Ash who is startled snapped back to reality.
But it was too late.
The piece of chalk arced through the air in a perfect parabola, striking her squarely on the forehead just as she was about to stand up and sending her already unsteady body tilting backward—
"Ah!"
"Teacher—Ash fainted!"
"Ash! Are you okay…?"
…
After a chaotic rush, Ash woke up in the school's medical room.
The unfamiliar yet oddly familiar ceiling above her made her expression turn complicated.
In the few minutes she'd been unconscious, Ash had finally absorbed memories from this body's past.
This place was called Gaia, a planet that was four times larger than Earth.
However, unlike Earth, this world was unique—it was a place where humans and extraordinary creatures called Spirit Beasts had coexisted since ancient times.
The Humans here could form soul bonds with Spirit Beasts and becoming something like Pokémon Trainers, known here as Beast Master.
By guiding their contracted Spirit Beasts, Beast Master wielded powers that could rival or even surpassed the strongest weapons Ash could remember from Earth.
Yet, unlike Pokémon Trainers, the humans on Gaia actually had evolved from a mysterious type of Spirit Beast.
According to ancient records and the memories Ash inherited, there once existed spirit beasts that were weak but possessed extraordinary intelligence.
In order to reach their full potential, these creatures abandoned their "beastly" forms and evolving into bipedal beings.
After countless years, they eventually became humans—a unique kind of Spirit Beast with spiritual energy but no natural way to release it.
In simpler terms, it was almost as if humans were an advanced type of animal—or so Ash interpreted it.
And here was the crucial part.
In a world where Spirit Beasts weren't born powerful, humanity's ancestors discovered that by forming soul bonds with these low-level Spirit Beasts, they could lend them spiritual energy, allowing them to grow strong enough to contend with more advanced Spirit Beasts.
This revelation thrilled the humans in the past, who had grown weaker after losing their "beastly" form and the ability to release their spiritual energy.
In those ancient times, when humans and Spirit Beasts frequently clashed over territory, a new profession emerged—Beast Master.
Using force to establish soul bonds, the first Beast Master enslaved many lower-level Spirit Beasts to fight on their behalf.
By feeding them with Beast Master's spiritual energy, these weak Spirit Beasts quickly grew stronger than they ever could in the wild and leveling up through battle.
But humanity was far from satisfied with this.
Soon after, a groundbreaking ability emerged, transforming everything—
Max-Evolution.
This power imitated the growth and evolution of Spirit Beasts through artificial means, using human spiritual energy to initiate and maintain the process.
It allowed a Spirit Beast below its complete form to temporarily reach a higher stage, enabling weaker Spirit Beasts to contend with stronger ones, and stronger Spirit Beasts to explore new evolution paths beyond their species' natural limits.
Upon recalling this memory, Ash immediately thought of Mega Evolution from the Pokémon games.