CH51 (281), Fourth Term Begins

The break ended up being pretty great in my opinion. Many interesting things happened in these three months. Well, the most obvious event was probably the end of the year 2180 and the start of 2181 at the end of the first month.

Ace's parents told him to send an invite to our chat group for the new year party, and roughly half our group members accepted the invitation. I asked my parents and after they agreed I accepted as well, so I got to greet the new year with friends and family.

Following that, I should mention the slew of improvements on my Pokemon's part. We took the first month slow to enjoy the break, but for the other two months, we trained like usual. There was quite a bit of progress, but let's focus on the most important ones.

The members of the Sinister Six, except for Stan/Gyarados, all raised their third parameter to SS. Manami/Lapras's Strength rose to SS, which was her fourth one. Mars/Ursaring's Agility increased to S, which completed his first round of limit breaking.

Tiamat/Milotic's Energy Density reached SS, which was her first one. Abzu/Milotic naturally could not be left out when Tiamat improved, and his Endurance rose to S, leaving only his Strength at A before he finished his first round of limit breaking.

Similar to him, Nyx/Umbreon only had to increase her Energy Capacity to finish her first round after her Strength increased to S. Ali/Kirlia was another one, his Endurance and Vitality increased to S, leaving only his Strength at A. Hera/Pidgeot could count as an honorable mention since her Strength and Endurance rose to S. However, both her energy parameters were still at A.

Another thing that happened was the evolution of all Metapod and Kakuna. Yep, I now had 26 more Butterfree, beside Mothra and Optimus, as well as 23 more Beedrill, beside Parvati and Prime, flying around Utopia. Mothra and Parvati made sure to give each one their share of the evolution potion, but only 3 on each side managed to improve their potential during their evolution.

On the Butterfree side, a deep green male's potential rose to light blue, and the same happened to two females, so that was pretty lucky. The Beedrill were less fortunate since only one of them had their potential raised to light blue. It was a male with deep green potential. The other two were a male and female that had their potential raised from green to deep green.

Still, at least they had the chance to raise their potential through my potions. The Magikarp were not that fortunate, since their evolutions were more random, at least in my opinion. 3 more Magikarp evolved to Gyarados during the break and naturally, they evolved at the same time without any forewarning, so they did not receive a potion from me.

Nonetheless, the 3 joined the others after they went through the little intimidation/submission event by the Sinister Six. Their addition brought up the number of Gyarados minions to 50.

Something else I did during the break was to go out and hunt down some more Rattata since I was going to need them for the future project that would give me the starter I was going to hand out at my future orphanages.

I gathered around 170 more Rattata to round up the number inside the subspace to 420. 30 of those had hatched from eggs laid by the previous batch. Moreover, 17 more unhatched eggs would probably hatch within the next two or three months.

150 of the newcomers were female and only 20 were male, which brought the total of females up to 250 and the males to 170. I might have increased the female ratio a bit in hopes that it would help increase the population growth without me having to order them to do so.

Currently, the worst potential among the Rattata was orange, and out of the 420 Rattata, 140 had a potential with a yellow shade, while 18 had light green, 7 had green, and 6 had deep green potential. Moreover, in addition to the 4 Rattata that I bought, a female newcomer, whose potential rose from deep green to blue thanks to the utopia bonus, got added to the blue shade group.

Since I wanted to use these Rattata for my future project and ultimately hand them, or rather their descendants, out as starters, I divided them into two groups according to their potential. The Rattata with a yellow shade and above made up one group while those below that made up the other.

Group 1 ended up with 186 Rattata, while Group 2 had 234 Rattata. I divided the Rattata territory into two and placed each group in one part. I did this to prevent members of group 2 from dragging down the potential average of group 1 to get better eggs in the future. I would obviously periodically check the egg of group 2 to see if any got lucky potential-wise.

After that split, I named group 1 the starter project group, and group 2 became the one that had to fulfill the original purpose, which was being a material source. Still, I was going to leave them alone until their numbers increased by quite a bit, and until then I would mostly ignore them.

Anyway, group 1 became my focus, and I distributed 5 kinds of Pokefood to all Rattata mischiefs in this group. The regular kind of Rattata Pokefood, and one each with a harmless amount of fire, water, grass, and electric energy to see which Rattata could qualify for my future project.

As I said the amount of non-normal type energy was harmless to the Rattata, and only served to help me distinguish which ones had any kind of affinity, no matter how meager, to a certain type. Furthermore, I was hoping extended periods of consumption of the Pokefood would be a bit helpful in the future when they were participating in my project.

