39 CH16 (39), First Time Ballcrafting

The next morning Mikail spent the time after breakfast until around 1 p.m. in the living room with his mother.

Well, it was more like she did her chores while he "played" around and did writing exercises.

At least they were in the same room, right?

Once the drying duration was up, he retreated to his room, where he once again asked Natu to be his lookout.

Before he entered his space he gave Natu some berries to eat.

After he entered his space he went to his working room and checked the apricorns to make sure they were ready to be used.

"The drying process seems to have gone without a hitch.

No tears or cracks formed due to the drying and the texture of the apricorns is suitable as well."

He used his telekinesis to levitate the tray towards the table with multiple brushes, while he went over to the cabinet that contained the mixtures.

He brought the blood mixtures over to the table as well and sat down while glancing at everything at the table.

"I think I am going to call the blood mixture blood ink from now on because it simply sounds better.

Next comes the most important step, to use the blood ink to paint the patterns and symbols on the inner and outer side of the apricorn shell.

Now that I am sitting here, I feel kind of dumb for not practicing the strokes on paper before.

While it wouldn't have been the same, because doing it on flat paper and doing it on a curved surface is not the same, it still would have been helpful.

The width of the lines has to be precise and the thickness of the lines is not uniform.

Some parts have to be thin, some have to be thick, and so on.

Not only that even the distances between lines, patterns, and symbols as well as their positions are important.

In short, the error margin is small and the failure rate high.

At least I can still remove the blood from the shell and retry it if the blood ink has not dried yet in case I notice something wrong.

If the blood has dried removing it without leaving any stains becomes much harder but it is still possible.

But once I apply the glaze to the outside of the shell any chance of reusing the apricorn flies out of the window, because it becomes impossible to remove the blood ink.

In that case, if it turns out I did something wrong then the whole apricorn becomes useless."

Mikail showed a resolute face, that would make whoever saw him acting like this think he was deciding the fate of the world instead of making some decisions regarding ballcrafting.

"I will add some drawing sessions to my schedule, twice or thrice a week should be good enough.

Now that I have already reached this step I won't back down.

The worst that can happen is that I waste some materials.

I just have to be more careful while applying the blood ink.

Here slow and steady wins the race.

If I notice a mistake somewhere along the line, the ink in some places would have probably already dried because of my slow pace, but I can still try to remove it to reuse the apricot.

The same applies if I spot a mistake during my check after I finish applying the ink.

I will naturally check the patterns and symbols every time I am done with drawing them not only to see if they were done correctly but also to check if their position and distance to each other are precise.

Better repeatedly find mistakes and having to re-do them, if the ink removal is successful then to apply the glaze and having to throw them away after the Common Ball does not work because of said mistakes."

Mikail put enough of the blood ink for one try into a small bowl, then he took the upper part of the shell into his left hand and one of the thin brushes into his right hand.

He scrutinized the shell for a bit before he dipped the tip of the brush into the blood ink.

After he got rid of the surplus of ink he started drawing the first symbol on the top of the inner wall of the upper shell.

The symbol represented Dialga, and he was grateful that it looked like those shadows that only showed the form but no details.

Thankfully, one only needed to be careful and precise to do this and no drawing talent was necessary.

After drawing the symbol one had to write time with the Unown alphabet to the left of it in a light curve.

Afterward came some symbols that were hard to describe and words like synchronize, attract, store, maintain, support, and recall as well the Unown characters for 'N', 'E', and 'U'.

"Well, everything looks fine to me."

He checked over everything once more before he put the upper shell down and took the lower part of the shell into his hand.

He started drawing the symbols for the lower part.

On the bottom came a symbol that represented Palkia and the word space was written to its left.

After that came some more symbols and words like stable, bond, energy, blood, minimize, and release as well the Unown characters for 'T', 'R', 'A', and 'L'.

These characters had to be positioned so that they would seamlessly fit with the characters of the upper part.

This was not only the case for them but also some of the other lines and symbols.

Especially for the symbol opposite of the word Neutral that represented Regigigas.

Apparently, at least one legendary Pokemon of the type the ball used would be added as a symbol.

Once he was done with the lower shell he carefully looked over both parts once more but couldn't find anything that seemed wrong.

He waited for another 15 minutes to let the ink dry some more.

He used that time to go over everything a few more times.

Finding nothing wrong, he started drawing the necessary symbols, lines, and words on the outer surface.

There were only 2 symbols on the outer surface, one on the right side near the cut and one on the left side near the cut.

Every shell part had half of the symbol and combined they completed them.

