CH40 (404), A Taste Of Success (3)

We did two things during the next few hours. One was starting to work on a C-Class Mystic Ice Gem, to see if it would be able to evolve an Eevee to a Glaceon.

The production cost for a C-Class Mystic Ice Gem was around the same as that of the rarer evolution stones, such as the Ice Stone or the Shiny Stone. So, while the C-Class Mystic Ice Gem would not clear our actual goal, the capability to produce such a product at that price could still be considered as at least partly succeeding in the project goal.

Moreover, if our gem succeeded, it would become the best one of the so far successful C-Class triggers that came out of our lab, simply because it would be in the "generally" affordable range. Unlike the other triggers that belonged to the group of most expensive objects of that class.

Anyway, despite our success at creating the D-Class version, we did not assume that we would be immediately able to create the C-Class version, but we were hoping that we would manage to produce a successful specimen within a week at most. The base provided by the information we had on the creation of the D-Class Mystic Ice Gem granted us that confidence.

Moving on, the second thing we did, after settling the materials for the creation of a C-Class Mystic Ice, which we obviously needed to produce the C-Class Mystic Ice Gem, was to use the last Mystic Ice Gem to continue the previous capability test with the help of Weiss, who had returned to the lab with me after sending off her school mates.

Obviously, it was impossible to finish all tests by the time Weiss had to leave at 6:30 p.m., so she agreed to come over to help us with further tests for a few weeks or rather until we had enough data. On that end, she would come over to the lab each day at 3 p.m., and stay for about 3.5 hours until 6:30 p.m.

That was the best she could do due to her other obligations, and even that was pretty generous on her part. She was taking out so much of her time for us after all, and that while going through her final year at her trainer school.

Once Weiss had left, Carl, Sibel, and I went up to James to discuss some things with him. We felt that we could not let Weiss help us for free, so after getting the go-ahead from James, we agreed that we would be gifting Weiss 3 D-Class Mystic Ice Gems, along with a C-Class one once we were done with the capability tests. We were sure that since Weiss was an Ice Elementalist and a semi-ice specialist, they would prove helpful to her.

The gifts would come out of our share of the profits once the lab organized the sale of the Mystic Ice Gem, whether that would be by producing them at the lab, or having others do so. It should have been obvious, but while our names were also going to be on the patent, as the developers, along with James' name since he was the lead researcher of our project, the patent for the Mystic Ice Gem belonged to Oak Labs.

Our group developed the Mystic Ice Gem in our capacity as researchers of Oak Labs, using the resources provided by Oak Labs, with the help of devices belonging to Oak Labs, so obviously, the patent belonged to Oak Labs. Still, the Professor was a generous man and we, as the sole developers, were granted 15% of any future profits earned by the lab through Mystic Ice Gems each.

James as the lead researcher also got 5%, which would have been more if he had actively taken part in the development, and the other 50% went to the lab. As I said this was really generous on the Professor's part since researchers/inventors working in research centers/companies usually only received somewhere between 2% and 10%.

Well, our 15% would give us a steady income each month, even if that would not be as exaggerated as most would think since the profit margin was not that big due to the material and production costs. I did not believe the professor/Oak Labs would add a huge amount on top of the cost, but it should still be enough to allow us to coast off just on that income as long as we did not go around spending money like water.

Anyway, enough of dreaming about future prosperity, especially since I had many other areas to earn money. The three of us had to stay overtime to finish the creation of the Mystic Ice. We only managed to leave around 8:40 p.m., since the creation process took about 6 hours, but by the end of it, we had 20 pieces of C-Class Mystic Ice, which would give us 20 chances to try to create C-Class Mystic Ice Gems tomorrow.

That was 10 rounds of tests since we had 2 pressure devices at hand, and we were unsure if that would be enough for the day, so we decided to start working on another batch of Mystic Ice as soon as we arrived at the lab the next day.

The next day we did our best, but nothing substantial happened on the C-Class front. None of us had expected to succeed on the first day, so we did not mind. Oh, we also received the reports issued by the PokeCenter from Max as well as Nora, and as we had expected, both Pokemon had received a clean bill of health.

As agreed upon, Weiss came over at 3 p.m. and helped us test the effects/capabilities of our D-Class Mystic Ice Gem. This time around she called out some of her ice-type Pokemon for further data, but once again, one day was naturally not enough to gather sufficient data.

I did invite Weiss to dinner after we left the lab at 6:30 p.m., to thank her for her help since I could not do so yesterday, and she agreed. She left directly afterward since she had to go to a reception with her family, some traditional family stuff, so I send her off before going back to Hope Town for a visit since it was Kyoday.

Grouday was our day off, and I spent most of the day with my parents at home. Still, I made sure to also spent some time with my Pokemon and I could not help but notice that Charmander had matured a bit faster than I had expected. He had reached 60% by now, and he would probably grow out of the stageless phase within 7 to 8 months if he kept maturing at his current speed.

Since he was currently around 12 months old, that would mean that Charmander would reach the (low) iron stage when he was around 20 months old, which was 7 to 8 months earlier than my initial estimation, which had already been 2.5 to 3 times the usual maturity speed for the Charmander-line.

Now, if we used the new estimation of 20 months, and compared it to the usual 1.5 to 2 years, Charmander was maturing 3 to 3.5+ times as fast as the average Charmander. There were a lot of factors involved in this, including Utopia's optimization, energy-rich environment, Charmander's diet, his potential, and lastly our bond. The last one was probably one of the main factors why I was off by quite a bit with my previous estimate.

