As the saying goes, the flowers you tend with care never bloom, while the willow twig you stick in the ground without a thought grows into a shady grove.
Dark's nostalgia for Pokémon actually came mostly from the first season, the original series.
When he discovered that the Magic Guide Spirits he Forged at random tended, for some reason, to turn out as Pokémon, Digimon, or Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters, the first thing he thought of was the familiar Pokémon from that original series.
Charmander, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Pikachu—he adored all of them as Magic Guide Spirits, and sadly he'd never managed to Forge a single one.
Fortunately, he'd started out with an adorable Little Eevee to warm his heart.
Later, Shuckle and Miltank had taken care of his appetite.
As for Pokémon like Applin, who'd shown up in later generations, he didn't have much attachment to them.
So if this Forging had veered off course, then it had veered off course.
Besides, he still had two Dragon-Bug Fruits left, right?
The key question now was where it had veered to.
"Splash!"
Water poured down and rinsed all the slime off the Magic Guide Card.
Dark picked the card up again, dried it off, and sat back down at the lab bench.
As he looked at it, he burst out laughing again.
"Maybe this is what they call the luck of the draw?"
"It's a pity it's not quite perfect, though."
"If it had been a Snorlax right off the bat, that would've been even better!"
That's right. Right there on the face of this Magic Guide Spirit Card was a little Munchlax, lying on its back!
Munchlax was Snorlax's juvenile form, with deep blue skin and a small, creamy white belly. It was the kind of Pokémon that made you want to scoop it up and ruffle it ruthlessly.
Compared to Snorlax, who ate until it was full and slept until it was rested, Munchlax was a lot livelier.
But its appetite was still staggering.
It was said that Munchlax ate its own body weight in food every single day, swallowing everything whole with barely a chew.
It was in the habit of hiding food in its long fur, but when it was frantically stuffing itself, it would forget about the food tucked away beneath it.
On the surface, Munchlax was highly compatible with [Major Sin].
Greed, Gluttony, or Sloth, it should get along with any of them.
Unfortunately, it naturally didn't have multiple evolution forms like Eevee, so whichever [Major Sin] he used, it would probably end up as a Snorlax.
"Munchlax is a Normal-type Magic Guide Spirit. It can accommodate the vast majority of attributes, but even so, getting a Munchlax out of a Dragon Grass base is still a very low-probability event."
"Then again, I've been using this Basic Transmutation Method to Forge Magic Guide Spirits for almost a year and barely veered off even once. By the odds, it was bound to happen at least one time."
Dark smiled faintly and poured magic power into the [Munchlax] Magic Guide Card.
Information about it flowed back into his mind along with the feedback of his magic power.
▼
[Card Name: Munchlax]
[Type: Spirit Card]
[Level: ✪✪✪]
[Race: Animal species]
[Attribute: Normal-type]
[Magic Power: 2000]
[Attack: 1000]
[Defense: 1000]
[Ultimate Moves: Pickup, Stockpile, Rain Dance, Seed Bomb]
▲
"It's Animal species!"
Dark let out a small breath of relief.
Whether Munchlax counted as Animal species determined whether it could work with [Zoo].
Dark honestly couldn't tell whether it was a bear, a sloth, or a fat cat, so he hadn't been able to pin down its race at first. But now that it was confirmed as Animal species, there was no point digging any deeper.
"Three stars and Normal-type. That fits right inside the first tier, so I can Normal Summon it directly."
"If I use Greed III, it should evolve into the second-tier Snorlax."
"I just don't know whether the evolved Snorlax will be five stars or six."
"Misdreavus evolves into Mismagius through Lust III, and Mismagius is five stars. Snorlax is most likely five stars too."
"Anyway, no rush. First I'll study Munchlax's data thoroughly."
Dark kept reading, full of enthusiasm.
Munchlax's stat line… wasn't especially strong.
Its magic power, a full 500 points over the three-star ceiling, certainly padded its health bar. But as a tank, its defense was only 1000.
"It looks so chubby, and its defense isn't even high?" Dark mused.
With attack and defense both at 1000, it could hardly serve as a main attacker, and it wasn't a capable meat shield either.
That left the Ultimate Moves.
But since it was a gold card, among its four Ultimate Moves there would usually be at least one rare, rule-breaking one.
Dark turned his hopes to Munchlax's Ultimate Moves and kept pouring in magic power for a deeper analysis.
The first of Munchlax's four Ultimate Moves was Pickup, not Gluttony as Dark had guessed.
But whether it was Pickup or Gluttony, both were Ultimate Moves that expressed the nature of Greed.
Comparing the two, [Gluttony], which only made Munchlax eat Berries automatically when its health dropped by half, was clearly less useful in reality than [Pickup].
But Pickup's original effect was likewise far too game-like.
No doubt it would be adjusted to some degree on this Munchlax.
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[Pickup: In battle, can pick up items dropped or discarded by others and temporarily gain the right to use them. The opponent can neither retrieve nor dismiss them.]
