The next morning Mikail woke up early like usual.
He did his stretches and bodyweight training before focusing on his psychic training.
Mikail could feel that there was a paper-thin wall between him and the next class, so he could advance anytime.
He stopped an hour later and thought about the things he could do at home since he was not going out exploring today or tomorrow.
He recalled that he never went to his parent's office that was on the same floor as his room and decided to rectify that immediately.
When he arrived in front of the door he tried to open it and was surprised to find it unlocked, shrugging at his parents, should he call it, carelessness, or carefreeness Mikail entered the room.
It looked pretty comfortable, there was a 2-person couch with a coffee table, a study desk with an office chair, and 2 bean bags.
Furthermore, there was a pretty big bookshelf that was nearly filled with books and documents.
Mikail ignored the ones that were out of his reach and focused on the lower rows that he could reach.
He decided to first focus on a few maps of Kanto and a few complimentary books he found amongst the reading materials.
He took out 3 maps, one showing the whole of Kanto, one focusing on the part between Viridian City and Pewter City, to which his parents added Hope Town, and the last one focused on Hope Town.
Besides the map, he also took the book "Settlements and You" to help him understand the classifications on the map and to get some general knowledge of Kanto's settlement situation.
The first thing he noticed when he looked at the map of Kanto was that it was huge.
He objectively knew that even the size of a single Terran continent that humanity settled on was two times the Earth's surface area but only after seeing the size of Kanto and knowing that it was only a small part of the whole continent did he comprehend how big the continents and subsequently Terra really were.
The Kanto region alone had a territory of 15.5 million square kilometers, which was much larger than any country on earth except for Russia, and the difference between those two was not that big.
The shape of the region did mostly resemble the one from the games, but the land outcrop around Pallet City, yes not town but city, was further towards the center of the region.
Other than that they chose an island west of Pallet City as Cinnabar Island and the one from the games was designated as an unsafe volcanic island.
Because of the sheer size of Kanto and because this was reality, not a game, there were naturally more cities than the 10 from the games, and their distance to each other was way larger.
Their position on the other hand was relatively the same just not their size and distance.
The map of Kanto as a whole he was currently studying showed only the Tier 7, and Tier 6 major cities, which included the ones from the games but there were still 34 major cities recorded on the map.
According to the scale of the map, each major city had a 10.000 square kilometers area which was considerable.
That was somewhat between the size of Tokyo, 8.000 sqkm, and New York, 12.000 sqkm.
Mikail saw that each major city had a strip of land/route connecting them to other cities and that only those were considered relatively safe areas.
The strips/routes were all 100 kilometers wide, so the safe area was not small it just looked small in comparison to the wilderness.
Everything outside those strips/routes was considered wild area/wilderness and this was inside the Kanto region.
The area outside Kanto's borders was marked red and categorized as deadly.
He also noticed that the Rota Kingdom was drawn north of Pewter City and it was marked as a subordinate territory of Kanto.
Mikail saw the tier categorization of the cities again and was curious how the settlements were divided, so he put the maps aside for now and focused on the book on settlements he chose.
From there he found out quite a bit of information.
There were 6 types of settlements that were recognized by all of humanity.
Villages, Towns, Small Cities, Cities, Major Cities, and Capital Cities.
The settlements were divided into parts according to their size.
Towns had an inner and an outer area.
Small Cities had an inner, outer, and fringe area.
Cities had a center, inner, outer, and fringe area.
Major Cities/Capitals had a core, center, inner, outer, and fringe area.
Now came the part that he was the most curious about.
There were 7 settlement tiers.
The assigned tier of a settlement depended on its size, strength (military and/or economic), and influence on its surrounding area.
Tier 0 was possible for Villages and Towns.
Tier 1 was possible for Villages, Towns, and Small cities.
Tier 2 was possible for Villages, Towns, Small cities, and Cities.
Tier 3 was possible for Small cities and Cities.
Tier 4 was possible for Small cities, Cities, and Major cities.
Tier 5 was possible for Cities and Major cities.
Tier 6 was possible only for Major cities and Tier 7 only for Capital cities.
'I finally know what Hope Town being a Tier 2 town means.
