Pokémon Detective Case Files.

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!"

The Poké Ball flashed red, and the Pokémon appeared under Rena's expectant gaze. However, the Heal Pokémon that jumped out of the Poké Ball seemed rather uninterested. It shook its head and silently walked towards a nearby grove of trees.

"See, I knew Almost Doll could do something!"

Seeing that her partner seemed to have figured things out, Rena felt a little strange, but she still clapped her hands with a bit of excitement and pulled Ms. Pachira next to her to follow.

Almost Doll led the two to a wide area in the woods.

The shrubs here are sparse, with only a few exceptionally large trees vying for the right to bask in the sunlight.

The moment Rena stepped into this area, she felt a sense of déjà vu—everything, from the location of the trees to the surrounding scenery, looked incredibly familiar. This seemed to be the very place where she had witnessed the mountain of corpses and the sea of ​​blood the night before.

However, there were no bodies.

A gentle breeze rustled through the trees, rustling the grass beneath our feet, while sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting dappled patterns of gold on the ground.

There are no vicious murderers here, no wild spirits who have died violent deaths, and...

Then, Rena saw that thing. It was that thing that had drawn the almost-doll here—

A sealed plastic bag, lying on its side on the ground, clearly bulging from the outside, containing frozen rocks to store rare tree fruits...

.

After sending the distraught tree fruit cultivator, clutching a plastic bag, back to Kagome Town, Pachira did not continue south through the forest as she had declared. Instead, she turned a corner some distance away and returned to the northern forest near the Giant's Cave.

"Alright, King of Team Plasma. I've done as you instructed and sent the little girl back to town. You don't need to hide in the shade anymore... watch out, or I'll set it on fire."

Houndoom glared menacingly at its trainer, growling as if it was about to unleash a "Flamethrower."

"I'm sorry, I was distracted upstairs just now. I didn't mean to ignore you."

A green-haired youth descended slowly from the sky, riding a proud pheasant. The latter had a pinkish-red crest on its head, resembling a masquerade mask, indicating it was a proud male pheasant.

"Are you still thinking about that formula of yours? Can that really pinpoint the whereabouts and motives of criminals?"

As the King of Team Plasma waved goodbye to the bird spirits who had helped him fly and roam the earth, Pachira couldn't help but ask with a belly full of doubt.

"That's true."

N, dressed in white, brushed the leaves off his clothes, revealing the bloodstains he had stained while trying to heal the elf, and said with certainty.

"I have personally witnessed someone use keen intuition and meticulous logic to systematically extract various elements from a complex event, arrange them into an interlocking shape, and then use those elements to deduce a seemingly fantastical yet grounded truth... I may not be able to do what he did, but I can emulate this method of connecting details to make inferences. Even if I cannot obtain the truth, I can still obtain a certain degree of fact."

"Really? Then where is Voodoo, the corrupt trainer who poisoned so many Pokémon?"

The news anchor pushed up his orange-red glasses.

"To ensure your investigation isn't interfered with by outsiders, I painstakingly moved the intruding eyewitness to another forest and spent most of the day wandering around there in vain with her. During this time I've been doing this voluntary work for Team Plasma, has His Majesty's reasoning made any progress?"

"There has been progress... of course, but it's all meaningless."

The green-haired youth sighed; the shadow beneath his baseball cap was as dark as ink from an octopus bucket.

“I should have noticed where the perpetrator went last night. But I was so caught up in the discovery of new bodies that I tried to save the Pokémon that had been poisoned… but it all ended in failure.”

"The scene that the berry breeder witnessed seems to be the moment you pressed on the Pokémon's artery to try and confirm its heartbeat... Interestingly, that person seems to have mistaken you for a criminal. Fortunately, N, you managed to negotiate with that similar doll's inner voice and got it to agree to cooperate with our performance."

"After all, that's the best way to ensure its trainer's safety. Sigh, Pokémon that have interacted with humans are always willing to ignore their own feelings for the sake of others; it's really heartbreaking sometimes," Team Plasma's king explained to Nearly.

