“Why do you talk like that anyway?” Erika asked Kong Hou curiously, finally unable to suppress her curiosity. After cleaning up their rented field and getting their pokemon to the pokemon center, Erika couldn’t help but get out her burning question. “Why do you speak exclusively in poem?”
Kong Hou’s face twisted a little, having clearly anticipated her question.
Erika thought he would drop the act, but apparently, Kong Hou was too committed to the bit for that.
He stared at her sadly. “Since Kong Hou fell and hit his head, forever more his lips bring dread. To eternally speak in verse, is his most tragicomic curse."
Erika spat out her drink.
"You know, I can't say I'm surprised to hear about head trauma being involved..."
The honedge sheathed at his waist was rattling loudly, making an almost sort of keening sound as it shook about back and forth. Erika looked at it a little weirdly and it stopped moving. Even his pokemon are fucking weird.
Kong Hou went off to grab a shower, and Erika was left to her own devices.
Before doing anything, Erika took out Moon Orchid, her yumi, and started doing the maintenance for it. The entire process took nearly thirty minutes because Erika was bored and didn’t have much to do. She just took her time and carefully went through the motions Eton had taught her.
After that, Erika spent the next ten or so minutes going through the prize list of some of the non-beginner rank competition formats.
There were dozens of unique formats you could compete in, but the Pokeathelon Dome typically divided them into groups of three known as race courses.
Very simply, the race courses were: speed, power, skill, stamina, and jump.
The block smash format that Erika had just competed in before her match with Kong Hou belonged to the Power race course.
If Erika actually wanted to win a prize, she’d need to complete a full race course of three formats, otherwise, it would just be considered practice. The Pokeathelon let newbies learn the formats one by one just as Erika had done with Block Smash, and then you were free to progress through the different race courses at your leisure.
Erika was inclined to just continue going through Route 36 straight for Violet, but something in the prize list caught her eye.
Leaf stone.
It was arguably the most coveted evolutionary stone for grass specialists like herself. Evolutionary stones were a league-controlled resource, and they imposed harsh restrictions on retailers who wanted to acquire and sell them, which primarily manifested in the form of increased prices, as the taxes the league imposed on the producers were passed directly onto the consumers.
Although Erika could just buy it directly because she was loaded (with Fulton’s money), she thought it would be more interesting to earn it herself.
Erika was quickly coming to realize how boring mindless spending was. It took the fun out of almost everything. While she didn’t mind it - on the contrary, it was very convenient for her to be able to buy anything - she wouldn’t pass up the chance to earn something on her own merits if she could either.
Especially something like the leaf stone, which was offered as an exchangeable item for pokeathelon dome athletes.
The price for the first-time exchange was also fairly reasonable: 2,500 AP, or athlete points. If Erika wanted a second leaf stone, the price would be doubled, and so on for each following exchange.
The prize list clearly explained its reasoning. Evolutionary stones and other rare pokeathelon dome prizes were a reward and incentive for its athletes. However, they couldn’t just give them out endlessly. By using the previously outlined exchange schema, they could preserve their stock from being depleted and ensure that hard-working athletes would be able to save up for prizes which they desired at least once. More common exchange items like potions or apricorns could be exchanged endlessly without price doubling.
Erika didn’t have any issues with it. She pulled out the list and continued searching to see if there was a sun stone as well, since there were good odds she’d use one or the other eventually, given that she was a grass specialist.
EXOTIC PRIZE LIST
——————————————————————
Fire Stone - 2500AP [exchange count: n/a]
Water Stone - 2500AP [exchange count: n/a]
Leaf Stone - 2500AP [exchange count: n/a]
Reflective Crystal - 400AP [exchange count: n/a]
…
——————————————————————
The list kept going, but eventually Erika hit a stopping point which barred her from going further which simply read: Rarer exotics require higher athlete ranks. She didn’t spot any sun stone option listed on the exchange in the portion which she was allowed to view.
“How can I access the rest of the exchange list?” Erika asked the athlete shop manager directly. “It says I need a higher athlete rank. How do I do that?”
“Earn a full set of medals from the Tier 1 race courses,” he informed her candidly. “It’s very simple. For every full set of medals you get in each tier, you can upgrade your athlete rank by one level, and gain more access to the complete exchange list. However, you won’t be able to go past Tier 4 unless you sign an athlete contract with the pokeathlon dome.”
“Got it.”
The medicinal list also looked interesting, so Erika swiped through it a bit.
