That evening I told my parents about Mars/Ursasol's evolution and showed them his new look. However, I also requested them to keep his evolution to themselves for now since I was not going to share it with anyone else for the time being.
I had plans for that one, plans that would raise my prestige in the academic community a lot, paving the way for at least a Junior Professor title, maybe even the full-fledged one. Okay, maybe not the full one, but the junior one was definitely in the running, especially if I had other achievements listed such as the Arctic Heart and eventually the new Eeveelution.
Anyway, I already knew the requirements for the evolution of Ursaring. I had tangible proof that using a B-Class Sunlight Bellflower and Sun Crystal during a visible Solar Flare would trigger the evolution to Ursasol. What I was hoping to achieve was to create, or rather nurture a singular evolution trigger. That was also why I kept the current method I discovered a secret.
The Sunlight Bellflower was a plant that grew and flourished by absorbing energy from fire energy-rich environments, and knowing that the other necessary component was the Sun Crystal I was simply going to infuse the crystal's energy into the flower.
The easiest way to do that privately for me was actually to use the material subspace of Utopia. I created a fire-energy dense area inside the material subspace by burying a lot of fire stones and fire crystals in the ground. That would mimic/recreate the environment the Sunlight Bellflower typically grew at.
However, what I wanted was not just a regular Sunlight Bellflower, but one that had been infused with the energy of a Sun Crystal, so I would bury a few of those along with a few Fire Crystals in a circle, and plant the Bellflower in the middle of that circle.
After that, all I would have to do is wait for the flower to grow, and see if it came out as I wanted it to. If it did, Utopia would be able to copy the new bellflower strain, giving me access to a steady, unlimited source of evolution triggers.
I was hopeful and somewhat confident that unlike in Mars' case, a C-Class flower of the new strain would be enough to trigger the evolution since it would hopefully be a perfect blend of the two items. Especially since Utopia would be optimizing the new flower as soon as it had actually matured.
If my plan worked, I would essentially have both the method and the means for the evolution at hand. I could then decide if I wanted to be the sole distributor of the new evolution trigger, or if I wanted to allow it to spread somewhat. It would require quite a special environment to grow after all.
Also, if I wanted to be the sole source/provider, I would have to ensure that the ones I sold could not be used to grow more. Nonetheless, I would think more about that once I managed to actually nurture the flower.
On Arcday, I bought four seeds coming from a B-Class Sunlight Bellflower, since that was the best I could get my hands on at the moment, and after coming back to my dorm room that evening, I began to actually implement the super bellflower plan.
Flowers like these grew really slowly, and since I wanted them to reach at least the C-Class before plucking one, I would probably have to wait for at least a year to do so. I guess Mars would be living the life of a super spy for the next year or so.
Regardless, the last day of the month passed, and Mewday officially started the last month before my month-long vacation. We had after all arrived at the end of the 4th school/academy term, and I was contractually following the school schedule, even if I had only visited the trainer school only five times during these 4 terms. Moreover, one of those was the first day of school.
Regardless, the days flew by, and before I knew it it was Dialday. Around lunchtime, I actually ended up receiving a call from the construction crew. The supervisor told me that they were done with the shelter and asked if I had the time tomorrow to come over for the handover.
I was going to go back to Hope Town over the weekend anyway, so I consented. We agreed to meet up at 1 p.m., and I made sure to be on time. My parents accompanied me to the place and the boss of the company was present as well. The supervisor showed us around the shelter, and once I confirmed that everything was in order, I finished the rest of the payment.
However, I was not done with the construction company and they knew it. We had already discussed everything beforehand, so when I told them to go ahead, they knew that I was talking about the construction of the two warehouses and battlefields as well as the multipurpose building on top of the property. There was no way I would leave the plot empty, just because the bunker/shelter was underground after all.
The supervisor promised that he would try his best to stick to the timeline, which was 5 to 6 months until all buildings along with the two battlefields were done. The reason I let them create battlefields was that the property was located between the orphanage and the habitat zone I was planning to create, so to me, it just fit.
Anyway, after settling everything our family went to the town center to stroll around. I put aside everything else and spent the rest of the weekend with my parents. Still, come Arcday, I was back in the lab and working on the Mystic Frost Yache Gem. We were coming closer and closer to finishing that one.
It was on Giratiday, around 3 p.m., that we managed to produce a Mystic Frost Yache Gem with a fusion rate of 99%. We did our best to create a viable one but still failed at the end of the day. Nonetheless, that did not detract from the fact that we had come into spitting distance of our goal.
Sadly, the awaited success did not happen on either Palkiday or Dialday, so we had to leave the lab for the weekend without being able to finish this part of our project. I stayed in Pallet City over the weekend, or rather than Pallet it would be more accurate to say that I stayed in Utopia over the weekend to spend some time with my Pokemon.
The biggest thing that happened, was probably Tiamat/Milotic's breakthrough to the gold stage shortly after lunch on Kyoday.
