CH112 (726), Did I Nearly Became A Ghost Master Without Even Trying To?

The seal drain had reduced Ceruledge's stage to (low) platinum, and his potential had been at deep blue when I checked him before I captured him; I had been optimistically hoping for his potential to rise to purple and that his stage might actually rise "back" to the (mid) platinum stage due to Utopia remedying some of the damage caused by the seal drain. Reality actually ended up surpassing my expectations.

While Ceruledge might not have unlocked any modifier or talent, I did not mind that at all since I saw that his potential had somehow risen to deep purple, which should have been impossible. There was just no way for any kind of deep blue potential to rise to deep purple relying on the 160% boost granted by Utopia's optimization. It seemed that Ceruledge's potential before the drain had been at least at light purple since the optimization apparently managed to restore it to light purple (48%) before the optimization bonus was added on top of that, which was how Ceruledge ended up with deep purple (8%).

Moreover, his potential was not the only area where Ceruledge surpassed my expectations. While Ceruledge's stage had "only" recovered to the (mid) platinum stage, which was what I had actually been hoping for, I had thought that his parameters would have been restored to the minimum threshold of the substage, but I ended up being wrong in the best way possible. More than half of Ceruledge's parameters had been pushed/recovered to a D-value while the rest were at an E-value, which was stably within the (mid) range with hopes of recovering his (high) platinum stage prowess within a year or maybe 2 years.

Honestly, those two pieces of good news outweighed the surprise I felt when I saw Ceruledge's age. As weird as it felt to me, Ceruledge was older than our civilization as well, though he was quite a bit younger than Dusknoir; Yet, at 7288 years he was not exactly what I would associate with young. Frankly, I was surprised that Ceruledge was "only" able to reach the (high) platinum stage at his age considering that his potential was much higher than that of Dusknoir, who was stronger than him, and I could not help but bring it up with Ceruledge.

Ceruledge who had been very surprised to have his strength partially restored, actually looked a bit embarrassed by the question. He explained that this had actually been his 3rd raid and that each loss had resulted in this kind of drain. He had to retrain to restore his (high) platinum stage, and I nearly face-palmed when he said that. I would be embarrassed as well if I had to say that I stuck my finger into the socket three times even after getting shocked during the first attempt. 

More importantly, this meant that Ceruledge's original potential had likely been at either purple or even deep purple depending on how much damage the seal's drain had caused each time, so Utopia's optimization might have simply brought his potential back to the level it had been at originally. 

The two Aegislash brought pretty good news as well, in that they both also recovered to the (mid) platinum stage, though their parameters were roughly a value rank lower than those of Ceruledge. However, that still put them firmly into the (mid) substage. It just meant that it would take the two longer to recover their (high) platinum-stage prowess.

Regardless, one thing was certain now that I knew that Utopia's optimization was helping them recover some of their lost strength, namely that there was a very good chance for the (sub)bosses that fell to the dark gold stage to recover their (low) platinum stage prowess, which was very good news both for me and for them. I swiftly brought out all 12 Pokeballs containing said (sub)bosses after getting the guarantee that the currently very happy ghostly boss trio would help me reign the 12 underbosses in.

I chose to release them in 4 batches, starting with Golurk and the two Ceruledge. Fortunately, Golurk recovered its (mid) platinum stage prowess, raising the number of Pokemon at that level to 4; That was actually extremely impressive since it brought me really close to fulfilling at least the Pokemon-related condition to attain the Master-class as a trainer, which was to have 4 (mid) 6th stage Pokemon along with 1 (high) platinum stage Pokemon. 

Once Ceruledge recovered his (high) 6th stage prowess, and one of the 12 underbosses advanced to the (mid) platinum stage to fill the opening left by Ceruledge, I would have essentially fulfilled the Pokemon requirement to become a Ghost Master. I had to let the fact that I had nearly attained the status of a Ghost Master without even trying to sink in for a bit. There were people like Stephanie Stone who were earnestly striving towards attaining the status of a Master, as well as the people who dreamt about reaching the status of a master but couldn't, and then there was me who ended up nearly stumbling into the rank.

All things considered, I was guessing that it wouldn't even take more than 2 to 3 years before that happened, and I honestly did not know how to feel about that. I would be lying if I said that the thought did not excite me, but I felt a smidgen guilty like it would be undeserved if I actually applied for the rank using these ghosts instead of my main team. In fact, I realized that I was now theoretically qualified for the Champion class, or more like overqualified, at least Pokemon-wise. 

Actually, taking my status as a Junior Professor into account along with my discoveries/contributions to science, I might even be able to fulfill the rest of the conditions necessary to become a Champion Class trainer, but frankly, I would rather reach that rank using my real team, so I simply acknowledged the fact before pushing it away to focus on more important matters, such as the fact that Utopia's optimization had indeed managed to help the Ceruledge underboss that fell to the (high) dark gold stage recover her 6th stage prowess.

The only unfortunate bit in her case was that her potential had barely entered deep blue, which made her potential the worst one among the platinum ghosts so far. Another unfortunate thing was that the Utopia upgrade I had been hoping for did not happen even though the number of platinum-stage Pokemon inside Utopia reached 6. The only expansion that took place was the addition of the newly created habitats, and while Utopia's surface area had already become 3000 km², these 6 ghosts alone increased it by nearly another 270 km² due to Utopia the 6 sides of Cuboid Utopia expanding concurrently. I had pretty much given up on the upgrade at this point, but I was still curious about how much Utopia would expand once all ghosts had been registered. 

