r18novel Chapter 333 Deadly Poison - An Unsolvable Equation
Chapter 333 Deadly Poison - An Unsolvable Equation
Chapter 335 Deadly Poison - An Unsolvable Equation
When Rena opened her eyes again, the hellish, terrifying night was completely over. The blinding sunlight made her almost dizzy. Had the murderer caught up with her? Had she been captured by Team Plasma? Had she fallen asleep? Were the things she saw last night just nightmares? Was this Kagome Town? Where was the doll? Was there still a chance to retrieve the lost berries?
Trying to calm his confused mind, the tree fruit grower gradually adjusted to the dazzling sunlight and finally saw clearly what was in front of him—under the clear sky, a strange, fashionable woman.
A black turtleneck vest paired with red and black openwork trousers looks particularly refreshing in this early spring season.
Although the other person had crossed their arms and appeared quiet, wearing red glasses and with their long pink hair braided into two pigtails, compared to their intellectual, bookish air, the bright colors of their clothes and their unrestrained, scrutinizing gaze gave Rena a fiery sense of crisis.
"Oh, you're awake?"
The fashionable woman noticed Rena opening her eyes, walked up to her, squatted down, and made eye contact with her.
The breeder then noticed that she was leaning against a tree trunk with hard bark, with mud and weeds beneath her—she was indeed still in that forest.
The fatigue from yesterday's long run still lingers, but I don't have any painful wounds from the fall I sustained after fainting—however, we can't rule out the possibility that Almost Doll later released another "healing wave" on herself.
She nervously looked away and glanced around, only to see her Pokémon partner, who had been put into the Poké Ball, watching over her with concern.
The pink-haired woman then initiated the conversation—
"When I entered this forest this morning, I found you lying unconscious here. I felt I couldn't leave a girl like you in such a place, so I kept watch over you for a while. Luckily, you woke up not long after, otherwise I don't know how much longer it would have taken."
Seeing Rena open her eyes, the woman in front of her smiled, seemingly relieved.
Her voice was very pleasant to listen to, both generous and fluent, so clear and accurate that it was almost without any accent, just like a news anchor on TV.
No, now is not the time to let my mind wander to such things!
Reina, regaining her senses, was suddenly startled—
Since I woke up in the forest, it means that the villains and corpses I saw last night were not dreams, but real reality.
Doesn't this mean that right now, deep in this forest, there is a major crime scene so bloody that if it were exposed, it would definitely make the headlines on television news?
"Miss, although this may not be the first time we've met, this is, after all, a public place. To avoid any awkwardness, let me introduce myself."
Ignoring Rena's hesitation, the pink-haired woman with red glasses reached out to the breeder and pulled her up from the ground. "My name is Pachira. I'm a news anchor from the Carlos region. I recently came to the Unova region to interview a big shot."
"Ah, so you are an announcer. Hello, Ms. Pachira. I am Rena, a berry grower. And this is my partner, Almost Doll."
The breeder looked at Pachira in bewilderment. She longed to tell someone about the things deep in the forest, but didn't know how to begin.
"I didn't recognize her after all. If Karuni were here, the situation would probably be different—"
The pink-haired woman shook her head and changed the subject, "Almost a doll, although it doesn't seem to have much fighting power, it seems to be carrying some amazing gadgets."
Miss Pachira looked Rena up and down with a meaningful gaze.
For some reason, my partner seems a bit down today – Rena thinks it's probably because of the corpses we saw in the forest last night. As a healing Pokémon, Almostbean must have been incredibly saddened to see so many Pokémon corpses that couldn't be saved.
Thinking this through, Rena finally mustered her courage and tentatively asked the pink-haired woman who introduced herself as a news anchor, "Miss Pachira, were you originally planning to enter this forest?"
"Well, I guess I'm just passing through. After all, I have a lot of confidence in the strength of the demon elves, and when traveling in the wild, I don't deliberately choose the easiest paths. The risk of starting a forest fire seems to be greater here than being attacked."
