Seeing her superior leave like that the assistant let out an awkward chuckle before asking me if there was something I needed help with in regard to Larvitar, and when I politely denied that, she led me to the exit of the facility. She escorted me to the gate of the property and asked me if she should call someone over to Teleport me to Rosewood City. I once again declined her friendly offer before calling out Horus/Xatu. I then thanked her for the offered help before telling Horus to Teleport to Rosewood City.
Horus brought us to the outskirts of the city, and I saw no reason to enter the place since I planned to spend the rest of the day inside Utopia. So, after confirming that there was no one close by I entered Utopia together with Horus, and my arrival triggered a wave of happy greetings from the ones that had chosen to hang out around my area. Mothra/Butterfree quickly flew up to me and asked me how my search for a Larvitar had gone, which had the others perk up in curiosity as well.
"Well, I got to check over 1000 Larvitar, and there were quite a few interesting Larvitar among them. Still, ultimately I could choose only one Larvitar and I went with the one I felt had the best talent of the bunch," I replied which had them break out in excited chattering. They began to ask me what made the notable Larvitar interesting along with what talent our Larvitar had.
"Well, there was a trio that had a rather funny set of talents," I began and I had to chuckle a bit when I said that, rousing everyone's interest even further. "Each one of them had a talent labeled with Eater. There was a Mountain Eater, an Earth Eater, and a Lightning Eater. The talents themselves were quite good as well, allowing their holder to consume their respective type and recover or boost themselves through eating while granting them immunity towards their food type," I expanded and most seemed suitably impressed by that.
I had to laugh when I heard Munchlax say that he would love to have all these talents while drooling. The others laughed as well when they heard his words, and Munchlax, who got roused from his daydream joined in as well. A few others admitted that they would love to have a talent like that as well, including Mothra, who had the others mock-chide her, telling her to be content with the two talents she already had and to leave some talents to them. That caused a new round of laughter, which rose a notch when Mothra graciously agreed to let them have the talents if they wanted them so much.
"Well, regarding our Larvitar," I began once the laughter had calmed down a bit. "His talent Raw Power increases his strength by half, which is quite the boon since their strength is the Tyranitar line's strongest point," I followed up, and the reactions to that were rather divided.
There was a group that reacted along the lines of "that's it?", though their reaction was connected to a comparison to other talents such as Mothra's Quick Start, Tatsumaki/Alakazam's Mega Mind, Kimura/Hitmonform's Perfectly Balanced, and Fortuna/Togekiss' Heaven's Favorite. Admittedly, compared to those talents Raw Power appeared a bit lackluster, but that was not because Raw Power was not good, far from it, it was just that those talents were too buggy.
Nonetheless, the number of those reacting like this was not that big, and most thought Raw Power was good enough. Some of the wittier ones suggested that Raw Power likely could grow stronger in the future, which was my hope as well, so I gave them a "secret" thumbs up for their theory.
Still, after letting them continue their discussions for around 5 minutes, I decided to lead our conversation back on track, so I teased Mothra a bit by telling her that Larvitar seemed to be a little foodie just like her. Mothra just giggled and praised her new junior for having good taste, which Munchlax seconded.
"Alright, I'm going to let Larvitar out now," I eventually announced which immediately stopped all the chatter. "This will be his first time inside Utopia and Larvitar has not undergone Utopia's special treatment yet, so let's see how it goes. Maybe Larvitar will be lucky," I said before taking out Larvitar's PokeBall under everyone's watchful eyes. The first thing I did was to blood register the ball to establish the (artificial) bond I would need to check his full stat sheet later on.
I then let Larvitar out, and as soon as he appeared, Utopia detected his presence. Utopia naturally directly initiated the optimization process once that happened, and everyone waited/watched with bathed breath as Utopia did its thing. I naturally followed the report Utopia gave me as its optimization process progressed.
'Analyzing...., Larvitar analyzed.
Begin improving potential...., potential successfully improved.
