Well, I certainly could not complain about how the first week of my third term went considering that Tiamat/Milotic's Strength reached S on Dialday, which officially finished the first round of her limit breaking. Not only that, but the 19 of 22 spars that I won against Erza and her fellow novice knight certainly did help my mood as well.
I mean it was only a slight improvement compared to the 17 wins I managed to achieve a month ago or the 18 wins I got the last two weeks, but it was a steady improvement, that happened thanks to the successively better grasp on my ability to use my aura during combat.
Honestly, weapon or fighting ability-wise Erza and some of her colleagues were as good or better than me, but my ability to use aura made up for that difference.
If not for the fact that their knight training allowed them to improve their physique to superhuman levels to similar levels of aura users just without the accompanying superpower/aura, their superior combat ability would not have been enough, but it was possible, so they were a worthy challenge.
I had not heard anything about sword force or another weapon-specific force like I had read about in many of the asian novels I used to read, or knight and other such professions would have been multiple times more dangerous.
Hmm, that made me think about the possibility of creating weapons using high-class materials of certain elements/types and then seeing if I could create something along the lines of magic/type knight profession by having them stimulate the elements inside and outside the weapon.
The only thing they would need besides the no doubt valuable weapons would be enough of an affinity with any type/element to stimulate the functions of the weapon. As for the weapons themselves, I could use, or adapt the runes used in ballcrafting and other professions to create them.
Still, doing that would require me to reach pretty high tiers in blacksmithing, ballcrafting, and alchemy so creating a brand new profession, or rather upgrading an existing one would have to wait for the future.
I mean I am a hundred percent sure that I was not the only one who thought of that idea, I was not that arrogant, and since I had not heard about any elemental knight running around, it meant that achieving it was pretty hard.
I mean, there were strong weapons used by strong knights or other professions, but nothing like I was envisioning. Regardless, this was something I would have to throw in my mental "ideas for the future" folder, which had grown rather big by the way, since I could not realize this idea for many years, just like many other ideas I had come up with to strengthen myself, my Pokemon, or humans in general.
Well, random flights of fancy aside, the second week went by pretty quietly, at least it did until Dialday when Ace decided to pay me a surprise visit. Knowing Ace as well as I did, I knew that something had to have happened that he wanted to share with me, or rather show off, face-to-face, instead of informing me over the phone.
Well, I was flattered that he came to me first rather than announcing it in the chat group. Anyway, seeing how he was currently telling me that we should move to the terrace because he wanted to show me something with a rather smug smile, I could guess what had happened.
"Alright, alright. Look at your smug face," I told him with a chuckle, while we stepped onto the terrace. "Everyone would be able to guess that one of your Pokemon broke through or evolved looking at that smug face of yours," I joked and he just laughed.
"Pfft, a breakthrough or evolution are not brag-worthy," he said smugly while taking out two Pokeballs. He called out the Pokemon inside and began to brag while doing so.
"I need at least two breakthroughs and evolutions if I want to be able to brag in front of you," he backhand complimented me while bragging, before he started to laugh happily, and seeing the two Pokemon in front of us cheekily waving at me I could totally understand his happiness.
"Congratulations," I earnestly congratulated while patting him on the shoulder. "When did that happen?" I asked curiously.
"Yesterday, actually," Ace answered happily. "They were fighting each other, and they got really into it. They suddenly stopped in the middle of their battle and told me they felt the opportunity to break through to the silver stage.
I naturally gave them the go-ahead, since it had been quite some time since they had reached the (high) bronze stage. Anyway, after their breakthrough, I set up the materials mom and dad gave me for their evolution before I let them go through with that one as well.
I thought about announcing it in the chat group, but I decided to surprise you first since it's usually you that does the surprising," he said mirth fully, which explained why he had yet to brag about it in the group chat.
After that, he called out his Feraligatr and handed him his phone, before he had me stand to the left of his now Infernape as well as Floatzel while he stood on their right.
Feraligatr took a few photos before he handed the phone back to Ace, who chose the best one to upload into our group chat with the caption "Just showed off my freshly evolved Infernape and Floatzel to Mikail" with a smiley face at the end. That was a pretty long caption I know, but it was Ace so whatever.
It did not take long for the congratulations messages to flood the chat, and Ace send back his thank you messages. Still, despite knowing that none of them, or rather most of them, were not the impulsive sort, I send a message reminding them what I had told them about the best evolution points.
You know, just in case someone got overzealous. I had informed all of them about the optimal evolution points months ago, citing that I had learned about that after a lot of research, and most of them said that it was close to what many of the elders in their families spoke of in their experience, so they decided to trust me in this.
Those without big families or clans behind them were even more thankful, and I gave the go-ahead for all of them to spread the exact points I told them to their family and clan members. That was a piece of information that was helpful to everyone and I did not mind their families benefiting from that knowledge.