MEDICINAL PRIZE LIST
——————————————————————
Nikos’ Moomoo Milk (Skim) - 20AP
Nikos’ Moomoo Milk (Deluxe) - 25AP
Potion (Apollo Brand) - 40AP
…
Paras Fungus Herb Mix (Aura Infusion) - 100AP
…
Blister Cream - 20AP
Mikvit’s Blackhead Remover - 5AP
…
Full Restore (Park Brand) - 500AP
Full Heal (Hershel Brand) - 80AP
…
——————————————————————
I’ll get one Park brand full restore, and a leaf stone, Erika decided eventually. That totals out to about 3,000AP, which I should be able to earn by competing for two days or so. It won’t slow my journey down much.
The race courses were differentiated by tiers as well, and as a beginner, Erika had a tier of 0. The amount of AP you could earn by competing in Tier 0 race courses was quite limited, so it would be best to move into Tier 1 as soon as possible by earning all the Tier 0 race course medals. However, that came with its own issues.
Erika’s pokemon weren’t suited to certain formats like Ring Drop, which required heavy pokemon to jump on other pokemon or knock and shove others off a platform. Only Mordred was heavy and bulky enough to compete, but you needed at least two competing members for the Tier 0 courses. Nimue was light as a feather, and Gwen wasn’t exactly physically imposing either unless she decided to boost with growth.
Even Block Smash isn’t particularly good for me in hindsight, Erika realized. It was less obvious when it was only Mordred smashing the blocks, but in a real competition I’d need to swap Gwen in eventually if Mordred ever got tired. She can’t smash blocks very well. And Nimue definitely can’t break blocks either.
There were too many unique formats for Erika to familiarize herself with, and not all of them were suited for her current team. If Erika wanted to acquire a full set of Tier 0 medals, it wouldn’t be impossible, but very hard, and time-consuming.
Knowing that, perhaps it was better to just find a single race course that they were suited in and just compete in that over and over again to earn enough AP to buy the prizes she wanted.
“Which race course should we do?” Her pokemon were finally done being treated, and the Nurse Joy had released them to wander back to Erika, pokeball in hand.
Speed course,’ Mordred suggested straight away without hesitation. ‘Nimue not fit for physical competition formats. Gwen and I will compete. Speed course has best fit.’
“Gwen? Nimue? Any thoughts on this?” Erika naturally had to get the opinion of her other team members too.
‘Makes sense…” Gwen replied.
Nimue agreed as well.
Erika promptly pulled up the Tier 0 Speed race course and its associated formats on her phone for the team to see.
Tier 0 Speed | Hurdle Dash, Pennant Capture, Relay Run
“Let’s go for a spin,” Erika said to her very eager team members. “I bet we’ll crush it.”
They did not crush it.
“We did not crush it,” Erika groaned loudly. She slumped back in her seat, exasperated by the successive rounds of defeats. The others nodded in agreement.
Erika’s entire team did amazingly well on the Relay Run, coming in first place with a crushing lead nearly twice that of the runner up.
The problems started cropping up in the Hurdle Dash, and they became much worse in Pennant Capture.
“This is very arbitrary Mordred,” Erika started, gesturing to a video playback on the wall of their race. “But you’re going to have to learn how to jump… less.”
The video showed Mordred rather comically overjumping the hurdle and crashing into the one after that, and tumbling to the floor in a messy heap. Through their bond, Erika felt Mordred burn with embarrassment.
Mordred’s legs weren’t long enough to jump over hurdles the same way a human would. If it was Erika running the hurdles, she could easily rely on her momentum to propel her over, and all she needed to do was tuck her legs as she leapt across, and bring them back down. However, Mordred’s legs were much shorter - and also more powerful, and he needed to squat more to fully jump.
The consequence of doing so meant that it was harder to restrain the distance he jumped. The gaps between each hurdle were too small for Mordred to conveniently leap over, as even when he restrained himself as much as possible, he still overshot.
Even worse however, was Gwen.
Pennant Capture was a format which demanded its competitors run around collecting flag poles, and fellow competitors could slam into one another to steal flags. While this was undoubtedly great for a physically imposing pokemon like Mordred, the problems started arising when you considered smaller pokemon like Gwen…
And to make matters worse, Gwen was always targeted by her competitors on the field because she was slow - yes, slow, because she was being weighed down by the heavy flagpoles relative to her body. While she was very fast if unburdened, the weight of the flags she gripped turned her into a walking target for everyone nearby.
