My Pokémon System Scanned 41 REJECT EGGS, So I Took The One With A SHINY GARDEVOIR!

Recap

After waking in a Pokémon world at 18, the narrator receives a “system” that can scan Pokémon—but starts with zero points and a shop so expensive that one gacha pull costs the equivalent of three Gym Leader victories. Scanning, however, is free.

At his university’s Pokémon-breeding sanctuary, he’s stuck with the rejects: 41 cracked, unwanted Pancham eggs. On the 33rd scan, he finds the jackpot: a Ralts egg with a shiny color variant.

His classmates think he’s made a terrible choice when he picks the cracked egg. Four days later, it hatches into a striking blue-and-white shiny Ralts. His deskmate first asks if it’s sick, then sincerely congratulates him. The dorm fills with gawkers, including people who just want a photo. The narrator earns his first system points for discovering the unprecedented shiny in the discard pen.

He also ends up with a Goomy, which he affectionately describes as a useless slug and a very long-term investment, and a temperamental Litten that bites him before seemingly recognizing a kindred spirit: they’ve both been picked last.

Winning with type charts—and a cartoon avatar

To afford system pulls, the narrator finds a loophole in the League’s official battling simulator: Gym Leaders play ranked matches there, and beating one counts. He streams under the deliberately harmless name “I Love Pokémon the Most”, using a cheerful cartoon-girl avatar to make opponents underestimate him.

His first major target is Nessa, the famous Water-type Gym Leader, whose predictable rain strategy has let her down in public tournaments for years. The narrator beats her by manipulating the weather rather than fighting her rain head-on. The match goes viral, and Nessa—rather than getting offended—messages him to ask how he did it. His blunt explanation is that she’s relied on one plan for so long she’s never needed a second.

Next he faces Elesa, the dazzling Electric-type Gym Leader, with a deliberately maddening strategy: Chansey and Shuckle turn into an almost unbreakable wall, while Toxic slowly drains her team. The battle lasts 51 minutes, to the horror and fascination of tens of thousands of viewers. Elesa’s final response is “Why?”—and then, after losing, “I hate you.” Both Gym Leaders add him as a friend.

Soon a chat group forms around the narrator: Gym Leaders and Elite Four members who all joined after losing to him. One member is Corina, a fiery Fighting-type Gym Leader who starts calling him “Master.” He admits, after some private self-reflection, that he is surprisingly easy to flatter when the praise comes from a blonde girl on roller skates.

The narrator wins his freshman tournament with his evolving Litten, whose Intimidate and Fake Out disrupt opponents from the opening turn. The final ends quickly, but the crowd’s first cheer for him means more than the prize. He gives the Pancham he wins to a classmate who lost earlier.

A crisis at the breeding base

The most dangerous battle of the year happens when Sabrina, the powerful Saffron Gym Leader, breaks into the breeding sanctuary to steal a rare Kubfu. She turns 11 staff members into cloth dolls and heads for the secure wing.

The narrator can’t overpower her, so he improvises: he borrows a Galarian Weezing and a Shedinja from the breeding staff, then uses the Weezing’s Neutralizing Gas to switch off abilities. His shiny Ralts uses Skill Swap to take Shedinja’s Wonder Guard.

Sabrina’s Psychic attacks can’t touch the now-protected Ralts. The narrator’s Torracat knocks out her Abra, but he’s clear that he hasn’t defeated Sabrina—he’s only stalled her. She takes one Kubfu and leaves; the other, which had quietly watched the whole incident, refuses to leave the narrator’s side.

Afterward, he collapses and spends three days unconscious. Classmates Xio and Ling visit him, and Ling peels him an apple in one long spiral. It becomes one of the small, kind gestures he remembers most. Sabrina later gives him a bank card containing 500 million from her unused Gym Leader stipend. He takes a long time to spend any of it.

