405 CH38 (402), A Taste Of Success

Manami/Lapras' success on Giratiday and her celebration served as a good motivator for me. It also ended up being the only source of good news for the next while.

The second week went by without any further success in the lab or any significant breakthroughs for my Pokemon. Well, on the personal front, I ended up receiving the offers I had been waiting for, the ones concerning the shelter designs from the construction company.

They sent over 6 designs, and I ended up choosing the one that had the greatest protection and survivability among them. Surprisingly, it was not the priciest of the designs, that obscure honor went to one that screamed luxury and comfort, but it was the second costliest of them.

Mainly because of the material and device costs, which was also true for the first one, but the focus was an entirely different one. Nonetheless, I wired the initial payment of 600k Poke and the company informed me that they would start working the next day.

After that, the second week was swiftly followed by the third and fourth weeks as well, but Carl, Sibel, and I kept working hard on our Mystic Ice plus Ice Gem project. Even when Mewday, the last day of the 32nd month approached, the three of us were still performing experiment after experiment, fully focused on creating our fused object. Unfortunately, that did not mean that we ended up succeeding.

We ultimately ended up greeting the 33rd month without having achieved any substantial success during the 32nd one. Still, it was not as if we had nothing to show for our hard work since the number of wasted materials had drastically reduced, and the degree of fusion between the Mystic Ice and the Ice Gem had increased quite a bit.

It was thanks to these small but steady improvements that our trio kept working on our project with just as much enthusiasm as in the beginning despite having failed to succeed in our current endeavor. Besides, it was not as if we were the only ones that were in such a situation.

I made sure to ask James about the progress of the other groups before leaving the lab on Mewday, and it was a fact that none of the groups on either project had managed to produce a viable D-Class evolution trigger capable of evolving an Eevee to a Glaceon.

Most groups had by now switched to a top-down method, which meant they were planning to first create a viable C-Class object, by using a D-Class base with C-Class supplemental materials and work their way down to the D-Class.

They changed their approach after the last two successful groups failed to sufficiently reduce the number of necessary items and thus the cost of their product. The best any side on either project had managed to come up with currently came from these top-down groups.

The C-Class objects were capable of causing the evolution to Leafeon or Glaceon, but both objects belonged to the costliest category among C-Class items, so James with the assent of Professor Oak declared that they could only be deemed as semi-successes even if the goal was to produce a C-Class trigger and not a D-Class one.

While that was unfortunate news for the groups that managed to create those objects and our research group overall, it could be considered somewhat "good" news for my group since it meant we still had the chance to be the group that came out with the successful product.

Now, all three of us knew that this kind of thinking was quite selfish, but in the end, we were just humans as well, so it was not surprising that we wanted to be the ones that ended up succeeding. Besides, it was not as if we went out of our way to sabotage the others, we were simply glad that we still had the chance to be the first ones that came out with a successful product.

Nonetheless, seeing another successful first step put some more pressure on us, so we started into the new month with even more fervor than before. That same fervor carried us through the first week of the month before it began cooling down.

By this point we had proven that the pressure method was without a doubt the better method, so we chose to completely shelve the heat/freeze part. We still kept going with nearly as much diligence after that since the results we were getting were proof that we were getting closer and closer to our first success.

Still, I had to admit that I was starting to feel a bit frustrated by the fact that we had yet to succeed despite pouring in so much labor and sweat. I was used to failing a lot due to my ballsmithing experience, but even there I never had to wait so much for some form of real success.

Thankfully, I knew the best way to deal with these frustrations, which was to enter Utopia and play as well as cuddle with my Pokemon after returning to my dorm room from the lab.

To me it looked as if Carl and Sibel felt much less frustration at the current situation, so either they were used to it due to having more experience with long-term projects, or they had anti-stress techniques of their own and were simply better at keeping their frustrations at bay.

Regardless of our feelings on the matter, we kept diligently working through the second week as well, and at the end of the second week, we reached a point where it seemed as if our project had reached a bottleneck.

Nearly 90% of our experiments managed to fuse nearly entirely, but all of them were missing just a small bit to be considered completely fused. Once we managed to overcome that last hurdle our object would finally be complete, and we would be able to test if it would work as an evolution trigger or not.

Sadly, Arcday of the third week did not end up being that day. Neither did Mewday, or Giratiday, even if we did manage to raise the rate of near successes to about 95%. No, it was now, at 4:17 p.m. on Palkiday, close to two hours before we had to call it a day, that we finally ended up succeeding.

I just put our latest result into the analyzer to test the degree of fusion and the machine returned that the object showed no inconsistency. I was at first bewildered, not having expected to suddenly succeed, so I had to recheck the report I got from the machine before I began cheering.

