Well, Charmeleon's advancement was certainly a great thing, but we were already halfway through the third week, and that meant I only had two more weeks left before the month was up. My original goal of reaching 110% before the end of the month seemed a bit too high right now, but I was hoping that I could make an increase to the 95 to 100% range seem believable/reasonable.
I did my best at the lab, showing 120% engagement and focus to the assistants working with me while I was working on improving the 4 formulas to the "best" of my abilities. I slowly but steadily improved the initial 85 to 88% by about 0.5% each day, showing a small but still surprisingly consistent improvement in the potency of the formula each day.
Normally, improvements like that only happened every few days or even weeks, but I was displaying such progress each day, which was a tad bit incomprehensible. Still, my track record and the engagement I was showing while I was toiling away made the people at the lab justify the results to themselves without me having to do it.
I was so focused and immersed in the work at the lab that I, myself, nearly felt as if I was not just revealing things I already knew, but was uncovering them as I worked. I even insisted on showing up to work on Kyoday despite Professor Varon saying that I should enjoy my time off. Truly I deserved an Oscar for this.
Anyway, by the time I clocked off on Kyoday evening of week number 4, I had managed to raise all four formulas above 93% with the highest one reaching 96%. I still had three days of the month left, so I had a very, very good chance of reaching my adjusted goal for the month. Well, excluding the one cream that had already entered the 95 to 100% potency increase range.
Still, despite my impressive performance as far as the improvement of the external supplements was concerned, something had to give way for that, and in this case that ended up being the massage technique I was "coming up" with. I had been completely neglecting that one for the last two weeks to fully focus on reaching the goal I set for the supplements.
Nonetheless, I believed the exchange was worth it and everyone agreed that focusing on the supplements while I was in the "flow" was more important. Yeah, the lab staff came to the conclusion that I was experiencing one of those epiphany moments or periods where everything just flowed and made sense.
I was pretty sure that one or two of them were even starting to believe that I was usually in a continuous semi-epiphany-like state, or at least something similar, which was how they tried to justify the unusual proficiency and knowledge I showed.
That was how the human mind worked. It tried to assign everything it witnessed a label it could accept and in case it did not have one that fits the situation, it came up with a "compromise" that did.
Moving on, I decided to simply relax and kick back on Grouday since I had accumulated some fatigue due to the work "intensity" I had to keep up for the last few days. The closest thing I did to "work" today was doing the routine check-up, which I actually enjoyed doing.
I certainly enjoyed it even more whenever I ended up seeing something good during the checkups as I was doing right now. Apparently, Gwen/Gardevoir had managed to raise her last parameter to the regular limit sometime throughout the week, meaning that she had officially started the limit-breaking phase.
What was a tiny bit less interesting, but still counted as pretty good news was that Ali/Gallade had apparently completed the second round of his limit-breaking phase. It was quite a coincidence that both Gwen and Ali gave me some good news that day, but I was happy to see it happen and would certainly not mind getting more such news.
In fact, I took the matter into my own hands and created some good news through my own efforts. By doing my absolute best for the next three days, I managed to achieve the goal I set for the month and raised the other 3 supplements above a 95% efficacy increase as well.
Not only that, but it seemed that the new/6th month decided to give me a pleasant start as well since I noticed that Hades/Haunter's strength had risen to SS while I was doing my routine check-up on Grouday. That only left two more parameters before he would be done with the second round of his limit-breaking phase.
Well, honestly that seemed a bit lukewarm compared to the previous good news, but as I said I would take any good news I could get. As they say, "Good news is always better than bad news", and if that was not a proverb yet, then I was declaring it one now.
Regardless, it was certainly a good way to finish the first week of the new month, and I was hoping it would set the tone for the rest of the month. Starting with the second week I returned to my previous system and once more began switching between working on the external supplement formulas and the massage technique for the Buneary line.
In the end, I did not have to wait for long for some good news. Though the good news once again came from my Pokemon and not from the ongoing lab project. On Palkiday, Po/Pangoro managed to advance to the (high) silver stage, and we made sure to celebrate this success on Kyoday.
The two days delay was because I wanted to throw a proper party. It had been quite a few weeks since the last one and I was in the mood for some merrymaking.
The two weeks after that were rather calm. I was making good progress at the lab, but there were no pleasant surprises which was a bit sad because as I said I liked hearing good news which pleasant surprises usually were.
Still, I managed to raise the total potency boost to all 4 supplements above 106% which could be seen as good news, I guess. Even better was that the boost to one of the cream formulas was close to reaching 110%.
