The ascent up the mountain was not a fast one by any means.
Slow. Slow. And slower.
Those were the only words with which Erika could use to describe the climb up the stairs.
She and her team paused halfway up the mountain before going any further since they were already tired from their journey through Route 36, setting up camp as usual.
There were actually a lot of bamboo shoots growing at the base of the mountain, so Erika took it upon herself to sample their taste.
“Just chop them up unevenly, it doesn't matter too much,” Erika advised her starter, as he dutifully chopped away at the prepared bamboo shoots. “As long as they fit into the pot, it’s all good. I’ll go grab Gwen and bring back some meat.”
Prior to that, Erika had already laboriously carved off the hard exterior of the bamboo, leaving Mordred to dice up the remaining chunks. She did it by smacking the bamboo onto the edge of Mordred’s tail, relying on the sharpness to crack the exterior open.
While Mordred was busying himself prepping the bamboo for cooking, Erika went with Nimue to retrieve Gwen.
‘Hunting?’ Gwen asked, after they found her and interrupted her training.
Erika thought about it for a bit. We could just get pidgey again. The weaker ones aren’t hard to kill if we shoot them down from a distance. But that’s boring though. We’ve had pidgey multiple times already.
“How about vegetarian?” Erika proposed. Nimue would surely like that right? As a herbivore, it would probably be nice to have something she could consume in full right?
Nimue trilled her agreement, and since Gwen didn’t object, Erika decided to just sweep up all the non toxic mushrooms and forage they could get.
The ground was slightly damp today, which Erika thought was odd, but she didn’t pay it any mind. There wasn’t much soil at the base of the mountain - it was more gravelly than anything, so Erika ventured out back towards Route to see if she could find anything of substance to eat.
A woven from some of Mordred’s vines was slung on her back, and Erika threw in whatever she found inside.
‘Wood chicken,’ Nimue informed. ‘Turn right.’
Sure enough, there was a patch of chicken of the woods growing on a dead tree. While Gwen stood guard, Erika crouched down and took out her knife to harvest the mushrooms. Their color was jarringly bright yellow with a tinge of orange across its folds, a color that would have ordinarily scared Erika away due to the fear of consuming something poisonous.
Back in Celadon, there had been chicken of the woods as well, but their quantity was vastly outnumbered by sulfur shelf mushrooms which were poisonous to eat, and Erika didn’t dare to take the risk of harvesting them.
In the Johto provincial region though, and especially areas around Violet, Erika read that lookalikes of chicken of the woods didn’t exist. Therefore, harvesting them was very safe. It wasn’t like back home, when the ratio of chicken of the woods to lookalikes such as sulfur shelf and giant polypore was more than one to twenty.
Just to be safe though, Erika pulled out her phone and scrolled down to the notes she’d made on mushroom foraging to check off the indicators that it was safe to eat.
“Usually found in the months of June onward, large size, bright color, grows in large masses…” Erika muttered, reading out the instructions. “Avoid those with black spots or sallow color, as they may be black stained polypore or sulfur shelf.”
“Any idea on this one Nimue? You’ve probably eaten quite a few right?”
‘None back home,’ was Nimue’s succinct response.
Ouch. Erika had forgotten about that. Nimue wasn’t a native to Kanto. Come to think of it, neither was Mordred. More than half her current team were foreign.
It was probably safe to eat, so Erika went ahead and started harvesting the mushrooms. They were fleshy and soft to the touch, also good indicators, and Erika carefully diced through the bits where they made contact with the wood to peel them off the tree trunk. It took a while to harvest them all, since the base of the tree was practically covered in chicken of the woods, but eventually she got through them all.
Another surprising find was more wild garlic. Gwen stumbled across it literally while walking, and helped Erika excavate them from the ground. They would be another good addition to the vegetarian meal Erika was trying to assemble today.
The final thing Erika grabbed was cambium. She had Gwen quite literally cut down a few younger trees and rip off the outer bark, before exposing the softer insides. The cambium was the soft inner bark, and it had a sort of sweet taste if you got used to it. Erika had eaten plenty of cambium growing up on the streets of Celadon due to the lack of food.
If you could peel the bark off a tree and had access to a knife of some kind, then it was a decent supplement to your daily meal plan. Harvesting it manually was hard work though, and if you ate too much though, it would upset your stomach.
Gwen spun and slammed her head leaves into another tree, shattering the outer bark layer and scraping off the exterior to reveal the insides.
Erika rubbed her hands along the tree trunk to check whether they had reached the cambium layer. As a test, she used her knife to dig a little groove and tried to peel off a layer from the tree. After tugging a little, it peeled off smoothly.