Begin optimizing genes..., genetic optimization ongoing….., attempt to unlock genetic variables..., unlocking attempt failed…, finalizing optimization process..., optimization process ended.
Begin optimizing abilities...., two abilities detected…., optimize abilities….., optimization failed.
Begin unlocking talents...., present talent detected, commence with talent optimization…., talent successfully optimized…., begin attempt to unlock second talent….., unlocking second talents failed.
Checking energy storage....., energy storage can support activity.
Generating tailored habitat...., habitat successfully generated.
Add habitat to main space.....,'
I interrupted the process at that point and had Utopia place Larvitar's habitat beside Munchlax's place. I naturally also chose to forego the relocation process. Meanwhile, Larvitar curiously flexed his arms and inspected himself, obviously aware that something had happened to him just now. Something that had been positive since he felt better somehow. His reaction was not surprising especially since I had not informed him about Utopia or what was waiting for him.
"Alright, Horus, Mothra," I called out to my most senior Pokemon. "Clear things up for the newbie please, while I check things out," I asked before turning to Larvitar. "Larvitar, these two are in charge when I'm not around, and they'll explain to you what just happened and where we are right now, alright?" I clarified for the little guy, and he nodded dazedly, finally realizing that he was surrounded by a whole lot of Pokemon. I just pat him on the head to calm him down, before leaving him to Mothra and Horus while I observed his status sheet.
'Name: N/A
Species: Larvitar
Gender: Male
Age: 2+ years
-
Type: Rock, Ground
Potential: Light Purple (19.93%)*'
Well, his potential jumped from blue to light purple, which was definitely good. I had been hoping this would happen, but there had always been the chance that he could have ended up with deep blue potential with a high-end percentage. As things stood right now, Larvitar was a shoo-in for light aurora potential during his breakthrough to the silver stage.
Granted that could change if he ended up unlocking a modifier of some kind, but honestly, even then he stood a good chance of reaching light aurora during his silver breakthrough due to the bonus he was going to receive during his evolution to Pupitar. Still, on the off chance that did not happen, attaining light aurora potential at the gold stage was still impressive, though I honestly did not think it would come to that.
Anyway, I already knew that there were no changes in the next two sections, so I directly moved on to the talent one.
'Talents: Raw Power*
Affinities: Rock, Ground'
Interestingly enough, Larvitar's talent was still labeled as Raw Power even after undergoing a successful upgrade/optimization. I naturally opened its description to see what had changed compared to before since something must have changed. I did not believe that Utopia would troll me like that.
As I expected there was a small but very significant change in Raw Power's description. The 50% strength increase had changed to a 100% increase, effectively doubling Larvitar's strength. For some species, this would not be as impactful, but for Larvitar and its line, this had a rather significant impact. Raw Power was now raising Larvitar's racial value by about 21%, which was more than the boost the Shiny Gene gave and not too far off from the 25% bonus granted by the Royal and Ancient Genes.
One should not forget that Larvitar could still unlock one of those on top of Raw Power, and once he did, it would be as if he had two modifiers instead of just one. I was definitely happy with this development, and I could not wait to share this along with his new potential with the others, though I still decided to wait until I was done with the whole status sheet before I shared the news with the rest. I mean, Horus and Mothra were still explaining things to Larvitar and I did not want to interrupt them, especially not with something that I knew would take minutes to die down.
Anyway, I continued to look through the rest of his status sheet. I took a look at his parameter section, and while it was not bad, Larvitar was still quite a bit off from reaching the regular limit, much less from starting to limit break.
'Parameters:
Stage: Iron Stage (High)
Vitality: C
Strength: B
Endurance: C
Agility: D
Energy Capacity: D
Energy Density: C'
After that came his type relation section, and boy was that a mixed bag. The electric immunity was nice, though I knew that it would vanish once he evolved to Tyranitar. The resistances were quite nice as well. I mean, 1 major and 4 minor resistances were not a small number of resistances to have.
