability tweaking, or IV boosting.

“….”

Was this one of those infamous cweimao systems?

Comically useless. Painfully underpowered.
What an embarrassment of a gold finger…

---

T/N: cweimao is a chinese platform you can read fanfics from :)) its really good, i use it

This is a fan translation of 宝可梦，开局龙舞圆陆鲨 by 眼含泪光 All rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!