“We’ll have to rely on Mordred a lot for Pennant Capture,” Erika decided eventually. Perhaps it was better this way. “Just switch out as soon as possible, Gwen. The rules say if you deposit three flags, you’re eligible to swap places with a team member if you so choose. Swap as soon as you can to get Mordred back out on the field.”
‘And the hurdles,’ Mordred reminded.
“And the hurdles,” Erika agreed. “We’ll need to train your fine control a little more when it comes to movement in tight areas.”
‘I can try hop more, jump less. Should help out.’
“It should. Let’s do some quick training before we get back on the field.”
Thirty minutes later, Erika and her team found themselves back at the track stadium where the Speed Course was held.
The organizers were already resetting the hurdles for the next round of athletes, and the previous referee had been replaced by a new one to go on his lunch break.
The referee had all the trainers get into line and release their pokemon into their respective lanes.
He blew his whistle, and then Mordred was off, along with everyone else.
“Go Mordred!” Erika shouted encouragingly.
Mordred surprisingly did not overshoot this time, but his movement was still very awkward as he tried to hop between the hurdles.
This time, he slowed himself down to prevent the previous tragedy from occurring, and although it cost him first place in the hurdle dash, Mordred didn’t trip over himself anymore, so he didn’t come last either.
Erika watched her starter clumsily hop over each hurdle and cross the finish line slightly ahead of the middle of the pack.
Gwen in comparison was doing much better, leading the pack at the front and coming in a solid first place.
Their combined results gave Erika’s team a very decent score now that Mordred didn’t come last place. Good enough. If we do crush the relay run like last time and do decent on pennant capture, we should be able to clinch a victory.
The next race was probably the most crucial one.
Speed wise, Erika was confident her team was unmatched, at least within Tier 0 Speed. They’d proven it last race when Mordred and co came first place in Relay Run by two orders of magnitude faster than the runner up, absolutely obliterating the competition. However, their Pennant Capture and Hurdle Dash scores were so middle of the pack that it stopped them from winning overall.
“Go for the nearest flag and drag it back,” Erika advised Gwen. “The quicker you can switch out, the better it’s going to be for us.”
Pennant Capture was a fairly simple game when you got down to it. Each trainer released a pokemon onto a field covered in flags, and you could grab up to a maximum of nine flags before placing them into the goal zone to officially obtain your “score.” Each time you scored, you needed to switch your pokemon and let them enter the field. Trainers were also allowed to let their pokemon steal flags, but that was a different story.
If Gwen was let out first while the flags were still abundant, the switch would happen faster as she could just tug the flags near the goal zone instead of dragging the ones further away.
“Three, two, one, start!”
The moment the match began, Gwen did as instructed and latched onto the nearest three flag poles. It took her only a few seconds to haul it backwards into the goal zone, and Mordred emerged instantly to take her place.
Like a rampaging bull, he smashed his way through all the other nearby pokemon and knocked them aside, hindering the other teams as he emerged. Mordred then animated his vine net to sweep up all the nearby flags, much like how a wailord would open its mouth to suck up seawater, and leapt back into the goal zone to score the flags.
Gwen came out again, but she was much smaller and couldn’t copy Mordred’s rather brutish tactic. She also lacked arms, a significant impairment in Pennant Capture which stopped her from copying what Mordred did.
Well, the lack of arms themselves wasn’t a huge issue - it was more the fact that she didn’t have an efficient replacement. While her head leaves could wrap around flag poles and lift them up, she couldn’t grab many at a time, and unclenching her leaves to wrap around new flag poles would release the ones she already had in her grip. Things were much more convenient if Gwen could find a group of nearby flag poles bunched up together, as she could sweep them up and clench her leaves to grab them in one go. However, as time passed, the number of flags dwindled more and more.
Erika could practically feel Gwen’s exasperation. You’ll get arms once you become a Gloom, she thought with some amusement. Although you won’t gain any digits like Mordred.
The flags closest to the goal zone had mostly been nabbed by now, so Gwen made her way towards the ones further back and retreated with three clenched in her leaves. Gwen was nearly ambushed by another pokemon on the way back before she nimbly dodged, and dragged back three flags as fast as she could. Thankfully this time, no one bothered her on the return journey, since they didn’t consider it worth it to ambush a pokemon for only three flags.
Maybe when the number of flags dropped more that might happen, but at the current point in time it just wasn’t worth doing.
When the round finally ended, Erika was pleasantly surprised to see that they were just ahead of the middle of the pack again, putting them in position to win if they could perform like last time on the relay run.
