After a quick return to Cellok for food preparation, which amazed the both of us at the cook's speed, and an even quicker goodbye to the six humans in the dormitory, Mewtwo and I find ourselves on the eastern side of the village. A couple of mightyenas as well as our poochyena guide are here to see us out. Pets are given and happy barks are exchanged, and then we are off. We once more walk upon the Arrival plain, but according to the map we should leave it behind us after nightfall.

Please never, ever show that inventory correction thing to ANY villagers ever again. Mewtwo says once we are far enough from the village. I snort and agree wholeheartedly. With Cellok cooked food, I discovered that I had ways to know the amount of energy food items could give me. And since I had not tried it before, I asked for raw food to see if it was better to eat a cooked meal rather than the raw ingredients. The answer was that cooked meals were better, which did not surprise either me or Mewtwo, but the fact that the potato that Cellok lent me turned out bigger and a different shape out of my inventory almost had the cook sequester us to improve all their food. We managed to excuse ourselves, but only barely.

"Yeah don't worry, I am going to look for a way to make a bag and I am only storing items once we are far from anyone." I answer. The experience gave me quite the new look on the villagers.

Mewtwo chuckles and we continue to walk silently for a while. "should we go faster?" I end up asking. "I am topped for power and we have enough food to hold for more than two weeks."

Mewtwo quirk an eyebrow at me and then smirks. Let's try to reach that little natural orchard they mentioned before nightfall. I smirk back. "On your mark?"

Ready?

"GO"

We start running. Or more exactly, I start running and Mewtwo floats alongside me. I jog just below the limits of triggering my cooling system and Mewtwo experiments with his flight. We cover ground at a fast pace, and with a final look behind me, I see Hound Village disappear in the distance. A pang of grief tugs at my heart, and I smile. I may not be Aster, but I will make sure the trio gives him his happy ending.

With our speed, the terrain speeds along with us and I use that time to check a few thing in my system. First is of course the mapping system I supposedly unlocked. And indeed I did. I activate it and instantly regret running while doing so. My vision turns into a pixelated overhead view of my current location, with the edges slowly updating as we move. I can even see an icon representing Mewtwo next to me. Nice, but also quite problematic. As is finally made apparent when my foot finds a rock. And I do a beautiful somersault and land heavily on my stomach.

Are you okay? Mewtwo has watched the whole thing and his expression is split between genuine worry and hilarity. I give him a thumbs up and mutter into the ground. "Never been better."

He helps me get back on my feet with a few chuckles and quickly sees the problem. You are no longer seeing. What is that overlay?

"Yeah, give me a second here, it's the new map system we got." I quickly scan the new map overlay and finally find a cog-shaped option wheel. Within it are size configuration options, which I instantly use to resize the map. It soon becomes a circle on the upper right corner of my vision. I nod to myself. "We now have a usable map."

Interesting. Ah here it- Wow. I see how that was a problem. Mewtwo also find the map display and tweaks it for a minute. This will be useful to find each other again. Oh look, we can put down markers now.

I blink and indeed, there is an option to place markers on points of interest. I leave one on Hound Village and when I turn around, a single square indicates the location of the distant village, as well as a distance indicator. Wow this will be extremely useful. After a bit of marveling, we resume our run toward our first stop. The natural orchard. A place where berry and fruit trees grow together without any supervision. We will need to be careful as it is also a known hunting ground for newbie farmers.

As we speed along, I continue to poke my system, and I almost stumble down again. Mewtwo looks back at me in worry and I simply wave him off as I restore my pace. First of, I have 740xp. Which should not be a surprise, but I did almost instantly pass out when I received them. Second, I have new perks that can be upgraded. Muscle strength is straightforward, as are Body reflexes and Armor resistance, but Sensor suite has me a bit surprised. What will it actually upgrade? for now all four are 5 point each and give me the same boost as the other four perks I can upgrade. 0.1% boost. It may seem little, but it still felt like more than it appears. The little boosts I already gave myself can attest to that.

On top of that, I can now upgrade every perks to a new tier, allowing me to purchase bigger boosts for slightly less experience. The first four efficiency perks are only 200xp each to go to the second tier, but the new four are 1000xp each. Which I do not have. And right now, I do not feel like either of these tier upgrades will help me. Another important bit of information is that each upgrades that boost the physical capacities of my body will come at a greater energy consumption cost. I cannot just leave the whole energy situation alone.