With a relaxed shrug, Pachira inquired with interest, "You seem quite concerned about what's happening in the forest. Is there some problem there? Speaking of which, Ms. Reina, why did you faint here?"
"What I'm about to say may sound horrifying, but it's exactly what I saw with my own eyes last night."
The trainer took a deep breath, regulated his breathing, and said in an unprecedentedly serious tone, "The reason I fainted here is because I witnessed a horrific massacre in the forest yesterday. I fled in panic and lost consciousness. Believe me, it was no simple case that could be ignored. At least dozens of Pokémon were slaughtered, and their deaths were extremely gruesome. I saw the perpetrator with my own eyes last night, as well as the Pokémon that were killed and abandoned under the trees."
"Oh? That's definitely a case that no journalist can afford to miss."
Miss Pachira said this, but she didn't react much; instead, her face showed obvious suspicion.
"I swear! I really saw that scene with my own eyes, and the doll was there with me too, and my bag of berries is still there."
Rena tried to raise her voice, attempting to make her words more persuasive.
She sensed that the woman in front of her had a similar aura to Azure and Douzi, and considering the woman's confidence when talking about her strength, this news anchor was likely also a trainer with considerable skill.
If they could persuade her to return to the crime scene, even if they encountered that terrifying killer again, they would still have a chance to escape once more.
Rena certainly wanted to call the police herself, but right now she didn't even know the exact location of the crime scene, and even if she notified the police, she couldn't describe the specifics of the crime scene. If she dialed the police so recklessly, she figured she'd just be seen as playing a prank.
The pink-haired woman blinked. "Really? But there doesn't seem to be any sign of anything happening on the outskirts of this forest. Could you have been seeing things in the dark? Or were you having a nightmare? And we can't rule out the possibility that it's a hallucination created by a wild Ghost-type Pokémon, can we?"
The news anchor's questioning was flawless, leaving Rena speechless.
Pachira maintained a composed expression, her orange pupils behind her glasses sweeping over the silent, almost doll-like figure beside her, before suddenly turning to Reina and saying—
"Fine, since you're so sure, I can take you back to the scene. After all, I was planning to cross this forest anyway, so even if we come up empty-handed, there's not much to lose."
As she spoke, she took a digital camera out of her waist bag.
"Please lead the way, Ms. Rena. Although photography isn't my forte, I can't be too picky right now. I hope we can gather enough eye-catching material, just as you say."
"This bag is so eye-catching," Rena thought to herself, but then felt that such a statement might be disrespectful to the Pokémon that had died.
Half an hour later.
"No, that's impossible! I definitely saw a huge pile of corpses in this forest before!"
Rena and Pachira set off from the outer perimeter towards the center of the forest from north to south. However, they found no creatures along the way. The entire forest was quiet and peaceful. Apart from a few spring deer that hurriedly hid when they saw humans, nothing unusual happened.
"It seems there haven't been any massacres in this forest that made the news."
Miss Pachira closed the viewfinder of her digital camera and helplessly spread her hands to the guide beside her.
"Please wait a moment, please search the area again. I really saw something horrible here yesterday!"
"I can't believe it," Rena blurted out. However, this was already the umpteenth time she'd said something similar along the way.
"I didn't give up without a reason. You should have seen the Pokémon I sent out when we set off from the edge of the forest, right?"
The news anchor raised her hand and waved, and a black figure suddenly darted out from the bushes behind her.
"This is my partner, Houndoom. It had already patrolled the entire forest when we set off from the north."
Furthermore, it possesses the skill of "smell detection," meaning it can detect any abnormality immediately if there is a corpse or the smell of blood nearby. However—"
The canine Pokémon with two devilish curved horns on its head returned to its owner, sat down on the ground without any urgency, and even lazily yawned.
"Hello, have you noticed anything unusual in this forest?"