Anyway, I left Hope Town at around 11 p.m. and returned to my duty at the lab right the next morning. We kept up our work on Arcday, and then on Mewday as well without producing a C-Class Mystic Ice Gem. Nonetheless, we were not without results, since the work with Weiss produced some good ones.

By the time we knocked off for the day on Mewday, we had proven that the Mystic Ice Gem amplified the effect of ice energy and moves by a third. Weiss and her Pokemon also noted that it helped speed up their training speed, but we would need much more data to say roughly by how much. Only the last effect was still undiscovered for now since proving that our Mystic Ice Gem could induce an epiphany depended on luck.

Anyway, starting Giratiday we started gathering data with the help of Weiss and her Pokemon to see if we could determine how high the training speed boost was. On the C-Class Mystic front, we had once more reached the point where the Mystic Ice and the Ice Gem fused by roughly 95%, so it was, hopefully, only a matter of days before we managed to produce our first C-Class Mystic Ice Gem.

Since we had reached such a high fusion rate, I decided to keep focusing on the pressure devices on Palkiday, even after Weiss came over at 3 p.m. I left the analyzing work of Weiss and her group to Carl as well as Sibel.

Currently, I was observing both Mystic Ice Gem test numbers 69 and 70 going through the pressure fusion in the two devices. We had arrived at the final stage of the fusion process. It took 15 minutes for the process to be complete, and thankfully both objects remained intact.

While it had become much rarer for the pressure process to break the object after we passed the 90% fusion degree, it did happen on occasion. Nonetheless, even if both objects had successfully gone through the process, I still had to test the fusion degree to see how close we had gotten with the new adjustments. The best result so far had been test-object number 64, which had a 98% fusion degree.

Anyway, I took one of the two objects, idly noting that it was test-object number 70, and placed it inside the structural analyzer, which began to test its fusion rate. It took a few minutes, but the analyzer gave out the result, which showed that object number 70 showed a fusion degree of 97%.

I could not help but sigh a bit in disappointment. Nonetheless, I still documented the result, noting that the current configuration had failed as well. After that, I moved object no.70 aside and placed test object no.69 inside the analyzer.

Afterward, I started the device and proceeded to wait for the result, hoping once more for the report to be a positive one. I should have probably just checked it with my observe function, but after the 50th disappointment, I kinda stopped doing that.

Still, the few minutes needed for the analysis passed, and the device informed me that the test was over. I looked at the report, hoping that the fusion degree had reached at least 99% when I saw that no inconsistency had been found.

I read through it again, just to be safe, and confirmed that the fusion process had been successful. I could not help but cheer at that, which made Carl, Sibel, and Weiss come over. They looked at me with anticipation seeing my reaction, and I nodded in confirmation, which made Carl, as well as Sibel, release joyful laughs.

They still looked through the report to confirm for themselves that we had succeeded, but that was just standard procedure for us. While they did that, I took the Mystic Ice Gem out of the analyzer and used my observe function on it to see what had changed compared to the D-Class version.

'Name: Mystic Ice Gem

Type: Ice

Class: C

Uses:

The Mystic Ice Gem is a compound item that can not be found as such in nature. Despite that, the Mystic Ice Gem is an object containing a high concentration of refined ice energy.

Due to the nature of the materials used in its creation, it is capable of increasing the power of ice-type moves by two-fifths. It is further capable of increasing the training speed of ice-type moves and there exists a small chance that the Mystic Ice Gem might trigger moments of inspiration regarding matters involving the ice element.'

The obvious change I could see was that the amplification rate had risen a bit to 40%, and the epiphany chance had changed from slight to small, so I guess that had also increased by a little bit. Those were good news, but the most important question was whether the C-Class Mystic Ice Gem would be able to help an Eevee evolve into a Glaceon or not.

A question that we would be able to answer in a few minutes. James had come over and we told him that we had finally managed to produce a C-Class Mystic Ice Gem. He congratulated us before sending Samantha to fetch an Eevee for the evolution test.

While Samantha was bringing over the Eevee, Carl made sure to save the configuration we used to create test object number 69. We also did the preliminary test for formality's sake, even though the D-Class version had already passed it.

There was always the chance that the object was faulty in some other way after all, and I could not use my observe as an argument. Still, our C-Class Mystic Ice passed the preliminary test, and we moved right to the central workstation since Samantha had already come back a minute or so ago.

The others had already set up all recording devices, so once Sibel placed the Mystic Ice Gem onto the middle of the table, everyone observed the Eevee move towards it. My group, Weiss included, watched with bated breath how Eevee lifted her left front paw and placed it atop our gem.

When she erupted in bright light a few moments later, Weiss cheered in happiness, and I laughed out of joy. Carl and Sibel were also cheering, even if the three of us were a bit more subdued at showing our joy than Weiss since the situation was still being recorded.

Once the evolution was over, everyone saw a perfectly fine Glaceon sitting in the place the Eevee had previously been. James and the other research assistants began congratulating us after they stopped recording the event since the evolution process was over.

We thanked them all, really happy with the result. If the evolution test had failed, then that would have meant that our plans to create a D-Class trigger for Eevee based on our Mystic Ice Gem were unlikely to succeed, but since it worked, we could see it as the confirmation that our plans could work.

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