As soon as that happened to the other 3 formulas as well, I would start doing some more drastic changes to the formulas to ensure that I could go for bigger efficacy increases without rocking the boat more than I already was.
Well, I ultimately still ended up hearing some good news after all, even if it took until the end of the fourth week. Kimura/Hitmonform was the one that made me smile. He managed to raise all his parameters to A, which signaled the start of his limit-breaking phase.
Knowing Kimura, it would not take too long for him to finish the first round, and I was pretty confident that he would be able to break through to the gold stage before the first half of my upcoming practical year was up.
Anyway, the final week finished up on Dialday, bringing the 6th month of 2184 to a close and Kyoday started the final month of this term. The way things were, the two days of the weekend ended up being the entire first week, and I spent that week with my parents and friends.
Actually, Rose had invited us to a contest she had joined in hopes of earning her third ribbon. This was the sixth contest she was taking part in, and her third attempt at earning the third ribbon.
Unlike with canon, where the difficulty of the contests seemed pretty "random" since everyone could take part in every contest, the contests here became increasingly difficult after each ribbon due to the matching ribbon rule the coordinator association had introduced.
Coordinators with two ribbons could only take part in Contests with other Coordinators that also had two ribbons. The same was true for those with one, three, or more ribbons, so each competition was as "fair" as the association could make it.
Anyway, Rose used Ivy/Leafeon for the performance/first round, and the show they put on was spectacular, so none of us were surprised when she made it to the next round. Still, I had to admit that there were quite a few performances that were nearly just as good as hers.
For the battle rounds, Rose chose to go with Princess/Ninetales and together they managed to win the whole thing, earning Rose her third ribbon. Honestly, rather than the splendor of the performances, the thing that surprised us all the most was to see that Ivy and Princess had actually evolved.
It seemed that Rose had kept it a secret to surprise everyone including her parents and me. Well, I'd say she was successful with that since I considered myself surprised, and from their looks, the rest thought so as well.
Apparently, both Princess and Ivy had gone through the evolution just three weeks ago, spending those three weeks getting used to their new forms as well as strength, and this contest had actually been the debut for their evolved forms so to say. Since they had won the contest, I'd say it had been a big success.
We obviously celebrated her victory once we left the Contest Hall, and after the dinner, Jessie, Rose, and I went to a nearby Karaoke Club to sing. I did most of the singing under the urging of the girls, and they even asked me to sing some of my "original" songs for them.
They had heard me sing those for my Pokemon, and really liked it which was why they asked me to sing in the first place. We actually had gone to one of the private rooms instead of the public stage in the lounge area, but my singing leaked when one of the waiters came in to clean up the empty bottles of iced tea as well as plates and inquired if we wanted a refill.
A few minutes after she left, the manager came in and asked if I was interested in singing on the stage since quite a few customers that had happened to hear me sing had requested my appearance. He even shared that a rather successful music producer who happened to be at the club that day was among those people.
I naturally declined and even though the girls felt that it would be fun, I did not go onto that stage that night. The fact that I did not want to sing publicly was the reason we booked a private room in the first place after all.
Nonetheless, despite that little interlude, the outing was great, and it was past midnight by the time I made it back to Rota. I obviously had to escort the girls to their dorm and motel first before I could make my way back, which was why it took me that long to make it home.
Anyway, I could say that I certainly believed that the whole experience was a great way to start the month, and I was in quite a happy mood when I went back to the lab on Arcday. There was quite a bit of work I had ahead of me if I wanted to achieve what I had hoped to accomplish.
Reaching 200% seemed incredibly unlikely, at least within this month since the increase was currently at around 110%. 150% was a much more realistic goal, but as I said I would be doing some bigger changes to the formula this month, so I was not completely denying the possibility of reaching 200%.
However, even if I ended up missing the mark, I was hoping to come as close to it as I could since I was planning to tie up my time here at Varon Labs with the upcoming end of the term. Truthfully, there was not much else for me to do here, aside from what I was currently doing, and I believed that I had already contributed a lot to Professor Varon's research.
I was quite confident that I had accelerated the progress of their project by at least 3 to 4 years, likely more, during the 17 months, pending 18, that I spent here.
The massage technique was already close to done and so far it worked as intended. I only had to do some final adjustments, but this should wait a bit. Since that portion was near complete, I chose to substitute the massage technique with the exercise routine I wanted to come up with to get more out of the internal supplements.
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