CH35 (165), Hunting Competition (3)

Horus/Xatu followed Luna/Clefairy's Gravity with a Flash blinding the Arbok that just felt the increased gravity. Virtually at the same time, Thor/Pikachu released a Thunder Wave paralyzing it while it was slowed down and temporarily blinded.

However, that was still not the end. No, Luna used the time Horus and Thor were attacking to get a bit closer before she began using Sing to lull Arbok to sleep. Horus directly followed up with a Psychic, and the "battle" was pretty much settled without Arbok being able to put up a fight.

I threw over the Pokeball and waited to see if it would stay inside. It wobbled for a while, which made me wonder for a moment if Arbok had managed to shake off the status conditions. Luckily, the ball finally settled down signifying a successful capture.

Arbok was indeed stronger than all of my Pokemon individually, but being ganged up by 3 Pokemon that were only weaker by a bit was enough to take it down. Especially when one fought dirty as we did instead of confronting it head-on.

I could have elevated the dirty tactic even higher by adding Mothra or Hashirama/Ivysaur to the mix. That actually was a good idea, so I promptly called out Mothra.

She flew over to me for a hug before she flew to each team member to greet them. Horus added her to the link and we brought her up to speed. Anyway, our latest capture added another 800 points to my balance, so I needed another 590 to reach my personal goal of 4000 points.

A quick look at my watch told me that I still had a bit more than two and a half hours until 6 p.m. We resumed our search for targets and managed to find a (high) silver-stage Ariados and a pair of (mid) silver-stage Butterfree during the next 20 minutes.

I obviously caught all three, netting 600 points in the process. That was enough for me to reach 4000 points, so we changed our target to iron-stage Pokemon.

The plan was to locate any groups without too many strong members, suppress them and let me check the status screen of all iron-stage Pokemon among them.

Since I was catching them so that they would be handed out as starter Pokemon, I decided to focus more on the friendlier species. Caterpie, Pidgey, and Sentret were our first-tier targets, while Rattata and Weedle were our second-tier targets.

Ekans, Spinarak, and Spearow made up the third-tier since they were least suitable on the list. They were the hardest to handle among the options for newbies, and honestly if Oddish had been on the list I would have preferred catching those since the line was friendly enough to rank between Tier 1 and 2 in my target list.

Anyway, we had a bit more than 2 hours, so we sped up a bit and left the search completely to Horus, ignoring any Pokemon we met on the way he didn't single out.

I saw two students while we were moving, but I ignored them to avoid wasting time. We found the first large group 4 minutes later. It was a large flock of Pidgey that was led by a (high) bronze stage Pidgeot.

According to Horus, there were 247 members in the flock with roughly 80% of them being in the iron stage. So, once we arrived at their roosting place Mothra immobilized the Pidgeot along with a few of the stronger Pidgeotto using Psychic, while Luna used Gravity to immobilized the rest of the flock.

Horus then levitated all iron-stage Pidgey over to me so that I could check out their status one by one since I couldn't use my telekinesis to do so without getting outed as a psychic.

It took me about 20 minutes to simply check out the 195 Pidgey. I had Horus move the qualified ones to the right while moving the others to the left. 16 Pidgey managed to qualify, 11 of them had yellow potential, 2 had deep yellow potential, and another 2 had light green potential. The last one had deep green potential.

The reason the lowest requirement was set as yellow was that I was planning to secretly have them all go through Utopia before handing them over, so they had the chance to have their potential light green. Anyway, once I was done checking them all I had Luna put them to sleep and caught them.

I felt a bit bad for the flock since I practically took all their talented iron-stage members, so I left a small hill of flying-type food I had made and stored inside Utopia as a small compensation.

We released the flock and quickly resumed our search. It took 8 minutes for Horus to find the next group that satisfied our demands. This time it was a business of Sentret led by a (high) bronze-stage Furret.

This group was larger than the Pidgey flock with 343 members. About 90% of them were in the iron stage, 302 to be exact. Since we only had 100 minutes left until the deadline I decided to hasten my checking speed.