And so they did. The obstacles on the Relay Run posed minimal threat to Mordred and Gwen, because Mordred could jump astonishingly far and move blazingly fast, and Gwen was nimble and agile enough to run around them, which was a huge advantage in the early tiers.
Nimue would have been a better fit for Relay Run, but Erika didn’t have the confidence to win if she had to participate in Hurdle Dash and Pennant Capture. At higher tiers, Erika heard that there were extra aerial obstacles as well, but Tier 0 Speed didn’t include any of that.
Their final score came out to be about 197, allowing Erika to smoothly snag the position of champion, which netted them an extra hundred points as a bonus.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Combined with the 45 they’d won last time, Erika was already one-fifteenth of the way towards her goal of 3000 AP.
“That was a good showing!” Erika was in a group huddle with her team. “If we can do that fifteen more times, we should be able to get our prizes!”
‘Most of our points came from bonus,’ pointed out Mordred, dampening her enthusiasm a bit. ‘Won’t win every time. Tier 0 Speed matches only held once per two hours too.’
“Even if we don’t win, we’ll still be able to amass a few points every time,” Erika reasoned. “Plus, we can still go compete in the other race courses too with the same logic. It doesn’t matter if we lose badly in those ones as long as we can harvest a few points every time. By tomorrow night, we should be able to accumulate 3000 AP.”
‘Practice… makes perfect.’ Gwen squatted in the center of the group huddle with Nimue, dwarfed by Erika and Mordred’s comparatively much taller height. ‘Practice more… will win.’
‘Should get better after little while,’ Mordred agreed. ‘Hopefully we finish fast. Get back to traveling.’
Erika was about to lead her team out to try the Power course when a thought crossed her mind. “Hey, what do you guys think Kong Hou is up to?”
‘That fool?’
Mordred snorted, turning his head away. ‘Reciting poetry, no doubt. Total clown.’
----------------------------------------
So, walk me through why we’re digging up a grave again? Kong Hou had black lines on his face. This feels kind of disrespectful.
The sword by his side vibrated with a keening hum, a sound which Kong Hou had come to recognise as his master laughing. ‘You have much to learn, o’ disciple o’er mine. This is no mere grave!’
So what is it then?
‘It’s where I hid some of my treasures!” Sovereign Yu declared proudly, as burying treasure inside a grave was a completely normal thing to do. Weren't you complaining about being short on funds just now? Well, we’re here to solve that problem.’
So, you’re telling me that 80 years ago, young Yu Wuying randomly decided to create a grave in Route 36, bury money inside it, cover it with topsoil, and erect a headstone with his own name on it? Are you nuts?
‘Ah, well, it sounds a lot worse when you put it in that way,’ Sovereign Yu hummed, dismissing his disciple. He flew out of Kong Hou’s sheathe and stabbed straight into the soil, using the blade - or was it himself? - to help Kong Hou dig the dirt covering the grave. ‘I prefer to describe it as not wanting to be a mantis stalking a cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. A clever fox has many hidey holes, and one must be prepared for any circumstance.’
Kong Hou was beside himself. “A stray patch of land, you chose at rand? Master o mine, your mind holds naught but a frightful retort!” This was the point where he stopped trying to mentally talk with his master. There was no one in the forest anyways for days.
‘Once you start getting careless like that, that’s how they get you,’ Sovereign Yu warned. ‘Two can only keep a secret, if one of them is dead. Should your words be overheard, our secret will be blown into the open, and I’ll be discovered by my enemies.’
I’m literally talking in poem. At worst, they’ll just think I’m insane. I think you’re just being paranoid, Kong Hou replied, but he listened to his master and didn’t verbalize anymore.
‘Good.’ His master didn’t speak anymore on that topic, clearly unwilling to discuss it.
Kong Hou didn’t press the issue either. Sovereign Yu had made it very clear that he wasn’t to know about his enemies before he got stronger, because if he ever ran across one, he wouldn’t react to them in a way which outed himself as “in the know.”
Without knowing who his master’s enemies were, if he did run across one of them, he wouldn’t recognise them, and things would be all good. However, if Kong Hou had been told about them in advance, he might react with fear or nervousness on sight, and that was something very suspicious. Sovereign Yu didn’t say it outright, but it had been implied that his enemies were not the sort who you were supposed to fear - rather, they were outwardly friendly, and it was highly suspicious to be scared of someone like that.
Kong Hou’s improv shovel (one of Bai Qi’s swords) hit something solid, and he drew the weapon out of the ground in surprise. Is this what we’re looking for?
