CH68 (198), Making Progress

We returned home the next day and my parents spent the rest of the week at home. During these 4 days all our, or rather my parent's, acquaintances/friends paid us a visit. Most of them expressed some form of disbelief and congratulated them.

Only Thorn and Lily were not really surprised. Don't get me wrong, they were happy for my parents, but they were not surprised. Due to being my parent's closest friends, at least as far as I knew, they were pretty much up to date concerning my parent's journey, so the two had a rough idea regarding mom and dad's strengths.

Rose went wild during their visit acting like a little superfan. I had to laugh when she kept hovering around my parents instead of sticking to me as she normally does. It was fun to watch for me, less so for my parents.

Even Ace and Weiss came to congratulate my parents together with their parents on Dialday. We were pleasantly surprised by their visit, and I was happy as well since that showed that the parents of Ace and Weiss valued my parents and me. It was always great if the families of friends got along since they would not get between the friendship that way.

Come Arcday mom and dad left to complete enough missions to buy the Pokemon dad wanted. If they could, they were going to try to earn enough points to buy the evolution triggers on top of that.

They promised they would visit for the weekend every 4-6 weeks as long as they did not take a long-term mission, in which case they would inform me beforehand.

I still had 2 weeks left of my holidays, so I focused on training my Pokemon. Coincidentally, on Palkiday, the 01.09.2179, four days before the start of the fifth term, Parvati/Beedrill reached the (high) silver stage. Her endurance and energy capacity had been holding her back, but they improved to D within two hours of each other.

That improvement allowed Parvati to finally reach the (high) silver stage. She was really happy to have finally caught up to Mothra/Butterfree, at least for now. I did not have it in me to tell her that the gap was going to open up once more after Mothra finished her limit breaking.

Mothra only had to raise her parameters by another grade to SSS, and she would be able to break through to the gold stage. I estimated that it would take until the third or fourth term of my second year, at most before that happened.

Parvati on the other hand would probably need at least three to four years before she was ready to do the same. Anyway, back to Parvati's efforts. Besides training her parameters, she did not neglect her moves. She would train them nearly daily for a few hours, at least she tried to do so.

Since our move to Rota Parvati had raised the proficiency of Fury Attack and Fury Cutter by a grade to the advanced mastery. I had her do so since I saw great potential in a possible combination of those two moves. A continuous move that got stronger with each successful hit sounded pretty good.

Training up the two Fury-moves took nearly three months each, and then successfully creating the combo move took close to four months as well. We decided to call the new move Furious Cutter, by combining fury with continuous.

She understandably had enough for a bit from those moves, so instead of raising its proficiency, she began learning Protect. Once she brought up Protect to beginner mastery Parvati returned to Furious Cutter.

To keep herself from getting bored by the move she occasionally switched to one of her other moves. She would just train them for a day to make sure she could use them without a problem.

Anyway, sometime after she raised Furious Cutter to proficiency I thought about adding some poison to it, drawing insight from Poison Jab. That was her current project, and I was positive she would succeed in a few months.

We also decided to begin her second round of resistance training now that she had reached the (high) silver stage. The fire type was the target of the second round and Enji/Growlithe was the one helping her with her resistance training.

After Parvati's success, we enjoyed the last few days of the holidays since on Arcday the academy resumed. At the start of the second month of my fifth term, which was the tenth month of the year, I moved Ali/Ralts to the priority/focus group.

After nearly 22 months of training, he had managed to raise all his parameters, except for strength and endurance to D. Those two were still at the E-grade. This meant once Ali raised all his parameters by a single grade he would reach the (high) bronze grade.

I had high hopes that it would happen before the end of the academic year, or at least during the holidays that followed. Once he did reach the (high) bronze stage Ali would evolve to Kirlia. Presently, his low racial parameter values were slowing down his progress speed, so once he evolved his progress speed should pick up a bit.

Not that his current progress speed was slow. I was doing my best to help along in that regard, but it could certainly be faster. He has made some good progress with his moves as well. Calm Mind and Double Team had been improved by a grade to advanced.

Ali also learned Protect and trained it up to proficiency. It was pretty good in blocking or mitigating any dangerous moves/situations. Right now he was working on Dream Eater. He began working on that one after raising Hypnosis to proficient mastery.

Anyway, life went on after that decision, and just two weeks later Swablu's vitality reached the SS grade, making it her fourth SS grade parameter. I moved her up my priority list after that as well.

