539 CH12 (534), Military (7)

The rest of the month after that, well, I don't want to call it disappointing so let's go with interesting instead, horde experience, was spent with me working on my gun skills as well as body conditioning while learning the many many rules and customs one had to adhere to as a soldier.

Though I did find out or rather confirm that the higher one's position was, the less restricted one was in the way one had to behave, so I guess that universal rule persisted here as well. Oh, and I got to find out more about the military's structure, so that was interesting I guess.

As a result of that, I also found out that my previous belief about the number of high-ranking trainers in Kanto and the other regions was slightly off. It seemed that the military's "top forces" were not included in the numbers I looked up.

They kept those two records independent since one was the record of the trainers registered with the alliance, while the other was a force directly working for the alliance.

Similarly, Gym Leaders, Gym Personell, and active Alliance Personell were not included in that list as well, but on a separate one. I had to do some research, but in the end, I came up with a new set of numbers that I was sure was close enough to the truth.

The number of Elite-class trainers in Kanto was closer to 6400, and there were close to 330 Champion-Class trainers in Kanto, along with close to 35 Master-Class trainers and 5 Legendary-Class trainers.

The difference was not world-shaking, but every single additional high-class trainer counted I guess, and even if the addition of the other regions was only 40 to 70% of Kanto, adding the numbers for the 17 known regions aside from Kanto up still added more than a full region worth of trainers to the mix.

Naturally, I would not be me if that stuff was all I did during the rest of the third month. No, Yelena's story about the Houndoom horde they faced, or rather the Houndour that fled and settled close by, piqued my interest for obvious reasons, so I began to look up all the various intrusions our military camp faced over the last decade or so.

I was interested to see whether some of them could rouse my interest and if I could get an idea in which direction they had been forced to deviate so that I could potentially track them down in the (near) future to see if I could lure them into Utopia. By the end of the month, I had managed to find four more cases that managed to rouse my interest.

The first one was an enormous 3-star Beedrill horde that attacked 6 years ago. The swarm fought right up until their queen, as in leader and not a Beedril with a King/Queen gene, died, which took until over 98% of the Beedrill swarm met their end, leaving only about 1800 Beedrill that only flew away once the queen was dead.

They apparently flew northwestward and I would be lying if I said that I was not interested in getting them. They would fit right in among Parvati/Beedrill's current underlings after all, which was why the swarm made it onto the list.

The second case was a grouping of 1500, formed by the Quagsire line, that had been driven off 3.5 years ago after a brief confrontation with the first battalion. The usually easygoing and carefree nature of the Quagsire line resulted in them quickly avoiding any further conflict after the initial clash, which meant no real harm happened to either side during the "conflict" if it could called be that.

I was honestly surprised the 1st battalion did not simply let them in considering what I had seen during my first deployment and the fact that some more Quagsire in Kanto would be no problem at all. In fact, some more Pokemon with the kind of disposition Quagsire and Wooper were known for would have been pretty good. That was also the main reason they made it on the list, along with their typing.

The third case was one that definitely had my interest since it involved a 3.5-star herd/gathering of the Rhydon/Rhyhorn line. A group with less than 1000 members had been stopped from entering Kanto and had been forced westward after the defenders had been pushed to call for backup. This happened nearly 9 years ago, so I was not too hopeful, even though I would love to add them to Utopia, which was why I still added them to the list of cases to follow up upon.

The fourth case was a rather recent one that happened only 1.5 years ago. The intruders were not even numerous enough that I would call them a mob, but nonetheless, a 1-star sleuth of 60 Vigoroth was repelled as they tried to force their way into Kanto.

The Vigoroth ran straight back in the direction they came from after being overwhelmed when they tried to rush through 10 squads, which was 120 soldiers plus their Pokemon, by themselves. Those Vigoroth were definitely not the brightest bunch, but the prospect of a Slaking was certainly attractive enough for me to add them to the list.

Anyway, there were more cases than that, but those 4 were the ones that I was the most interested in, which meant that I wanted to check them first before considering whether to follow up on the others. Surprisingly, the chance to do so came much earlier than I had expected.

After having to remain within the border camp during the last three months, I ended up being surprised when I was informed, at the start of the fourth month, that I was allowed to leave the camp on Groudays for a period of 6 hours.

