Chapter 38 : Evolutions

The change immediately caught everyone's eye. A smile appeared on Orion's face while Rhyhorn and Machop looked on curiously. Secretly, even Gardevoir observed Abra properly.

Orion softly said, "Rhyhorn, Machop, ensure that no one disturbs Abra."

Rhyhorn and Machop nodded. They quickly stood on the opposite sides of Abra, ready to intercept anyone who might bother him.

Evolution was a delicate process. If a Pokemon was disturbed while it was evolving, the evolution would be stopped. While the Pokemon could always evolve later, such disturbance could leave behind hidden injuries. That is why, the safest way to prevent Pokemons from evolving was using Everstones.

Orion didn't want to take any chances. He looked at Abra with excitement as he thought, 'It's the first time my Pokemon is evolving.'

Abra closed his eyes as he felt the changes happening to him. He was shimmering with a soft glow. Soon, a faint light enveloped him. He could feel that his Psychic Energy was rapidly increasing in quantity and was improving in quality at the same time. His body also started to slowly increase in size.

He recalled Orion and Sabrina's words about what to do during evolution and focused on the Psychic Spoons he was holding. He had already absorbed some energy from the Psychic Spoons in the last week and a half.

However, as he was evolving, his body began absorbing the energy inside the Psychic Spoons at an incredible rate! The energy he absorbed was mixing into his own Psychic Energy and body. Generally, this process was incredibly slow. Abra would have needed more than a couple of years to absorb all the energy in the Psychic Spoons.

However, during Evolution a Pokemon could absorb this energy at a rapid rate and incredibly efficiently. Abra could feel himself getting stronger every second!

In half a minute, all the energy from the Psychic Spoons was absorbed. During this time, Abra's form had gradually shifted, transforming into the more composed and sleek figure of Kadabra. Soon after, the faint light enveloping him faded away.

With a wide smile on his face, Orion said, "Congrats, Kadabra! You have evolved!"

Rhyhorn and Machop moved closer and congratulated him as well. At the same time, both began anticipating their own evolutions. Orion had already informed them that both of them were very close to their respective evolutions as well. They were both just a couple of levels away from their respective evolutions.

Orion quickly returned back to the city and entered the training area inside Saffron City. He began testing out Kadabra's improvements and the new moves Kadabra had learnt due to the evolution.

When he tested Kadabra's Psychic Energy, Orion was shocked. He thought, 'Damn! His Psychic power is more than ten times greater than what Abra had!'

Orion quickly began testing out the moves and was pleasantly surprised once again. Kadabra had instinctively learnt 5 moves! They were Disable, Kinesis, Psybeam, Reflect and Ally Switch.

Orion quickly analyzed how useful every move would be and concluded, 'Kinesis isn't very useful. Though lowering accuracy is a good debuff, high level Pokemons won't get distracted by something so basic. As for weaker Pokemons, I can just knock them out.

Psybeam might be useful, but not too much. Once Kadabra levels up, my goto attacks will be Psychic and Psyshock. I doubt I'd ever use Psybeam. Its only advantage is that it can confuse the opponents. Hmm, I'll improve it up to the Expert level. For now, Confusion will remain Kadabra's main attack move.

Disable will be helpful to shut down opposing Psychic Pokemons. It could also help in catching Psychic Pokemons who know Teleport. Reflect is very good. I'll work on it. Ally Switch will only be useful in official tournaments and battles. I can leave it for later.

Sigh, I wish I had found Abra earlier. It'll be difficult to raise all of Kadabra's good moves to Master level move mastery in just a year. Oh well, there is nothing I can do about it. At least I am far better off than someone who'll receive his or her first Pokemon from the League.

For now, the most important move for Kadabra to keep working on is Teleport. I need him to be able to do group teleportation. That will add an additional level of safety to me and my team. Not to mention, it'll also give me a method to sneak in and attack unexpectedly.'