"Mewtwo, what do you think I need most? I am thinking strength, but speed might be a better call I feel." I ask Mewtwo for advice. He looks over my screen as we keep going and nods.

Speed, or reflexes might be a better call. As well as that Sensor suite stat. It seems to be helping with more than just the basic five senses. Oh right... that could be good. I nod and divides my points. Most go into Power efficiency, the less I consume, the more I can keep going. Another part goes into Generator efficiency, a bit in both repair and coolant efficiency, and then the rest goes mostly into both Body reflexes and Sensor suite. I still invest a small bit into both the armor and the muscle upgrades.

Once it is all done, I barely feel any different. I do feel like I can run faster without triggering my cooling system, and so I accelerate.

We keep running for some time before I stop. Not because we have reached our destination, the orchard is not even visible in the horizon, but because we have found a small tree. And I need logs. Mewtwo smirks at the tree and stops me from going at it. Allow me. He sends confidently.

He orients his free fingered hand behind him and a purple aura flares around it. It slowly morphs into the shape of a hatchet and he then swings it at the tree. Once, twice, thrice, and stops. The tree slowly parts at multiple points. And a little ding gets both our attentions. Quest completed. Yes! Mewtwo cheers, jumping in place, his tail swinging around in excitement.

"Wow! Congratulation. Here!" I quickly claim the prizes and hand him the Candy XS. He gobbles it and then floats the neatly cut logs to me.

All the levels from the Praetor gave me a few new paths and cleared others. These levels feel more like they are slowly unshackling my powers than powering me up.

I think on that. Mewtwo might be on to something here. Maybe all this is not for us to grow strong, but to actually unleash our true potential? Meh. Why even have us so weak in the first place? Or maybe it was by design? To rig their bet? Did the Trio make us so weak because they know how far we can rise? To trick Eziakophael into accepting us as contestants for this bet in the first place?

"Mewtwo, how hard is it to find equipment or tools here?"

Hum? Most villagers sell some to anyone in exchange for soul tokens. But they are of low quality. One of the humans was trying to become a blacksmith, but it seemed quite an arduous journey, considering that he had to invest token in specialized skills while also growing stronger for the raids.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"I see..." Yeah, I don't have that problem. I am pretty certain that if someone gave me enough material and I had all the crafting chips I need, I could simply make almost anything anyone would need. I am pretty certain I could cook food by myself as well. I should have concentrated in the crafting aspect of my body earlier. "Let's keep going, that should be enough to make the tools my quest hinted at."

We resume our run and I open my inventory and crafting menu. And finally I have them both. The Part builder and the Tool station. I turn them into chips and install them. I do notice a small yellow bar underneath the crafting chip. Wait that's a durability bar. Oh for fuck sake why do these chips have durability? Okay maybe the fact they are made of wood might be a good explanation, but STILL! Fuck. I grumble a few more insults toward the sponsors for such a stupid idea.

But now I have two new crafting windows. One to make tool parts and one to assemble them. I start with the part maker. Two slots side by side, an arrow toward a single slot. I put the sword blade template on the leftmost slot and then add stones on the one next to it. After six stones are added, they disappear and a grey blade appears on the rightmost slot. I take it out and put it in my inventory for now. I repeat the process for the pickaxe head and after nine stones this time, I obtain a stone pickaxe head. And I am officially out of stones

I then move on to the tool assembler window, Right now it is a single empty square surrounded by five others. On the left are a series of icons representing different tools. I select the sword one first and then return to the part maker. The moment I touched the sword icon, the layout of the tool maker changed, and it showed me I need two other parts to make the sword, and it shows the same thing for the pickaxe: I need a tool rod and a binding part. I exhale in annoyance. Do I need those parts to be stone too? Would using wood be better? I wince. I do not really have a choice here, so only one way to find out. And if the quest does not complete, I still have tools to gather more things. I can still use that pickaxe to mine more stone right?

Feeling a bit more confident with my reasoning, I make both tool rods and bindings out of wood and assemble them. The satisfying ding once I collect the pickaxe fills me with relief and joy. "Yes!" My turn to shout in joy. I take the sword out and then the pickaxe and look at them. The sword looks like a stone spike with two sides sharpened to a glossy finish. The spike is bound by wood fiber to a wooden handle that fits neatly into either of my hands.