‘Yes. Help me lift it out. I’ll grab the other end… well, grab isn’t exactly the right word, but whatever. Just grab the end opposite to me.’
With a sigh, he wormed his hands into the loose soil and wriggled until they found purchase against a hard surface. It felt coarse, probably from both age and being buried for so long, but it was thankfully bereft of sharp edges, so Kong Hou’s fingers didn’t hurt when he grabbed it.
After a single attempt of lifting whatever it was that Sovereign Yu had buried, it became clear instantly that it was quite heavy.
What the fuck did you bury here old man?
‘You’ll see,’ his master said enigmatically. Kong Hou grit his teeth and continued heaving. It did not budge.
After some more fruitless attempts to excavate his master’s treasure, Kong Hou released Bai Qi from his pokeball and had him telekinetically wrest it out of the earth, and the slab - for it was a slab, Kong Hou couldn’t describe it as anything else - rose up and was tossed carelessly to the side.
Kong Hou examined it to see if there was anything special about the slab, but even his second sight couldn’t detect anything. It was just a slab of stone.
He poked and prodded it until his master got annoyed and cut up the stone block into two pieces.
‘What are you looking at?’ Sovereign Yu sounded annoyed. ‘The real prize is beneath!’
Kong Hou kicked away some of the remaining dirt and had Bai Qi levitate the rest away, and finally, Sovereign Yu’s treasure was revealed.
It was a small lockbox. Kong Hou grabbed it and was surprised by how heavy it was. The box was made from a grayish metal, and was heavily corroded from the years of burial, but the structure was still largely intact and held strong despite the passage of time. He ran his hands over it and fumbled with the lock before his master gave him the correct code to unlock the box.
When he opened it, Kong Hou was nearly blinded by what he saw inside.
Ten nuggets of gold, he whispered mentally, nearly dropping the box in surprise. You dirty old man, you hid this much money in your grave?
‘It’s not my grave,’ his master replied with some annoyance. ‘It just has my name on it.’
Kong Hou bit back the reply he was going to say in favor of admiring the gold.
Each nugget was about the size of a golf ball and perfectly spherical, and they were all neatly arranged in lines of two and stacked up upon each other in cloth padding. Kong Hou pulled one out and held it up to the light to stare at it, admiring its brilliant shine and glint.
‘That’s 24 karat gold, I’ll have you know,’ Sovereign Yu declared smugly. ‘100% purity, the highest class possible. Each one can sell for a good chunk of money, enough to fund your journey for the next year at least if you spend lavishly, and two years if you're more frugal. You were complaining about that right? Well, complain no more, because your master has just awarded you your long-deserved apprenticeship gift. It’s tradition for the master to give the disciple a ceremonial present, at least in our lineage, and since I physically can’t go out and buy you stuff, one of my old buried treasures should suffice.’
Master is wise, master is powerful! Kong Hou thought immediately. I completely acknowledge you as my master now!
Sovereign Yu snorted. ‘All it took was some gold to buy you over? There’s more where that came from if you’re afraid.’
No, I’m not afraid. Kong Hou lifted the box high up to the sky, his grin positively massive. I think good days are ahead of us. Should I compose a poem to commemorate the occasion like you taught me?
“Ten beads of gold, enough to sell my soul-”
‘That’s enough out of you today.’
----------------------------------------
Kong Hou never showed up again, so Erika assumed that he had already left for Violet.
She and her team spent the next day and a half grinding the race courses for athlete points until they finally saved up to buy a leaf stone and full restore, and it was with much relief that Erika finally laid her hands upon the evolutionary stone she wanted. She stowed it away safely in her backpack inside a thick wooden box.
They were about to leave when Mordred poked her.
“What?”
‘Don’t forget daily good deed,’ he reminded. ‘Promised to do them daily.’
“Right, I did say that.”
In the end, Erika ended up volunteering to help clean one of the food stalls in the open air market section of the Pokeathlon Dome. The stall owner was quite happy that she offered to help, and he sent her off with a few sticks of fried meat for her trouble. Erika didn’t know what she was supposed to feel, but at least she got food out of it.
Before heading out into the forest again, Erika topped up her supplies again and splurged on a nice breakfast at one of the restaurants nearby, filling herself up with a hearty miltank burger and fearow egg omelet. The rest of her team opted to try the famous pokeathlon dome kibble, which was supposed to be extremely nutrient dense and tasty.