Pachira asked an unnecessary question, while her partner shook his head listlessly.
"Miss Reina, it seems you really did have a terrible nightmare in this forest yesterday. Could you have been attacked by a ghost Pokémon?"
"But I really saw it with my own eyes." Even Rena herself began to feel confused.
"Seeing is not necessarily believing, especially in the pitch-black night. Ms. Rena, there are no traces of blood or anything like that on you. Apart from your statement, there is no substantial evidence. After all, it is strange in itself that someone is killing a large number of Pokémon in the wild."
The news anchor's tone was gentle, but the questions she posed were as sharp as a Beedrill's sting: "If it's poaching, the perpetrator would specifically ensure the lives of the captured Pokémon, and would lock them up with Poké Balls or cages afterward. And if the criminal's goal is to obtain special organs like Slowpoke's tail, they would only target a specific type of Pokémon, making the widespread slaughter you described unlikely—such mass killing is utterly unprofitable. Moreover, the murderer you witnessed seemed to have killed the Pokémon with their bare hands. For a human to kill double-digit numbers of wild Pokémon consecutively seems rather unbelievable, doesn't it?"
"Could it be—did I really see wrong?"
Rena wandered aimlessly through the dense woodland. Under the dazzling sunlight, the terrible memories that should have been deeply imprinted in her mind gradually faded away, like the lingering snow of early spring.
Suddenly, she found a lifeline: "That's right, there's also the Almost Doll! It witnessed the crime scene with me, and last night it sensed the unusual thing in the woods even before I did."
The berry breeder quickly released his partner from the Poké Ball.
She shook the latter's soft, furry body, pleading, "Almost there, tell Miss Pachira quickly, what we saw last night wasn't a dream or a hallucination!"
The Poké Ball flashed red, and the Pokémon appeared under Rena's expectant gaze. However, the Heal Pokémon that jumped out of the Poké Ball seemed rather uninterested. It shook its head and silently walked towards a nearby grove of trees.
"See, I knew the doll could do something!"
Seeing that her partner seemed to have figured things out, Rena felt a little strange, but she still clapped her hands with a bit of excitement and pulled Ms. Pachira next to her to follow.
The doll led the two to a wide area in the woods.
The shrubs here are sparse, with only a few exceptionally large trees vying for the right to bask in the sunlight.
The moment Rena stepped into this area, she felt a sense of déjà vu—whether it was the location of the trees or the surrounding scenery.
Everything looked very familiar. This seemed to be the place where she had witnessed the sea of blood in Toyama last night.
However, there were no bodies.
A gentle breeze rustled through the trees, rustling the grass beneath our feet, while sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting dappled patterns of gold on the ground.
There are no vicious murderers here, nor wild spirits who have died violent deaths, and...
Then, Rena saw that thing. It was that thing that had drawn Almost Doll here—a sealed plastic bag lying on its side, clearly bulging from the outside, filled with frozen rocks to store rare tree fruits.
After sending the distraught tree fruit cultivator, clutching a plastic bag, back to Kagome Town, Pachira did not continue south through the forest as she had declared. Instead, she turned a corner some distance away and returned to the northern forest near the Giant's Cave.
"Alright, King of Team Plasma. I've done as you instructed and sent the little girl back to town. You don't need to hide in the shade anymore. Watch out, or I'll set it on fire!"
Houndoom glared menacingly at its trainer, growling as if it was about to unleash a "Flamethrower."
"I'm sorry, I was distracted upstairs just now. I didn't mean to ignore you."
A green-haired youth descended slowly from the sky, riding a proud pheasant. The latter had a pinkish-red crest on its head, resembling a masquerade mask, indicating it was a proud male pheasant.
"Are you still pondering your formula? Can that really pinpoint a criminal's whereabouts and motives?"
As the King of Team Plasma waved goodbye to the bird spirits who had helped him fly and roam the earth, Pachira couldn't help but ask with a belly full of doubt.