The pickaxe is large, with a crescent shaped head. Both points are sharpened and almost glisten under the sun. It is no metal, but the rock is surprisingly well polished. The long handle, almost as long as my arms is made of wood, unsurprisingly. I do little experimental swings with both and unsurprisingly, the sword is a lot better to swing around as a weapon than the pickaxe, but the pickaxe could still be an effective weapon. And I should be able to use both while running.

Mewtwo looks impressed at the new tools. "I don't think it will ever equate to your new psychic blade." I tell him.

Maybe not with stone, but who knows what other materials we will find.

I nod and look at the next goal. There are a lot actually. This single quest unlocked two new quests for me, and Mewtwo's earlier one did so as well.

Hot topic

Your new tools look fancy, lets start the process to make some fancier ones.

Craft a 'Furnace chip': 0/1

Rewards: 15xp; 2 Exp. Candy XS

Materials and you

This world is rich in different ores, gems and other things. Find the most common ones and explore their potentials

Collect 'Raw iron': 0/10

Collect 'Raw copper': 0/10

Collect 'Raw gold': 0/10

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(+8 more)

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Rewards: 50xp; 2 Exp. Candy S

Refining your arts

A slash and you cut everything into ribbons, but what if you tried a gentler approach?.

Obtain a 'Leaf bundle': 0/1

Rewards: 20xp; 1 Exp. Candy S

More than a cutting tool.

Good job on the psychic hatchet. Now try a pickaxe, or a shovel.

Create a 'pickaxe': 0/1

Create a 'shovel': 0/1

Rewards: 20xp; 5 Exp. Candy XS

We look at our new quests and both sigh. We have our work cut out for us. "We might need to go explore a cave or something." I tell Mewtwo. I remember the cave entrances I saw in the Forest of Beginnings, some had coal and iron veins visible. They had been slightly highlighted by the WAYLA system.

It will be dangerous. Caves have monsters constantly present, and pokemons are slightly more territorial there from what I heard.

I raise my sword. "Monsters should be easier to deal with now. And you seem to be able to exude a bit more of a presence now." Mewtwo blushes as I mention the pressure he subjected the league representatives to.

True, but some will still attack.

"We will try to reason with them, and if that fail, we will try to scare them off."

I can see Mewtwo is not fully convinced by my reasoning, but he agrees nonetheless. Let us resume our run. We are almost there. I nod and we run once more.

It must be late afternoon when we finally reach the orchard. There are no fences or any delimitation, but I can see a slight change in the color of the grass. Still, the most obvious change is that suddenly, there are trees all around us. It is different from the forest. There the treetops touched each over into a sun-blocking canopy. Here the trees are rather short, most barely reaching twice the height of Mewtwo, and I can see a lot of things moving among their branches. Pokemon, mostly, but also surprisingly, animals. Little birds frolic among the branches along with pidgeys and fletchlings. On a tree, a black headed blue bird look straight at us with suspicions. The chatot eyes us as we pass, but make no moves to follow us. I almost stop in my tracks as a little fennec-looking yellow pokemon peeks from behind a tree. their large red-tipped ears and their red-tipped tail go straight as they notice my attention. They turn around and run away in quick bursts of flames. That had been a fennekin. I blink we continue our run. Mostly exploring the orchard until we reach its edge. Once we do, we stop.

So? What do we do now?

I look at the map and point at a darker group of pixels. "We go here. This should be a cave entrance."

Alright. You do not want to gather some supplies first?

I look at my energy bar and quirk an eyebrow. It is still full, but there is a line beneath the three leftmost squares. "I am still full. We have the meals prepared by Cellok. We should be good."

Mewtwo nods and we make our way through the orchard once more, until we finally stand before the cave opening. Sadly it is a straight drop to the depths. I can see the bottom, but climbing down or up will be a chore. But I do see some veins already exposed. Coal, mostly, as well as some copper at the very bottom.

"Ah..." I still deadpan at the sight.

Ah indeed. I can float you down, but if we have to leave in a hurry, I may not be able to get you out fast enough.

I think about it. That is a risk. But at this point the greater risk will be the raid in two days. "Let's take that risk." I answer confidently.

We need the supplies and the experience. We really need to get stronger. In the two days before the second day. We need to have weapons and strength at our side. On those though, we both jump into the hole. Just as we pass the edge, I head the surprised squawk of a bird. The chatot must have followed us to keep an eye on us. See you later little bird.