Friends, Pokémon, and unlikely breakthroughs

Nessa later tells him about a Feebas she caught as a child and released after adults told her it would be too difficult to raise. They find it in the same lake 13 years later. It recognizes her and eventually evolves into a huge Milotic. Its Competitive ability turns opponents’ attempts to weaken it into a boost—particularly satisfying against trainers who rely on Intimidate.

The narrator also catches a Corviknight whose Mirror Armor bounces stat reductions back at opponents. At a university team event, he uses Iron Defense and Body Press to lead the bird through five consecutive battles. The trick is simple: its defensive boosts also make Body Press hit harder. An Elite Four member warns him that showing the whole region the strategy means people will eventually learn how to counter it.

That warning proves right: Caitlyn, a young psychic whose uncontrolled powers have kept her isolated, learns to use Iron Defense and Body Press with her Metagross. The narrator’s meditation technique helps her finally sleep and put her powers down. She eventually starts living with him after her treatment ends, though neither of them initially knows how to discuss the fact that she has no medical reason to stay.

During a thunderstorm, he tells her she doesn’t need a reason to exist in his home. Her solution is very Caitlyn: she buys a villa in the city.

The narrator also helps Corina see the weakness in relying exclusively on Fighting moves. In a simulator battle, he gives his Tyranitar the Ghost type with Trick-or-Treat, making Corina’s Fighting attacks useless. She takes the lesson and later adapts her team.

Legendary encounters and unexpected rewards

At a lighthouse, the narrator learns of a 60-metre Dragonite that has remained in pain for 11 years after an abnormal Dynamax event. He brings Sabrina, Caitlyn, and Elite Four member Leo Fua to help. Sabrina steadies the Dragonite’s mind, Caitlyn’s Metagross braces its body, and the narrator’s Corviknight gradually wears it down with repeated Body Presses. The Dragonite finally settles on the beach and willingly enters a Poké Ball.

The narrator then finds the scientist who invented Galar’s Dynamax wristband and credits her for her work. She helps devise a treatment using Dragapult to remove the trapped energy without surgery. He had understood the game’s mechanics, he realizes, but not all the answers—and the local experts know things he doesn’t.

In Unova, he encounters Reshiram and Zekrom awake together, peacefully, despite the region’s legend that their opposing ideals split them apart. He argues that truth and ideals need each other: see the world as it is, then work to improve it. The system awards him both “Hero of Truth” and “Hero of Ideals,” an apparent contradiction it refuses to explain.

In Alola, the narrator helps Lily confront a traumatic memory that has kept her from touching Pokémon. With Sabrina and Caitlyn, he enters the memory and breaks the hold of the Nihilego that frightened her. Lily finally reaches for Sabrina.

Soon afterward, Lily chooses a strange, unidentified Cosmog as her first Pokémon. The narrator recognizes what it is but keeps quiet, knowing that revealing its significance could attract dangerous attention. A pale-gold Nihilego follows him back from Ultra Space; he names it Lily, too, and it becomes an affectionate companion—eventually learning massage techniques from television.

A camping trip, Suicune, and Zapdos

A camping trip with Nessa, Caitlyn, and Leo Fua produces some of the year’s funniest and strangest moments. The narrator tells a Sherlock Holmes joke, only to discover that nobody has heard of Sherlock Holmes. When a Suicune appears on the lake, he pretends not to notice it because a childhood memory of seeing Suicune trapped in a net upset him so badly. His friends see through the act.

Later, the system gives him a Rainbow Wing. Using it as a camping lantern, he accidentally draws Marshadow out of his shadow. He enthusiastically praises Marshadow, calling it his favorite; the mythical Pokémon immediately retreats, apparently unprepared to be appreciated instead of treated as a stepping-stone to Ho-Oh.

Suicune eventually challenges Lily to battle. The narrator misreads the psychic invitation and starts preparing to fight it himself, prompting his friends to explain that Suicune is not asking for a wrestling match. Lily defeats it with a mix of speed, Mirror Coat, and Toxic.

