Chapter 3:
"She's not even born yet and already this stacked?"
Larx stared at the system screen like it owed her money. Her Ekans—well, her egg technically—was still chilling in its case, all warm and gooey, and yet the stats were already there, printed in glowing blue text like a prophecy.
[Pokémon: Fyrunian Ekans][Potential: 4 Stars][PL-0: Dormant][Tier 0: Unawakened][Badass Ranking: 0]
She squinted at it again.
Four stars. For an unborn snake.
"Okay, what the hell."
In the Academy, power mattered. This wasn't a Saturday morning cartoon with friendship rainbows and "believe in yourself" speeches. Trainers didn't just wing it and win with plot armor. The rating system was god. And like all gods, it was complex, unforgiving, and loved to punch people who didn't pay attention.
[World Mechanics: Pokémon Rating System]
Potential – The natural limit of a Pokémon's growth. It's what you'd call "talent" if this were a sports anime. Ranges from 1 to 5 stars. Anything below 3 is scrap heap tier. Anything above 4? People start trying to kidnap it.Larx's Ekans having 4 stars straight from the egg? That was like being handed a knife at birth and told, "go be a war god."
Power Level (PL) – Determines how awakened a Pokémon's internal power is. PL-0 means "dormant," like a sealed nuke. Most Pokémon start there. Higher PL unlocks stronger techniques, passive skills, and even advanced instincts. Raising PL isn't easy. You don't just grind—this world doesn't play fair.
Tier – Divides raw battle viability. Think combat readiness. A Tier 0 might survive a street fight. Tier 3s are regional threats. Tier 5s make headlines. Tier 6s get government surveillance. Most students never reach Tier 2. And unranked means you're still a wannabe.
Badass Ranking – Okay, that one was hers. The System just gave her a blank number and Larx renamed it. It sounded cooler than "Charisma Modifier" or whatever boring stat it used to be.
People liked to pretend the system was fair. That effort mattered. That if you loved your Pokémon hard enough, they'd overcome bad genetics. But the truth? Compatibility and raw specs were king.
That's why the second you entered the Trainer major, the rating system became your Bible, your tax form, and your doomscroll all in one.
Some Pokémon were born elite. Some were born cannon fodder.
For any student in the Trainer major, the Pokémon rating system was gospel. Unlike those anime dreams of friendship and magic saving the day, the real world ran on numbers. Power scaling mattered. PL scores, star ratings, move pools, evolution ceilings—everything was tracked, charted, graded. Pokémon were not just pets or pals; they were a part of a competitive ecosystem of a televised blood sport that was glorified and televised.
Larx didn't care about the ranking boards. Not really. She cared about turning that little egg into a killer.
She started reading up on Kanto Ekans. Sure, all regional strains shared base stats, abilities, and learned moves—but each region bred different instincts. Hoenn Ekans evolved fighting styles to match Seviper infestations: they struck from distance, adapted for range. The Kanto strain, by contrast, was more traditional. Up-close brawlers. They leaned into physicality, learned more contact moves than any other regional variant. People called them "mid." Not weak—but not strong enough to make it on serious teams.
Larx didn't give a damn. "I'll make mine bite like a f*cking Garchomp," she muttered.
She wasn't some wannabe pretending to be a biologist after a week on PokéTube. She grew up on Animal Planet, had Steve Irwin episodes memorized, and could ID snakes by fang shape. Game Freak might've designed Ekans as a cartoon coil with fangs, but in reality? It was stitched together from real-world biology.
From what she gathered, Ekans was likely inspired by Dasypeltis, the African egg-eating snake. They fed exclusively on bird eggs, using bony spines in their throats to crack the shell internally and suck out the contents. Super efficient. Agile climbers. Sensitive to smell—smart enough to avoid rotten or too-developed eggs. Nervous as hell when cornered, with that saw-scaling trick to hiss like a rattler.
She even found papers on the ecological damage unchecked Ekans populations caused in the wild. They decimated regional bird species during uncontrolled breeding seasons. Most predators avoided them because of their hemotoxin meat. But they still had natural enemies: Arboks (oh wow, there corbels what a shock), Nidoking, Nidoqueen, Snorlax, and Noctowls.
Since they are Corbas the most Larx will use them as a baseline.
Enter the king cobra—Ophiophagus hannah. Not a true cobra, but the longest venomous snake alive. Apex-tier. It ate other snakes for fun, including venomous ones, and only lost fights to giant pythons or apex predators like Chickens or Hawks.
Knowing what species of snakes her Ekans is based on helped Larx to grow it properly.
That also meant expensive feeding bills. Fortunately, snakes had the blessing (and curse) of low metabolism. Even factoring in training and stress-induced hunger spikes, she estimated her Ekans would need a full feeding maybe once every two weeks. Quality over quantity.