According to my estimation, she should be ready to break through to the bronze stage around the same time Ali should reach the (high) bronze stage, if not then a bit later than that.

After I received her, I had her focus on learning Cotton Guard. It took her a while but she got it down. Once she did, I had her improve her Sing to proficient mastery before she returned to Cotton Guard and did the same with it as well.

Until recently, she had been focusing on her Dragonbreath, but she managed to reach advanced mastery with it two days ago, so we were currently on a break.

Once I decided which move Swablu should focus on next, she would resume her move training. On another note, she still had not gained sapience, but I was positive that she would do so within the next few months.

The tenth month ended without much hubbub, and the eleventh month seemed to follow that trend as well. However, on Kyoday, the 13.11.2179, during the weekend of the second week of the third month of my 5th term Swablu attained sapience. Such important dates had to be noted which was why I was being so specific.

It actually happened while my parents were staying over for the weekend, so they got to witness it as well. We threw an impromptu celebration, and the next day, I asked her if she wanted a name.

Surprisingly, she told me she had already decided on one before she told me she wanted Saphira to be her name. Well, the name fit like a glove, so I accepted without a fuss, and all her friends, aka my other Pokemon, congratulated her on her new name.

A few days after that Ace bragged about his Chimchar reaching the (low) bronze stage and evolving to Monferno. Weiss decided to use that moment to reveal that the Spheal she got at the auction we all visited had reached the (low) iron stage and could now be trained.

As the humble person that I am, I kept quiet. I chose not to brag about anything and just called out Saphira/Swablu to hug her for a bit since she was so fluffy.

The days went by and just two days before the month ended Osiris/Marowak managed to complete his water-resistance training. It took quite some time, but the effort was definitely worth it.

Just thinking about the look on Misty and Takeshi's faces when the water moves of their Pokemon did not do the damage they expected was worth the wait.

I gave him a two-month break from resistance training, even if he wanted to start the next round straight away. We would start his ice resistance training once those two months were up.

The last month of the fifth term began and brought with it some happy news. They were once again from Osiris, who reached the (high) silver stage in the middle of the first week.

His agility has been holding him back, but it reached the D-grade on Palkiday, which raised his parameter average high enough to qualify for the (high) silver stage.

Well, aside from his parameters his move training had been going great as well. He managed to complete the self-created move Thunder Strike that he had been working on around 25 months ago. After that, he trained with it until he raised its mastery to beginner proficiency.

Once he achieved that we decided to switch things up a bit to avoid boredom. He pushed Flamethrower up by a grade to proficiency, before doing the same to Protect.

Afterward, Osiris returned to Thunder Strike and promoted his mastery to proficient. Watching him fire lighting from his bone club looked pretty awesome and gave me the urge to call his club Mjölnir. Jokes aside, we stopped focusing on Thunder Strike after that point and shifted our focus to Iron Defense until two weeks ago.

That was the time Osiris managed to raise Iron Defense to advanced mastery. His current project was learning Iron Head, and he was drawing insight from Iron Defense and Iron Tail for that one.

During Giratiday of the third week of the twelfth month, my parents paid me another visit. We celebrated dad's birthday and they stayed until the end of the weekend. They also shared two good news with me.

The first good news was that Azure/Kingdra and Cell/Magnezone had reached the (high) gold stage. The second good news was that they had managed to collect enough points to afford Dratini if they pooled all their points, merit, and contribution, together. Well, at least that was the case after applying the 50% voucher.

They chose to gloss over many of the missions they had to do to get so many points in such a relatively short time, but I could imagine that they were pretty risky. I asked them to take it a bit slow since they still had close to eight months until the access to the resource website expired, so there was no need to risk their health by rushing things.

To make sure the message settled I choose to make a sacrifice and used my previously shelved super-secret weapon. I, Mikail Geo, used puppy eyes and pouty lips on my mom. While it might seem a bit ridiculous on my 16/17-year-old face, but towards my loving mother, it was super effective.

I did not need to persuade dad, I simply had to persuade mom, and she would handle the rest. It worked and mom solely promised me that they would slow down a notch or two.

Dad laughed at me for putting on that face which earned him a glare from mom and a smile from me. I was just happy with the knowledge that they would be a bit more careful, avoiding unnecessary risks. I had noticed how tired they had become due to the high pace they had been keeping.

Something like that could have quickly led to mistakes and injuries, so a bit of embarrassment on my side was a price I was willing to pay to avoid a scenario like that.

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