Yup. Just as I remembered.
The cambium was a much lighter shade than the external bark, colored an almost creamy brown. Erika privately thought it looked and felt like bacon, even if it didn’t taste the same. She didn’t have anyone to reference this with, because she didn’t know anyone else who ate cambium. Well, perhaps the other street rats did too, but they were her enemies and Erika didn’t have the pleasure of having any in depth conversations with them.
Using her knife, Erika slowly diced more layers of cambium off the tree trunk, collecting over two hundred thin pieces before calling it quits.
On the way back, Erika munched on some of the cambium and savored the taste. Lucky. It’s sweet this time.
In her personal experience, the flavor could vary quite greatly depending on the type of tree you took it from. It was always chewy to some degree, and it could either be mildly sweet, or downright bitter. Pine trees were quite good, but Erika didn’t see any of them nearby, so she just settled for whatever she could find.
Gwen and Nimue got some cambium as a snack as well for their troubles.
Can’t eat too much cambium though, Erika thought absentmindedly. It’s not very nutritious.
Erika had read somewhere that humans weren’t supposed to be able to digest cellulose, and that the fiber was only good for helping them pass waste. And since cambium was mostly cellulose, it wasn’t a very nutritious food source because of it.
Of course, for a desperate, starving girl, cambium was far better than digging through the trash for moldy food, or eating nothing, which was why she’d eaten tons of it during her earlier childhood.
She’d learned to enjoy the taste of the inner wood bark over the years, even if it looked a little weird. Seeing someone walk up to a tree and start eating the bark would mess with a lot of people. While Erika was staying with Milly, she had to restrain herself from doing so, but now that she was back in the emptiness of the wild, she was free to eat as much cambium as she wanted. And it was great.
When they got back, Erika snorted when she saw that Mordred had dozed off.
“Wake up!” Erika shouted for fun, hoping to startle him awake. Much to her disappointment, Mordred wasn’t actually asleep.
Mordred said disdainfully, ‘Eyes closed, not actually sleeping. Just resting. Not scared.’
Erika sighed and threw her forage bag onto the ground next to Mordred. “You’re no fun. Help me sort the forage out and we’ll get cooking.”
The meal was as hearty as always, and this time Nimue was able to enjoy the entire thing alongside the others.
Come morning, Erika and her team were busy ascending the mountain stairs again.
Instead of returning Gwen to her pokeball, Erika decided to keep her out.
Gwen was much shorter than Erika, and she needed to jump up each time to climb even a single stair, and it would tire her out before long. Logically, Erika should have returned her to her pokeball to make the climbing process more efficient - after all, only Erika herself needed to get up the stairs. So long as Gwen was carried in the pokeball, they’d still end up in the same place right?
Erika disagreed. The process of the climbing, the journey, was as important as the destination. The ascent up Mt. Tsukuba’s stairs was another excellent opportunity to train her team’s endurance, and Erika would be depriving Gwen of that important experience if she was returned to her ball.
In the same way, Erika refused Mordred’s help in climbing up the stairs. It would have been easy if she just got on Mordred’s back and had him ferry her up, but that meant she would lose the benefits of climbing the mountain on her own.
It was hard, because Erika had to practically pull herself up every single stair, but she appreciated the journey and the effort required. It was a transformative process, one which would hone and sculpt her into something better. Something stronger. Just like it would do the same for her pokemon.
As they got higher and higher, the air started to thin, and the wind picked up drastically.
It was so chilly that Erika started to shiver unconsciously, and her breathing slowly grew more ragged from the thinning air. Mordred and Gwen were faring considerably better, but they didn’t like the cold either. Nimue was doing the best, mostly because she just sat on Erika’s head.
Even if Erika let her climb on her own though, there wouldn’t be too much effort invested. Nimue didn’t have to fight gravity to ascend, because she could float up. In Erika’s opinion, Nimue’s time was better spent on her head, at least for this part of the journey. There were better ways to train her endurance, ones which didn’t comprise Erika’s personal safety.
Sometime later, Erika spotted another training in the distance, maybe a hundred stairs above her.
Erika did find it weird that she hadn’t seen anyone in a while. Surely there would be other trainers climbing the stairs up Tsukuba Mountain right?
“Hey!” Erika shouted loudly, trying to catch the older boy’s attention. “Hello! Can you hear me?”
The howling of the wind broke up her shouting a little, but it did make the boy turn his head towards her. “WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”
“CAN YOU WAIT FOR A MINUTE?” Erika shouted back. “GIVE ME TEN MINUTES TO CATCH UP! I WANT TO ASK SOMETHING!”
