523 CH154 (518), The End (4)

The others continued celebrating Stan/Gyarados' breakthrough for the next few hours, until close to midnight. I, however, excused myself after roughly 3.5 hours into the festivity, or more specifically after dinner since I still had an exam tomorrow.

Mothra/Butterfree and Horus/Xatu wanted to join me, to keep me company, but I told them to go and have fun with the others. They tried to insist, but I insisted on refuting their insistence, and after assuring them for a tenth time that I would be fine on my own, they relented and stayed with the others.

Anyway, while the others kept making merry for another three or so hours, I read through my notes in preparation for tomorrow's exam. Moreover, while they stopped at around 10 p.m., I kept doing old exams until close to midnight. Mothra and Horus did join me after 10, with her perching on my head and him standing vigil on the side. I ended up going to bed a few minutes past midnight.

My morning routine for Palkiday pretty much mirrored the one of the last three days, so I pretty much finished the exam while sipping my OO juice, and after error-checking my answers twice, I still ended up handing in the exam close to 40 minutes early as well.

I was back at my dorm and inside Utopia before 10:30 a.m. and split the rest of the day into two halves. The first half, until roughly 4 p.m., I spent with my Pokemon, while the second half after that, was spent going over my notes for the two exams tomorrow. Though there was an hour-long break during the second half at 6:30 p.m. for dinner.

Still, I once more stayed up working on old exams until close to midnight before going to bed to get some good rest for tomorrow. The two Dialday exams were the last ones for this week, so after immaculately handling them both, I had two free days before I had to go through a second week full of exams.

Since I had neglected to do my morning exercise routine this week due to the exams, I chose to do a more serious morning workout session during the weekend. Instead of simply moving under the effects of increased gravity, I went ahead and did a complete workout routine under the highest level of increased gravity I could endure.

I performed everything I knew, from simple exercises such as sit-ups and squats to various weightlifting drills. Honestly, such an extreme way of training by overloading everything at once within a short period of time was neither smart, recommended, nor healthy. The only reason I dared do it was due to my increased regeneration as well as all the healing salves and tonics I had prepared beforehand.

Well, those and Utopia's healing ability. If not for those, training the way I did, would have been simple torture that actually destroyed the body instead of being useful. That was why it was important to always act within one's means and capabilities while one was training. Steady and safe gains always trumped risky and fast gains.

Well, unless one had supernatural regeneration and vitality along with cheat-worthy health recovery measures. In that case, working out in a risky manner could no longer truly count as risky, but even in such a situation I thought that the steady approach was better since it allowed one's control over the body to keep up with the changes/gains one attained. Brute force without control could be a liability or simply ineffective after all.

Anyway, I spent the next three hours after breakfast on both Kyoday and Grouday training my body. I spent the time until dinner with my Pokemon, after which I spent the rest of the day, specifically until midnight, preparing myself for the upcoming exam week by going over notes and doing old exams of the two subjects that would be tested on Arcday.

The new week arrived in that manner, and everything went smoothly with the two exams on Arcday. The exam on Mewday went without any trouble as well. After the exam on Mewday, I only had 3 more to go, more specifically, one on each day until/including Dialday. Then we would be waiting until Arcday of the following week for the release of the (school) results.

The graduation party/ceremony would also take place on the same day. It would also be the point, where I would be allowed to pick my Squirtle for getting first place in the internal school rankings. Oh, and Arcday evening was also the deadline when all trainer schools in Kanto were expected to have send in the result of their students.

Then, on Mewday, which also happened to be the last day of the month, the Kanto student exam rankings would be released, and I could finally head to Oak Labs to pick out my Beldum from the three the alliance would be presenting me to choose from. Still, I was getting ahead of myself. It was better to focus on the present.

Seeing how I had less to go over for the exams, I devoted an hour every day to my own training. Well, aside from the practice my third thought stream was regularly doing with either my three energies or the "earth shadow clone" project. The training I was referring to here was while actually utilizing my body, so as the focus, and not in the background while doing something else.

In this manner, I made it to my final exam on Dialday. It seemed that some parents decided to wait for their kids outside the exam room due to this being the last one. At least, I had not seen any parents until now, so I was assuming that this was the reason they had shown up.

I was spared the embarrassment since my own parents were planning to come back home/to Kanto on Grouday, just in time to make it to my graduation ceremony on Arcday, or at least that's what they told me. Still, I was happy with that since I could vividly imagine Mom shouting and cheering to congratulate me as soon as I came out of the exam room.