The words upper, lower, inner, outer, connect, shrink, enlarge, contact, and capture were the most important ones.

The words were connected by lines and circled the two symbols.

The symbol on the right was responsible for connecting and keeping the two shell parts together, while the left part was responsible for owner registration as well as Pokemon recall and release.

Mikail looked over everything twice more after he had drawn everything.

He could not spot any obvious errors and decided to try his luck.

"Who knows maybe I will have some beginner's luck and succeed on my first try.

Either way, I want to do the whole process of crafting a Pokeball at least once before I start going all critical on the crafting process.

There is no way to know when I will manage to do the whole process again because it could take me some time to be satisfied with the inking step."

He left the 2 shell part in special holders to let them dry without touching anything that could smear the ink while he took the container with the pulp mixture to the heating station.

There he slowly heated the mixture up until it became a viscous liquid.

This took about 40 minutes because he had to keep stirring it and he couldn't increase the heat too much.

Once he was done with the heating he went back to the drying shells.

He examined if they had sufficiently dried or if he had to wait some more.

The reason why he had not used the heater to dry the blood ink was that natural drying had a higher success rate than accelerated drying.

It turned out the ink had completely dried so he could apply the glaze.

Mikail took the brush for this occasion and dipped it into his viscous liquid.

Once he had done so he evenly applied the liquid on the outer surface of both shells.

Afterward, he left them on two holders, which only came into touch with the inner wall, so that the glaze could dry.

It took another hour for it to dry, which he used to check up on his Caterpies.

The last step was to align both parts correctly.

There were 3 possible outcomes for this.

The first outcome, the two parts did not stay connected, which meant that he had made a mistake at the outer surface.

The second possible outcome was that the two parts stayed connected but the ball could not be used, which meant he had made a mistake at the inner surface.

The third possible outcome was that he succeeded.

Mikail obviously hoped for the third outcome to happen.

He took both shell halves and carefully aligned them to each other.

He released one of his hands from the ball and turned the hand that was holding the ball to see if the two parts would stay connected.

Unfortunately, that did not happen as the part he was not gripping fell off signaling his failure.

Mikail sighed for a bit but did not seem too surprised.

"Well, what can I say.

If it was easy everyone would be doing it.

It seems I will have to perfectly follow all the guidelines and steps regardless of how much they prolong the crafting process until I reach a certain familiarity with the process.

Doing everything with the same brush may be possible but it seems to be too advanced for me.

It looks like I will have to use various kinds of brushes during the drawing process.

I think I will train my brushwork for a while before my next attempt.

This whole thing took about 4 hours and I don't want to expend that much time before I think I made some progress."

He cleaned up everything and threw away his failed product while having a slightly sad expression.

He decided to shelf his ballcrafting plans until he made some progress with his drawing and brushwork and focus back on his previous mock-fighting plans.

Before he had unlocked his ballcrafting working space Mikail had planned to focus his training on his female Caterpie.

He planned to prepare and train her for about a week as he did with Natu before starting with the mock fights.

He could follow the progress of his second experiment while doing that, so the two did not interfere with each other.

Having come to a decision Mikail left his space.

He had been here for more than 4 hours and it was time to show his face to his mother.

The training had to start tomorrow either way because it was too late to begin today.

He spent the rest of the day by the side of his parents having some quality family time, which meant playing and watching TV together.

When it was time for him to sleep, he decided to check up on the female Caterpies status to prepare for tomorrow.

He wanted to see the progress she had made.

'Species: Caterpie

Gender: Female

Type: Bug

Potential: Blue (18.6%)

Parameters:

Stage: Iron Stage (low)

Vitality: H -> G

Strength: H

Endurance: H

Agility: H -> G

Energy Capacity: I

Energy Density: I

Resistance: Grass (Minor), Fighting (Minor), Ground (Minor)

Weaknesses: Fire (Minor), Air (Minor), Rock (Minor)

Condition: Healthy, Content

Masteries: Bug E. Manipulation (Novice)

Techniques: Tackle (Novice), String Shot (Proficient), Bug Bite (Novice) -> (Beginner), Electroweb (Initial) -> (Novice), Confusion ( ) -> (Initial)

She made some progress in her parameters, which is good.

Especially the increase in agility.

She also made progress with her moves.

String Shot and Electroweb are going to be the pillars of our fighting style for now but the improvement in Bug Bite is good as well, this way she has something useful for close combat.

I'll go over what she has to do with her tomorrow.

Time for me to sleep.

I have a full schedule and I need all the rest I can get.'

With that thought, Mikail drifted off to sleep.