“Those poison-type Pokémon who became Voodoo’s accomplices are undoubtedly a negative example, aren’t they?” Pachira asked.

"Ugh……"

N sighed deeply and said guiltily—

"I should have realized the truth when I heard the elves' voices cut off, but in the end I couldn't help but do something unnecessary and missed the opportunity to catch the criminal..."

Surprisingly, Pachira, who was standing to the side, shook her head in opposition at this moment.

"Perhaps it's not my place to say this, but no one in this world would consider trying to save lives a superfluous act. Even if it only succeeds once out of ten thousand times, or even fails once, if it increases the possibility of saving a life, then it's all worth it."

"As expected of the Fire Elite Four member of the Carlos region, his admonitions are truly resounding."

"No, I didn't say such clichés on purpose for the sake of a title in the league. I was probably influenced by philanthropists I've interviewed in the past."

King Pachira was a little embarrassed for a moment, and quickly steered the conversation back on track—

"Now that you know where Voodoo, who committed numerous poisoning crimes, is, why do you say that this fact makes no progress in solving the case?"

"That person will most likely run into the interior of the Giant's Cave. For reasons that are inconvenient to disclose to outsiders, that area has always been under the long-term control of our Plasma Group. Since Voodoo has run there, it's only a matter of time before he is caught by us. Our capable subordinates in the Order should have already thought of this."

"Oh?"

Carlos, the Fire Elite Four member, raised an eyebrow—

"From this perspective, isn't the reasoning quite effective? Next, all we need to do is catch the perpetrator and get the real motive behind his indiscriminate killings from him, and the case will be solved smoothly, right?"

"That's the problem."

N said seriously—

“I suspect we may never know the true motive of the perpetrator. Because according to the formula in my mind, Voodoo and his Pokémon are probably suffering from an incurable poison, just like the wild Pokémon they killed. When we find Voodoo again, we may only find a cold human corpse.”

Beep, beep, beep beep!

Before Pachira could even show a surprised expression, N's plasma cluster communicator rang at this crucial moment.

The king answered the phone, and the voice of Dr. Vio, who had previously been in charge of exploring the giant's cave, came through—

"Your Majesty, we found that person in the cave... but he is already dead."

Chapter 324 Poisonous Tragedy – A Trap of Self-Destruction

N possesses the ability to hear the thoughts of Pokémon. This is neither a false claim by Team Plasma nor a far-fetched assertion by their ardent followers; he truly can understand the languages ​​Pokémon use.

However, in reality, learning the language of Pokémon is merely a byproduct of N's ability. Rather than describing his ability as "listening," it's more akin to a semi-forced, long-distance telepathic communication with Pokémon.

If a person can directly sense every thought or feeling that others are trying to express, then he can easily learn the spoken language they use—for N, this is as easy to grasp as an elementary function.

In the state of sensor connection, even if the Pokémon do not actually speak, as long as their brains are still unconsciously functioning, N can subtly sense the true thoughts of the Pokémon on the other side through his own thoughts, as if looking at flowers through a fog.

It is through this connection that he is able to communicate with all the Pokémon in the world—even those that cannot make sounds in the conventional sense, like friends.

It was precisely through this special ability, which he had honed since birth, that he was able to establish a connection with the ancient Pokémons through the thick rock layers when he was fighting against the two girls in the wilderness of Liyong City, igniting the anger of those two ancient creatures slumbering underground.

However, during this operation to capture Voodoo, the Plasma King's usually invincible special ability was completely rendered useless.

It wasn't that the king's skills were lacking, causing his abilities to malfunction; nor was it because of some special magnetic field interference in the vicinity that rendered his listening ability ineffective; nor was it because he had once again been tormented by fate, suddenly losing this innate talent and curse… but rather for a simpler, and more cruel reason—

All the Pokémon who witnessed the crime died from poisoning.

