49 CH26 (49), Progress (2)
After their trip to Lake Hope Mikail just continued with his routines for the next 2 months.
During that time he kept training his Pokemon as thoroughly as possible, focusing on all their parameters and the mastery of their moves.
He also kept up his own training as well as tracking the progress of his Magikarp experiment.
He obviously kept combing through the area around their property as well and he decided to do two more ballcrafting sessions.
During the first week, the only noteworthy events were Caterpie improving Bug Bite to Beginner mastery, Mothra raising Tackle to Beginner grade, and Natu boosting Teleportation to Novice grade.
The 2nd week was more eventful compared to the first.
Let's start with his Pokemon.
Caterpie focused on Tackle during this week and raised it to Beginner mastery.
He decided to let Mothra focus on Confusion for now and she managed to reach Novice grade with the move during this week.
Natu on the other hand was tasked with improving Teleport because that was always going to be one of his main moves.
While he did not increase his mastery he was not far from it.
Next up was his own training, specifically his telekinesis.
By the end of the 2nd week, Mikail had managed to levitate 30 stones in a 30-meter radius for 30 minutes.
After that, he decided to start the next exercise, which was levitating 1-kg heavy piles of sand instead of 1-kg stones.
Compared to levitating stones, levitating sand took way more focus.
He had to concentrate on keeping the pile together or he risked losing control of a part, which would then fall to the ground.
Mikail began the new exercise with one pile of sand.
Aside from this, there was also his Magikarp experiment.
Mikail was forced to stop the experiment for the dragon supplement side-tester.
Its aggression and irritability went through the roof and its health kept deteriorating.
If he kept up the experiment the specimen would either suffer a psychotic breakdown or die because of its worsening physical state.
The other two specimens were stable for now.
The last event of the 2nd week was him completely combing through the southwestern area.
He managed to find 3 new materials during the process, which was a good harvest.
'Name: Useful Mud
Type: Ground
Class: F
Uses: It's mud, which consists of thickened ground-type energy that has absorbed a bit of water-type energy from its surroundings.
Contains ground-type energy and can be used as a supplement to help ground-type Pokemon.
It can also slightly increase their resistance to water.
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Name: Floating Dandelion
Type: Air/Plant
Class: F
Uses: It's a Dandelion, that has absorbed energy from the atmosphere.
Contains air-type energy and can be used as a supplement to help flying-type Pokemon.
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Name: Ancient Tree Core
Type: Ghost
Class: D
Uses: It's the core of a fallen tree, that has been absorbing the spectral/nether energy in its surroundings for over 400 years.
If left alone the tree could have become a Phantump.
Contains ghost-type energy and can be used as a supplement to help ghost-type Pokemon, especially useful for the Phantump-line.'
When he found the fallen tree he sensed a disturbance in the force, *ahem* sensed a gloomy atmosphere around the tree so he decided to check it out.
After reading that it could turn into a Phantump in the future Mikail debated if he should leave it alone so that he could catch it later but ultimately decided to harvest the core because he was not sure how long the formation/transition to Phantump would take.
The tree was ancient, so it could take another 100 years or so for all he knew.
What was also interesting to him, was that the tree had not decomposed even after 400 years and, obviously, that it had the potential to transform into a Phantump even without the soul of a human/pokemon being available.
He was happy that there were Phantump that were not the transformed soul of a dead/murdered child.
This confirmed or at least showed to him that there were naturally formed ghost-type Pokemon as well and that not every ghost was the result of a sapient being dying and turning into a ghost for one reason or another.
Anyway, moving on.
On the third day of the third week, Caterpie advanced to (mid) iron-stage and he kept training his Electroweb, which was harder to train than his other moves.
On the other hand, Natu managed to achieve Beginner mastery for Teleport, and once he had done that they decide to bring his Leer up to Beginner mastery and Stored Power up to Proficient first before focusing on Teleport once more.
As far as his own training was concerned, he managed to increase the number of sand piles to 2.
Mikail also tried another round of ball crafting during this week, because he wanted to test if his drawing and writing exercises with the different brushes had helped.
While he failed once more, he noted that the process felt a bit easier.
During the 4th week, a few important things happened as well.
Mothra improved Confusion to Beginner mastery and Natu did the same for Leer.
Mikail himself managed to raise the number of piles to 3.
He decided to start changing their forms while levitating them, to increase the difficulty of the exercise.
The form change for all sandpiles was the same because simultaneously changing the 3 piles to different forms was much harder.
He decided to reserve that exercise for the future.
Mikail also finished combing through the southern area during the 4th week but unfortunately, he did not find any new materials.
On the other hand, his Magikarp experiment showed some progress during the 4th week.
Magidraco gained her second "dragon" scale at the beginning of the week and this time the scale that changed its color was located on her back.
Other than that she showed no other obvious changes that could be observed.
His plant specimen was stable at the beginning as well, but a few days before the end of the week that changed.
The plant-type energy inside the specimen seemed to have reached a critical amount because a major reaction in the form of a high fever suddenly happened.
He assumed that it was either a rejection or adaptation phenomenon that triggered after a large amount of grass-type energy had accumulated.
He believed that the reason for this was that grass energy was much milder than the other energy-types he used for his experiment, so until a certain volume was reached the Pokemon showed no adverse effects because the Pokemon could tolerate it.
Mikail was certain that if he had allowed the specimen to fully digest the grass-type energy instead of steadily introducing more, then nothing would have happened to his specimen.
He fed his specimen a mix of oran, leppa, rawst, and lum berries to help her against the fever she had and to keep her body from collapsing.
