CH89 (703), What In Giratina’s Name

Hopefully, it was not the human child turned Phantump kind of special since those were poor souls with unfortunate circumstances. Not that I had a reliable way of finding that out unless Phantump remembered its potential previous life which usually was not the case with spirit-turned-ghosts, but asking it would cost me nothing I guess.

"Let's see what makes this little one so special," I let out before checking out Phantump's status sheet under the curious eyes of the others.

'Species: Phantump

Gender: Male

Type: Ghost, Grass

Potential: Blue

Stage: Iron-stage (High)

(Genetic) Modifiers: Forest's Blessing

Abilities: Natural Cure, Harvest

Talents: Child of the Woods

Affinities: Ghost, Grass'

"Oh wow," I could not help but let out, inadvertently raising everyone else's curiosity, but considering what I was seeing my reaction was pretty understandable. One thing was certain, I was definitely catching this little guy. "{Don't leave us hanging like that, bro}," Thor/Raichu complained and the others urged me to share what I found as well.

"Well, this little guy here apparently has some protagonist luck," I said while pointing toward the Phantump with my thumb. "He not only has a blessing, but a talent on top of that. Besides, he has blue potential and is only at the (high) iron stage," I said and the reactions that caused were quite contrasting.

Mothra/Butterfree and Hades/Gengar were like "{Oh, that's it}", while Thor was the opposite. "{Raikou damn it, another super lucky guy}," he grumbled, though I was not sure why he was complaining. Sure, he did not have a modifier, but he had a pretty good talent along with a psychic affinity, so he was pretty lucky/special as well. Shino on the other hand simply said "{That's nice}" before asking for details.

"Well, he has a blessing called Forest's Blessing that gives him a 20% boost," I replied after looking at the description of Forest's Blessing. The bonus it gave was higher than the 15% that Volcanion's Blessing gave Ignis/Gyarados (fire), but it was lower than the 25% bonus granted by both the Blessing of Water and Aura.

That made some sense I guess since the blessing said Forest and not Vegetation or something along those lines, which would have involved the entirety of the Flora. Honestly, it was already good enough that it gave a 20% bonus. Still, in my opinion, there was a very obvious connection between the Forest's Blessing and Phantump's Child of the Woods talent.

I had no idea if the talent was the one that invoked the blessing or if the blessing gave rise to the talent, but I was pretty sure one of them caused the other. Nonetheless, the title Child of the Woods combined with the lore behind the Phantump line brought back the question of whether this Phantump was one naturally generated by nature or one that formed due to the spirit of a deceased.

"{That's pretty good, right?} Mothra said, making me stop my musing and read through the description of Child of the Woods while listening to them as the others echoed her. "{So, what about his talent?}" Thor followed up after concurring that 20% was not bad at all. "Well, his talent is called Child of the Woods, and it is a rather versatile as well as very useful one," I began making everyone perk up and focus on me with eyes full of curiosity.

"Child of the Woods is what allowed Phantump to elude us like this. It allows Phantump to blend in with the Forest, not only visually but also spiritually and on the energy level, masking and obscuring his presence, causing Phantump to appear as an unimportant part of the forest. The latter is not to be underestimated since it had us ignore Phantump's prone body right before our eyes," I began to explain and everyone nodded at the last bit.

"{Is that it, boss? I expected more after you praised it like that}," Hades spoke up before I could continue. "{Obviously, he's not done yet genius}," Thor replied in a tone that screamed "duh". Hades embarrassedly rubbed the back of his head at Thor's words, and Mothra giggled before throwing in her two cents. "{Hades, you should know by now that Mikail loves long-winded explanations}," she said semi-seriously, obviously teasing me before she broke out in laughter and this time all of them joined in.

"Ha, ha, ha. Do you guys want to hear the rest or am I too long-winded?" I threw out which had them stop laughing. "{Not long at all. I enjoy hearing all those interesting explanations, please go on}," Thor buttered me up which had the others mirror him with their own compliments. "Alright, you can stop," I said when they kept going.

"Aside from hiding Phantump, Child of the Woods also allows the Forest to act as an extension of Phantump's senses, so he can probe much wider areas than his own senses would usually allow him to. That allows him to easily spot both danger and prank targets," I shared, and Hades, Thor, as well as Shino, seemed particularly impressed with this, though probably for different reasons.

"Impressively enough, there's still more," I added which surprised the others since talents with two broad effects, especially ones that were as impressive as the ones of Child of the Woods, were pretty rare. I continued before Thor or Hades could interrupt me again. "Thanks to Child of the Woods, the forest shares its vitality and energy with Phantump, allowing him to recover his stamina, health, and energy at an accelerated speed," I shared and they all agreed that that was very useful.

They immediately pointed out the obvious point, namely that the recovery effect could not only be used during battles, as long as they happened inside a forest or at least a grove, but also during training since Utopia was full of forests/trees and Phantump's own habitat would only be more fitting for it and not worse. I let them discuss a bit about how useful the recovery aspect could be in the wild in combination with the concealment aspect before I decided to share the final effect of Child of the Woods with them.