Heart stopped beating, breathing ceased, brain died... and the voice was lost—like being trapped in a dark, sunless Poké Ball.

From the tourmaline cave where the Plasma Cluster first discovered the poisoner's trail, to Voodoo's second hideout—the frozen warehouse in Fanba City—to the white forest at the foot of Mount Reversible, isolated from the outside world, and finally to the giant cave in Kagome Town...

Throughout the pursuit of the poisoner, N encountered not a single wild Pokémon that had ever witnessed Voodoo's presence. In other words—every single Pokémon that had encountered the poisoner was killed without exception…

They turned into the countless corpses he witnessed along the way.

A shrew, having entered Voodoo's restricted area, stepped into a "Poison Spike" trap and perished in the mountains with a bewildered expression; a budding deer, passing by the escape route of a poisoner, was attacked by a Poison-type Pokémon, its neck being gnawed by "Poison Fang," and it died in agony amidst terror; a greypigeon flying through the sky was struck by an upward "Poison Needle," losing its ability to move and falling to its death; a wild centipede, attracted by the scent of blood and venom to the crime scene, was also attacked by a "Poison" move, ultimately struggling to its death while afflicted with an abnormal status...

The human seemed to be possessed by some kind of obsession, relentlessly slaughtering every Pokémon he encountered along the way.

Common sense dictates that such a simple act of killing should be entirely devoid of any benefit.

Wild spirits abandoned in the wilderness cannot turn into money and flow into the criminal's wallet, nor will they become experience points to make the murderer stronger, as in video games.

The venom collected by Team Plasma from the corpses showed that although the venom used by the poison-type Poison Pokémon under the command of the drug lord had been specially formulated and enhanced to a level that amazed even the scientists within Team Plasma, its toxicity remained unchanged throughout the crimes committed.

This indicates that Voodoo, who committed numerous atrocities in the Hoenn region, had already completed his venom research before arriving in Unova. The killer's motives were completely different from those in the Hoenn period; it was definitely not a killing for the so-called "toxicity testing."

Even from the fugitive's perspective, wild Pokémon don't have a social relationship with humans, and their deaths in remote areas wouldn't even attract the attention of the Unova League police—in other words, even if the Pokémon that witnessed Voodoo were allowed to scatter and escape, these Pokémon wouldn't pose any threat to the escaped poisoner. Besides, those Pokémon didn't even know Voodoo…

However, despite this, Voodoo continued to kill mercilessly along his escape route, just as in reality.

Even realizing he was being hunted by Team Plasma, he stubbornly wasted every second of his escape time killing innocent, harmless wild Pokémon...

Was this a crime committed out of some kind of morbid psychology, such as a compulsive killing disorder? Or was it to pursue some belief or pleasure?

No, N simply couldn't convince himself with such a crude conclusion.

Judging from the modus operandi, this does not seem to be a crime committed based on some kind of paranoid psychology.

On his journey to become the King of Team Plasma, N has faced countless battles with humans who disregard the lives of Pokémon, including vicious trainers who treat life like dirt, poachers who see Pokémon as commodities, mad scientists who conduct experiments that push the boundaries of morality, and mentally unstable patients...

However, the present-day Voodoo is completely different from the battle traces left by those people.

Rather than calling him a madman who enjoys killing, judging from the traces of Pokémon battles, he is more like an assassin who maximizes the destructive power of his Pokémon.

Contrary to the characteristics of most paranoid crimes, Voodoo's massacres in the Unova region seemed to have completely abandoned his personal style, instead focusing on efficiency and cost. Every wound was as precise and deadly as an autopsy, and he would not do anything unnecessary if he could kill with one blow.

The reason why most of the traces left behind are poison-type moves is simply because the poison used by the Voodoo Pokémon has been specially modified, making it more skillful and efficient in attack, which makes trainers more inclined to choose this fighting style.