I did not doubt that it would spread from there, but humanity becoming a bit stronger that way was not a bad thing in my opinion. Besides, it was a question of whether trainers were willing to delay the evolution of their Pokemon because I was sure a few wouldn't even after learning about the optimal points.
As for why I had not published it, well, conclusively proving that was too time-consuming and not something I was willing to do, which I would have to do if I wanted to publish the knowledge.
When I went to Mr. Cameron to confide him about publishing it he said that high-class trainers roughly knew about it, but that it was not confirmed yet because proving it was a gigantic project.
When I asked him if I could publicize my guess online as just something I had inferred which was not proven, he told me to wait until after I won the global competition, since that would add a bit more credit to my name.
The fact that he backhandedly told me that he believed that I would win the global competition was not something that I missed, and his confidence in me was welcome.
Anyway, my parents kept Ace hostage until after dinner, not letting him leave before we had eaten, and he only offered token resistance after they stopped him when he said that he wanted to leave once he was done showing off.
Mom obviously asked if he had places he needed to be before she began pressing him to stay for dinner since she would not have "forced" him if he had previously planned appointments.
After Ace's visit calm returned to my routine for the next week, which only got interrupted at the end of the month by Abzu/Milotic's Agility reaching S. That was his fourth one, so he was lagging a bit behind Tiamat who had finished her first round at the beginning of the month.
That was entirely due to the difference her shiny gene caused. Abzu's slightly higher potential could not bridge the gap caused by the 15% boost of Tiamat's shiny gene. Still, it was the only reason he was only lagging by a small bit instead of being completely left behind.
Still, totally unrelated, but I was slightly disappointed that Mothra/Butterfree had not done the last step by the end of the month. I had hoped her Strength would have reached D sometime this month, but unfortunately, that did not happen even after the last day of the 33rd month went by on Palkiday.
Well, it seemed that fate decided against making me wait for too long for good news because I got some at the start of the second week of the new month. It just wasn't exactly the news I was waiting for.
Still, Stan/Gyarados's Endurance reaching SS was great news nonetheless. This meant that only his Energy Capacity needed to follow before his second limit-breaking round was complete.
Moreover, experience told me that an improvement on Stan's part meant that some similar progress from the other 5 members of the Slithering Six was not too far off. It would probably happen anytime between one to three months.
On Palkiday, I managed to up my winning ratio to 20 out of 22 spars. The funny thing was that the ones I ended up losing against kept changing. It was not as if there was one that was beating me each time, but it was more like there was always one or two that were performing better that time than usual, and that bit made enough of a difference for them to win.
Still, that was pretty normal since humans were not robots that had a set performance. For us, it was more like we had a performance range, and depending on multiple factors our performance would be somewhere within that range.
Additionally, we were also capable of underperforming if we were really unfortunate, but the opposite was true as well, where we over-performed due to some fortunate reason.
Anyway, now that I had justified to myself why I did not manage to get a full win streak, despite having won against each one of my sparring partners more than once, I could move on.
Before the second week ended, I received some great news. What I waited for finally came to pass. On Grouday, during our morning training session, Mothra's Strength rose to D. That was enough for her to reach the (high) gold stage, due to her Energy Capacity being at B, which increased her parameter average.
I naturally directly shared the good news with everyone inside Utopia and we began to congratulate her before I threw an internal celebration inside Utopia for her. Our celebration went on until noon. At that point, I left Utopia while the others kept going for a bit more.
I gave the good news to my parents, and I briefly called Mothra out of Utopia so that they could congratulate her as well. They wanted to throw a celebration, but I told them that we had thrown one when she reached the gold stage, so there was no need to throw one now.
They insisted for a bit, but I managed to persuade them that they should wait for her to break through to the dark gold stage. I mean we already held a celebration that was still somewhat ongoing without me, so it was really not necessary.
Once I had convinced my parents, I posted the news in the group chat, and everyone began sending congratulations messages. It took a while for some to send their messages, but that was normal since it was not like we were constantly looking at our phones.
Ace jokingly complained about me one-upping him after his evolution stunt, and everyone send laughing smileys. After that Aaron send a message that his Poliwrath had broken through to the gold stage two days ago along with a sunglass-wearing smiley.
He added that he didn't announce it because he did not want to brag, and everyone send out another round of congratulations. With that Aaron only had one Pokemon that was at the silver stage, with the rest being at the gold stage.
We chatted for a while, but at some point, everyone had to leave to do other stuff, so a string of goodbyes appeared on the chat. Before dinner that evening my parents insisted that I call out Mothra as well. Mom had cooked a special dinner for her in celebration of her advancement.
Mothra certainly enjoyed the attention and she liked the dinner as well, so I could say that the day ended on a high note for everyone.
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