Chapter 070

"Magnemite! Ascend and use Thunder Shock!" yelled Alex.

"Magnemite" cried the Pokemon, as it ascended to dodge the Flame Thrower by the Ponyta and fired Thunder Shock.

Ponyta was directly hit and fell down.

"Good job Magnemite!" said Alex, as he moved forward to treat the fallen Ponyta.

It had been two weeks since he'd seen Zapdos. After the whole incident, he settled back down in Pallet Town, training his Charmander and the newly captured Magnemite. Magnemite was level 22, having broken the level 20 bottleneck soon after he came back to Pallet Town. The pool in his backyard was finished, and he had also had a large generator installed for Magnemite to get charged.

Magnemite did not need to eat food. Instead, it required high class electrical energy for sustenance. The generator he had installed was one of the best models, which provided the optimum type of electrical energy required by Magnemite. He had ordered this with the funds he got for his Water Stones.

A special liquid metal was also purchased by him. This metal had to be coated on the surface of Magnemite every day to increase the steel type energy in its body.

Charmander on the other hand, had broken through to level 16. It had not yet shown any direct signs of evolving, but its increased irritability and the growing flame on its tail indicated that the evolution was close. But according to its stats, its training was only 60% done.

After observing each of the Pokemon on the ranch for so long, Alex had already figured out how the training percentages worked.

A Pokemon could be forced to evolve at any percentage. Especially some Bug type Pokemon and Pokemon that needed evolution stones, they could be forced to evolve at 0% also. But they would evolve into a weaker member of their species. Their size and strength would be less than the average for their species. They would lose most of their potential, and their strength would probably stagnate.

60% training was the minimum required for a Pokemon to evolve healthily and without losing its potential. But evolving Pokemon at just 60% would not be ideal.

First of all, a Pokemon could easily learn certain moves as they gained a certain level of strength, just by the inheritance of their species. If they evolve, the inheritance while present, would be less and less perceivable, as their own personality supersedes the inheritance from their species.

Secondly, the bodies of Pokemon would store a part of the energy they have by instinct. All the energy accumulated in the body would be utilised when evolving. Naturally, the more the energy dormant, the more would the energy to utilize when evolving, and more the strength of the Pokemon afterwards.

Thirdly, some materials could be used to increase the strength and potential of Pokemon while evolving. But they could only absorb a certain amount at lower levels. The higher the level, the more energy they can absorb while evolving.

And lastly, better trained Pokemon instinctively grasp the usage of their new bodies, compared to prematurely evolved Pokemon. For example, if a Nidorino is trained well, it will instinctively know how to walk and run on two legs after evolving. But in case of a premature evolution, the Nidoking may not even be able to make use of its legs.

Alex also observed that most trainers allowed the evolution of the Pokemon at 60% training. Trainers who had some good sources of information, like all the trainers sponsored by Oak Corall for example, would evolve their Pokemon in between 70% to 80% training.

He had heard that some trainers who had strict requirements of themselves, or those who were born in major clans and thus had to have powerful Pokemon, would wait until their Pokemon were fully trained before evolving them.

So he had bought a few Everstones and gave one to Charmander, intent on fully training it before it evolved.

After returning Magnemite and sending off Rapidash, he walked towards the Professor's office. He had asked yesterday to be allowed to perform some experiments on Poliwhirl independently, stating that he had a few ideas.

The Professor, as he predicted had hit a dead end for now. He did try the trade machine, but he did not associate King's Rock with Politied. Not yet anyway. Alex planned to make a few random experiments on Poliwhirl, before setting his eyes on the King's Rock using some excuse, and 'accidentally' discovering that Poliwhirl + King's Rock + Trade Machine = Politoed.

But first of all, he had to get permission to experiment with the Poliwhirl belonging to Oak Corall. And then he had to confirm if the method he remembered from his previous life would work here.

If this succeeded, he could convince the Professor that he was a genius with 'innovative ideas' and get started on his first pot of gold.