Whether it was nutrient dense or not was up for debate, but Mordred confirmed that it did indeed taste good, at least for kibble anyway. Erika personally couldn’t see how the brown granules could ever taste good with how unappetizing they looked, but the manufacturers knew their stuff apparently and had made it work somehow.
Still, Mordred expressed that he didn’t want to eat it again, and Erika could understand why. It looked extremely bland, and the texture wasn’t the best. The only thing that it had going for it was that it was somewhat tasty, but even that couldn’t cover its unappetizing appearance.
Gwen didn’t care at all because she wasn’t a picky eater, while Nimue preferred real vegetables and fruits.
They waited until it was day the next morning to set off on Route 36 to get to Violet.
Erika didn’t bother to stop for too many training sessions this time, because she thought that they’d already gotten their fill of wilderness survival for the time being.
The only interruption to their high speed travel came in the form of a massive stantler, which Erika foolishly decided to hunt after seeing a wound on its side. It stood proudly at almost 8ft tall, roughly two heads taller than Mordred. The fur on its body was matted with blood to the point that it was slick, and Erika noticed how it limped on its hindleg instead of putting pressure on its front leg. Furthermore, one of the stantler’s antlers had been totally shattered, leaving its head swinging dangerously off balance. Prime target.
Although its bulky frame was imposing, Erika was tempted into attacking it after seeing its various injuries.
This proved to be a mistake.
The moment Erika nocked and fired her arrow, she saw disdain on the face of the stantler as it looked straight at her and realized that they had already been noticed. SHIT! It was luring us in!
With the psychic power emanating from its remaining antler, the stantler pushed the arrow off course and prepared to charge. Gwen scattered many razor leaves into the air, as did Nimue with her magical leaves, and their combined efforts riddled the great beast with dozens upon dozens of leaves, causing its blood to leak out like a sieve, but even that didn’t deter the stantler from breaking into a dead sprint straight towards Erika.
“D3,” Erika shouted, energized by Nimue’s flower veil and running away immediately. Mordred and Gwen both stepped forward to cover her and distract the stantler.
‘Go, get away!” Mordred roared, as he tried to intercept it. However, the stantler was far too fast and much too nimble for Mordred to block. It smoothly sidestepped him despite its bad leg, using its psychic power to relieve the pressure on its bad leg and accelerating rapidly.
Mordred tried to throw his vine net onto the stantler to restrain it, but it ignored him completely and tore the net to shreds using its last bits of psychic power. Erika could only stare grimly as the stantler’s remaining healthy antler imploded from the stress, and it madly beelined towards her and smashed into her.
Nimue’s reflect shield came up in time to cushion Erika, but it only blunted the impact - the collision still sent Erika flying like a ragdoll and crashing into a tree, leaving her vision blurry and sending a streak of pain through her arm. The flower shield had done its work as well, preventing the remaining force from totally crushing her.
“Cover me!” Erika screamed at Nimue as she struggled to her feet and hobbled away. A new reflect shield came into existence at an angle and the stantler smashed through it, barely missing Erika. The angled reflect forced it in a different direction away from Erika, and capitalizing on the stantler’s momentary confusion, Nimue conjured up an energy ball and sent it towards its weak leg, blasting one of its kneecaps open and grounding it temporarily.
However, the stantler was totally rabid, and even its ruined leg couldn’t stop its maddened fury from driving it forward. Disregarding its horrific injuries and leaking blood from all the leaves stuck in its body, the stantler forced itself up and tried to make for Erika again.
A gas cloud erupted as Gwen sprayed her spores into the air, but the effects would take a little while to set in, and Erika didn’t have the luxury of waiting. Still, the spores lowered the visibility somewhat and let Erika evade the stantler’s sight briefly.
Gwen and Nimue coordinated another volley of leaves, one from behind and the other from in front, peppering the buck with another vicious dose of sharp leaves that left it wailing in pain.
Gwen enlarged instantly with growth instantly and leapt in, raking her head leaves across the stantler’s side and tearing its stomach open. However, her leaves hit its rib and went no further, letting the stantler salvage the situation by snapping its leg and kicking Gwen flying away. Blood sprayed furiously out from its stomach wound, but its viscera remained inside. The stantler ignored the pain and continued crazily pursuing Erika despite all its accumulated injuries. Crazy bastard!
Erika covered her head and ducked behind a tree as the stantler hobbled towards her, rolling under a swipe of its head and barely dodging the broken remnants of its antlers. The tree she was hiding behind was crunched open as the bark splintered, and finally, Erika fucked up. The same spores that Gwen released inhibited the stantler’s vision, but it had also done the same to her, and she tripped on a branch and fell to the ground facefirst.
