CH3 (525), Prelude To The Practical Year (3)

"You were right," I informed Horus/Xatu loud enough that the others could hear it as well. "You've completed you're limit-breaking, and are ready to break through to the next stage," I finished, which caused most of the others to break out in excitement.

Not Horus though. No, Horus just smiled calmly, though I was sure everyone saw the touch of smugness his smile carried. "Yes, yes, I'm sure you did not doubt that thanks to your talent," I said while shaking my head in fake exasperation, not even bothering to hide my smile.

"Exactly, everything went according to my expectations," Horus said in a pretentious tone, playing along for a moment before we began to laugh. Some of the others laughed along with us, while the others just smiled at our antics.

"Alright, jokes aside," I began a few moments later. "We're moving towards Horus' place, so that he can break through," I declared. Not only for those present but also through UtopiaFM, so that everyone else that wanted to attend could head over there.

That said, we began heading there, and everyone started to excitedly discuss the two major topics related to the upcoming breakthrough. One was whether Horus would unlock anything interesting during his breakthrough, and the other one was if Utopia would finally change as a result of his breakthrough.

I had already shared my expectations in that regard with them, so they knew that I was still waiting for the improvement/production capacity to rise to the B-class, but that I was expecting some additional changes due to the delays that kept happening.

The most common guess in that regard was that Utopia might grow quite a bit, and I was inclined to agree since that seemed pretty likely. The biggest claim in that vein, coming from both Fortuna/Togetic and Mothra/Butterfree, was that the size might double, which would be quite impressive since Utopia had grown to slightly beyond 50 km², 52.42 km² to be exact.

Honestly, Utopia felt a bit empty even at its current size since only 1000 plus Pokemon were living in the main space. That was about 20 Pokemon per km², and no matter how you looked at it, 20 Pokemon per 1 million m² gave one a feeling of emptiness.

If Utopia's size truly ended up doubling, which was possible since the idea was thrown out by the lucky duo, especially Fortuna/Togetic, then the empty impression would only worsen.

Anyway, aside from the size increase, another popular idea that was thrown out, was that some interesting "natural" materials related to the available habitats might start to pop up. The idea had merit, and I for one would welcome it if that happened.

There were also a few absurd ideas that were first thrown out by Hades/Haunter as a joke before the others joined in on the fun. There was the laughing gas geyser, obviously proposed by Hades himself, the cotton candy bush, the meat tree, and the Noodlefalls, which was a chain of waterfalls that each had a different kind of noodle soup flowing/falling down instead of water.

Surprisingly, aside from Hades' joke suggestion, all the other absurd ideas were food related. The foodie side of everyone got exposed, and I was not sure whether to laugh or cry when I heard their proposals. Honestly, this was not Toriko or Totto Land, so no idea how they came up with those ideas.

Regardless, after we made it to Horus' place and everyone that wanted to come over had done so, I signaled them to start forming the circle, while I went up to Horus. There was no need for big words here, so I just looked him in the eyes, gave him a nod, and hugged him before stepping back.

I still wished him good luck, before stepping aside, so that Fortuna/Togetic could work her magic, and once she was done, I pat him on the shoulder before Fortuna and I joined the others in the circle, leaving Horus alone in the center.

Afterward, I gave him the go-ahead, and he initiated his breakthrough. While I was focusing on Horus, I had my second thought stream keep an eye on the area through the master/birdseye view. Additionally, my third thought stream was keeping an eye on the entire main space using the same method.

The breakthrough itself was going normally, and it did not seem as if anything extra would happen. In the end, the breakthrough ended without anything unusual happening, though we all could see that Horus appeared quite intrigued, the way he was looking at not only himself but everywhere as well, so I guess something did happen to him during his breakthrough after all.

Still, while Horus was checking himself and his surroundings, my second thought stream observed as Horus' habitat grew as soon as his breakthrough was complete. That was not surprising since it was something that had happened quite often.

No, what was truly interesting was that thought stream no.2 noticed that not only Horus' habitat, but the ones beside it seemed to be growing as well, and those were not the only ones. My third thought stream witnessed the growth happening to all habitats in the main space.

In fact, everyone felt the slight tremors that seemed to appear because the whole main space was expanding. Horus even stopped his assessment and focused on the ground along with everyone else.

Curious whispers could be heard, and those turned into proper exclamations of surprise after the slight tremors stopped for a moment before returning even stronger than before. They were still quite weak, but undoubtedly stronger than at the start, and there was a rather surprising reason behind that development, Utopia had begun a second expansion.

Once the expansion of the habitats stopped, and I was including the empty/vacant habitats in this, the main space had actually grown to about 85 km². Yet, the expansion did not stop there. New areas began to grow out on all sides of the main space/mainland, and the environment of these areas seemed to be based on the ones present in the existing habitats.

The expansion only stopped after the mainland had grown to an impressive size, and surprisingly it was no longer a circle/pie but had adopted a square format instead. The total size had grown to a remarkable 225 km², due to being 15 km in both length and width. Compared to its initial size, Utopia's mainspace had actually more than quadrupled in size, which was extremely impressive.