Larx calculated she could stretch the budget as long as she found reliable suppliers of high-protein prey meat.
Still, she'd have to account for battlefield nutrition. Battle Pokémon weren't pets—they were athletes. Warriors. Constantly in bloody-glorified brawls that made old Dragon Ball fights look tame. Healing, stamina, toxin replenishment, muscle regeneration—it all required different type of diet.
Battle-trained Ekans would need a nutrient-dense diet. Whole prey animals, vitamin-packed vitems, wings, berries inside the intineines, electrolyte-heavy drinks in the stomach, and even organ meat supplements. Pokémon cuisine wasn't a joke.
Larx scribbled more notes.
Metabolism again: low SMR. Spiked drastically when active or digesting, but went near-zero at rest. That's why wild snakes could go weeks or months between meals.
They were ectotherms, too. "Cold-blooded," sure, but that word was lazy. They didn't make their own body heat—they borrowed it. Sunlight, hot stones, basking. Indoors? You needed heat lamps, climate control, radiant coils. No heat, no movement.
Larx looked at the egg again.
No twitch. No rumble. Still dormant.
"F*ck. I also have homework," she muttered, rolling her eyes and flopping onto her back.
Because, yeah—on top of raising a rare, high-potential, apex-bound venom noodle, she still had a full academic load. Due to her first-place entrance exam scores, scholarship, and... whatever political favors were involved, Larx had been assigned one of the Academy's penthouse dorms—an entire loft with a view of Black Dragon City's smog-choked skyline. Luxury she didn't care about.
She'd already declared her specialization—Dragons. Same as the hotshots before her. The degree path was no joke. A four-year undergraduate grind, GPA pressure, win/loss ratio tracking, and mandatory battle exams. After that, residency under an Ace Trainer somewhere in the wilds, minimum three years.
Basically Trainer med school, but for people who raised bioweapons instead of doing surgeries.
One week later...
The egg didn't explode into light or music. No cinematic sparkle, no anime glow. It just… shifted. A low crackle echoed through the egg case as the hard shell hairlined from the center. Larx, curled on her couch in worn tank top and compression shorts, immediately rolled up and sprinted over. Heat levels had spiked on the case's readout—37.2°C and climbing. Right on cue. She'd stabilized the nutrient bath mix with S-grade Egg Solution, even reinforced the yolk proteins with trace calcium from crushed Oran extract. That was the thing they never told rookies: hatching wasn't magic. It was biochemical micromanagement, and one wrong humidity dip could leave you with a deformed reject. Larx had triple-checked every parameter. Her Ekans would hatch perfect.
A tiny nose breached the cracked shell—no fangs yet, just the blunt end of a serpent's snout slick with yolk. Its scales glistened a deep amethyst, not shiny, but dark enough to glint in low light. That was a Kanto strain alright. The baby unwound itself with instinctive grace, sliding free of the shell in a slow-motion coil. Larx saw the telltale markers: narrow jawline, the classic rattleless tail tip, and the thick neck that would one day hood up if it evolved. She watched it breathe, slow and shallow. For the first 48 hours, it wouldn't eat. Just absorb the last of its yolk sac and learn how to move. Most Pokémon had a lag period between hatching and their first true instinctual response. Battle Pokémon like this one were born wired differently. Larx could see it in its eyes already—aware, locked onto her.
She reached into the incubator with gloved hands—standard protocol in case of reflex bites. Her first contact class had warned her: some newborn Pokémon see movement as threat, especially Poison-types. But the Ekans didn't strike. It slithered weakly into her hand, coiling against her skin like she was the warmest rock in the terrarium. Intimidate hadn't kicked in yet—it wouldn't until its first aggression moment, usually during live training. Still, she could feel the latent pressure in its muscles. Like holding a corded spring.
This was no pet store snake. This was a bioengineered predator, the product of centuries of environmental adaptation and League-overseen breeding algorithms. Not to mention the egg move loadout it came with: Sucker Punch, Poison Fang, Disable—half the syllabus for Venom Combat 101 baked right into its DNA. Larx smirked. "Welcome to Black Dragon Academy, little killer."
She set it down on a heated stone slab beside her desk and logged its birth data into the TrainerNet registry. A few dorms away, she could hear the faint sounds of someone else's Chimchar practicing Ember drills. The Academy was always awake. Even at 2 AM. First-hatch weeks were considered a rite of passage for every serious Trainer student. You didn't just hatch your Pokémon—you bonded through blood, sleep deprivation, and five separate biological failures waiting to happen.
Larx cracked her neck and tapped the Dragon Lord Emblem on her lanyard. Her Ekans was Tier-0 now. Dormant, untested. But the Badass Dragon Lord System didn't discriminate by type—it only demanded loyalty, power, and results. She glanced at the egg shards still steaming inside the case. From here, it only got harder.