It took 3 days for the fever to start to lessen and to his surprise, the potential of the specimen increased from deep yellow to light green at the end of the 3 days.
Another day later his specimen became stable and he decided to continue feeding her the grass-type supplement.
He noted that the specimen was more enthusiastic towards the supplement than before.
During the 5th week, not much happened except for Caterpie finally improving Electroweb to Beginner mastery, which meant that all his moves reached Beginner mastery.
Mikail decided to have Caterpie focus solely on String Shot from here on out at least until he reached the Proficient grade in it.
He did think that this would take quite some time because Caterpie was much slower than Mothra as far as training moves was concerned and even she took a bit to do so.
Aside from Caterpie, Natu improved his Stored Power to Proficient mastery as well, so he decided to focus on Teleport once more.
Besides these two events, nothing else happened during the 5th week.
Compared to the 5th week, the 6th week was more eventful.
At the beginning of the 6th week his plant specimen, from now on dubbed Magiflora, gained its first different colored scale.
The scale was lime green and unlike Magidraco whose scale appeared on her forehead, this one appeared in the center of Magiflora's chest.
Three days later Magidraco gained her 3rd "dragon" scale near her second one and her potential finally increased to light green as well.
Another thing that happened was that Mothra managed to reach Proficient mastery with her Confusion.
He was not bragging but Mikail was sure that she was better with the move than some Butterfree were, which just showed how awesome she was.
They decide that Mothra would pause training Confusion and train up her Bug Bite and Electroweb instead.
Aside from these two events Mikail also started another round of ballcrafting.
Well, the result was still the same, which meant he failed.
But!!!, he did at least manage to produce a Common Ball this time.
It just turned out to be an 'F'-class Common Ball, so it was categorized as a failure.
'Name: Common Ball
Type: None
Class: F
Faults: Upper half, interior.
The first part of the third line is too thick by 1 mm.
The portrayal of Regigigas has to be positioned 1 mm to the left.
(19 more mistakes) .....
Uses: Common Balls can be used to catch wild Pokemon.
The Common Ball has the same probability of catching any Pokemon as the standard Pokeball, but if it is used against Normal-types the probability doubles.
This Common Ball can be considered a failure because it will be unable to catch any Pokemon, except maybe for some newborn Pokemons.'
When he saw the status of the Common Ball Mikail was simultaneously happy and unhappy.
'Ouch, the burn.
The ball does not even work on all newborns.
No wonder it is considered a failure and not only that, but the number of mistakes is much higher than I had thought.
I made 21 mistakes during the crafting process and here I thought I did a decent job.
The only positive thing is that I can finally see what I did wrong.
Before this, I couldn't see the status of failures, probably because they were not even considered finished products, but with this one, I can.
Now I can finally learn from my mistakes because until now the only thing I could do was try to be more precise, steady, and careful.
This is the difference between having a teacher and having none.
A teacher can point out your mistakes and tell you what to do better.
Now that I can see the faults of my product, I can do the same, which means my ballcrafting will finally start to improve for real.'
He wanted to see if his space could upgrade his ball, but then he remembered that he was already inside his space and that there had been no indication that it would improve it.
Nonetheless, he went out of his space with the ball and put it inside his space again but nothing happened.
Two days into the 7th week Mikail managed to levitate 4 piles of sand and not only that but he also expanded his range from 30 to 40 meters.
The next day he finished combing through the southeastern area.
He, thankfully, managed to find 2 new materials during the process.
'Name: Wepear Berry
Type: Plant
Class: F
Uses: Contains nutrition and plant energy.
Can be eaten as food and causes the consumer to relax greatly, which may cause drowsiness.
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Name: Pink Apricorn
Type: Plant
Class: F
Uses: Contains nutrition and a mix of energies.
Can be eaten as food and helps slightly with physical training.
Can be used to produce various PokeBalls.'
The berry was an okay find but he was happy over every new apricorn he found.
He started combing through the eastern area the day after.
Mothra managed to improve her Bug Bite to Proficient by the end of the 7th week.
Mikail had to admit that it was something else to see a cute little thing like Mothra rip out parts out of boulders by using her Bug Bite.
That more than anything proved to him once more how tenacious Pokemon were because he was sure even (low) iron-stage Pokemon could resist this move one or two times while only gaining bruises before it started getting injured.
During the 8th week, on Arcday during their call, Rose told Mikail that her Vulpix egg had moved once the day before.
Other than that, Natu managed to improve his Teleport to Proficient mastery and Mothra did the same for Electroweb.
Besides that, he finished combing through the eastern area but he, unfortunately, did not manage to find anything new and after this, only the northeastern area was left for him to comb through.
The last few days of the 2 months were part of the 9th week.
During these 4 days, quite a few things happened, when compared to the calmer 8th week.
During this time Magidraco gained her 4th "dragon" scale, while Magiflora gained her second scale.
Mikail noted that the process of gaining scales took quite a bit longer for Magiflora than for Magidraco.
He naturally attributed this to their affinities.
He knew that Magidraco had a natural dragon-type affinity and even if Magiflora gained a grass-type affinity after her fever, which he still could not control, her new affinity could not compare to Magidraco's natural one.
At least not yet.
Besides this, his Caterpie improved his String Shot's mastery to Proficient and Mothra tried to use her Bug Bite and Electroweb as references to learn Thunder Fang.
Despite being the one to propose the idea he was surprised when she actually managed to form an Initial Thunder Fang.
As expected of Mothra, she did not disappoint and even though neither Mothra nor Natu advanced to the (high) iron stage during these 2 months, Mikail was sure that they were not far too from advancing either way.
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