When the development stopped and along with it the tremors, everyone turned to me for an explanation. I was only too happy to share the good news to help, when I, or rather my thought streams witnessed something that actually made me gape.

Everyone was surprised at my reaction, but just a moment later they felt the source of my surprise when another round of tremors began. What they could not see, but I did, was that the mainland was actually expanding downwards. It was slowly but steadily turning into a cube, with various habitats on its surface, and from what I was seeing these habitats were no longer just based on the original ones.

All kinds of environments started to form and I could even see whole underground tunnels/cave systems in areas that appeared to be steel, ground, and rock-centric areas. Actually, there were also underground lakes and seas that were linked to the various water areas and some of the other ones as well.

In the end, a cube was floating inside the main space, kinda like a cube-shaped mini-planet, and the final size of the "planet" was much much higher than anything we had thought possible. Each side of the cube had the same surface area as the original mainland square, so 225 km². Since all regular cubes had six sides, including this one, the total surface area of Utopia was now 1350 km².

That was more than 25 times Utopia's size before Horus' breakthrough. Besides, 1350 km² was just the surface area. There were still various cave and tunnel systems, as well as the underground lake and sea areas below the surface.

If we added those into the equation, the total habitable area of Utopia was an unbelievable 1800 km². That was close to 34 times Utopia's initial size. All in all, I would say that I was entitled to my surprise, and my gaping was only natural given the change that just took place.

I was honestly surprised at the whole chain of events, and I could not help but marvel at the amount of energy the expansion must have taken. I knew that the regular energy reserves of Utopia were nowhere near enough to support it.

This meant that my previous belief that Utopia had another hidden reserve that neither I nor Utopia could access/make use of was most likely true. Well, at least not under normal circumstances. That was naturally only if my assumption was true, though I had no idea how the energy matter was actually dealt with if I was wrong.

Anyway, a few moments after the vibrations stopped, Mothra could not stop her curiosity and flew over to me. She began bugging me about what just happened, and her actions woke the others from their surprised state, and they all expressed their curiosity as well.

Being the nice person that I was/am, I shared with them what I had just witnessed. I made sure to describe the whole process and even supported the narrative by simulating the expansion of Utopia using my ground manipulation.

They were all amazed when I told them by just how much Utopia had grown and what it had turned into. I did not forget to mention the new underground areas that had appeared, which intrigued and impressed them as well.

Just as I had started to describe what had happened I remembered why I had been anticipating this upgrade in the first place, so while I was talking, my second thought stream checked Utopia's production and upgrade capability.

It seemed that the upgrade I had been waiting for had finally happened after all. Utopia was finally capable of upgrading materials to B-Class, and it could produce them as well. I directly tested the effect with one of the materials I knew had room to grow, and I was happy to see the results.

'Name: Decamillennial Tree Core

Type: Ghost

Class: B

Uses: It's the core of a fallen tree, that has been absorbing the spectral/nether energy in its surroundings for over 10000 years. Due to the years of absorbed energy, the spectral energy it is storing has become remarkably pure. If left alone the tree core could become an exceptional Trevenant. Contains spectral energy and can be used as a supplement to help ghost-type Pokemon, especially useful for the Trevenant-line.'

The change was obvious, and surprisingly this was not all. Utopia was now capable of directing the upgrade/optimization of the materials as long as it was possible to do so, which happened to be the case here.

'Name: Decamillennial Tree Core

Type: Ghost, Grass

Class: B

Uses: It's the core of a fallen tree, that has been absorbing the spectral/nether energy in its surroundings for over 10000 years. Due to the years of absorbed energy, it actually regained parts of its vitality despite the spectral nature of the energy it is storing. If left alone the tree core could become a Trevenant. Contains spectral energy and can be used as a supplement to help ghost-type Pokemon, especially useful for the Trevenant-line. Grass-type Pokemon are also capable of making use of this material to a certain extent.'

This version turned the tree core into a dual-type item, though the ghost-type aspect was still the stronger one. I also noticed that the Trevenant mentioned in this description was not an exceptional one as the one in the original/untouched B-Class core had been. It was not hard to see that the difference in purity mentioned in the original core's description was the reason for this.

'Name: Decamillennial Tree Core

Type: Grass

Class: B

Uses: It's the core of a fallen tree, that has been absorbing the spectral/nether energy in its surroundings for over 10000 years. Due to certain events, the spectral energy stored inside has been completely transformed into grass-type energy, turning it into a pure grass-type object. If planted in an energy and nutrition-rich area a giant tree will sprout that is capable of transforming its surrounding into a grass-type energy-rich area. Contains grass-type energy and can be used as a supplement to help grass-type Pokemon, especially useful for the tree-like grass-type species.'

This version of the tree core actually discarded the ghost type and turned the item into a pure grass-type object with a pretty great effect. At least I thought it was a pretty great effect since it could be used to create a grass-type domain/habitat.

Regardless, with these test results, it was clear that my wish had come true and that the effect was even better than I had been hoping. Anyway, I finished the upgrade tests around the same time as I finished the expansion descriptions, so I directly shared the good news on the upgrade matter with them as well.

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