Erika stuck up ten fingers to emphasize her point, waving wildly and pointing to the ground, and making an X shape with her arms. The boy got her point eventually.
The boy actually descended some stairs to meet Erika in the middle, which made the process much faster than if he’d just waited in place for Erika to catch up to him.
Her entire team was tired and sore from the nonstop climb, and bitterly cold, so Erika just plopped herself down once she found a decent clearing to the side of the stairs. It was the only bit of flat ground that she could find, and a good point to take a break at without having to sit on the stairs themselves. The boy agreed with her thoughts too apparently, because he descended further to join her.
Erika took out her flint and struck some sparks onto the kindling she’d prepared and got a fire going.
She still had some chicken of the woods left in her bag, so Erika took those out and started grilling them. Gwen found a few sticks for Erika to use as skewers, and she speared them through the mushrooms to grill them on the fire.
By the time the boy got down to where Erika was, she already had several skewers of mushrooms ready to eat.
Erika threw the boy a mushroom skewer out of solidarity, and he caught it gratefully. “Thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Erika said dismissively. “I wanted to ask you something.”
She bit into her mushroom skewer and chewed slowly. “Have you seen any other trainers going up the stairs? You’re the only one I’ve seen the entire day.”
“Other trainers?”
The boy looked taken aback. “No, not at all. That’s normal for this week. This week is the anniversary of the week during which Hero Branwen and Tempest Crown fought Raikou. All of Violet is out celebrating right now. It’d be weirder if you saw anyone on the stairs actually?”
“Huh!?” Erika’s face betrayed her shock. She looked so surprised that the other boy burst out laughing. “What about the trainers below though? Those who want to go to Violet to join the festivities? Shouldn’t they be going up the stairs too?”
“There’s a bus route going up the other side of the mountain,” the boy pointed out. “The only ones who go up the stairs are dedicated trainers. Even a lot of trainers opt for the bus route because the stairs are just so tiring to go up and down.”
Oh damn.
Erika threw him another mushroom skewer in thanks before continuing her ascent. She expected the boy to join her, but he explained that he was actually going down - even if Erika hadn’t called him, he would have descended regardless.
“Why are you going down? Don’t you want to join the festival in Violet? I’m Erika by the way,” she added at the end.
“I’m Mat,” the boy replied easily. “And no, I’ve already had my fill of the festivals. Mom loves Violet and makes us come for the festival every year, and I’m bored of it. Catch you later!”
After another few hours of climbing, Erika was forced to stop for the night again.
This time, there was no flat area to lie down on, or set up a tent, so she was forced to just huddle beneath Mordred to get some shelter from the mercilessly cold wind.
Erika wriggled a little bit, feeling a little cramped after being hugged by Mordred. “Can you move a bit? You’re cramping the space.”
‘No.’
Mordred’s body was like a giant stove, heating Erika up and breaking the wind so that it wouldn’t chill her. Gwen and Nimue huddled underneath as well, leaving Mordred to bear the wind alone.
He stayed up the whole night solemnly guarding Erika and her team while they slept, dutifully making sure that no other pokemon would approach to attack or eat them.
When the sun rose again, Erika gratefully returned Mordred to his pokeball and let him get his well deserved rest.
After a final push up the mountain, Erika knew that they’d reached Violet when she started to hear the booming of fireworks and loud music being played.
It was so loud inside the city that Erika couldn’t even hear herself think.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Every street was swarmed with people, their bodies swaying back and forth and jumping up and down to the music or cheering for the procession of marching bands that pushed through the street and serenaded the crowd as they went.
Shining golden lanterns with beautiful lightning patterns were hung practically everywhere, illuminating the streets with an iridescent yellow glow. A giant flying skarmory blimp flew over ahead, its great rubber wings casting a massive shadow down onto the street as it went.
Under the shadow of the skarmory blimp, the light from the lanterns only became more mesmerizing, contrastingly brilliantly against the darkness.
The moment the skarmory blimp showed up, everyone present started screaming and roaring and cheering, their voices reverberating and amplifying until Erika was forced to cover her eardrums.
People shoved her from the left and right and every direction, and due to her much more diminutive size, Erika was helpless against it.
Eventually, she released Mordred from his pokeball.
“I can’t see where we’re supposed to go!” Erika shouted, trying to be heard over the constant roaring of the crowd and music. “Can you raise me higher up?”
‘Ugh. Get on head.’
It was a struggle, but Erika managed to wrap her legs around Mordred’s collar, using it as an impromptu seat. Atop his head, Erika could finally see above the crowd.