However, the number of weaknesses Larvitar had was even more impressive than his number of resistances, which was not a good thing for us. 2 major weaknesses along with 4 minor weaknesses were a bit too much for comfort, and I knew for a fact that his evolution to Tyranitar would not result in a better picture in this matter. At least I did not think that changing one 1 major weakness for 2 minor ones was a good trade.
'Immunity:
Electric
-
Resistance:
Poison (Major), Normal (Minor), Fire (Minor), Flying (Minor), Rock (Minor)
-
Weaknesses:
Water (Major), Grass (Major), Ice (Minor), Fighting (Minor), Ground (Minor), Steel (Minor)'
Honestly, I could not help but think back to the Solid Rock Larvitar while looking at this list of weaknesses. It would have definitely come in handy considering this pretty big list. Yet, despite that, I still felt that my choice was the right one. We simply would have to work on reducing the number of weaknesses bit by bit even if it took us a long long time to do so.
I finished my observation by checking out what kind of moves Larvitar knew, and while neither the number of moves was all that high, nor their mastery all that good, it was still a pretty good turnout considering that Larvitar was only 2 something years old.
'Condition: Healthy, Curious, Excited
----
Masteries:
Rock Energy Manipulation (Beginner)
Ground Energy Manipulation (Novice)
----
Techniques:
-
Novice:
Payback, Scary Face, Rock Slide, Smack Down, Dark Pulse, Crunch
-
Beginner:
Leer, Tackle, Sandstorm, Bite, Stomping Tantrum, Screech
-
Proficient:
Rock Throw'
I could not help but notice the high number of dark-type moves Larvitar knew. I mean there were 4 dark moves while Larvitar only knew 1 ground type move. All I could assume was that his future typing was showing here, especially since Larvitar also knew 4 rock-type moves.
There was no way that I could leave it like that, I would definitely have Larvitar learn some additional ground-type moves. Even if he was going to lose his ground typing in the future, the moves would still be useful. Besides, he would have the STAB bonus until he became a Tyranitar, so there was no reason not to make use of it until then, right?
Regardless, after closing his status sheet, I shared the good news with Larvitar as well as the others, and it was amusing to see Larvitar's reaction to the news. He shook in excitement and I felt a cocktail of joy and excitement radiate off of Larvitar. Everyone else was naturally happy with the news as well, and some of those who had been less impressed with Raw Power admitted that it had become quite a bit more useful.
We naturally had to celebrate the new addition to our family as well as the upgrade to his potential and talent, so I quickly brought out everything we needed for a party before declaring the start of said party.
---------------------
---------------------
This part is purely to display Larvitar's status screen in one piece and does not count toward the word count.
'Name: N/A
Species: Larvitar
Gender: Male
Age: 2+ years
-
Type: Rock, Ground
Potential: Light Purple (19.93%)
(Genetic) Modifiers: None
Abilities: Guts, Sand Veil
Talents: Raw Power
Affinities: Rock, Ground
-
Bond: Mikail (artificial)
Quirks: None
----
Parameters:
Stage: Iron Stage (High)
Vitality: C
Strength: B
Endurance: C
Agility: D
Energy Capacity: D
Energy Density: C
----
Immunity:
Electric
-
Resistance:
Poison (Major), Normal (Minor), Fire (Minor), Flying (Minor), Rock (Minor)
-
Weaknesses:
Water (Major), Grass (Major), Ice (Minor), Fighting (Minor), Ground (Minor), Steel (Minor)
----
Condition: Healthy, Curious, Excited
----
Masteries:
Rock Energy Manipulation (Beginner)
Ground Energy Manipulation (Novice)
----
Techniques:
-
Novice:
Payback, Scary Face, Rock Slide, Smack Down, Dark Pulse, Crunch
-
Beginner:
Leer, Tackle, Sandstorm, Bite, Stomping Tantrum, Screech
-
Proficient:
Rock Throw
-
Advanced:
None
-
Mastered:
None'
----------------------------
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