'Name: Tiamat
Species: Milotic
Gender: Female
Age: 11+ Years
-
Type: Water
Potential: Deep Purple (40.98%)*
{Light Purple (76.07%) -> (80.98%) -> Deep Purple (40.98%)}
Genetic variation: Shiny
Abilities: Marvel Scale, Cute Charm
Talents: Universal
Affinities: Water
-
Bond: Mikail (strong)
Quirks: None
----
Parameters:
Stage: Gold Stage (mid)
Vitality: C
Strength: E
Endurance: D
Agility: D
Energy Capacity: C
Energy Density: B
----
Resistance: Fire (Minor), Water (Minor), Ice (Minor), Steel (Minor)
-
Weaknesses: Electric (Minor), Grass (Minor)
-
Standardized:
Electric (in progress)
----
Condition: Healthy, Pleased, Joyful
----
Masteries:
Water Energy Manipulation (Advanced)
----
Techniques:
-
(Unofficial) Initial:
N/A
-
Novice:
N/A
-
Beginner:
Flail, Dragon Tail, Water Sport, Helping Hand (new), Round (new), Mud Shot (new), Dragon Dance (new)
-
Proficient:
Splash, Tackle, Iron Tail, Aqua Tail, Coil, Wrap, Disarming Voice, Recover, Twister, Safeguard (new), Blizzard (new), Hyper Beam (new), Double Team (new), Whirlpool (new), Captivating Attraction (C), Swift (new), Iron Head (new), Dragon Pulse (new)
-
Advanced:
Water Pulse, Ice Beam, Scald, Endure, Life Dew, Attract, Captivate, Rain Dance, Protect, Surf (+), Hydro Pump (+), Refresh (+), Aqua Ring (+)
-
Mastered:
Water Gun
-
Combos/Custom:
Captivating Attraction (Proficient)'
A result of her limit breaking was that her potential reached deep purple and was not that far from reaching the halfway point to light aurora. Another one was that she started out at the (mid) gold stage, but needed only one more parameter increase in any parameter to reach the (high) gold stage.
This was thanks to both the limit-breaking bonus and her Shiny Gene. Tiamat's breakthrough fired up Abzu/Milotic quite a bit since he did not want to lag behind too much.
Anyway, the weekend passed, and it was halfway through Arcday that we finally ended up producing a viable Mystic Frost Yache Gem. I naturally checked its status as soon as possible, and to my relief, the gem had the two effects I/we wanted.
Sadly, it failed the evolution test, which was a bit disappointing, but we were used to failure, so we directly moved on to testing its capabilities, and we actually managed to conclude those by the end of Giratiday. I was attributing our speed to our experience and the fact that the Mystic Frost Yache Gem was practically the fusion of two of our previous products.
On Palkiday we began working on the new gem, which had the potential to be one of the greatest ice-type items in the world, at least for ice-type beings. The first thing we did before we began, was to settle the name issue. Using our previous style, the name ended up being way too long, so we decided to go for a more metaphorical name.
We ended up settling for Arctic Heart since it could practically generate an ice area on its own and was the core/heart of the area it brought about. We quickly noticed that the difficulty of fusing the Yache Essence, Frost Extract, and Cryogonal Ice into the Mystic Ice Gem was a lot higher than doing so with just the first two.
So much so, that we only had a success rate of 2 out of 10 tries of even producing a "failed" Arctic Heart on the first day, and even among the "successful" ones, the highest fusion rate was just 27%.
It took us around 1 and a half weeks to raise that to 38%, and the work we put in made us realize, that while the material costs were just within our budget limits, the addition of the labor and production costs pushed the price past the maximum limit set for a D-Class evolution trigger.
To be more specific, we estimated the total production cost of the Arctic Heart to be about 10% higher than the limit, so adding a profit margin of roughly 10% would push the end price to somewhere between 20 to 25% above our maximum limit (for D-Class triggers).
We naturally still insisted on working on the Arctic Heart because of the potential the object promised to have, and we were hopeful that the Professor would be able to push the cost and resulting price down to 10 or 15%.
Even if that did not happen, we still thought that the Arctic Heart was worth the additional cost, considering that the trainer could actually use it for its many, many effects until his Pokmeon was ready to evolve, so paying 20k to 30k more was deemed acceptable to us.
We obviously had to share our conclusions with James, who shared them with the Professor. We made sure to add the effects we were expecting the Arctic Heart to have, and both agreed with us, so we were able to continue without any problems.
Giratiday was the last day of the month, and Palkiday would have been the start of my month-long vacation, but I convinced my parents, James, and the Professor, in that order, to let me at least finish the week, so I kept working until Dialday evening, and only returned to Hope Town on Kyoday.
It took quite some work to persuade my parents, and I had to promise to completely leave the matters of the lab behind me for the rest of the month, but it ended up being worth it since we managed to push past the 40% fusion rate during those additional 2 days.
I did not think that Carl and Sibel would be able to produce a viable Arctic Heart until I came back, so I had no problem keeping the promise I made, so I did not even insist on them calling me if a breakthrough happened.
-----------------------------
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This is chapter 3/4 for this week.
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Advanced chapters, sketches, drawings of the MC, variants, alternate evolutions, and maps can be found on my Patre’on. A patre’on exclusive Legendary Lore series can be found there as well.
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