The mayor turned out to be pretty welcoming and told me what I needed to know, so I left after thanking him and headed to the east of the town to check the conflict zone.
I spent the next three days checking the situation to get a relatively comprehensive picture of the situation and learned the reason for the conflict.
Turns out that the two tribes discovered a small orchard of 6 Chilan Berry trees that were located close to their territories, and coincidentally, it had about the same distance to both their territories, so none of the two tribes could claim a bigger right than the other.
I also checked the two tribes themselves, and I observed a few of the conflicts. The good news was that it seemed as if the tribes did not want to escalate the situation, most likely due to the fact that the two tribes were roughly equal in strength.
An all-out conflict would result in a pyrrhic victory for whoever won, which was why they avoided provoking the other party to escalate the situation. That sentiment was the only reason why I saw no deaths during my three days of observation.
The worst that happened was heavy injuries, but so far no Zigzagoon, Linoone, Sentret, or Furret had died yet, which to be honest was pretty impressive.
Well, at least that was the case for the conflicts I saw. Still, I concentrated my observation on the main conflict zone, which was the area around the Chilan orchard, so I might have missed something.
Now, the bad news was that the two sides seemed to be getting frustrated with the current situation since the number of clashes and injuries were progressively increasing.
Anyway, once I was satisfied with my preliminary investigation, I focused on observing the tribe leaders and deputies of each tribe, to get a better picture of the forces I would have to deal with. I wanted to avoid any sudden surprises when I was going to mediate between the two.
As far as I found out the Linoone tribe had a (low) gold-stage leader, and 6 (high) silver-stage deputies. Meanwhile, the Furret tribe had a (low) gold-stage leader and 5 (high) silver deputies, so the difference was not enough especially since none of the tribes had a number superiority that would help tilt the conflict in their favor.
It took me nearly two days of serious investigations before I was sure that neither tribe was hiding some old leader at or above the (low) gold stage that was chilling in seclusion until the tribe needed it, or something like that, which used to happen a lot in some of the cliche novels I used to read.
Still, it might have taken me five days in total, but once I was sure what I was getting into, I called out Mothra/Butterfree, Horus/Xatu, Enji/Arcanine, Thor/Raichu, Nyx/Umbreon, and Tyson/Machoke before making my way to the Linoone tribe's den to talk to the leader.
I was "obviously" coming with peaceful intentions, so while we were being watched with distrustful eyes, no one attacked us until I got to meet the boss Linoone that asked us what we wanted.
I made use of everything taught to us in the academy to explain to the boss Linoone that I was sent to mediate between the two tribes and help resolve the conflict.
The boss seemed to doubt my qualification to handle the situation, despite my usage of aura, so Mothra volunteered to clarify to it that I, or rather we, were capable of handling any problems that might crop up.
She clarified our qualifications perfectly and I was sure even the dumbest individual would have understood her message. Thankfully everyone seemed to have gotten the message and the boss was more amiable for the rest of our little talk.
In the end, boss Linoone agreed to hold some peace talks with boss Furret tomorrow, so I headed to the Furret territory next and repeated the process there as well. The boss Furret turned out to be as sensible as the boss Linoone and agreed to tomorrow's peace talk as well.
I set the orchard as the meeting place, so the next day, the two bosses appeared with two of their deputies each, since that was all I asked/allowed them to bring along for the meeting.
The area was surrounded by their tribes which would no doubt attack as soon as something happened to their bosses, but at the meeting place itself, there were only 3 Pokemon from each side.
I played my role as the mediator perfectly and I was sure everyone would agree with me on that. Anyone with complaints might voice them to my trusty assistant Mothra. After a few minutes of complaints being thrown around, of claims about why the berry trees belong to them, and so on, I managed to get them to agree to split the trees between the tribes.
Actually, that was the smart and logical thing to do which the bosses could have come up with on their own as well, the only reason they did not do that themselves was that transplanting grown berry trees without the right techniques and conditions led to the death of the tree.
Moreover, there were differences in conditions and techniques for most berry types. The tribes did not want to risk losing the trees so they refrained from transplanting them. As for why they did not gather the berries and simply planted them to grow more berries, that was actually quite simple as well.
Unlike canon, here not all berries could be used to plant new berry trees. Only certain berries are qualified to be used as "seeds", and unfortunately the visual difference between regular berries and "seed" berries was so small that only professionals (berry farmers) could spot the difference.
