area51novel Chapter 323 Deadly Poison - An Unsolvable Equation
Chapter 323 Deadly Poison - An Unsolvable Equation
When Rena opened her eyes again, the hellish, terrifying night had completely passed, and the dazzling sunlight almost made her dizzy.
Has the murderer caught up? Have I been captured by Group Plasma? Am I asleep? Were the things I saw last night just nightmares? Is this Kagome Town? Where is the Doll? Is there still a chance to retrieve the lost berries?
Struggling to calm his confused mind, the berry grower gradually adjusted to the dazzling sunlight and finally saw things clearly before him—
Under a clear sky, there was a stylish, unfamiliar woman.
A black turtleneck vest paired with red and black openwork trousers looks exceptionally chic 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 United States after all, so to avoid any awkwardness, let me introduce myself.”
Ignoring Rena's hesitant expression, the pink-haired woman with red glasses reached out to the breeder and pulled her up from the ground—
"My name is Pachira, and 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 really don't recognize her. If Karuni were here, the situation would probably be different..."
The pink-haired woman shook her head and changed the subject—
"It's a doll, isn't it? Although it doesn't seem to be very strong in combat, 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 of this, Rena finally mustered up her courage and tentatively spoke to the pink-haired woman in front of her who claimed to be a news anchor—
"Miss Pachira, did you originally intend to enter this forest?"
"Well, I guess I'm just passing through. After all, I have a lot of confidence in the strength of my 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 than being attacked."
With a casual shrug, Pachira intrigued and countered with a question to Rena—
"You seem quite concerned about what's happening in the forest. Is there a problem there? Speaking of which, why did you faint here, Reina-san?"
"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, adjusted his breathing, and said in an unprecedentedly serious tone—
"The reason I collapsed here is because I witnessed a horrific massacre in the forest yesterday. I ran away in a 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 almost there with me... 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 get her to go back to the crime scene with them, even if they ran into that horrible 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?"
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 doll 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 nothing 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 really gather enough eye-catching material, just as you say."
"It's eye-catching," Rena thought to herself, but then felt that such a statement might be somewhat disrespectful to the dead Pokémon.
.
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 of the forest, heading south towards its center. However, they found no corpses along the way. The entire forest was quiet and peaceful, except for a few spring deer that hurriedly fled upon seeing 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 terrible 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 elf 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. Not only that, it also possesses the skill ‘Scent Detection,’ so it can detect anything unusual immediately if there are corpses 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.
"Houndoom, 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 such a dark night. Ms. Rena, there are no traces of blood on you, so there is no substantial evidence other than your statement. After all, it is very strange that someone is killing a large number of Pokémon in the wild."
The news anchor's tone was gentle, but the questions he posed were as sharp as a bee's sting.
"If it were poachers, they would definitely ensure the lives of the captured Pokémon, and would lock them up with Poké Balls or cages afterward. And if the perpetrator's goal was to obtain special organs like Slowpoke's tail, they would likely only target a specific type of Pokémon, making the scene of carnage you described unlikely—such mass killings offer no benefit whatsoever. 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 seems rather unbelievable, doesn't it?"
"Could it be... that I really saw it 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—
“Oh right, and there’s also the Almost Doll! It witnessed the crime scene with me, and last night it noticed 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 and pleaded, "Almost doll, hurry, tell Miss Pachira that what we saw last night wasn't a dream or a hallucination!"