Anyway, next I released the 2 Aegislash underbosses along with the Polteageist. I was pretty happy when the male Aegislash recovered his platinum stage prowess, but it was less nice that he dragged the potential average down with his blue potential. At least he was less than 0.1% away from having it upgraded to deep blue, so it could have been worse. I froze for a moment at the realization that I was nitpicking over such matters even though I had just added 9 freaking platinum stage ghosts to Utopia, and I could not help but feel ridiculous.

After taking a moment to adjust my attitude, I continued to release the next batch of underbosses, which encompassed the 2 Cofagrigus and 2 Runerigus. I happily noted that both Cofagrigus recovered their (low) platinum stage prowess, along with the female Runerigus. I could not help but notice that one of the Cofagrigus had blue potential as well, but at least two of the 4 new additions had light purple potential, which was very nice.

I then went ahead and released the final two underbosses. I felt quite happy to see the female Chandelure's joy at regaining her platinum stage prowess, though the fact that she had purple potential might have been another factor. I just couldn't help myself in the matter. *le sigh* I was suffering from success, and all I could do was try my best to keep my attitude as humble as possible.

Anyway, with the addition of the final batch, the number of platinum stage ghosts had risen to 15, and after observing their reactions during this time I was not worried about them acting out. They had seen or for those that had fallen felt the effect of Utopia and they were impressed as well as appreciative of the procedure they went through, especially after I told them that it did not only repair some of the damage caused by the recent seal drain, but that it also pushed up their potential. 

None of the 12 underbosses disagreed when the 3 bosses declared that they would be following me from now on and that this/Utopia was their new home. Forget about complaining, they were rather happy to go along with it, especially after I moved us to the area where I arranged their new habitats. Even the boss trio was impressed with the new ghost zone I created, and their appreciation deepened even further after I showed them that the zone was split into districts that were ideal for their individual species.

That appreciation nearly turned into a form of devotion when they witnessed the ghost zone's expansion after I began to release the rest of the ghosts. One thing was certain, I definitely would not have to worry about the compliance of the ghosts. In fact, I was pretty sure that they would go along with any of my orders as long as they were not blatantly stupid, which frankly was exhilarating and I had every right to feel that way.

After Utopia was done with the ghosts I now had 15 platinum stage ghosts, 1364 dark gold stage ghosts, and 2003 gold stage ghosts joining me/Utopia. These numbers revealed that the initial estimate I made at the start of the invasion was wrong. At that point, I had estimated that about 40% of the invaders were at the gold stage, but now I could see that it was the opposite. The dark gold stage ghosts were the ones that made up around 40% of the number, but I'd say I could be forgiven for that misjudgment since the dark gold stage ghosts had simply made a bigger impression during the chaos of the invasion.

Either way, I was now suddenly so far ahead of even regular champion class trainers that it wasn't even funny, and the joke of me becoming equal to some of the more impressive specialist families of the ghost branch was no longer a joke. Not that that was a genuine possibility for us since our little family only consisted of 3 people. I was purposefully disregarding the George family here for two reasons.

One, they were already ground specialists, and two, Dad still did not like the George family all that much even though he no longer bore any animosity towards the family. He did not mind it when I told him that James and Layla were from the George family and he continued to treat them the same, but he explicitly told us that he had no interest in even visiting the George family home in Sienna City when Layla brought up an invitation from the family head to Mom and Dad during our last meeting.

As for Mom's side of the family, I still had no idea what was up with that side. Since Mom showed no interest in finding out more about her roots I had not bothered to dig deeper into it even after I became a Junior Professor, which gave me more access to the alliance's databank, including the citizen registry. 

Anyway, I was also happy to note that Utopia's growth at the end of this registration spree had clocked out at nearly 100 km² per side, which led to an overall increase of close to 600 km². That was nearly a fifth of its initial/original surface area of around 3000 km², so even though Utopia did not undergo an upgrade, it still grew by close to a fifth, which was rather impressive, especially after I noticed that the underground system had expanded as well, going from its previous 1000 km² to 1300 km².

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A quick summary of the changes and data for the boss as well as (sub)bosses. This part is obviously not included in the word count.

A total of 15 platinum stage ghosts, 1364 dark gold stage ghosts, and 2003 gold stage ghosts.

Boss trio:

Ceruledge (male) (low) platinum/deep blue potential

-> recovered (mid) platinum, rose to deep purple potential (8%)

-

Aegislash (Shield Forme/male) (low) platinum/deep blue potential

-> recovered (mid) platinum, rose to purple potential (12.63%)

-

Aegislash (Blade Forme/female) (low) platinum/blue potential

-> recovered (mid) platinum, rose to purple potential (18.87%)

- - - - -

12 Subbosses:

Golurk (mid) Platinum 

-> recovered (mid) platinum, rose to light purple potential (82.76%)

-

Ceruledge 2 (low) Platinum 

-> 1 female recovered (low) platinum, rose to deep blue potential (4.21%)

1 female retained (low) platinum/rose to light purple potential (13.84%)

-

Aegislash 2 (low) Platinum 

-> 1 male recovered (low) platinum, rose to blue potential (99.91%)

1 female retained (low) platinum/rose to deep blue potential (87.62%)

-

Polteageist (low) Platinum 

-> 1 retained (low) platinum/rose to deep blue potential (93.99%)

-

Cofagrigus 2 (low) Platinum 

-> 1 male recovered (low) platinum, rose to blue potential (85.38%)

1 male recovered (low) platinum, rose to light purple potential (7.53%)

-

Runerigus 2 (low) Platinum 

-> 1 female recovered (low) platinum, rose to deep blue potential (3.79%)

1 male retained (low) platinum/rose to light purple potential (11.46%)

-

Chandelure 2 (low) Platinum

-> 1 female retained (low) platinum/rose to purple potential (39.80%)

1 male recovered (low) platinum, rose to deep blue potential (78.95%)

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