"......"
Serena stared at the Yache Berry displayed on her shopping app.
Its icy-blue surface shimmered like some legendary spiritual fruit straight out of a fantasy novel.
Her brows furrowed deeply.
—Should she buy it… or not?
Yesterday, for reasons she still didn't quite understand, her first-ever top viewer, Basket Fetches Nothing, had generously sent her a Super Rocket during her debut Poke-TV stream.
After platform fees and taxes, the payout would be enough to buy more than two Yache Berries.
But that felt… extravagant.
Her entire monthly student allowance barely amounted to the cost of four Yache Berries.
"Why even buy a Yache Berry?" Serena muttered.
"If I want Gible to build resistance to Ice-type damage, wouldn't it be cheaper to just let it eat ice cream?"
"One Yache Berry costs as much as a thousand ice-cream pudding cups."
Back in the day, a pudding cup cost 0.5 yuan.
Then inflation hit—it became 1 yuan.
Even so, five hundred pudding cups were enough to revive a certain 'boss' five hundred times.
Choose wisely:
Lose one revival
Or gain one pudding
Pudding Cup:Five hundred revivals later… I'm still standing.
She acted immediately.
After training that day, Serena brought Gible to the campus supermarket and—through sheer "hard work"—
Walked out proudly with an entire box of pudding ice cream.
"Kapu..."
Logically speaking, a Pokémon with a 4× weakness to Ice should fear cold environments.
But in Sinnoh, Garchomp tribes were known to live on snow-covered mountains, roaming freely through blizzards.
So when it came to temperature tolerance, Serena honestly had no clue where Gible stood.
One thing was certain—
Gible showed immense interest in ice cream.
Come to think of it, maybe that explained why Champion Cynthia often stood motionless in front of ice-cream stalls.
As long as it was edible, Gible's appetite was unstoppable.
Steel, gems—nothing was off-limits.
"Kapu-kapu~!"
Using both stubby fin-arms, Gible didn't even bother unwrapping the ice cream.
It dumped the entire box straight into its mouth.
Gible looked like a tiny, chubby baby shark—short-limbed, round, and built like a Spheal.
Its appetite, however, was bottomless.
Even compared to another pseudo-legendary baby like Larvitar, it showed no restraint.
Larvitar ate rocks and soil.
Gible?
Anything edible—or even arguably edible—went straight into its four-dimensional stomach.
A single Gible could probably eat an entire giant metal robot built by Team Rocket.
Comedy Pokémon followed comedy rules.
Logic had no jurisdiction here.
"Zzzzz...!"
Under Serena's stunned gaze, Gible finished the entire box in seconds.
Her original plan had been to let it eat a few pudding cups a day—
slowly building tolerance to Ice-type energy.
But Gible had other ideas.
A chilling wave surged through its body.
Its eyes spiraled into dizzy swirls as it staggered in place, wobbling on its tiny legs.
—Ice damage! Super effective!
Before ever stepping onto an official battlefield, Gible greedily handed over its first knockout in life.
Fainted due to overeating.
"…Ice—what the hell!"
At a complete loss, Serena scooped up her unconscious Pokémon and made another emergency trip to the campus infirmary.
Once again, she and Gible were boosting the workload of the "Angel of the Infirmary"—
Miss Mimosha.
Though, strictly speaking, Miss Mimosha was salaried staff.
She didn't need "performance numbers."
Serena simply didn't know any other Pokémon doctors or breeders.
She was… unintentionally troubling her.
"Kapu… kapu…"
Gible lay weakly on the small Pokémon bed, mouth opening faintly.
Eating that much ice at once was obviously unpleasant.
"It's nothing serious," Miss Mimosha said gently, smiling.
"It just consumed too much ice cream at once, causing a sudden drop in body temperature and nerve shock."
"After resting for about half an hour, it'll recover."
"Anyone—human or Pokémon—would react the same way if they ate ice cream that fast."
"Especially Gible, which is naturally sensitive to cold."
"As its Trainer, you really should be more careful. You can't just let it eat ice cream without limits."
"Uh… I only wanted it to build some resistance to Ice-type energy," Serena explained awkwardly.
"I didn't expect the dosage to get… out of control."
While Gible was definitely at fault for inhaling everything in sight—
The Trainer was still responsible for supervision.
"Letting a Pokémon directly face what it fears the most…"
Miss Mimosha frowned slightly.
"Your training methods are far more devilish than those of any Trainer I know."
As a Pokémon doctor, she had zero tolerance for mistreatment.
If Serena were genuinely abusive, Mimosha would've had her Hypno escort her out immediately.
"There's a saying, though," Serena replied seriously.
"The best way to overcome fear is to face it."
She tactfully left out the second half—
'Let's go, you got this!'
Mimosha probably wouldn't get the joke anyway.
"Serena," Mimosha asked curiously, tilting her head,
"You're not even a Pokémon Battle major. Why train Gible so relentlessly?"
"If a person has no dreams," Serena replied calmly,
"how are they any different from a Magikarp that only knows Splash?"
An easy, comfortable life was certainly tempting.
But what Pokémon fan didn't dream of standing on the world stage—
Side by side with their partner Pokémon?
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