"I'm still not done," I said, grabbing their attention. "{There's still more?}" Thor could not help but question bewildered. "Yes, there is," I replied with a chuckle. "The final effect concerns Grassy Terrain. If Grassy Terrain is used inside a Forest with Phantump around, the healing and power-boosting effect of Grassy Terrain will focus on Phantump, ignoring everyone else. This also causes Grassy Terrain to completely ignore its usual restriction of not affecting non-grounded Pokemon, so even though Phantump is levitating in his usual ghost fashion, he'll still benefit from Grassy Terrain's healing and grass move boosting effects," I shared another broken aspect of Child of the Woods.

This talent was honestly so broken that I could not help but place it on the same level as Mothra, Tatsumaki/Alakazam, Fortuna/Togekiss, as well as Kimura/Hitmonform's talents, and those were the most broken talents we knew of so far. Hence, it was no surprise that Mothra, Shino, Hades, and Thor were quite shocked to hear the full extent of Child of the Woods' effects.

"{What in Lord Giratina's name is this? Boss, are you sure that talent is called Child of the Woods and not Lord of the Woods or King of the Woods or something like that?}," Thor could not help but blurt out. "{What you said sounds more like the Forest is trying to suck up to Phantump rather than a parent taking care of its child}," he complained. Thor's words caused me to chuckle and the others to burst out laughing. Still, to some extent Thor was right, but he had no idea what overly nice helicopter parents were capable of.

"What can I say, I didn't name the talent," I said with a shrug, and Thor raised his hand wanting to complain before thinking better of it and reluctantly letting it fall down again since he could not argue otherwise. The others laughed again, and I finally chose to focus back on the Phantump in question.

There was no way I was not going to catch this little guy. I was not sure if he would join the main team in the future, but he definitely was way too precious to let go, so he would join the reserve team for now. Unless of course, Phantump had no interest in battling, in that case, he could simply hang out inside Utopia until he found something he wanted to do. The bottom line was that Phantump was going to enter Utopia as my Pokemon one way or the other.

As a precious newbie, I was naturally not going to capture Phantump with a run-of-the-mill PokeBall, but a custom one. The question was just which one, or was it? Unfortunately, I had not made a Haunted Forest Ball yet, so Phantump would have to be caught with either a ghost-type or a grass-type ball, but considering his talent, there was honestly only one logical choice among my current custom balls, the Forest Ball.

By taking out a Forest Ball from Utopia I attracted everyone's attention and they all watched as I lightly threw the ball at Phantump's prone body. In his current state, Phantump was pretty much defenseless in front of the Forest Ball, so the capture process went over without any resistance. I levitated the ball to my side and set it to stasis mode.

I did not want Phantump to wake up yet since I was planning to let him out after I returned to Utopia for dinner, so it was better for him to remain in stasis until then. That he was currently sleeping made the whole thing much more quite convenient since he would feel nothing during the whole process.

Anyway, after I put Phantump's ball away, I took out the compass and determined the correct direction before we resumed our journey. The rest of the day passed by unassumingly without any additional surprises and before long I moved all of us inside Utopia for dinner. Our family had already gathered at my place and greeted us upon our arrival.

Usually, we would have directly started with the dinner preparation after that, but I wanted to deal with Phantump first so that he could join us for dinner after Utopia was done with him and he had gotten his crash course on Utopia101, so after telling the others about my choice, I took out the Forest Ball and let Phantump, who as expected was still sleeping, out. As soon as he appeared I heard the optimization process start inside my head.

'Analyzing...., Phantump analyzed.

Begin improving potential...., potential successfully improved.

Begin optimizing genes..., blessing detected….., analyzing blessing….., potential for augmentation detected…., attempt to augment blessing….., blessing augmentation successful. Resume genetic optimization….., attempt to unlock genetic variables..., unlocking attempt failed…, finalizing optimization process..., optimization process ended.

Begin optimizing abilities...., two abilities detected…., optimize abilities….., synchronization with blessing and talent triggered, optimization succeeded.

Begin unlocking talents...., present talent detected, analyze talent…., talent cannot be optimized any further. Begin attempt to unlock second talent….., unlocking second talents failed.

Checking energy storage....., energy storage can support activity.

Generating tailored habitat...., habitat successfully generated.

Add habitat to main space.....' 

I interfered in the process at this point since I did not want Utopia to relocate Phantump, who was getting acquainted with his situation and the others. Still, damn, was this little guy lucky. Not only did his blessing get boosted, but he ended up going through an ability mutation. Oh, let's not forget that Utopia said that apparently, Phantump's talent was already as good as it could get. Honestly, everything about this little guy screamed protagonist.

I would not be surprised if he had stumbled upon some super secret treasure and stashed it away somewhere. I definitely had to ask him if there was something like that, but before that, I had to check out what exactly the changes caused by Utopia entailed.

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