During the time that I was getting these calls I was also traveling north to head to Mt. Chimney that was between me and my next badge from Lavaridge city. I also knew that team Magma was near the top of the volcano likely setting up the meteorite powered device they hoped to set off the volcano with. I wasn't sure if they were as stupid as in the game though and were wearing the team uniforms in front of the lift to stop people from taking it. 'Considering how stupid the aqua grunts were I am pretty sure they are.' I thought with a sigh.-
Still I had at least a week before I arrived at the base of the volcano so I didn't need to bother with with that quite yet. The wilderness between Mauville and Mt. Chimney was a diverse place in terms of typing even if one were to ignore the desert to the east of the volcano. Rock , grass , steel you name it and the wilderness between those two points had it. The area outside of the main routes were also infested by the most powerful pokemon in Hoenn as well as the richest in resources and opportunities.-
In that regards the area was considered much the same as the likes of Mt. Silver or Coronet in Johto/Kanto and Sinnoh. The league made it abundantly clear that if you enter the wilderness in these areas death was a very high possibility. The pokemon here were between ace and champion in power on average and if you get REALLY unlucky you might even come across a champion tier pokemon. Needless to say I directly ignored those warning and led my team straight through this area. Let me tell you it was soooo worth it.-
Rare materials and ingredients practically littered every inch of the ground and the less said about the shit below the ground the better. Walking through the dense overgrowth with my team I collected useful stuff nearly every step. My foraging skill was climbing rapidly as I had to exert it constantly to identify and carefully harvest whatever I wanted , which was most things. "Tree! Tree! Co!" Yani said confidently barely an hour after we entered the area. "Well by all means if you can evolve then do so." I said jokingly before she huffed and got a look of concentration before making my jaw drop as she lit up.-
The same familiar rainbow colored sphere as usual surrounded her form and she officially started her evolution. The rest of my team snickered at me and I glared at them because I knew exactly what they were amused by. Yani had long since proven that she was an absolutely monstrously talented individual but to just will her self to evolve without external pressure was a downright insane idea. Pokemon WEREN"T built to evolve that easily save very very rare cases and the Treecko line was not one of those.-
So while it was theoretically possible for what Yani did to happen no one , not even mother fucking Professor Oak had succeeded. Meanwhile Yani was all like "Fuck this form! Evolution time!" and just set a fucking record because why the fuck not? The worse part is that no one would believe me if I tried to share the news. Until she was ready to evolve again I literally had no proof besides mine and my own pokemons testimonies. "Man I really have to stop attaching common sense to Yani , what a fucking headache." I complained while my team just unanimously nodded in agreement.-
While we waited for Yani to complete her evolution I scanned the surroundings with my X-ray vision that had lost a lot of power after my other eye was destroyed because apparently the ability worked by overlapping the image you see in each eye over each other in your mind so you get a clear picture of what you are looking at. When I was close to whatever I was looking at say ten yards or so I could see perfectly but after that things start to blur and get fuzzy.-
It was irritating as it limited my treasure hunting ability greatly but since I still had a good ten yard distance that I could clearly see through when using the ability it wasn't unacceptable. Still there was nothing really worth going to the trouble of excavating within that distance of me and even the mushroom that was growing inside a hollow area within a nearby tree was only slightly rare but not by much. The mushroom in question wasn't even medicinal in nature by rather prized by chefs for the deep and bold flavor it provides soups.-
Honestly I only had Gaia bust open the tree to get it just so I could see what the fuss was about. I won't lie , I really loved cooking after I got the skill for it from the system so long ago. It was the only skill I had at expert mastery in fact after preparing so many meals in the wild with fresh harvested or rebought ingredients. While I freely admit that I specialized in meat based dishes I could just as easily whip up a vegetable dish to dazzle the taste buds. I hadn't quite figured out how to make inorganic meals from various minerals like Gaia likes but it was a work in progress.-
In a funny sort of way I myself had picked up the stone collecting hobby like the Stones but unlike themselves I wasn't after uniqueness but rather flavor. Obviously I wasn't eating the stuff myself since it all tasted like dirt to me but apparently mineral consuming pokemon like Gaia taste entirely different things when eating them. So as a hobby now that Gaia was able to eat again I collected different types of rocks and tried to make gourmet meals by having Gaia eat them in a certain order while I recorded the ratios based on her input.-
Her current favorite at the moment was one part iron shavings , one part crushed diamond and two parts rough smashed quartz scaled depending on the size of the meal being made. Her favorite mineral to eat though was iron which had a sorta sweet thing going on like oranges. Anyway after i stored away the mushroom for later I was stuck to waiting for Yani to finish up so I started messing around with the ingredients I had found so far for alchemy. By the time she was done I only had a single successful product if I wanted to even consider it that.-
So I mixed the extracts and essences of five different ingredients that had an energizing effect on those that consumed it and ended up with a potion that was liquid heart failure. It was such a potent stimulant that even the system said that more than a drop a day would cause heart failure from sheer over work in a Wailord. To put that in perspective that was like killing an elephant because it got a single grain of sand in it's body.