Hope Town is better than I thought, being at the highest tier possible for a town.
To rise to Tier 3 it would need to upgrade to/qualify as a small city.'
Were Mikail's thoughts before he focused back on the book.
Next up was the standard size of settlements and the distance between settlements.
Villages were 4+ sqkm big and had 10+ km between them.
Towns were 25+ sqkm big and had 50+ km between them.
Small Cities were 225+ sqkm big and had 100+ km between them.
Cities were 400+ sqkm big and had 250+ km between them.
Major Cities were up to 10.000+ sqkm big and had 500+ km between them.
Capital Cities had the same standards as Major cities.
As for the population, Mikail looked that up as well and they considered the number of registered households.
The big ones were 300.000+ households for Major cities and 1.000.000+ households for Capital cities.
That was all Mikail needed to know of that topic for now.
If he ever decided to take over or build his own settlement, he would revisit the topic.
After putting the book back from where he had taken it, Mikail focused on the maps again, especially the one of Hope Town and *how surprising it was* that he actually found Hope Hill on the map.
Nodding to himself Mikail verified that he was accurate once more before directing his focus back to the map.
While Mikail was concentrating on the map of hope town his mother entered the room.
She had decided to see what Mikail was doing because he had not come downstairs yet.
He used to come down much earlier, so his mother went up to see if something happened but couldn't find him in his room.
While she was moving towards the bathroom, because that's where she thought he was, Arya heard the sound of shifting paper coming from their office.
Once she entered the room she saw her son focusing on a map.
She asked him amused.
"Mikail, why did you enter this room, and why are you staring at the map so intently?"
Mikail who nearly sprang up in surprise turned to his mother while putting on the most innocent look he could muster.
"Mommy, good morning.
I was a bit bored.
When I wanted to go downstairs I saw the door.
I decided to peek.
I haven't been here before.
I got curious.
Look I found treasure maps like in the stories."
Mikail said while pointing at the maps.
Arya laughed a little before she started speaking.
"Honey, those aren't treasure maps, but real maps.
What they show is the location of places.
Sadly, there are no crosses that show the location of buried treasures on these maps."
Mikail acted disappointed.
"Not treasure maps.
Awwwwww.
I even found the hill.
I thought the treasure is buried there.
Are they really not treasure maps?"
His mother was trying not to laugh at his look.
"I'm sorry, honey, but those are really not treasure maps.
Since you singled out Hope Hill on the map I can talk to your father and we can go there on a trip if you want to."
Mikail agreed to her suggestion because any new place was a new source for possibly useful materials.
"Okay, thank you, mommy."
They went downstairs together and had their breakfast.
Mikail's parents talked with each other, and Arya told her husband about what happened upstairs.
Edward had to laugh when he heard what his wife told him and instantly agreed once he heard about her idea of a trip to Hope Hill.
They decided to go there tomorrow right after breakfast.
Mikail spent the next few hours with his parents before he told them he was tired and that he was going to take a nap.
He went to his room and called out Natu after making sure his parents did not follow him.
"Hello, Natu.
I need your help again."
Mikail explained his plan to Natu.
He wanted to do his psychic training and fully focus on it, so he wanted Natu to use his senses to keep an eye on the stairs leading to his floor and warn him once his parents went upstairs.
The reason Mikail did not tell Natu to directly use his senses on Mikail's parents was that he suspected they, specifically his father, would notice something causing him to become alert, which Mikail did not want.
The reason he wanted to fully focus and could not stay alert himself was that he wanted to invest all his energy in his training hoping to successfully advance as soon as possible.
"Natu. Na."
Natu agreed while expressing his hunger, not so subtly demanding a bribe in the form of berries.
"No problem.
I will give you 2 Sitrus and 2 Leppa berries.
If you still have more space in your belly after eating those, I can give you some more."
Mikail proceeded to take out the promised berries and focused on his telekinesis exercise afterward.
During the time he had done his exploration Mikail had not forgotten about his psychic training.
He had made sure to train for at least 2 hours per day and had managed to increase the number of stones he lifted during his telekinesis exercise to 19.
While he had not increased his range of 10 meters or persistence of 10 minutes, just the increase of 9 stones was good enough progress for about two months of training.