After we had the business subdued, I had Xatu levitate the Sentret in a circle around me so that I could quickly walk from one to the next after briefly touching them instead of Xatu moving them over one by one.

That new arrangement allowed me to finish checking them all in about 20 minutes as well, despite there being more Pokemon to check. The final haul was 33 Sentret. 19 had yellow, 9 had deep yellow, 4 had light green, and 1 had green potential. I left them a small hill of food too before we moved on.

During the final 80 minutes, we managed to find and check out 3 more groups. 1 large one and 2 small ones. The first group we came across was a small group of 60 Ekans led by a pair of (mid) bronze Arbok.

I had the suspicion that all Ekans were the children of that diligent pair. Anyway, I checked 50 of the Ekans and caught 13 of them. 10 had yellow, 1 had deep yellow, and the last 2 had light green potential.

After that, I nearly ran out of the Pokeballs the teachers provided, so I had Horus teleport me back to the meeting point to get another batch, before resuming my search.

The second group we came across was a large army Caterpie led by a (high) silver-stage Butterfree. There were nearly 600 members, 494 of them being iron-stage Caterpie. I left the 4 silver-stage and bronze-stage Butterfree alone since I was only after the iron-stage Caterpie.

Checking them all took me nearly 30 minutes, but I received a big haul consisting of 35 yellow, 14 deep yellow, 3 light green, and 1 deep green potential Caterpie.

Before we left I left them 2 piles of food made for the Caterpie line and a few "Butterfree's Treats", just because they yielded the biggest haul, and not because I favored their species or anything like that.

Anyway, the last group we managed to check was a small mischief of 80 Rattata. I caught 7 of them with 4 having yellow, 2 having deep yellow, and the final one actually having green potential. Just after I caught the last Rattata a mental message announcing the end of the competition arrived.

So, I quickly left them a small pile of food and moved towards the meeting point. The reason I didn't teleport there with Horus was that I used the time it took to walk there to relocate all our captures to Utopia and let them out of their Pokeballs.

They were all still asleep thanks to Luna using Sing on all of them before capture, so none of them saw the inside of Utopia or noticed anything happening.

Of the 81 yellow potential Pokemon 25 had their potential improved to light green, entering the range of 4-stars. The other 56 only got deep yellow potential.

8 of the 28 deep yellow potential Pokemon had green potential after the boost, while the other 20 had light green potential. That still meant that there all turned into Pokemon with 4-star potential.

The 11 Pokemon with light green potential remained at the 4-star potential range anyway, but the potential of 3 rose to deep green. So, whoever got those would have an easier time raising a 5-star Pokemon since they only had to raise the Pokemon's potential by one grade.

Of the two green Pokemon, Ratata had his potential raise to light blue, while Sentret's potential turned deep green. The potential of the deep green Caterpie and Pidgey also turned light blue, so the three of them had 5-star potential.

Once that was done I had 2 more habitats, one from the Ekans, and one that was for both Rattata and Sentret. Both were small due to the Pokemon's weak strength, so I just added them to the second circle since they were going to be empty anyway. We could use them for training purposes.

Anyway, I recalled them and 5 minutes later I arrived at our meeting point. I saw that the teachers had set up a few tables with a laptop on top, along with something looking like a small Pokeball scanning outlet that was connected to the Laptop.

I was not the first one to arrive and it took 10 more minutes for the last student to arrive. I used that time to find Weiss and Ace.

"So, are you two confident?" I asked them after I found them.

"Absolutely!/I'm going to win." They answered full of confidence and I had to smile.

"Oh, good. Seems like you're going to be second and third then. If that happens our academy would occupy the first three places." I teased them before I began laughing.

"Hey, I'm going to be first." They protested at the same time, before looking at each other and saying "No, I will" simultaneously once more, which made me laugh some more.

They stared at each other for a moment before they broke out in laughter as well. We just talked about our hunt and they both grimaced when I told my encounter with Leo-something, I think it was Leotard.

It seemed like I was unlucky because the two had met Knight students as well and the ones they met were pretty nice. I just lamented my bad luck a bit before changing the topic, and we talked about the Pokemon we came across.