While that would certainly be heartwarming, it would be just as embarrassing, and I felt that the embarrassment/teasing I would no doubt be subjected to on Arcday would be more than enough for me. Regardless, I banished those thoughts before moving inside the room to take a seat at my designated spot.

The exam itself ended up being no problem either, and I once again finished everything ahead of time. Seeing no reason to delay it, I handed in my papers before I made my way out of the room while thinking that I was finally free, and whether I should hang out in the city until lunch, or if I should head straight to my dorm room/Utopia.

I was shocked when I heard multiple familiar voices calling out to me a few moments after I stepped out of the exam room. Turning in the direction they came from I was surprised to see not only Mom and Dad standing there, but Jessie and Rose as well. Mom, Jessie, and Rose were waving at me when they saw me notice them, and Dad just showed me a part teasing, part proud smile.

"Everyone, what are you doing here?" I could not help but ask after moving to their side. The girls laughed when they heard my surprise and Dad actually ruffled my head, which looked a bit funny since I was a by now a centimeter or two larger than him.

"There's no way we would miss this chance to embarrass you," *ugh* Dad joked before Mom gave him an elbow to the side. "We obviously came to celebrate the fact that you're finally done," He corrected and Mom gave a satisfied nod, before moving past Dad and hug-slamming into me.

"Congratulations sweety, you're finally done with school," she exclaimed before shooting out a few sugary praises which she tied up with "I don't doubt that you'll come first in everything". Once she had her fill, Mom let me go.

She stepped aside and made room for the girls who came up to me to hug me. They both congratulated me on my freedom and they also congratulated me in advance on coming first, showing that they were completely confident in me as well.

I thanked all of them for their support including Dad, who stepped up to give me a hug after the girls took a step back. Since I had come out of the exam room more than half an hour in advance, the other parents waiting for their kids had nothing else to do, so all their attention had been drawn to us, even if they were trying not to be blatant about it. Well, at least most of them, some just blatantly stared at us.

Anyway, not wanting to "put on a show" for all of them any more than necessary, I suggested that we moved on to stop distracting everyone and to avoid making any further commotion since the other students were still busy with the exam. Not that they got wind of anything since the exam rooms were sound isolated, so no noise from the outside could be heard inside the room.

Nonetheless, we still left the school and headed to one of the better city parks close to the city center. There, we spent the time until lunch talking about everything that was going on in our lives. Well, it started with them asking about my exams, but seeing how I had not much else to say except that I had sufficiently prepared for them and that I was confident that I had aced them, the topic moved on to other stuff.

Or rather, I moved the topic from my exams to Rose's journey by asking her how it was going and how she was doing. From there it moved on to Jessie and my parents before moving on to other related things. We only stopped when I pointed out that it was already past 1 p.m., and that it was high time for lunch.

The ladies wanted to eat a salad, so we went to one of the restaurants that had good chicken salads. The ladies ate those, while Dad and I ordered some roasted chicken with fries. We ordered some green salad on the side, so I felt we definitely had the better experience.

The ladies' questionable decisions aside, once everyone had eaten, we began strolling around the city until it was time for dinner, which I/we naturally invited the girls to as well. Rose and Jessie both posted a picture of us at dinner in our group chat with the caption that we had celebrated my/Mikail's freedom from exams and school.

That triggered quite a few replies and in short, everyone promised to do their best to show up for my graduation ceremony/celebration on Arcday. I also saw that I had received some congratulatory messages from quite a few of my acquaintances, including Professor Oak and Mr. Cameron.

I missed them because I had switched my phone to silent mode during the exam and not bothered to switch it back afterward. Still, seeing how they had gone out of their way to message me, I sent all of them a thank you message in return.

The girls left after dinner, and my parents and I headed to my dorm room, where I proceeded to pack up anything I wanted to keep. Everything else I didn't want got bagged up so that it could be thrown out. Once that step was done, Mom and I cleaned up the whole place. Honestly considering how "small" my dorm room was it took us less than an hour to deal with everything.

After the place was cleaner than it had been when I moved in, we vacated the room and I locked it behind us. We then tracked down James, which wasn't that hard since he was in his room down the hall. I handed him the keys to my former room since I was officially moving out.

He accepted the keys and also congratulate me on the completion of my exams. I told him that we would see each other one more time since I would be coming to pick up my Beldum on Mewday and to say my final goodbyes to everyone, before my parents and I left for Hope Town.

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