[Pickup (Additional Effect): Munchlax is consumed by desire for everything it doesn't own (especially food), and often picks up items (food) that others have discarded or left lying around.]
▲
"Temporarily gain the right to use them?"
Dark's pulse quickened, and from that one plain line he caught a whiff of something interesting.
In this world, because of the existence of magic, many things bore strong personal magical imprints, and even if they were seized, they were hard to use.
Magic Guide Masters in particular carved thought locks into their Magic Guide Cards to keep them from being stolen.
And high-end Magic Guide Cards, which were intensely "personalized," couldn't be used by anyone else even without a thought lock.
So in a Magic Guide Duel, even if you snatched an item (a weapon included) out of your opponent's hands, you could most likely only use it for the physical purpose of "smacking someone with it," with no way to activate its effects or abilities.
But with Pickup, a passive Ultimate Move, Munchlax could briefly gain the right to use items others had dropped or discarded, and the opponent couldn't even dismiss them right away!
In fact, Eevee's [Covet] and Meowth's [Thief] had similar "seizing" effects.
But compared to Pickup, the effects of Covet and Thief were clearly nowhere near as strong.
Dark even suspected that if he dropped Honedge on the ground, Munchlax might be able to pick it up and use it. If so, that would add a bit more margin for error!
At the moment, among his Magic Guide Spirits, only Gatomon and Leomon, who had Hero Aptitude, could unleash Honedge's true power.
But if Munchlax's Pickup really worked, it might open up another possibility.
"At certain critical moments, this Ultimate Move might turn out to be unexpectedly handy!"
Dark couldn't stop his imagination from running wild.
After a while, he turned to Pickup's additional effect.
Taken literally, Pickup's additional effect was very similar to Meowth's [Pay Day (Additional Effect)].
The difference was that Meowth could summon real treasure, while Munchlax would very likely just "pick up" expired food =.=!
Dark had always figured his reading comprehension was pretty decent.
"If I haven't misread this, I may have to give it a bath every day from now on, to keep it from picking up expired food and hiding it in its fur to rot away…"
He rubbed his forehead, sensing that this additional effect probably had a catch.
And unlike Pay Day's "occasionally," Pickup's additional effect said "often."
Come to think of it, didn't that make it even scarier?
…
Dark did his best not to think the worst and moved on to the next Ultimate Move.
Munchlax's second Ultimate Move was a skill called Stockpile.
If he hadn't pulled the information from the Magic Guide Card, Dark wouldn't even have remembered what the move did.
It was just that unremarkable.
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[Stockpile: Build up strength by eating, raising your own defense. Can be stacked up to 3 times, with each stack raising defense by 50% of base. Stored power can be [Spit Up] or [Swallow]. For each stack consumed, the defense raised through [Stockpile] reverts one stack at a time.]
[Stockpile (Spit Up): Blasts the stored power at the opponent. The more stored, the stronger the strike. The attack power of the [Stored Power] equals the number of Stockpile stacks multiplied by base attack.]
[Stockpile (Swallow): Swallows the stored power to restore your own magic power. The more stored, the greater the recovery. Recovery depends on the stacks consumed: one stack restores 1/4 of full magic power, two stacks restore 1/2, and three stacks restore all of it!]
▲
"Why does it feel like these are three Ultimate Moves instead of one?"
Dark's gaze turned strange. He read it again, carefully, and came away with a much deeper understanding of Stockpile.
Even listed on its own, this Ultimate Move deserved to be called divine.
Just by eating normally to build up strength, Munchlax's measly 1000 defense could be raised to a full 2500!
That would boost Munchlax's tankiness to an unprecedented degree.
2000 magic power and 2500 defense.
It was almost impossible to imagine that this was a first-tier Magic Guide Spirit.
Even Shuckle didn't have panel stats like that.
What's more, paired with Spit Up and Swallow, Munchlax could sacrifice defense for an explosive burst of attack or a heal.
The hard part would probably be… feeding it enough?
Feeding a Magic Guide Spirit until it was full?
It sounded ridiculous at first.
But for one of Dark's Magic Guide Spirits, it somehow seemed perfectly normal.
Still, to fill Munchlax up would take 105 kilograms, a full 210 jin, of food!
Assuming one full meal built up one stack of Stockpile, he'd have to feed it to the brim three times in a row to get three stacks.
And what could get full could also get hungry. Maybe once Munchlax got hungry, the number of stacks would drop as well…
In that case, calling it a "gold-devouring beast" wouldn't be an exaggeration.
Definitely not something an ordinary person could afford to keep.
Dark shook his head slightly.
At the Duke's estate, there was plenty of food.
Even back at the academy, with the generous pay from writing the Arithmetic textbook, he'd never let it go hungry.
"Lucky for you, your master is rich enough."
Dark rubbed Munchlax's little belly with a fingertip. Inside the card, it smacked its lips, lifted a paw to scratch its belly, rolled over, and went right back to sleep~
A warm smile crept onto Dark's face, and he moved on to the next Ultimate Move.