"That's true."
The man in white brushed the leaves off his clothes, revealing bloodstains from his attempt to heal the elf, and said with certainty,
"I have personally witnessed someone use keen intuition and meticulous logic to systematically extract the various elements from a complex event."
Arranged in an interlocking pattern, and then using those elements, deducing a seemingly fantastical yet grounded truth—I may not be able to do it like him, but I can emulate this method of connecting details to make inferences; even if I can't get the absolute truth, I can still arrive at a certain degree of fact.
"Really? Then where is Voodoo, the corrupt trainer who poisoned so many Pokémon?"
The news anchor pushed up his orange-red glasses.
"To ensure your investigation isn't interfered with by outsiders, I went to great lengths to relocate any unwanted eyewitnesses to another forest."
I spent most of the day aimlessly wandering around with her. During this time I was doing voluntary work for Team Plasma, has His Majesty's reasoning made any progress?
"There has been progress, of course, but it's all been meaningless."
The green-haired youth sighed; the shadow beneath his baseball cap was as dark as ink from an octopus bucket.
"I should have noticed the perpetrator's whereabouts last night. But I was so caught up in the discovery of new Pokémon that I tried to save the poisoned Pokémon, but I failed."
"The scene witnessed by that berry breeder seems to be the moment you pressed the Pokémon's artery, trying to confirm its heartbeat, right? Interestingly, that person seems to have mistaken you for a criminal. Luckily, you managed to communicate with that similar-looking doll through your thoughts..."
It agreed to cooperate with our performance.
"After all, that's the best way to ensure its trainer's safety. Sigh, Pokémon that have interacted with humans are always willing to ignore their own feelings for the sake of others, which is sometimes really heartbreaking," Team Plasma's king explained to Nearly.
"Those poison-type Pokémon who became Voodoo's accomplices are undoubtedly a negative example, aren't they?" Pachira asked.
"throat-..
N sighed deeply and said guiltily, "I should have realized the truth when I heard the elves' voices cut off, but in the end I couldn't help but do something unnecessary and missed the opportunity to catch the criminal—"
Surprisingly, Pachira shook her head in protest, saying, "Perhaps it's not my place to say this, but no one in this world would consider trying to save lives a superfluous act. Even if it only succeeds once out of ten thousand times, or even fails once, if it increases the possibility of saving a life, then it's all worth it."
"As expected of the Fire Elite Four member of the Kalos region, his admonition was truly earth-shattering."
"No, I'm not saying this cliché for the sake of a title in the league. It's probably just influenced by philanthropists I've interviewed in the past."
King Pachira was a little embarrassed and quickly steered the conversation back on track: "Speaking of which, since you already know the whereabouts of Voodoo, who committed numerous poisoning crimes, why do you say that this fact makes no progress in solving the case?"
"That person will most likely run into the interior of the Giant's Cave. For reasons that are inconvenient to disclose to outsiders, that area has always been under the long-term control of our Plasma Group. Since Voodoo has gone there, it's only a matter of time before we catch him. Our capable subordinates in the Order should have already thought of this."
"Oh?"
Carlos, the Fire King, raised an eyebrow. "From this perspective, isn't the reasoning quite effective? Next, all we need to do is catch the culprit and get the real motive behind his indiscriminate killings from him, and the case will be solved smoothly, won't it?"
"That's the problem."
N said seriously—
"I suspect we may never know the true motive of the perpetrator. Because according to the formula in my mind, Voodoo and his Pokémon are probably suffering from an incurable poison, just like the wild Pokémon they killed. When we find Voodoo again, we might only find a cold human body."
Beep, beep, beep beep!
Before Pachira could even show a surprised expression, N's plasma cluster communicator rang at this crucial moment.
The king answered the phone, and Dr. Vio, who had previously been in charge of exploring the giant's cave, came through: "Your Majesty, we found the man in the cave—but he is already dead."