On that front, I was pretty lucky, since the optimization process of Utopia made such that a lot of the berries grown by trees that had gone through the process were qualified to be used as "seeds".
The probability got raised from about 1-2% to 10-20% for the more common species like the Oran berry, and from around 0.5% to roughly 5% for the more uncommon berries. The even rarer ones had their probability raised by 10 times as well.
Anyway, that was why they were not simply planting new trees, since they had no idea which one would work and which one wouldn't. Thankfully, I could be considered a berry connoisseur, so transplanting berry trees was a simple thing for me, even if it was one of the trees belonging to the rarer berry variety.
The bosses on both sides along with their deputies gave me doubtful looks and straight-up warned me that they would work together to take me down if I caused the berry trees to wilt/die in the transplanting process, and I just calmly nodded since I was absolutely confident in my skills.
After we agreed on transplanting 3 berry trees to each tribe, we all moved to the trees and I began working on carefully digging up the first tree, before moving it to the Linoone territory. I chose a satisfactory plot to transplant the tree and prepped the earth for the process before (re)planting the tree there.
I sprinkled some of my self-made fertilizer and poured some of my special water to help the tree settle, before returning to the orchard to repeat the process with another tree but this time I planted it in the Furret territory.
I repeated the process until each side had their 3 Chilan berry trees, and the bosses and their deputies shadowed me for the next two days after that until it was clear that the transplantation was successful and that the trees were not going to die.
Once that happened, they genuinely thanked me and they even brought along the majority of their tribe members to do so, which to be completely honest was an impressive sight.
All in all, it took me around a week to finish the mission, and after the bosses along with their tribes thanked me I went to the mayor to report the successful completion of the mission, before informing him that I would still be here until the end of the second week.
I honestly had no interest in my regular lessons, so I was planning to make full use of the two weeks I had been given for the mission. Miss Emily who had kept her word until now about keeping my presence to herself learned that I was done with the mission and began to brag about meeting me.
That led to my presence becoming known in the town, which led to me reducing my visits to the town since I did not want to be constantly approached each time I went there.
I spent the rest of the week simply training with everyone without going around challenging any Pokemon. We worked on either their moves or parameters, so it was training in its purest form, and it paid off as well. On Kyoday, a day before I made my way back to Rota, Stan/Gyarados's Strength reached SS, and Manami/Lapras's Vitality did the same.
For both Pokemon, it was their first parameter at SS, so I praised them quite a bit and we threw a mini party to celebrate their progress and the successful completion of the mission.
Grouday morning I returned to Rota after leaving a message for the mayor that I was leaving, and I spent the whole day with my parents. It was nice to spend some time with them after 2 weeks, even if mom called me like every second day.
Come Arcday, I went to the academy and after homeroom, I asked Mr. Burns if Mr. Cameron was available since I wanted to give my mission report.
He told me that Mr. Cameron was waiting for me, so I made my way over to his office on my lonesome since Mr. Burns saw no reason to accompany me due to having to go to his next lesson.
I gave my report to Mr. Cameron, including the fact that I stayed for the full duration of the mission even after finishing early, and Mr. Cameron told me that my report matched the one they received.
He told me that they were happy with my success, especially since I used a mostly diplomatic approach, which was what they wanted to test with this mission.
When I asked if it was okay to tell me that they were using the mission to test me, he waved it off and said that he knew that I was smart enough to know what they were doing. I felt a bit proud due to the confidence Mr. Cameron had in me.
After that, he told me that I had been accredited the 150 academy points along with another 50 points for my approach as well as for showcasing advanced botanical knowledge and competence.
That meant I was missing less than 200 points to reach my goal, so I directly asked Mr. Cameron if I could take up another mission, but Mr. Cameron told me that I would have to wait until the end of the next month before I could apply for another mission.
According to him, I had to spend at least a month at the academy before going out for another mission, so that I could take a look at the academic materials, and spend some time with my class/academy mates. Moreover, he reminded me that I had some lessons with Mr. Burns that were important for my personal combat prowess that I had to go through.
Seeing that he would not budge on that condition I thanked Mr. Cameron and informed him that I would be back at the end of the next month for another mission, before leaving for my next lesson, which was actually my first lesson this academic year, not counting the homeroom class I sat in before this.
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