Hearing the noise I made, Carl as well as Sibel quickly hurried over to my side and I just pointed at the report while laughing happily. They looked at the screen with anticipation and released a whoop of joy as well after reading the report upon seeing that we had managed to create a perfectly fused product.

Nonetheless, we managed to calm down quite quickly and swiftly made sure to save the parameters that led to the creation of this version of our Mystic Ice Gem, as we had long decided to call the successful product.

The noise we made attracted James over, who asked us what was going on, and we proudly showed him the report on our success. He congratulated us, before mentioning that we still had to do the preliminary screening procedure, which we did under his watch.

The result ended up being positive as far as energy concentration and purity were concerned, so James sent out the word that we needed an Eevee for the actual evolution test. That naturally attracted the attention of everyone else at the lab, if our noise did not already do it, and they paused their work to observe ours to see whether we managed to produce a viable product or not.

So it was under the watchful stares of everyone in our lab that I took the Mystic Ice Gem and placed it on the central desk, where we conducted all the evolution tests. I also used the opportunity to observe our object after finally remembering to do so.

'Name: Mystic Ice Gem

Type: Ice

Class: D

Uses:

The Mystic Ice Gem is a compound item that can not be found as such in nature. Despite that, the Mystic Ice Gem is an object containing a high concentration of refined ice energy.

Due to the nature of the materials used in its creation, it is capable of increasing the power of ice-type moves by a third. It is further capable of increasing the training speed of ice-type moves and there exists a slight chance that the Mystic Ice Gem might trigger moments of inspiration regarding the ice element.'

This status screen more than anything confirmed for me that our experiments succeeded since this was the first time my observe function accepted one of our products as a compound one without adding the words "incomplete".

Now, from what I could see, we managed to create a truly useful object. Unfortunately, it did not mention whether it would act as an evolution trigger or not, but I had come across more than one case where that was the same, simply because that was not one of the main functions of the object.

Still, regardless of a successful evolution or not, once our group verified the effect of our Mystic Ice Gem, I was sure that it would become a popular product for trainers with ice-type Pokemon or even for Ice Elementalists.

Anyway, while I was thinking about the future of our Mystic Ice Gem, the others were done setting up the stage for the evolution test, so we all waited for the arrival of the Eevee. This was naturally not the same one I saw during my first day, since he had already evolved during one of the previous successful, yet cost-related failures.

Everyone quietened down once the Eevee was brought over and set down on the table. We all watched the Eevee approach our Mystic Ice Gem with bated breath. Carl, Sibel, and I even held our breath when the Eevee actually touched the M.I.Gem, but we all released a disappointed sigh when Eevee showed no signs of evolution after touching our object for a few seconds.

The Eevee looked disappointed as well when she took off her paw from our Mystic Ice Gem, and I kind of felt bad for the Eevee each time this happened. Nonetheless, it remained a fact that our product failed to trigger Eevee's evolution and everyone else put away their stuff and moved back to their own working stations.

Eevee was brought back to its home as well and James came up to us to tell us not to mind the failure while also trying to encourage us to keep working. We just nodded at him, and I took our Mystic Ice Gem before moving back to our work table.

Naturally, Carl and Sibel followed along as well. We silently looked at our gem for close to half a minute before I told them that I wanted to test its capabilities and whether it could act as an evolution trigger for the usual ice-type trigger evolutions.

That seemed to do the trick and pulled the two out of their funk. They agreed with my proposal, and I approached James with my request. He did not decline it but told me that he would have to apply for one of the Pokemon first and that it could take up to a few days to get the request approved.

I did not want to wait that long, since the test would tell us whether our Mystic Ice Gem had any chance as an evolution trigger or not, so I asked him if I could organize one myself by involving one of my acquaintances. He approved as long as the person(s) involved were willing to sign a psychic-backed NDA, so I pulled out my phone and called Weiss after thanking James.

I asked her if she would be willing to help me with something involving an experiment at our lab, and that she would have to sign an NDA if she agreed to help. Weiss did not hesitate at all before she agreed, so I invited her over after thanking her for her willingness to help me/us.

Weiss told me she would be here around noon tomorrow, so I informed Carl and Sibel of the arrangement. We agreed that we would use the time until Weiss came to continue the test on the capabilities of our Mystic Ice Gem.

We would also start the production of another two examples in case the evolution test was successful. If it failed, they would help accelerate the capability tests.

After that, we began discussing how we were going to test the capabilities of our Mystic Ice Gem and since I had an idea what exactly those capabilities were thanks to my observe ability, my suggestions went in those directions.

Once it was time for us to clock off, we stored our Mystic Ice Gem inside the safe provided to us by the lab and left for our homes.

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