278 CH46 (276), Second Term Down (2)

Well, Mr. Burns had told me that my spars would resume during the third term, but he already deemed me ready at the start of the third month of my second term instead.

Because he viewed me as too strong to face the third-year students of the Secondary Rota Knight Academy, he arranged my sparring matches with the Tertiary Rota Knight Academy instead.

Furthermore, I was not facing the first-year students, which would have simply been my sparring partners from last year, but he organized the second-year students to be my sparring partners. That meant I got to spar against Erza and her year/classmates.

I was happy that I got to meet Erza once a week like this and from what I noticed Erza felt the same. No matter how one looked at it, the girl enjoyed fighting a lot, whether that be personal or Pokemon fights.

However, she, herself, admitted to me that she would definitely feel restless if she did not get to release some energy once in a while, so occasional personal battles were a must for her.

My first sparring session turned out great. Mr. Burns managed to exempt me from my classes for the whole day and organized 2 periods with each second-year class of the knight academy.

I got to face each class one after another, which was extremely tiring even for me, having to face one student after the other with only a few minutes of rest between each session, and that for 8 hours.

It turned into a stamina/endurance test as much as a sparring session, and by the end, I was completely exhausted but pretty satisfied with my performance. Except for using my psychic abilities, I had gone all out, and the result was that I lost 12 out of 79 spars, each with a different opponent.

Still, I felt the need to mention that 4 of those losses were against pretty strong students that I had to face after the 5 hours mark, so I had no problems with those. However, 5 of my losses happened because I was pretty much working on fumes while fighting.

I lost against people that were weaker than me by a considerable amount, but it showed me that I could be taken down by people I could normally beat easily if I was out of stamina or injured. So, I guess I could begrudgingly accept those losses as part of a lesson.

The other 3 losses happened while I was still (somewhat) at full capacity. I had zero issues with those since I lost against people that were about as strong as me or better battle prowess-wise

I mean that was the reason for these sparring sessions after all, for me to get better at fighting, and I could only do that against people as good or better than me. Oh, and Erza was among the 4 that beat me after the 5-hour mark, simply because her class was the last one I got to face.

Anyway, in addition to those 7, 7 more students were chosen by Mr. Burns, which brought the total number of potential sparring partners to 14. This was done so that I only had to fight those that could pose a challenge since we/I generally had 2 periods to spar with the Knight academy students.

The 5 students that managed to beat me because I was spent were not among the 14, but they turned out alright and did not make a fuss because of that. They even jokingly said that they now could brag about having beaten the famous Mikail Geo, and we all laughed at that since it was true regardless of how it happened.

2 of the 14 novice knights were unwilling to spend their 2 free periods on this, while the other 12 students agreed. Thankfully, they all had the same two periods free on Palkiday, so it was agreed that I would come to the Rota Knight Academy at those times.

Fortunately, it fell into the 3-period gap I had on Palkiday, so I did not have to ask for any special treatment in swapping around my classes/lessons. Truly, Lady Luck was smiling upon me, considering how fortuitous the situation was.

Anyway, I did not understand why those two declined, I mean it was not like they were only going to spar against me. No, they obviously would be sparring among themselves as well while I was facing someone.

Plus, it was not like there was no incentive for their participation, Mr. Burns told me the knight academy staff/higher-ups liked the arrangement. They decided to reward the students that regularly participated and showed progress.

The only reason I could come up with for their decision was laziness, which kinda contradicts the fact that they were novice knights which was not an easy thing to achieve.

Their ability to qualify as sparring partners also contradicted that assumption, but Erza told me that those two were from two rather big knight families, so they had to be able to do all that.

However, according to her, they did not do more than what they had to do, which was not a good attitude to have. It meant that they would probably not become much stronger than they already were. Which to be honest felt like a waste since the two appeared pretty talented.

Still, that was the highlight of the week, and the rest of the week was pretty calm. The next week turned out to be interesting, on Mewday Tiamat/Milotic's Agility reached S, which was nice.

On Giratiday, I got to boss around Marlene and Sorrel, which had become a regular thing, and Mars/Ursaring's Energy Capacity reached S. On Palkiday I spent two periods sparring at the Knight Academy.

I won 13 out of 24 bouts, so I would say I did pretty good, considering that I was the only one that only got minimum rest between bouts thanks to Mr. Burns. Oh, and Mars decided that once was not enough, so his Energy Density also reached S, just a day after his Energy Capacity.

Dialday was the highlight of the week for me at last, since I met up with Kinji on that day, and he told me that his Pinsir had broken through to the (low) platinum stage just yesterday.