After creating an optimal plan, Orion got back to his training. He wanted to evolve his Pokemons as well.

Orion continued grinding in the wild the entire time Gardevoir was spying on him. She finally stopped and reported to Sabrina that Orion wasn't in contact with any suspicious people and spent most of his time fighting in the wild, erasing her suspicions.

Sabrina thought, 'I guess he just got lucky then. Looks like there is some truth to 'luck favours the brave' after all.'

Orion was completely oblivious to the fact that he had been spied upon for an entire month. His focus had entirely been on evolving his Machop and Rhyhorn and levelling up his Kadabra. As Orion calculated, Machop took a month and a half to go from level 26 to level 28. He evolved into a mighty Machoke.

However, it was Rhyhorn who surprised Orion. After reaching level 40, Rhyhorn's rate of levelling up dropped hard! Orion initially thought that it was due to talent, but he quickly dismissed that after researching deeply.

The reason why Rhyhorn's growth slowed was multifold. The biggest reason was that Pokemon's levels increased at a considerably slower rate post level 40. It was similar to the slowdown that happened post level 20 but was far more noticeable as every level up now needed several months. As a Pokemon kept level further, this issue would only aggravate exponentially. It was the main reason why most Pokemon Trainers would stop working hard after becoming an Elite Trainer as their Pokemons might need an entire year to go up just a single level!

The second biggest factor was the difference in levels. The Pokemons Rhyhorn fought were generally around level 10 to level 15. Higher level Pokemons were very rare. Due to this reason, even fighting a high number of wild Pokemons wasn't very helpful for Rhyhorn.

Orion would need to go much deeper into the wild and challenge some hives and colonies to get a sufficient challenge for Rhyhorn. Unfortunately, Orion didn't want to risk it yet and wanted Rhyhorn to evolve first.

And, the last factor was Rhyhorn's talent. A Platinum talent Pokemon would level up at a considerably higher speed even in level 40s. Gold talent Pokemons would do much better as well.

However, Rhyhorn's talent was either high Bronze or low Silver according to Orion's calculations. Though it was much better than an Iron talent Pokemon, the speed would undoubtedly be considerably slower.

That said, it wasn't all bad news for Orion. In the four months after his evolution, Kadabra had kept levelling up at a rapid speed consistently and reached level 27! He had nearly caught up with Machoke.

His move mastery in Teleport had reached Master level! And he could teleport the entire team along with himself. It was a huge boost to Orion and his team. Orion could now take more risk as he had this option available.

Finally, around 4 months after Abra evolved, Rhyhorn reached level 42!

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A/N: Hello everyone. Took your advice and finally created a P@treon page last night. I did think quite a bit about whether to create it or not. Decided to create it for this reason - Writing is very tedious and very frequently I feel very reluctant to continue writing. It's one of my biggest worries while writing that someday I might just not want to continue.

However, if I have Patrons supporting me, then I don't think my morals would allow me to quit. In addition, I checked upon the thoughts of some of the other writers and several said that every new Patron motivates them to write more and put more effort into writing. I chatted with one who said that it helped him overcome writing blocks. I am hoping that it'll help me in a similar way as well.

Anyway, this is the link - www.pat reon.com/DemiGod9

You can support me for as little as a dollar per month. As for the max, it's up to you. I am planning to have up to 30 additional chapters on P@treon (though I'll need some time to build them up). However, I WON'T be stopping/slowing my release rate on Webnovel to do so. Fortunately, I am free this week and will try to write as much as I can.

Currently, the Trainee and Beginner Trainer tiers are working as intended. The Intermediate Trainer tier will soon get all the listed benefits as well. The Advanced and Elite Trainers tiers will need some time to reach maximum benefits (though hopefully, I'll get it done in this month itself).

My release rate will continue to be 3 chapters per week on both, P@treon and Webnovel. I might try to increase this later on if I get more comfortable with writing at a faster speed or could devote more time to writing.

Thank you for your support, everyone. Have a blissful week :-)