Erika pulled out her phone quickly and searched the directions for Sprout Tower. “Start pushing out towards the left! We need to exit on Tanaha North Road, next to the sculptures ahead!”
Quite a lot of the people presented were disrupted by Erika’s orders, but she didn’t pay them any mind had Mordred push through the tightly packed crowd.
When they got past the statue they rounded the corner and went down Tanaha North Road - and were promptly faced with more crowds.
“Fuck!” Erika complained. “There’s just too many people! How are we supposed to get through?”
‘Wait until festival ceases,’ Mordred suggested calmly. ‘Maybe during night.’
That wouldn’t work either. Erika scowled, thinking about how Mat had told her that the festivals were week long. There’s no way it's going to stop. More people are just going to come in to replace those leaving.
A hand flashed by and tried to pat Erika’s back, and she seized it viciously, recognising it as a pickpocket. Her long years of experience as a pickpocket meant that she was extremely familiar with how they operated, and in a dense crowd like this, people were just easy targets. Erika was sat high atop Mordred, making her an easy mark to steal from - all anyone needed to do was to slash the straps on her backpack and pull them off and run away.
That was why when she’d felt a hand on her backpack and the sensation of tugging, she reacted on instinct. Sure enough, the offending party was a teen girl in ratty clothes, the kind which suggested that she either had a rebellious fashion sense or was homeless. A small knife was clutched in her hand, which she was now trying to conceal by shoving it back into her pockets.
“That’s my stuff you’re trying to steal!” Erika shouted at her. “Piss off!”
Mordred knocked the pickpocket off her feet with a vine as punishment and Erika urged him forward again, pushing through the crowd to get to the end of the street.
They made it another twenty or so feet before Erika gave up hope.
It was impossible. They weren’t getting through the crowd, and she’d have to accept that.
If Mordred shoved hard, maybe they could get through, but Erika had already seen a few security rangers in the crowd giving her a warning look, so she was forced to back off.
Pokemon of smaller size were allowed to walk openly in the city limits, but they weren’t allowed to cause harm or injury unprovoked, and especially not in a dense crowd like this. Mordred, despite his size, was still considered relatively small in the grand scheme of things. However, that was only when you thought relative to the pokemon of ace trainers. Compared to a regular human, Mordred was massive.
If he shoved too hard, he might actually hurt somebody.
“Let’s just move to the side,” Erika sighed, throwing her hands up. “There’s some restaurants nearby we can grab lunch at. We’re kind of dirty from traveling, so I’m not sure they’ll admit us, but the closest pokemon center is almost a mile away, and we’re not getting there any time soon.”
Erika wished she could order a cab. But that was a lost cause. Most of the roads had been cleared for the festivities and marching processions to walk through, so even if there were people who wanted to drive, it would be impossible.
The first restaurant Erika tried kicked her out after seeing how dirty she was. Even when Erika changed into her last presentable looking kimono, it didn’t change the fact that she was horribly messy. Her shoes were also covered in mud, and she didn’t have any spares.
Erika just grit her teeth and had Mordred keep moving.
Eventually, they found themselves in a less crowded alleyway teeming with food stalls and vendors, and a few restaurants built into the walls of the alley.
Erika sat herself down at a ramen stall and ordered herself a bowl.
“Busy day?”
The stall owner, a portly man with a big belly and a white apron, set down her miso ramen with a grin. “It’s impossible to get anywhere during this week. I can see that you’re a trainer - I don’t suppose you’re trying to get to the pokemon center?”
“Yes, I am actually,’ Erika replied. She sampled some of the noodles as she spoke and sipped the soup up. It was delicious. “Do you have any advice for me? If I want to find a place to get a shower and crash for the night, where should I go? The pokemon center is too far away, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get there with all these people blocking the way.”
The owner considered her words. “Have any flying types?”
If only. Erika put her hands to her face and groaned. “If I had any, I’d already be there.”
“Sorry. That was a dumb question.” He dropped an extra ladle of soup into Erika’s bowl. “Consider that my apologies. If you’re really desperate, you could try the homeless shelter nearby? Not that I think you’re homeless of course!”
He held up his hands in apology again after seeing Erika’s glare. “The Sprout Tower monks offer temporary shelter to anyone who needs it, and you’re allowed to stay a night free of charge. I heard the facilities are quite good.”
“I'll pass on that.”
Erika finished the rest of her ramen and paid the owner, then set off again, this time, determined to make it all the way to either the pokemon center or Sprout Tower itself.
“Please make way!” Erika shouted at the people next to her as Mordred did his best to gently nudge them. “Coming through!”