When Erika got up again, the stantler was already rearing up to stomp her to death.
Shit!
Another reflect shield manifested upon her body as Nimue strained to her limits, but Erika knew that wouldn’t be enough. If she got directly hit in her current state, she’d be lucky to get off with a few broken ribs, if not her entire chest caved in. The flower shield on her skin suddenly didn’t provide as much reassurance as it did before.
Erika rolled once under the first stomp, but she couldn’t avoid the second.
Just as Erika thought she was going to be crushed to death by the stantler, Mordred caught up and imposed himself between Erika and the stantler, taking the killing blow meant for her. The crunching sound the stantler’s hoof made on Mordred’s back startled Erika, and she watched as the scales on his back deformed and then shattered.
Mordred clenched his teeth and endured the hit solidly, and then, howling, spun around using the momentum from the strike and flicked his axe tail straight into the stantler’s face.
With a gruesome squelch, his tail cleaved the stantler’s entire head open into a gory mess and splattered its brain across the forest floor.
The great beast finally came to a still, shuddering halt. Everyone was silent for a moment as they caught their breath. The stantler’s body collapsed next to Erika, and she was given a front row view of its brutalized head.
Even in death though, the stantler was still glaring at Erika - with what was left of its face anyways. Erika didn’t need an auric bond to see what it was thinking before it died. You can try to eat me, but I won’t go down without a fight!
The stantler knew that it was heavily injured and unlikely to survive, so it had chosen to go out by dealing as much damage as possible and recklessly exchange injury for injury for the chance to kill Erika, the core of the team.
Seeing that Erika was finally safe, Mordred grunted and sat down heavily.
Erika checked up on her starter worriedly, but he was astonishingly relatively okay. The stantler was already weakened from its previous fight, and after the successive injuries her team had dealt to it, from riddling it with leaves to crippling its other legs, it could barely muster enough force to weakly kick.
Still, even that ‘weak kick’ was enough to shatter Mordred’s scales and leave him with a severe bruise. Erika inspected him some more to make sure that none of his vital organs had been injured or displaced, but she didn’t see any internal bleeding of any kind.
With a sigh, Erika slumped back as well and leaned on the broken tree behind her.
“We should use Plan D2 next time,” Erika muttered.
‘We were supposed to,” Mordred groaned. ‘Nimue detected stantler, but you chose attack. Just flee next time. Insurmountable enemy, not worth risk.’
Erika wanted to say something in retort, but she knew Mordred was right. That had been an unnecessary risk. The stantler was massive - easily twice Mordred’s size length wise, and clearly a buck in the prime of its life. It had been tantalizing prey for her though - weakened from a recent battle and already hobbling on a near crippled leg. Three versus one meant they had good odds though, because they could gang up on the stantler.
Her right arm was feeling a little funny, and Erika realized with some consternation that it had been dislocated. Erika just grit her teeth and used her left arm to grab the dislocated right arm, leaning against Mordred to stabilize herself.
Then, she popped it back in. FUCK!
That hurt. A lot.
“Good work team,” Erika bit out, slightly woozy from the pain. Despite everything though, Erika was smiling broadly. “Next time, we should pick our opponents more carefully. This one is my fault. We should also probably step up our training a bit.”
‘Regret decision?’ Gwen asked her after a moment.
Erika didn’t hesitate to answer. “No. The stantler was clearly weakened - and not by an insignificant amount either. Our only mistake was in failing to realize that it noticed us. If we pulled off a successful ambush, then we could have taken it out without any injuries like last time. We need to practice more.”
Already, Nimue’s flower veil was numbing the pain Erika felt. That didn’t stop numerous bruises from forming on her bicep though. The entirety of her upper right arm was practically purple.
Erika turned back to her spoils of war, appreciating the stantler’s carcass.
“That’s enough meat to last us the entire week,” Erika marveled. “We can salvage some of the antlers too! I can get that turned into a shiv, or maybe we could use them for stock.”
‘Better to sell,’ Mordred advised her. ‘Stantler antlers used in medicine, contain psychic aura. Very valuable. To make soup, use internal bones instead.’
“Good thinking.”
The rest of their journey was quiet and peaceful, insofar as a journey through the routes could be anyway. As long as they didn’t wander too far off course, the pokemon around would be relatively weaker. All the well trodden parts of the route had long been cleared by the league. Stronger trainers had the option of venturing away from the established trail, but that came with the risk of running into vastly more powerful pokemon.