He was guessing that he would be able to break through as soon as he managed to do his exercise with 20 stones.
Mikail gave his best during his training, pushing himself to lift the 20th stone.
While he already managed to lift 20 stones, he could not keep levitating them for 10 minutes.
His current limit was 8 minutes, which meant he was 2 minutes short.
So he kept exhausting his energy reserves using his telekinesis and then meditated to help with his recovery by actively absorbing energy.
He repeated this process again and again.
By the end of 2 hours, he had managed to increase his time to 9 minutes, which made him optimistic about his chances during his evening session.
He, unfortunately, had to stop right now, because any more than 2 hours would make his parents wonder why his nap was taking so long, which was why he put his hopes on his evening training session.
Mikail thanked Natu and put him back into his space, where he gave him another round of berries, before going downstairs.
The rest of the day went normally and he was full of anticipation towards his evening session, which his parents confused with excitement for their trip to Hope Hill tomorrow.
When it was finally time for him to go to his room to sleep Mikail quickly said good night to his parents, who were simply laughing at his antics, before running upstairs.
He took out Natu once more and told him that the deal was the same as before.
Once he gave Natu his berries Mikail fully focused on his telekinesis exercise, trying to achieve those 10 minutes.
He still kept exhausting his energy reserves and then restored them wholly, repeating the process again and again.
It was one hour later while Mikail was furrowing his brows deeply focused on the exercise with sweat dripping down his cute face always trying to extend the duration that he finally managed to hold out for 10 minutes.
As soon as he crossed the 10 minutes mark he felt something akin to a dam breaking ushering him forward.
He had advanced to Tier 1 second-class psychic and unlocked his telepathy.
Feeling extremely happy with his success, Mikail decided to pull a little prank on Natu.
He used his newly unlock telepathy to send a sound to Natu.
Mikail could not manage more than that for now but for his plan, he did not need more anyway.
'Pssst'
Natu got startled and started looking for the source of the sound before looking at Mikail suspiciously.
"Did something happen, Natu?
You started to hurriedly look around.
Did you notice something suspicious?
Are my parents coming upstairs?"
While he was acting concerned, posing questions Mikail used his telepathy to send the sound once more.
'Pssst'
But he either underestimated Natu's sensitivity or overestimated his control over his newly gotten ability, maybe both, because he got caught by Natu who was glaring at Mikail for pranking him.
Him overestimating himself was bad because it showed that he was behaving carelessly.
Being caught by Natu was one thing but if he acted carelessly and got caught by other people or wild Pokemon it could lead to consequences he wasn't ready for.
The endorphin and adrenaline that were released because of his excitement towards his breakthrough had made him a bit reckless, but this was a lesson that showed that he was not immune to stupid ideas.
He gave his immature body partial responsibility, the body affecting the mind, and all that, but in the end, he just needed to make sure he was able to control his ability before using them for pranks.
Not having fun was not a good solution, he just had to make sure he was in control and knew the risks.
"Sorry, sorry.
I just advanced a bit and unlocked telepathy, so I wanted to try it out.
Who, if not my best buddy Natu could have been the first individual with whom I should have shared my success.
I just got a bit overzealous with the method.
Hehehehe."
Mikail apologized to Natu while buttering him up a bit to soften his attitude, which seemed to work as Natu simply expressed something along the line of good for you, don't do it again or else.
"Thank you again for keeping a lookout while I was training.
It is thanks to you that I was able to fully focus on my training and breakthrough so swiftly."
Natu puffed out his crest feathers proudly, expressing his full agreement.
Well, crest feathers might be a bit inaccurate, with his body looking mostly like a head.
Natu instantly glared at him as if he had heard Mikail mocking his body.
"Yes, you were a great help, which is why I am going to give you a heap of berries once you are in the space again.
So I am going to put you away now.
See you later."
Mikail placed him back into his space as he had said and went to his bed to sleep.
They were going to Hope Hill tomorrow and he wanted to be well-rested for their trip.
-----------------
Advertising plug-in:
A self-drawn map of the Kanto region depicted in my story can be found on my patre'on.
Patre'on/Azrail93