"The power of Pokémon is extraordinary," a Kalos craftsman said, barely above a murmur.
Around him, Karen and the others had moved past their initial shock into something quieter and more deliberate. If Kalos could learn to work alongside Pokémon this way, could the common people there also stop going hungry?
Could the suffering that had been accepted as simply the nature of things actually be changed?
Elif led the group along the field's edge, and they walked in near silence, taking in the way farmland and Pokémon habitat were woven together without conflict.
For the Pokémon, the fields were home. For the farmers, the Pokémon living nearby were partners in the work of growing things. The word that kept forming in Karen's mind, without quite being spoken, was symbiosis.
After the fields, Elif brought them to one of Unova's factories.
When the word "factory" was first used, the image that formed in the minds of the Kalos delegation was automatic and immediate: a dark, damp space, the smell of rust and unwashed bodies, the sounds of forced labor. That was what a factory meant to people who had grown up in Kalos.
What they walked into was something else entirely.
Bright electric lights illuminated every corner. The tools were clean and organized. Pokémon and craftsmen worked alongside each other in practiced, easy coordination. Klink units spun with precise efficiency, grinding components to exact tolerances.
Machoke moved heavy steel materials without rushing, their strength applied with care. Charizard maintained a steady, controlled flame at the forging furnace, adjusting it with subtle shifts of breath. Chansey moved through the floor, pausing to treat minor injuries and fatigue wherever they appeared.
Everything was orderly. Everything was calm.
Karen and the others stood and stared.
Elif smiled. "The factories, like much of what you have seen, came from His Majesty Lucien's planning. Large-scale production increases the Kingdom's output and creates stable employment for ordinary people."
Karen caught a word. "Ordinary people? Not slaves?"
Elif looked at him with a mild expression of surprise, then answered carefully.
"The Unova Kingdom has no slaves. Every person here is a free and equal citizen."
The silence that followed was absolute.
"That cannot be possible," Karen said at last, his voice shaking. "Without slaves, who performs the hardest and lowest work? The noble families would never allow it. They would resist with everything they have."
"Every job, regardless of how difficult, is compensated with wages," Elif said. "So people choose to do hard work, because they are paid for it. They are not slaves. They are workers in a hired relationship. We pay them, they work, and when the day ends, they go home to their families. No one beats them. No one considers them property."
He continued.
"Whether someone works in the palace or sweeps the streets, they receive wages, scheduled rest, and are treated with dignity. When His Majesty Lucien took office, one of his first acts was to abolish slavery entirely. There was resistance, at first. But with Kyurem standing behind His Majesty's word, that resistance found no ground to stand on."
He paused, and his voice became quieter but no less firm.
"His Majesty has always said that a nation exists to protect its people, not to use them. Power and nobility were never meant to be tools for crushing those below.
They were meant to ensure that more people could live in peace. Any prosperity built on the suffering of slaves is built on sand. It looks solid. It falls apart."
He let the words settle.
"Only when every person is treated as equal, and the people's hearts are at peace, can a nation become genuinely strong."
The Kalos delegation did not speak for a long time.
They had been born into a system of rigid hierarchy and had never, not once in their lives, thought to question it. Nobles were superior by birth. Slaves were inferior by birth. Pokémon were instruments.
These were not beliefs they had chosen. They had simply been the shape of the world, absorbed before they were old enough to have opinions about it. No one questioned it. No one resisted it. Slaves labored, were ordered around, beaten, discarded.
Commoners feared the powerful and kept their heads down. Pokémon were tamed and put to use.
For a thousand years, this had simply been how things were.
And everything in Unova was breaking it apart completely, without effort, simply by existing.
No slaves. No hierarchy between noble and common. Workers paid for their labor, rested when tired, treated when hurt.
Pokémon moving through the factory floor not as tools but as colleagues. Light and warmth and dignity, available to ordinary people as a matter of course rather than as something to hope for from a great distance.
An old craftsman who had spent decades in the Kalos workshops stood in the center of the factory floor, looking at the scene around him, and wept without making any sound.
His hands were calloused and scarred from a lifetime of forging weapons and building palaces for nobility who had never once learned his name. He had watched comrades collapse from exhaustion and not get up.
He had watched children be brought into the workshops young, before they were old enough to understand what it meant. He had always assumed that this was simply how the world worked, that everyone everywhere was surviving in the same way.
He had been wrong.
It turned out that ordinary people could walk without keeping their eyes on the ground.
It turned out that laborers could be respected.
It turned out that people could live with dignity.
"In Unova, as long as a person is willing to work, they have a stable life," Elif continued, his voice gentle. "The factories pay wages on time. People use those wages to buy food and shelter. The streets are clean and orderly. No one goes hungry. No one freezes."
"What His Majesty wants to build is not a powerful army or a magnificent palace. It is a world where every ordinary person can hold their head up and live peacefully."