Obviously, the first thing I did on the first Grouday of that month was to meet up with my parents and friends, or at least that's what everyone would think, but that was in fact not the first thing I did. No, my first action was to track down the Houndour den I had heard about.

I teleported to the place I had come to during my first outing before following Yelena's description and heading 200 km to the northeast of the place. However, I failed to spot any Houndour. Still, it had been slightly more than two years, so some deviation was no surprise since they might have moved to a better/bigger area.

I used the supposed area as a staging point and began to swiftly explore the area around this place via a combination of flying and teleportation. Also, since multiple pairs were better than one, I had everyone on the main team capable of teleporting or flying help me, and with so many eyes looking/searching we managed to spot the new Houndour den within just 10 minutes.

Fortuna/Togetic was the one that managed to spot it. The new location was about 320 km to the northeast of the staging point, and she immediately signaled the rest of us so that we could all gather back together at the staging point.

Once everyone gathered, I thanked them for their help before recalling them all aside from Mothra/Butterfree, Horus/Xatu, Enji/Arcanine, Luna/Clefable, Hera/Pidgeot, and obviously Fortuna/Togetic. I thought for a bit before I called out Nyx/Umbreon as well. You never know, having a dark type present could prove helpful.

Though, it certainly did not end up helping with the first impression. I had Fortuna show the way, and as soon as we stepped into the den's immediate area, we heard a warning Howl being released, before a bunch of Houndour began to surround us and growl in a threatening way.

As soon as there were more than 50 of them, which took less than half a minute, they attacked us with Ember, without giving me or any of my Pokemon any real chance to speak to them. Obviously, an attack of that strength, even if it came from around 50 Houndour, was not threatening to us at all.

Luna alone stopped all of the Embers with Psychic before strangling/crushing them out of existence. Seeing their attacks easily crushed like that, the Houndour got extremely vigilant, and a few of them released another Howl, calling for backup and warning the rest of their group that we were strong. I/we allowed that to happen since their gathering together would make my job easier.

I was not worried about them threatening my safety even if all of the supposedly 2000 Houndour ended up surrounding me since I doubted that any of them managed to become strong enough to become a threat to me within just two years considering that the strongest was only at the (high) bronze stage when they fled two years ago.

I was absolutely sure that my Pokmeon were stronger than them by far, and if it came down to it I could take out a bunch of them to balance out the numbers a bit, so I waited for more of them to come over since none of the Houndour around us showed any signs of retreating. That none of my Pokemon aside from Luna had shown any indicator of their strength was probably the reason for that.

It took less than two minutes for the number of Houndour to swell to over two hundred, and once an actual Houndoom joined in, which was a pleasant surprise, they began to attack once again. This time they released a coordinated cloud of Smog, which was easily taken care of through a Gust from Hera.

Seeing another gold stage reveal itself, the silver stage Houndoom hesitated a bit but regained its conference when another 4 silver stage Houndoom along with 200 more Houndour joined their enforcement. On the other hand, seeing how the number of Houndour had reached over 400, I decided to reel in the net for now.

Luna used Gravity to increase the gravity around us by close to 4 times, which pressed all Houndour into the ground and completely immobilized them. She initially raised it to 5 times, but reduced it to less than 4 times when she noticed that the Houndour were unable to endure the effects of 5 times gravity.

The five Houndoom were still able to struggle/move due to Luna's consideration of the Houndour, but they froze in fright when one of my Pokemon appeared beside each one of the five Houndoom and displayed their strength.

In fact, the Houndoom that was chosen by Mothra ended up lying flat on the ground and whimpering when it noticed that a dark gold stage Pokemon had appeared on its head. I was certain that Mothra happily patting its head while releasing her actual strength did definitely not help Houndoom's fright.

Regardless, all 5 Houndoom ended up lying down in fright/submission, and I let Luna reduce the effect of gravity to 2 times once I was sure the Houndour had realized the situation they were in. I moved up to the strongest Houndoom, which happened to be the unfortunate fellow on whose head Mothra had landed.

I inquired into the situation of their pack, and it appeared that the Houndour had suffered a bit during the last two years since their numbers got further reduced to around 1500. That also explained why they were so quick to attack when we showed up in/close to their den. I would be like that as well if I was first decimated and then lost around 500 of my brethren in the last two years.