Voodoo may have indeed fallen into a kind of paranoia, but this poisoner must have maintained a calm mind beyond that paranoia, and his elves were not in a state of frenzy or berserk. Otherwise, they could not have maintained such a swift and decisive killing method throughout these forty-six consecutive poisonings.

So the question comes back to square one—why did Voodoo kill Pokémon in the first place?

N once speculated that it was possible that because of his existence, Voodoo, who knew of N's sensory abilities, deliberately poisoned all the wild Pokémon that had seen him in order to hide his whereabouts.

However, this idea was rejected the moment it came to mind—if the other party wanted to hide their whereabouts, why would they leave all the corpses of wild elves at the crime scene without any concealment?

In fact, it was because the Plasma Group discovered the corpse of an elf, murdered and abandoned by Voodoo, near the Tourmaline Cave that they began tracking down this vicious poisoner.

The reason they knew that the perpetrator was Futo, who had committed numerous bloody crimes in the Hoenn region, was because a road camera on a deserted street captured footage of him on his way. After comparing the information, they found Futo's criminal records in the Hoenn region.

Most chillingly, in the crude footage captured by that nearly abandoned camera, the drug addict's face was clearly visible, his gaze fixed on the lens.

Fudu had actually made eye contact with a surveillance camera!

It's hard to imagine that the serial killer who didn't even spare the birds flying overhead could so carelessly ignore the camera pointed at him—even though he could have easily avoided or destroyed it, he still brazenly left his image on the device.

Machines can be ignored, but life must be destroyed—what kind of action logic leads a drug killer who is being hunted to make such a judgment?

N feels like he is facing an equation with no known conditions. No matter how much he tries to deduce and exhaust the possibilities, his thinking always goes around in circles and returns to the starting point.

He had hoped that the situation would improve after the poisoner was caught—but things didn't go as planned.

Voodoo died, along with his companions.

The Poison/Fire type Saurami, the purple Weezing, the powdery-skinned Dustmoth, the four-winged Crobat, the red-fanged Scyther, and the Galar form of Slowking.

He died in the Giant Cave in the northern part of Kagome Town.

He died from a type of poisoning never seen before.

A new equation appeared before the king's eyes... and far more variables than the equation to be solved.

The only thing that can be confirmed is this:

That was the only fact that the incomplete equation could lead to, but at best it was just a vague concept that could be temporarily called a "conclusion"... It seemed meaningless in the face of the newly appeared corpses.

As if mocking himself, the King of Team Plasma revealed this conclusion to the Fire Elite Four member from Kalos—

“There was a clear lack of survival skills in Voodoo’s actions.”

N said—

“Throughout our pursuit, Voodoo never once attempted to communicate, negotiate, or argue with us. He simply trekked through mountains and rivers, avoiding cities where he could easily blend in with the crowds, and plunging headlong into remote, untouched forests. Not only did he fail to destroy the cameras that could reveal his identity, but he also wasted time killing large numbers of wild elves, leaving their corpses like road signs in place. This almost certainly shows that Voodoo had no intention of shaking off his pursuers and escaping alive.”

"Even though our Plasma Group was chasing us day and night, Voodoo was still one step ahead of us, maintaining a comfortable lead until we reached the Giant's Cave. For a human to do this, they would have to flee without eating, drinking, or sleeping, otherwise it would be impossible to shake off the organized pursuit of an entire group."

“But Vudu persisted in this state for nearly half a month.”

Inside the dimly lit giant's cave, standing among the bustling Team Plasma members, N pointed to the corpse ahead and said—

"The autopsy at the scene also proved this point. The trainer's physical condition was already on the verge of collapse before he died. Even if he had not been poisoned and had not received timely treatment, he would have been at least half dead after leaving the hospital. I think we can get a vague sense of the poisoner's mental state at the time from this information."

"It's as if escaping wasn't the goal, but rather the killing along the way was."

Facing the battered and gruesome body of the drug addict, covered in mud and blood, the news anchor remarked with deep conviction—