Presently, I had uncovered 2 Rattata that liked the food with fire energy and 4 that did not mind eating the spiked food when given the choice between the regular kind and the one with additional fire energy.

There were 4 Rattata that liked the food with water energy, and 7 that did not mind it. 3 that liked the food with grass energy, and 6 that did not mind it. 4 that liked the food with electric energy, and 9 that did not mind it.

While it was not much, it was more than I had expected since there were only so many Rattata in the group, so 39 out of 186 Rattata was not bad at all. I made sure that the Rattata with the same preference were in the same mischief to encourage the passing down of that trait.

After I identified those that liked certain types, I adjusted their food by upping the amount of extra energy by a bit while making sure there was no adverse reaction.

That was pretty much it as far as my break was concerned. Oh, wait, I forgot something since it was not about myself, but about my friends. Misty became the first one among my friends after Kinji to become an official Ace-Class trainer.

While Misty had been a Sea Lady, which was equal to the ACE-Class, for nearly 4 years already, she had not really bothered getting the official ACE-Class upgrade from the alliance, since she had been going around the other continents to catch some more water types for her team.

Still, her Starmie, Blastoise, Gyarados, and Golduck were all at the Dark Gold stage and had been at that stage for the last 3 years, so she could have qualified for the ACE Class if she had bothered fulfilling the other conditions.

Nonetheless, Misty had finally finished the quota of alliance missions one needed to complete for the upgrade. That had been the only condition that she had been missing, so once she did it, the alliance officially promoted her trainer class to ACE.

She invited all of us to a celebration lunch, and since it was a pretty important occasion everyone made sure to attend. Anyway, now I should have mentioned anything important that happened during the break.

Yesterday had been the first day of the fourth term and everyone had been excited to see each other after 3 months. Before I left, I actually got approached by another one of my classmates, Danielle.

She asked if she could join Sorrel and Marlene in our training session on Giratidays, and I agreed since it hardly made a difference for me if I was coaching two people or three. Our training session on Giratiday proved just that since there were zero problems during the training.

Palkiday proved to be interesting since my sparring session got adjusted just like Mr. Burns had said before the break. Mr. Burns seemed to have gone all out to fulfill his promise because he showed up with a recruit from the Aura Guardian Order.

Moreover, it was not a fresh recruit, but an experienced one that had reached Tier 3 as an Aura User. To quote Mr. Burns, "no need to beat him, just go all out and try your best. The purpose of this is for you to find your current limits and improve. As long as either of you don't die, we'll be able to heal you back up just fine regardless of the price."

Armani Raymond was a Tier 3 First-Class Aura User with everything that entailed. This not only had his abilities from the previous tiers been boosted, but he also could create temporary aura links/bonds, a minor healing factor, mostly useful to recover from fatigue, which unfortunately for me also meant that he could fight longer, and a minor computing boost, which showed that aura abilities was not only about breaks but also brains.

The most important part was his upgraded aura manipulation. His greater aura manipulation allowed him to construct an aura armor along with a plethora of aura weapons without too much effort. That made him a pretty hard opponent since Armani made his name proud by being actually able to properly wield the weapons he created.

Well, I should stop coming up with justifications, I ended up losing all our spars despite going all out. I used my short-range teleportation, my aura, and my weapons, but I still lost all four bouts.

It was embarrassing to say but I actually ended up losing the first one within three minutes because I underestimated him, or rather did that on top of overestimating myself due to being able to teleport. One could argue that rather than overestimating myself, I got cocky, but regardless of which one it was, I ended up knocked down.

Armani observed my offense as well as the use of teleportation for the first three minutes while defending, and after predicting where I would appear next, he delivered a brutal head blow that had my head ringing. He used that moment to show that he could end me, and Mr. Burns declared him the winner.

Once I got healed up a bit and my head cleared up I felt a bit embarrassed because of the easy defeat I suffered. This was actually the first time I was facing a clearly superior foe and I went in headlong instead of being cautious.

Mr. Burns and Armani did not criticize me, but I scolded myself mentally. The spars after that took 15 to 25 minutes because I made sure to not act recklessly, and while I still lost, I ended up lasting longer due to learning which maneuvers were too dangerous, and which one was good. That was a major plus in my mind, so I was happy with my progress.

That second and third week were like that as well, with the difference being that I lasted a bit longer. Still, I managed to raise the average length of a spar to 25 minutes, as long as I did not make a major mistake, so that was not bad.

During the weekend of the third week, on Kyoday, something great happened. Horus/Xatu's Energy Density rose to SSS, which only left his Vitality before he was done with his limit breaking. Just one more parameter and Horus would be able to break through to the gold stage. If that was not great news I did not know what was.

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