Still, their struggle to survive did have some "positive" effects on their pack, if one could call anything about their struggle positive. Due to having to fight a lot because of their low strength, more than 30 of the Houndour evolved to Houndoom and broke through to the silver stage, which allowed them to breathe a bit easier in the last year.

After hearing about their situation, I was more confident in my offer, so I turned my "good guy" aura and began to offer Houndoom and the others some candy, I meant the opportunity to move into a virtual paradise, which could actually apply to any relatively safe and fertile area compared to their current situation.

Houndoom obviously struggled with believing me despite my good guy aura, which showed just how distrustful they currently were. Seeing Houndoom's hesitation, I offered to quickly bring him to the place I wanted to relocate them to so that he could take a look, and he ended up agreeing after Mothra encouragingly pat him on his head.

I left the others outside and brought Houndoom as well as Mothra, who was riding along, to Utopia. Houndoom naturally went through the Utopia special, and the habitat that was generated for him actually got automatically fused into one of the areas that was appropriate for it.

This was the first time since the upgrade that I introduced someone new to Utopia, so I had not known that the habitat generation had been improved as well. While it might seem like a small thing, the fact that Utopia could autonomously decide which area was objectively the best for a species made my life easier.

Anyway, I had not bothered to check Houndoom's status before this, but I did so after the optimization since I could not help but be curious about how it looked after the upgrade, and it appeared that Houndoom used to have pretty good potential since it had been pushed to deep blue.

Thanks to Utopia's effect, Houndoom was quite a bit friendlier toward me than before so he did not mind me patting him, which I did to check his status. Not that he would have dared to stop me even without that effect with Mothra still riding on top of his head.

Regardless, once my curiosity had been satiated, I moved us to the habitat Utopia generated and allowed Houndoom to explore the area to get a picture of the place, and from the way his tail waggled, I could definitely say that he was happy with what he saw.

Still, a few minutes later I decided that this was enough, so I brought us back to the outside, where the situation was the same as before. Well, nearly the same, just with more subdued Houndour and Houndoom since apparently a few more had come over while we were gone, only to get subdued as well.

Houndoom actually seemed disappointed to have left Utopia and his reaction attracted the attention of all the subdued Houndour and Houndoom. The next part was easy, with Houndoom excitedly persuading the rest that Utopia was awesome.

It took some time, like 5 minutes, before Houndoom managed to persuade all the other Houndoom to at least take a look at Utopia, which was all I needed to succeed, and as I had expected, as soon as they entered, they turned to little fans of Utopia as well.

With their support, or order depending on how you looked at it, I moved all of the Houndour inside Utopia as well, and once I had done that, I left Horus along with one of the Houndoom inside Utopia before moving to the center of the Houndour den with the other Houndoom to pick up the rest of their pack.

No matter how awesome Utopia was, and how strong Horus was, I naturally did not let him watch over all those newcomers on his own. No, I transferred a bunch of the others, including Stan/Gyarados, to his side to help him keep an eye on the others. It also served to show them part of our true strength, which just was a bonus.

Anyway, on the outside, we made it to the center of the den, and as soon as we did, the 7 Houndoom released a howl that called all members of their pack to their side, including all the other Houndoom. Our presence naturally earned the doubt, suspicion, and curiosity of all new arrivals, but seeing the behavior of the 7 Houndoom leaders, they did not try anything against us.

It took around 10 minutes, but finally, all 22 leftover Houndoom and the roughly 1000 leftover Houndour gathered around us. "Our" 7 Houndoom then began to tell them about Utopia and my offer, which, unsurprisingly was met with some suspicion.

Still, after some more persuasion, they gave their fellow Houndoom the benefit of the doubt, and half of them agreed to take a look inside Utopia. Naturally, once they agreed to that, this whole operation was done deal, and predictably, the 11 Houndoom were taken in by Utopia's awesomeness as well.

Seeing them agreeing with the previous 7 Houndoom, the others agreed to enter as well, which led to the conclusion of all the other Houndour as well. It might have taken me some extra steps/"work", but after spending roughly 60 minutes on the whole thing, I ultimately managed to bag myself about 1500 Houndour along with 30 Houndoom, so I left the area as a happy camper and headed to Viridian City since that was where I agreed to meet my parents.

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