Through all of this, AZ had not said a word. He stood to one side, his posture composed, his expression still. But beneath his sleeves, his hands were clenched.
Floette drifted from his shoulder and came to rest against his cheek, her petals brushing him softly, steadying something in him that had been shaking since they walked through the factory door.
AZ looked at the faces of the craftsmen working at their stations. Calm faces. Faces without fear.
He finally understood.
A truly powerful kingdom was not measured by the sharpness of its weapons or the extent of its territory. It was measured by whether it fed its young, supported its elderly, lifted up its poor, and treated every living thing with care.
Strength built on oppression was always temporary. Peace built on equality and protection was the only thing that lasted.
Unova, without its rigid hierarchies, its endless wars, its institutionalized suffering, possessed a kind of power that Kalos, for all its armies and Ultimate Weapons, had never come close to. It was the power of people who believed in where they lived and chose to build something there.
Karen bowed deeply to Elif, his whole body trembling slightly.
"Today has shown us the true meaning of governance. The true prosperity of a people. Kalos held to the old ways for a thousand years, and caused immeasurable suffering because of it."
"We have only been pretending to understand governance."
The officials and craftsmen around Karen bowed their heads. The shame was genuine, and so was the longing. Compared to what stood before them, Kalos had been sleepwalking for a thousand years.
Elif gently helped Karen straighten up, his tone warm and without condescension.
"Unova was not always like this. It is only because His Majesty Lucien cared for every living thing, and because he and the Pokémon built this together, that we have what you see today. The path was made by people. The rules were changed by people. As long as there is genuine care for the people, everything can be changed. Everything."
The words settled over the factory floor. Pokémon chirped softly. Machinery turned in its steady rhythm. Craftsmen talked quietly among themselves as they worked.
The Kalos delegation stood in silence and committed every detail to memory.
Leaving the factory, Elif led them back through the city toward the center of Lucien City. They moved through winding streets lined with clean storefronts and open squares, and then a building stopped them all in their tracks.
White walls trimmed with gold. Towers rising into the sky. At the entrance, two carved Tyranitar statues stood on either side of the great doors, their stone forms rendered with striking precision.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Elif said, pausing with quiet pride, "this is the Pokémon League headquarters. The center of all Pokémon training and competition in the Unova Region, and the primary hub for cooperation between people and Pokémon across the Kingdom."
The delegation looked up at it in silence, a collective solemnity settling over them. Every line of the building expressed the same ideas: cooperation, partnership, mutual strength.
Inside the League Hall, the space was alive with movement. Trainers and their Pokémon rested, trained, and moved between stations throughout the hall. A large notice board covered one wall, filled with chalk entries: Pokémon care schedules, Trainer exchange programs, reports of wild Pokémon activity in the areas around Lucien City.
To the left, staff members answered Trainer questions with patient, unhurried attention. To the right, Trainers of different ages sat together in the rest area, sharing stories and experiences, several Minccino and Riolu moving among them freely, the atmosphere entirely relaxed.
"Lord Elif, what is this place exactly?" Karen asked.
Elif smiled and explained.
"In Unova, humans and Pokémon don't share their lives in just one way. The Pokémon League exists specifically to expand and develop Pokémon battles.
Trainers capture Pokémon, train alongside them, and compete against other Trainers to test their strength and grow. The League oversees all of this: organizing competitions, managing events, and handling any incidents involving Pokémon anywhere in the Kingdom."
Battles. Training. Competition. Capture. The terms landed in the minds of the Kalos delegation as unfamiliar shapes that they turned over slowly, trying to find the right angles to understand them.
Questions came quickly, and Elif answered each one with patience: how competitions were structured, how injured Pokémon were cared for, how wild Pokémon were approached and captured with care rather than force.
Karen stood in the middle of the hall and looked around at everything, stroking his beard slowly.
Humans and Pokémon, organized like this. Which meant that in Unova, any ordinary person could become a capable Trainer. Anyone could form that kind of partnership with a Pokémon, develop it, and grow stronger alongside it.
His mind moved forward from there, and the scale of what he was seeing began to clarify.
Pokémon Centers for healing. Arenas for competition. Pokéballs for partnership. Travel routes between cities. A League system tying it all together. This was not a simple arrangement. It was a complete, self-sustaining structure, one that generated strength and prosperity and continued improving itself through every competition, every partnership, every journey a new Trainer took.
And in terms of defense: if the Unova Kingdom ever faced a threat like the one that had nearly destroyed Kalos, they would not be sending an army of soldiers with spears and crossbows.
They would be sending thousands of trained Pokémon partners, each one bonded to a Trainer who had spent years developing that relationship.
Karen felt the full weight of that thought land, and his breath caught.
The others around him had clearly arrived at the same place. Several of them had gone very still, expressions somewhere between awe and the particular feeling of realizing, all at once, how far behind they had fallen.