Still, as soon as the last student arrived the teachers told us to line up in from of any of the 8 tables to complete the handover and point tabulation. We quickly made our way to Ms. Yu's table and proceeded to wait for our turn. Weiss and Ace stood before me, so they got their turn first as well. Once it was my turn, Ms. Yu smiled at me.

"Mikail, I want you to take out the leftover Pokeballs and place them into this bag," she said while pointing to a bag to her left, so I did as she said and put them in there.

"Good. Now, do you have more than 10 carcasses?" She asked, and I shook my head since the only ones I had were from the two Parasect I met.

"I only have 2," I told her.

"Alright, take them out, please." She instructed, and I did as told, pulling the Parasect bodies out of my bag of holding.

She nodded her head when she saw them and began to type in something into the laptop.

"A (low) silver-, and a (mid) silver-stage Parasect, that's 120 points." She said before she put away the bodies.

"Now, I want you to pull out the Pokeballs one by one and place them into the socket you can see on this outlet." She motioned at the little platform beside the laptop.

"The outlet was made to check the energy readings inside the Pokeball, so we'll know how strong the captured Pokemon is without having to call them out each time. It also saves me from having to type in the information each time." She explained before adding the last part with a bit of mirth.

I nodded and began pulling out the Pokeballs one by one placing them onto the outlet each time after Ms. Yu put away the scanned ones. With each scanned ball, Ms. Yu seemed to become happier, which was a good sign for my odds.

"800 points for a captured gold stage Arbok. 2450 points through silver-stage Pokemon. 120 points for 2 silver-stage Parasect carcasses. 640 points through (high) bronze-stage Pokemon, and finally 124 points through iron-stage Pokemon. That's a total of 4134 points.

Well done, Mikail. Compared to previous years that's enough to let you win, so you should definitely place in the Top 3. I'm happy with your performance. Anyway, go on, I have to finish with the other in the line. We'll announce the final result once everyone is done." She happily told me before shooting me away.

I moved towards them and asked them about their points. They acted all mysterious saying it was a surprise, so I didn't tell them about mine as well.

It took another 80 minutes for everyone to get their turn, and another 5 for the teachers to start announcing the results. Ms. Striker was the one to read out the Top 10.

"Alright, we'll go from the lowest to the highest. The 10th to 4th place will receive their prices after you return to your main camp. Only the first three places have to make their choice after the announcement since we have to hand out the Pokemon before we split up." She began and excited murmurs could be heard from the students.

"10th place, with a total of 2867 points goes to Yvonne Star from Aaron Academy." She announced and a lot of our year mates cheered.

Ms. Striker waited for 5 seconds before she continued.

"9th place, with a total of 2983 points goes to Daniel Ernest from Rota Knight Academy." Once she said that it was the turn of the knight students to cheer.

She continued to announce the 8th place, which went to Stephen Stranger from Group 2. The 7th place, which a girl called Julia from the other side got, and 6th place, which went to Eric Ericson also from the other side.

"5th place, with a total of 3654 points goes to Ace Gold from Aaron Academy." She announced and a lot of our year mates cheered, while Ace groaned a bit in disappointment before shaking his head and chuckling.

I patted him on the back and congratulated him. Weiss did the same. No matter what, he did achieve a good ranking, so there was no need to be too disappointed for not winning.

Ms. Striker announced the 4th place next, which went to a boy called Yu Tianjin from the other side. While that name sounded a lot like the name a young master would have, thankfully that was not my problem.

"3rd place, with a total of three thousand, nine hundred twenty-nine points goes to Weiss Schnee from Aaron Academy." Once she proclaimed that our students went wild, and I saw that Weiss while slightly disappointed for not winning seemed satisfied.

Ace and I congratulated her for her good ranking but quickly focused back like everyone else once Ms. Stricker resumed talking.

"2nd place with four thousand," she paused here for a moment, but I was cool as a cucumber. "One hundred," she made another pause and I was starting to get nervous.

Why couldn't she just finish the number in one go? Why the showmanship? I complained inwardly because I thought I was going to win this easily and her act was making me nervous, which I obviously disliked.

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