Afterward, the narrator “attacks” Suicune with his painful memory of the net scene, which promptly knocks the legendary Pokémon unconscious again. It’s a bizarrely effective way to explain why he ignored it.

On a later trip, the group follows Zapdos to a lake full of Electric-type Pokémon. Suicune and Lily join the battle, and Caitlyn’s Metagross helps shield the team from Zapdos’s attacks. The narrator throws an ordinary Poké Ball at the defeated bird, but Zapdos breaks free; he interprets the cheap ball as a polite way of saying he doesn’t want it. Caitlyn’s Ultra Ball also fails. Elesa catches Zapdos with the Quick Ball she always carries.

She immediately tries to give the legendary back, convinced she didn’t contribute enough to deserve it. The narrator insists that catching it was her moment—and that having Zapdos refuse to obey is a challenge, not a reason to give up. Elesa then catches a Magnemite and a Pachirisu, becoming a more ambitious trainer in a single afternoon. She also proves she’s learned his lesson about looking beyond the Pokédex: her Zebstrika can use High Horsepower, even though the move isn’t listed for it.

From rejected egg to legendary trainer

Back at the breeding base, Kubfu finally evolves into Urshifu—not after climbing a tower or reading a scroll, but after meditating and working out a lesson from the narrator’s visits. He insists he didn’t teach it; Urshifu found its own path.

Soon after, Litten evolves into Incineroar. The two Pokémon briefly clash, then embrace when the narrator tells them he doesn’t need one to be “the best”—he needs both.

The sanctuary reveals that the rare Kubfu mutation can only exist one at a time. With the first now evolved, another Kubfu hatches, leaving the sanctuary’s numbers unchanged. The base gives the narrator’s Urshifu to him for free, on the condition that he never use it for harm. Champion Mustard visits, praises the unprecedented evolution, and invites him to train at his school.

The year’s other major mystery is Cynthia. The narrator gives her Garchomp a golden Dragon Dance disc, which teaches the move the species has never been able to learn. He thinks of it as a present for Garchomp, not Cynthia.

But the disc unlocks a memory for her: as an 11-year-old, she remembers a boy who promised her a golden Dragon Dance disc and warned her not to waste Garchomp’s Mega Evolution. She believes that boy was the narrator, somehow visiting her from the future.

The narrator has never met her before. He’s certain of that—but the promises, which only he could plausibly have made, leave him unsure what to believe. The story ends with him heading toward a festival in Sinnoh, where Cynthia plans to ask him about the boy she remembers.

Key personalities

• The narrator (Zu) — A reincarnated trainer who relies on scanning, strategy, and a willingness to exploit unusual mechanics.
• Nessa — A famous Water-type specialist who grows from a predictable battler into a more confident Gym Leader and Elite Four member.
• Elesa (Alessa) — A glamorous Electric-type Gym Leader, competitive and proud, who eventually earns Zapdos.
• Caitlyn — A young psychic whose recovery allows her to sleep, train, and choose where she wants to live.
• Sabrina — The formidable Saffron Gym Leader, feared for her psychic power but revealed to have a painful history of isolation.
• Leo Fua — An Elite Four martial artist who becomes the narrator’s mentor and senior sister.
• Cynthia — Sinnoh’s Champion and archaeologist, who suspects the narrator is connected to a memory from her childhood.
• Corina — An energetic Fighting-type specialist who calls the narrator “Master” and learns to diversify her team.
• Lily — A girl who overcomes her fear of touching Pokémon; her Cosmog shares her name.
• N — A young man wrestling with whether humans and Pokémon can truly live together.
• Notable Pokémon — The shiny Ralts/Gardevoir, Litten/Incineroar, Goomy, Urshifu, Corviknight, Milotic, Metagross, Suicune, Zapdos, Cosmog, Nihilego, and Marshadow.