Erika wisely did not decide to provoke a vastly stronger enemy again, and whenever Nimue detected a powerful enemy, she would make the Plan D2 symbol and they would sneak off.
Moon Orchid, had been scraped and bent slightly following the scuffle with the stantler, so Erika was forced to spend the next day carefully treating it using the shaping block - the yumigata-kyoseiki, her mind supplied idly as she worked. Most of her special yumi maintenance tools had Old Kantonian names, all of which Eton had told her and Erika had written down, but they were still hard to remember.
The summer heat was quite dry in Johto, especially near Violet, so Erika did as Eton had instructed and soaked a cloth in water and moistened the bowstring. The bowstring wasn’t frayed or seriously damaged, so Erika didn’t need to replace it. She just ran her hemp pad over it to coat it with fresh resin.
Although these actions seemed unnecessary at first glance, Erika could slowly feel herself… growing closer to her yumi, as strange as it might have sounded. It was unnoticeable at the start, but after nearly two months of constant maintenance and care, the yumi was now a familiar presence to Erika. Each time she drew back the string and nocked an arrow, Erika slowly grew more comfortable and accustomed to holding Moon Orchid.
She still had no clue about the whole target reflecting her heart thing though. Erika suspected that was a mystery she wouldn’t be able to solve for a while. More meditation on the topic surely couldn’t hurt though, so Erika opted for staring in her reflection in various ponds that they ran across, or sitting atop trees and listening to the leaves rustling as she sat with her legs criss crossed in quiet meditation.
On sunny days, Erika would bring her team out to sunbathe, enjoying the warm light of the sun, and on cloudy ones, they would experiment with cooking new types of food.
Sometimes, on the rare occasions that it rained, Erika would have her team practice fighting under the downpour. Moon Orchid was left behind in their tent because Erika didn’t want the rain to wear away at its condition. In a real fight, Erika would unhesitatingly take it out no matter what hazardous condition it might be exposed to of course, but whenever possible, she endeavored to keep it as pristine as possible like Eton had advised.
Nimue grew more comfortable with draining energy through physical contact without needing to go through the kissing motion while using draining kiss after much practice - she did it practically all day in fact since she sat on Erika’s head.
Erika considered it a form of win-win training - it was both a form of endurance training for her, and it allowed Nimue to train her draining kiss constantly. As long as Nimue only took a little smidgeon of energy each time, it wouldn’t seriously impact Erika.
The strength of her reflect shields didn’t grow much, but she did get more proficient with shaping psychic energy and manifesting the reflections at angles and changing their curvature more.
Mordred’s control over his vine net improved tremendously the more he used it to pin down enemies, and it slowly became a mainstay part of their hunts when it came to dealing with larger hunting targets. He also maintained a swirling whirlwind of leaves around himself as they walked, honing his proficiency with leaf tornado constantly. The move was perfectly innocuous as long as the leaves they used weren’t hardened and sharpened with grass aura - if he just used the maple leaves scattered across the forest floor of Route 36, then he could practice leaf tornado wantonly without accidentally cutting someone or something up.
As for Gwen, she just continued her accuracy training with acid and razor leaf. Erika wanted to get her to the point that she could confidently hit enemies even if Erika was nearby, and learn how to minimize the splashback from her acid attack. She didn’t do any growth training because Erika didn’t have enough medicine to waste helping her recuperate. Growth was to be saved for critically dangerous situations, and in the wild, Erika couldn’t afford to let Gwen practice it.
Just like that, a week passed, and Erika found herself at the base of Tsukuba Mountain, the mountain upon which Violet City had been erected.
Erika had already prepared somewhat because she’d looked it up beforehand, but the sight of Tsukuba Mountain still shocked her.
The descriptions of the stairs leading up Tsukuba Mountain on the trainer forums Erika had browsed didn’t do it justice.
She could only describe them as ‘sheer.’ Each stair step was almost half her height, and seemingly reinforced with nothing more than bits of wood. The base of the stair itself was rock, carved straight out of the mountain face, but the worn wood covering its edges didn’t lend much confidence to Erika.
Each step was also steep enough that it would require Erika to pull herself up each time she ascended, as her legs weren’t long enough to reach the next step in one bound. The only creature comforts she had access to were a single set of rails going up the side of the staircase.
Much to her dismay, Erika realized that she would need to ascend every single one of the precarious stairs to get to Violet.