Sanded down

Natural sandstorms at most will sting at your skin and damage your eyes if it doesn't completely drown you in sand. Unfortunately there was nothing natural about the violent dome of sand covering Gaia and the pack. A triple stacked sandstorm like this one actively and slowly tried to remove flesh via constant fast paced abrasion. It was like someone rubbing heavy grit sandpaper over your skin in a single direction. No matter how strong your skin so long as you actually have skin you will quickly start to take serious damage from it.-

The pack was experiencing that at the moment and in addition to the already weakened skin from the rocks earlier led to serious blood loss. I almost felt bad for them after that as they tried to bring down Gaia but the sandstorm slowly grinded them down until Gaia finally killed the last of them. This wasn't to say that this was an easy battle as the exact opposite was true and Gaia was panting and having difficulty standing while her carapace was covered in scratches. She even had a bleeding crack on her leg from the Mightyena's final desperate attack.-

Still it proved to be very much worth it as she went straight to level eighteen after it was over which clearly signified how much growth this fight gave her. Levels in this world were different than those in the games as in the games you got higher stats from leveling up. In reality each pokemon had the level fifty equivalent stats from the moment they reached maturity. Maturity didn't mean a particular evolution either but the legitimate age the species was fully developed. This was the reason Gaia's stats looked so crazy when I got her.-

Leveling up in this world on the other hand didn't have anything to do with evolution or stats at all but rather how much battle experience and skill the pokemon had and could use. The old Sentret back there for example was right at level fifty but that would likely be much higher if it was in it's prime. Judging from the scars and way it carried itself I would assume in the seventies or even eighties in it's peak. Old age ruined pokemon's power when they reached a certain point just the same as with humans with a few exceptions such as some legendries that simply didn't age.-

I wasn't sure exactly what could trigger an evolution in a pokemon besides genuine will to keep fighting when they were at their limits. Obviously the phenomena could be forced such as in the case of Eevee or other item based evolutionary pokemon but otherwise I knew nothing of it. I only knew this thanks to the system flat out saying so when I asked after seeing the difference in levels between Gaia and other pokemon we ran into. This was why she could jump levels so easily since as a royal variation pseudo-legendary her stats were really good.-

In this particular case her jump in level was likely a result of learning new tactics against groups and a nifty way to utilize her moves. I had Gaia mark a tree nearby before we headed back for the day as the sun started to set and she was in rough shape. The bleeding crack of her carapace got a tiny application of the full restore since unlike in the games you don't in fact have to use all of it at once and in fact each bottle had exactly five uses unless the damage was serious.-

In this case a single use fixed the crack and quite a few of her scratches as well making it well worth it. The large crack did leave a slightly discolored area which was basically a scar for Gaia. We passed by the area with the old Sentret but it was no longer there. By the time we got home Gaia was feeling much better and we even found a bush of nanab berries on the way back. Nanab berries were strange pink colored things that looked like a bundle of bananas fused together side by side but half the size.-

I wasn't he biggest fan of the flavor since they were bitter with a slight sweetness to them but Gaia was in love with the things since she apparently liked bitter food. I collected five from the bush and she apparently didn't feel like leaving any for the other pokemon in the area after trying one and swiped the other six on the bush. I didn't say anything about it though as I felt just a little bad about her scar even though she seemed unbothered by it. For dinner today I ate an oran berry and Gaia ate a sizable amount of stone from the mountain wall.-

Hunting all the time would likely just cause the species being hunted to flee away from our cave which would make things harder for us so I chose to take a bit of a break from meat. The next week was not really worth talking about in detail as we basically scoured the area in every direction a few miles from our home. I found a couple of useful items such as sitrus , oran and pecha berries as well as a grade 2 leaf stone hidden in a boulder that got collateral damaged in one of our many battles.-

Today a week later and Gaia was sitting pretty at level twenty six and had all of her moves at the journeyman tier at minimum. This list consisted of bite(A) , leer(J) , sandstorm(A) , iron defense(A) , screech(A) , rock slide(A) , scary face(J) and thrash(J). The two newest moves thrash and scary face were something we were still getting the hang of but had proven themselves very useful. Thrash unfortunately came with the downside of confusion which seemed like an extreme form of dizziness in this case.-

The whole hurting themselves thing also wasn't true unless a pokemon used an AOE attack like rock slide and doesn't set it off at a distance but right above them instead. Like they wouldn't go to use bite while confused and latch onto their arm somehow but ranged attacks suddenly became way more dangerous for everyone involved , including me. Normally I would be unaffected by a battle but Gaia accidentally set off a rock slide right over the top of me when her opponent at the time circled around her. I obviously spotted the move and ran for my life before the move went off but it was still an attack on myself.-

Scary face was honestly a move that confused me a bit as other than the type energy it was basically just making a menacing face. I am not joking as to perform it Gaia would snarl and squint her eyes angrily with a dark grey energy around her face. That energy is then somehow projected to the opponent that then gets the shakes causing it's speed to drop drastically. It honestly made no fucking sense to me but I am no pokemon professor so I didn't go trying to deal with the headache that came with trying to figure it out either.