I asked him why he hadn't called me after it happened to share the happy news, and he said that he wanted to give it face to face. Kinji shared that he wanted me to be the first who learned about it, and he called Aaron beside me to give him the news as well.

This was Kinji's second platinum-stage Pokemon, so he was only one more platinum-stage Pokemon away from fulfilling the strength/Pokemon requirement for Champion Class trainers, or the Bug King rank in his case.

He also jovially shared that the Blipbug he managed to get thanks to me had reached the (low) bronze stage and had evolved to Dottler. Now, the reason that I emphasized that Kinji's visit was my highlight of the week, was because for my parents it had to be the pre-birthday party that they had for mom on Grouday.

Since everyone was busy on Arcday, mom and dad decided to call over their friends on Grouday instead, and they all went out for a celebration among themselves, so only their friends without any children.

I was so generous as to give them the go-ahead for their adult-only night out. The three of us celebrated her "real" birthday on Arcday after I came home from the academy. We went out to the city and once we came back home after a nice birthday dinner, I gave her a small box that contained my gift.

After she opened the box and saw the BatBall I stopped her from calling out Zubat since she had to do that in private for the initial meeting due to Zubat being a newborn. I told her what the BatBall contained, Zubat's status as a newborn/newly hatched, her potential, and her genetic modifier.

I did add that the color change was purely cosmetic, unlike the shiny gene which made the Pokemon stronger compared to others of the same species. She waved that off, citing that she did not mind that before she began squeezing the life out of me through hugging.

She thanked me for the gift, while dad gave me a blank stare that screamed how could you do that without telling me since my gift completely overshadowed his, which was a pretty nice necklace and a pair of matching earrings.

I had to suppress a chuckle since that would have been like throwing salt on a wound. Instead, I gave him a smile that conveyed "sorry, I forgot". Yeah, he didn't buy it even though it was the truth. I honestly forgot to mention it to him.

Anyway, mom's super successful birthday aside, Tiamat took another step forward on Giratiday, just one week after her last one. Her endurance rose to S as well on that day, and Abzu followed in his sister's footsteps just a day later, with his Vitality rising to S.

Still, it seemed that this was a pretty fortunate week because the pleasant news was not over yet. On Kyoday the last Caterpie and Weedle evolved to Metapod and Kakuna, which meant that all of Mothra/Butterfree, as well as Parvati's minions, had gone through their first evolution.

There were already some Metapod and Kakuna that had begun to grasp the basics of Iron Defense, so I was assuming that in a few months the first Butterfree and Beedrill would appear among the minions.

Nyx/Umbreon seemed to believe that this was not great enough, so her Vitality rose to S on Grouday, to finish the third week on a high note. After that, the last 8 days of the month were pretty calm, and after an uneventful first week during the last month of my second term, I thought that the rest of the 29th month of 2180 would be like that as well.

Well, I was proven wrong when Saphira/Swablu's Vitality reached C, in the middle of the second week, which let her advance to the (high) bronze stage. I thought about her evolution after she did that.

Normally, there would be no problem with her evolving since the (high) bronze stage was the perfect evolution point for Pokemon with only a single evolution.

However, I had my misgivings regarding the full excavating of her prospect due to her future dragon type. I had previously decided to wait until she at least finished her first round of limit breaking before she evolved, but her current low racial value slowed down her progress speed by quite a bit, which was why I was doing this internal debate in the first place.

I ultimately decided to stick to my decision to wait until Saphira finished her first round of limit breaking, and she fully agreed after I shared my misgivings with her. Her reply was better safe than sorry, which was normally my motto.

That was not all, after training with us for a while, Anubis/Riolu's Vitality rose to C, which was his third one. He only needed one more to reach the (high) bronze stage, and I was betting on either his Endurance or Energy Density being the next one to reach C.

The second term exams began on Giratiday of the fourth week and went until Dialday of the first week of the 30th month. I only had to go through the one for the regular subjects, so I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I just took the exam period as the time when I could go home earlier than normal after being done with the exams.

On Arcday, after my math exam, I noticed that Optimus/Butterfree's Strength had reached A, which meant that he could officially start his limit-breaking training. That little bit right there evaporated the slight bad mood I was in due to math and carried me through the rest of the week.

Still, it seemed that Manami/Lapras did not want to start the vacation in such a boring fashion, so after a period of heavy focus on her Agility, it finally reached S on Kyoday, which officially finished her first round of limit breaking despite her already having two parameters at SS, and I had to say that was indeed a nice surprise at the start of the vacation.

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