This was very strange.
Logically speaking, an untouched natural area like this should have been one of the habitats Pokémon loved most.
And the deeper one went, the stronger the Pokémon encountered should have become.
Otherwise, Himeko would not have had Lopunny protect her.
But the problem was that right now, she had not seen anything at all.
That was very strange.
This unreasonable situation immediately made Himeko cautious.
However, in the next second, just as she was lost in doubt, her field of vision suddenly opened up.
What appeared before her eyes was—
A small village!
Yes!
It was a small village!
How could there be a village here?
Himeko was a little stunned.
She had never heard of anything like this before.
After thinking for a moment, Himeko frowned and continued walking toward the village.
When she reached the village entrance, she looked inside.
She found that it was empty.
There was nothing there.
Strange.
Could it be an abandoned village?
Himeko wondered inwardly.
But when she looked carefully, the furnishings inside were still very new.
In that case, it did not look abandoned.
"Is anyone here?"
Himeko called out loudly.
A moment later.
The surroundings remained completely silent.
No one answered her.
"Is anyone here?"
Himeko raised her voice again.
After a while, there was still no response.
Himeko hesitated for a moment.
Then she stepped forward and walked into the village.
She walked inward for a while.
The farther she went, the stranger she felt.
There were clearly signs of life here.
Yet right now, she could not see a single living thing.
What made her feel even stranger was that the houses here were all extremely short.
Mm.
They were only about one meter tall.
They looked like something from a dollhouse village.
Clearly, they were not built for humans to live in.
But this was also a rather sizable village.
It obviously was not some bored person's prank either.
Could it be…
At this moment, a rather bold idea surfaced in Himeko's mind.
Could these houses belong to Pokémon?
She rejected the thought immediately.
But the more she thought about it, the more possible it seemed.
There was an eighty or ninety percent chance that these houses really were for Pokémon.
But then another problem appeared.
What kind of Pokémon did these things belong to?
A house only one meter tall meant the Pokémon living inside could be at most around half a meter tall.
Otherwise, it would affect their movement.
With such a small body size, they definitely would not be powerful Pokémon.
Because under normal circumstances, most powerful Pokémon had large bodies.
And that was especially true for the Dragon-type Pokémon living here.
When Dragon Pokémon reached their final evolutions, their wings were usually enormous.
In that case.
Most likely, the ones living here were all juvenile Pokémon.
However.
Even when they were young, they should have lived on the mountaintops of their own tribes.
In other words.
This place should not have been their residence.
Then whose residence was it?
Himeko frowned in thought.
Her mind was completely foggy.
She could not figure anything out.
Since she could not figure it out, she stopped thinking about it.
Very soon.
She reached the end of the village.
Here, the place was covered in dense weeds half as tall as a person.
Himeko parted the grass and continued walking inside.
As she walked, Lopunny sent her a telepathic message.
"What? You're saying there are living creatures ahead?"
Himeko was somewhat surprised.
She had thought there were no living things here!
As it turned out.
There really were.
Very soon, Himeko walked a few more steps deeper inside.
At first, she had thought that a deserted place like this would have some extremely powerful creature in it.
So when she heard Lopunny's words, she had become nervous for a moment.
She had made quite a few preparations.
However.
Lopunny told her that the creatures ahead were not much of a threat.
They were all relatively weak.
Only then did Himeko let out a breath of relief.
But she was also a little surprised.
Why would the Pokémon in a place like this be weak?
With that doubt in mind, she continued walking forward.
After advancing roughly a hundred meters, some movement gradually came from within the person-tall grass.
If she listened carefully, she could tell that these were sounds made by Pokémon.
Himeko stopped walking.
She listened carefully for a while.
Then she seriously compared those sounds against all the Pokémon in her memory.
She discovered that these sounds did not match any Pokémon she knew.
One had to know.
A Champion-level Trainer like Himeko, especially someone who had lived across two lifetimes, naturally possessed an extremely rich reserve of knowledge.
The attributes and habits of every kind of Pokémon—
Even their cries—
She could remember them all with perfect clarity.
So after hearing these sounds that were completely different from anything in her understanding, Himeko became even more confused.
What the hell?
What exactly were these things?
Himeko frowned.
Along the way, everything had been filled with strange and bizarre events.
In the next second.
She took a deep breath.
Since Lopunny said there was no real danger, she relaxed.
After parting the grass—
The scene that appeared before her eyes left Himeko completely dumbfounded.
Because what appeared in her field of vision was an entire stretch of soft grassland.
On the grassland.
There were more than a hundred Pokémon playing and frolicking there.
And what shocked her even more was—
These Pokémon before her eyes…
She did not recognize a single one of them!
(End of Chapter)
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