Timeskip

When I finally did get to eat though I sighed in contentment at the sheer variety of flavors in this oil based stew of mine. Salty , savory , sour , and sweet all at the same time with the copious amounts of oil making the flavors stick to my tongue. I downed the entire amount of food without any hesitation including the oil itself. Thanks to my physique I was totally fine eating so much grease as my digestion was very powerful. It helped that everything I had eaten was chock full of vitamins and protein.-

Malnutrition was kinda hard to accomplish when berries had grown over time to contain literally every type of vitamin you could ever need. Why would they do this? Because if they are eaten by the right creatures they can spread. An interesting thing I have noticed was that Gaia didn't use the bathroom , ever. I have had to use the bathroom several times in this world but she hasn't gone at all. Infact she completely lacked the orifice to do so and had quite some trouble explaining it to me. From what I managed to translate via our connection certain types of pokemon simply didn't use the bathroom in the same manner as others or at all.-

In her case as a rock and ground type almost every part of what she ate was broken down and added to her body while the old stuff fell off like dead skin on people. By that point it had already basically turned into pure elements such as carbon , iron and calcium. That was why she really liked to eat metal as it literally made her stronger if she ate enough. If this was true then it explained why she never seemed to need to use the restroom.-

Anyways after dinner we turned in for the night only this time Gaia moved the boulder in front of the cave and cuddled up next to me. It was a bit uncomfortable for me since she was basically a giant rock and as such was not soft at all. Still I didn't have too much trouble getting to sleep since it wasn't much different than sleeping against the wall. Time began to pass after that and soon enough an entire month passed since I arrived in this world. A few things had happened during this little time skip of mine that were worth mentioning.-

First was that I had gotten another two quests during this time that gave me new skill and five new items. They were simple quests since we didn't really do anything else worth a quest unlike the previous times I had gotten one. The first quest was simply to defeat an entire small swarm of Dustox line pokemon that decided to move upwind of the cave and use powder type moves for fun. Yeah it wasn't fun at all to deal with and I completely ran out of full restore doing it but that small swarm is gone now.-

The second quest was a repeating one that only paid out after a certain period of time which was in this case an entire week. I got it at the start of last week and so had only completed it a single time so far. It was basically that I had to complete a specific exercise routine everyday for an entire week in order to earn two item tickets. In this case it was a hundred crunches , a hundred pullups , a hundred push ups , a hundred squat thrusts and a 10 k/m jog.-

Why was it so hard you may be asking yourself , well the answer is that it was my new physiques fault. Apparently the system thought I wasn't keeping active enough to grow stronger and decided to incentivize me into self torment , yay. Jokes aside the workout pushed my body to perform it's best at all times so I was quickly turning more and more savage looking as the muscles grew more defined. My new skill was writing and was much like the majority of those I had totally useless for me at the moment. Writing didn't refer to literacy in this case but rather penmanship such as calligraphy which was obviously useless to me at the moment.-

My five new items however were a small steel shield , another expert belt , a hammer , a sooth bell and an anvil. I will admit that I got quite lucky by getting both a hammer and an anvil from these draws but it also irritated me quite a bit as well since the RNG gods seem to love spitting on my struggles. The expert belt I myself used as a utility belt on my waist by threading it through my very damaged and dirt jean shorts belt loops.-

The soothe bell was odd to say the least as it was a small white bell that when rung caused one to relax and be more friendly. I have no idea at all how it accomplished this but I did know for a fact that it did since I had personally felt it's effects. My preferred use for it though was having Gaia ring it every now and then to keep my mind calm and clear while meditating on aura. It sounds weird but keeping a clear mind was easily the hardest part of aura meditation in my opinion.-

The steel shield got done dirty by me however as I dismantled it for material after I got my hammer and anvil. removed the straps , pulled off the leather backside of the shield and beat the metal into a VERY rough pair of tongs as well as horrendous block of excess steel. I honestly had no idea how to properly use a shield beside putting it between myself and the dangerous thing intent on harming me. Rather than add learning that from scratch to my plate I tore it apart for other materials.-

The leather for example had been added to my jean shorts in a loincloth esque fashion by cutting it in two and poking a couple holes at the top of the long parts and threading my expert belt through them. Besides that Gaia had leveled up to thirty two during this time and said she was close to evolution which had me a bit excited. Thanks to the move training we have been doing she had raised her mastery of all but her newest moves to the next rank so her current move list read as follows. Bite(E) , leer(A) , sandstorm(E) , iron defense(E) , screech(E) , rock slide(E) , scary face(A) , thrash(A) , dark pulse(J) , payback(J) and rock polish(J) , metal claw(J) , sand bomb(J).-

As intimidating as that looked like it was unfortunately the end of the line in terms of proficiency via normal training. Expert was the third highest mastery of moves but without either inspiration or dumb luck that was as far as she could go with them. Rock polish and sand bomb were my absolute favorite new moves for battle. That special training I had her go through paid off in the form of sand bomb and metal claw. Sand bomb was an entirely unheard of move that she created by condensing a full blown sandstorm into a tiny orb the size of a fist wrapped in ground type energy that detonated in an explosion of sharp fast moving sand on impact , it was basically a sand frag grenade.