Munchlax's remaining two Ultimate Moves were Rain Dance and Seed Bomb.
From the names alone, he could tell they were a Water-type move and a Grass-type move.
"Is it because I used Water-attribute and Grass-attribute materials when Forging it?"
Dark thought briefly, then kept reading.
Rain Dance was a very famous field technique and left a strong impression on him, but his memory of Seed Bomb was much hazier.
▼
[Rain Dance: Pray to the water spirits and call down rain. Rain falls continuously for five turns, boosting the power of Water-attribute Ultimate Moves while suppressing Fire-attribute ones. Water-attribute Ultimate Moves gain 50% power, and Fire-attribute Ultimate Moves lose 50% power.]
▲
"A weather-type field technique that counters the Fire attribute to an absurd degree."
"Once Envy, the sin symbolized by Mercury, comes online, maybe I can add this Munchlax to the Envy deck as a stand-in for a Field Card."
After giving Rain Dance his heartfelt approval, Dark turned to look at Seed Bomb.
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[Seed Bomb: Creates a large seed with a hard shell and fires it at the opponent like a bomb, striking them.]
▲
In the Pokémon games, Seed Bomb had a power of 80. That couldn't match Sylveon's [Moon Power], but it was above the passing line and not weak.
But that was as far as it went.
Compared with Munchlax's other three Ultimate Moves, it felt more like a throw-in, better than nothing.
"You can't always expect all four Ultimate Moves to be off the charts in power."
Dark smiled, picked up the [Munchlax] Magic Guide Card, and walked over to a more open area of the room.
Next, he would summon Munchlax out and test Greed III!
…
"In the name of Dark, Magic Guide Summon—I choose you, Munchlax!"
Accompanied by his unhurried chant, the summoning light shot out from the card face and washed over the carpet.
A plump little blue cutie squirmed out of the card and took shape in the glow.
"Snooore~"
Newly arrived in this world, Munchlax was still sleeping soundly. Unwavering as ever, it kept right on dozing.
Dark crouched beside it and poked a finger toward its little creamy white belly.
His finger sank deep into the surrounding mass of soft flesh.
The springy softness pressed in from both sides, impossible to resist.
Dark nearly forgot why he was there. When he came to his senses, he yanked his hand back as if shocked, and said reluctantly, "Time to get up, Munchlax."
Munchlax: "Snooore~"
Dark: "…A Greed Munchlax already sleeps this well. If it were a Sloth Munchlax, wouldn't that be the end of me?"
He thought for a moment and changed his wording. "Dinner's ready."
"Kabi?!"
Munchlax blearily opened its round eyes and looked at its master, who felt so familiar.
"Kabi? Kabi?"
Dark had meant to fetch some food to lure it, but he'd never expected a single sentence to reel it in.
And since it was already hooked, he naturally wouldn't go get any food.
Munchlax, you've only yourself to blame!
Dark seized its head and rubbed it vigorously, then was caught off guard by Munchlax's Lick attack.
Thankfully, it was only ordinary licking with its tongue and not the real Lick Ultimate Move, or he'd have been paralyzed all over.
Dark wiped the drool off his face and finally got a good look at Munchlax.
Munchlax stood about 0.6 meters tall, but weighed 210 jin.
Its silhouette was the same as Snorlax's, and it actually looked a bit like the Totoro from Miyazaki's films.
"Hmmm…"
As he studied it, Dark suddenly locked eyes with Munchlax.
And in those eyes he saw a craving for good food, and plain desire.
"Kabi~"
Munchlax sat up, then threw itself at Dark with a "splat," hugging him and rubbing frantically against his cheek.
To assert his dignity as a master, Dark rubbed back without a moment's hesitation.
The room promptly filled with saccharine, borderline-indecent noises.
…
A Magic Guide Master and a Magic Guide Spirit shared a natural bond.
There was no need to go through a "getting acquainted" phase. They already felt like old friends who'd known each other for over a decade.
After cuddling with Munchlax for quite a while, Dark promised, "Cooperate nicely with the experiment, and when it's over I'll take you out for a big meal."
Munchlax licked the corner of its mouth and nodded eagerly.
"Honestly."
Dark pulled out a tissue and wiped away the drool dribbling from its mouth. Only then did he take out the Greed III card, hold its face toward Munchlax, and begin the summoning.
"In the name of Dark, Magic Guide Summon!"
As the Normal Summon completed, an extremely deep dark-blue radiance bloomed from the face of Greed III.
Munchlax stared curiously at the light shining on it and reached out a paw to touch it, but naturally grasped nothing.
Just as it was feeling let down, the crest of Greed lit up on its forehead.
The dark-blue radiance around it was abruptly sucked into that crest, and Munchlax's body began to glow.
Wrapped in the light of evolution, its body swelled at astonishing speed.
In the blink of an eye, the 0.6-meter little cutie had become a 2.1-meter big cutie!
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