Better Gardening 14 (Patreon)

Better Gardening

Chapter 14

-VB-

In return for the prisoners and their companion animals, I received a literal ton of books. 

This confused me. 

The “pokeballs” that the locals used to contain their companion animals was a marvel of technology, but books were the form of information exchange? I knew that they must have some sort of computers.

Was this a form of disrespect? Were they lying to me in some manner? Why books? Why so many books? I mean, sure, a ton of book would be just about what one would need to thoroughly understand the local bioecology, and from a cursory skim of the first book I picked up randomly, the information they offered did match up with my scans of the local environment, though they got a few things wrong and informed of a few things that my scanner didn’t pick up.

… I’ll never know if I don’t ask.

“Why books?” I asked Prefect Ueda. Apparently, Ueda was his family name, not his given name. 

He rolled my question in his head before seemingly giving up and asking in return. “I do not understand your question. Are these books not good enough?”

I shook my head. “No, I am wondering why you offered to give me books instead of electronic hardware,” I replied, explaining myself a little more. “The technology you displayed clearly show me that you have electronics on hand and thus electronic means of information exchange… right?”

“We do,” he replied with a nod. “But when I talked with my advisors, they were not sure about whether or not you could access the information in any electronics we could offer you. So we went with the surefire way of providing you with information with books.”

He didn’t even bring up language as a barrier. “And what about other languages?” I asked. The only reason why I was able to read their language was because Mana, my wonderful AI assistant, kindly translated them for me after receiving a sample of thirty pages that I skimmed over.

“... Pardon?” he asked confusedly. “What other languages? Isn’t there only one?”

I looked at him. He looked genuinely confused. 

This world only had one language? Despite there being many, many ethnicities, nation-states, and regions? 

It sounded artificial. Like someone made it that way. 

… Was this world seeded like I was seeding NLS-9?

I’ll have to discuss this with Mana later. 

For now…

“Yes,” I told him. “There are many. And as the only reason why we can communicate is, as far as I understand it, I have a lot of languages downloaded to my noggin.”

His lower eyelids rose up in that disbelieving smile of someone contemplating a potentially crazy person in front of them. 

I didn’t say anything else, instead picking up and skimming through another book. 

“Well, this was a good exchange. Thank you for your consideration.”

“And thank you for … not requesting anything ridiculous.”

I snorted. “You and I both know that you and your people think my request is ridiculous.”

“... Foreigners do not come to our region often, and they certainly don’t kill our enemies and demand a ransom from us and not their region.”

“I was actually going to demand that ransom from their home country…”

The talks came to an end, and I bid them goodbye.

After I had Umma pick up the books and loaded into internal storage, we left the town and walked deeper into the forest. We had someone following us, but I didn’t consider it to be a problem. 

There, I opened up a portal and -.

-VB-

Giovanni stared with wide eyes as he stared at the foreigner create a portal of some kind, walk on through to … 

Was that space? 

Did he … did he see another world from some kind of cockpit of a place in space through a portal?

The portal snapped shut after the elephant pokemon walked on through. When nothing else happened, he walked out of the bushes that he had been hiding behind and looked around. 

There was no trace of anything abnormal. 

What did he just see? 

Gulping, he headed back to Viridian City and reported to the prefect. 

“What did you see?” the normally kind man asked firmly. 

“He … He used some kind of a handheld device to create a portal. It led him to … a place I can’t describe. I could be mistaken in what I saw. But what’s clear to me was that the device he used was not a prototype or unique. It looked streamlined and mass produced.”

Prefect Ueda hummed. Captain Shimazu stood to Ueda’s right in the prefect’s office.  “So he wasn’t Johtonian playing the spook game.”

“He definitely was not,” Giovanni agreed. “Never mind the … killings.”

Deaths on the battlefield happened, and despite the intense distaste for all things Johto, Giovanni understood that there was a measure of honor that both Johto and Kanto gave each other. Neither side desecrated the other’s dead. 

What the foreigner did was … yes, he defended himself, however, it was clear to everyone that he had been overwhelmingly powerful and understood that as well. He ruined the bodies of his enemies because he could, and that put a damper on how they interacted with him. Never mind the fact that he used a gun to do it. 

It was impersonal. It was cold. 

It was not what a true war was about. Guns were normally ineffective against pokemon, and the strength of the trainers and their pokemons were how each region determined their strength.

Guns had no place in any region…

Giovanni looked up to the contemplating prefect. There was a long pause before the prefect nodded and looked back up to meet Giovanni’s gaze.

“Tell me what you think you saw.”