While some people were nice about it and made way for her, others doubled down and refused to budge. Erika found herself varying between apologizing and arguing with the people in the crowd, and she was about to give up on getting to Sprout Tower when Mordred rounded the corner and Erika finally caught sight of the wooden tower.
Holy fuck.
Trying to get through that crowd was arguably harder than the actual journey to Violet.
She and her team were tired and out of energy, and they just wanted to rest. Their destination was just up ahead.
Once I reach the External, I really need to consider getting a flying or psychic type pokemon, Erika vowed. Being able to fly or teleport would make my life so much easier, it's not even funny.
Outside the gate separating Sprout Tower from the main city, a monk in a purple kasaya was meditating on a straw mat. He seemed entirely unbothered by the noise and chaos of the city, and as Erika approached, his eyes opened and focused onto her.
“No need to show me your identification,” he told Erika calmly. “I have sensed it on you. You are permitted to enter.”
The gate swung open, revealing a small lake and a cobbled pathway cutting through it. The cobbles on the pathway were matted with thin weeds and bits of grass, but they didn’t seem disorderly. The weeds and grass grown into the pathway seemed almost artistic in how they had been arranged - but with how tired Erika was, she didn’t have the energy to appreciate it.
Mordred just dully walked through until they got to the wooden tower at the end of the pathway.
Another monk in purple waited for her there, and he pulled the door to the tower open for her. Erika didn’t question it. She just stumbled through and collapsed down onto the nearest chair.
One of the younger monks, this time in an orange kasaya, approached her with a set of keys and did a slight bow.
“Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,” he chanted. “It is good to see you, benefactor. I have brought the keys to your residence for the duration of your stay here. Please enjoy your stay, and make the most of your time here.”
Erika nodded numbly and just followed him without asking anything. She was too tired to do anything other than just shower and go to sleep.
He led her to a room at the back of the first floor, and slid the paper door open to reveal a small room furnished with straw tatami mats and a simple low hanging table. A very small shower unit was installed in the corner, just enough for a person to fit into and no more. Erika didn’t care.
“The training will begin within three days,” he added before leaving. “Some of the other attendees have already arrived, and you will assuredly meet them if you join us for dinner.”
Erika got into the shower immediately and visibly relaxed when the hot water hit her, feeling it relax her muscles and destress her. It also made her sleepy, which was good for what was about to happen next.
There was a minimalistic roll of cloth and a thin mattress bundled in the corner, so Erika unrolled it and just lay down. She released her pokemon team to do their own thing before falling asleep completely.
----------------------------------------
“Oi! Heroine of justice and destiny! Wake up from thy eternal slumber!”
Erika felt something like water being dumped across her mattress and she shot awake, ready to stab whoever had so violently woken up, when she recognised Samantha’s face.
Milly was resting to her right, leaning against the wall and clutching a pillowcase shaped like a bulbasaur. Then Erika unblurred her eyes by rubbing them and realized that it was an actual bulbasaur, because it was moving around.
“Samantha? And Milly?”
Erika’s mouth hung open. “What are you guys doing in my room?”
“My room?” Milly struggled to hold in her smile. “Don’t you mean OUR room?”
“My lady speaks no lies!” Samantha crowed, raising her bandaged arm, the one which Erika remembered which she claimed had great power sealed inside. “The virtuous monks of Sprout Tower saw fit to room us together! Is this not a sign of our grand and unstoppable destiny? Our fate to pursue justice, decry evil, and exterminate evildoers? WE ARE THREE!”
“What?”
In response, Samantha started screaming, clutching her arm as it started spazzing out. “Oh no! My dark and evil powers… they’re escaping my control! How could you not acknowledge our shared fate? Erika! Milly! Assist me! I must suppress the chaos power sealed within!”
Milly’s smile quickly grew strained at the sight of her friend’s obvious insanity. “My apologies Erika. I don’t think the sprout monks told you about the living arrangements here - people are grouped into rooms of two, three, or four, depending on the number of vassals a training candidate has brought.”
“Vassals?”
“Remember the conversation where I asked if you wanted to be my vassal?” Milly stuck up a finger and pointed it at Samantha. “Sammy here has agreed to subordinate herself to me.”
“I serve a new master!!” Samantha added gleefully. “No longer am I controlled by the powers of chaos and darkness!”
Milly continued speaking, ignoring what Samantha said. “Each training candidate is allowed to bring in exactly one vassal to support them. The vassal will share a room with their liege, and since each room is meant to house two training candidates, depending on whether or not both candidates brought a vassal, the number of occupants in each room will vary from two, three, or four.”
“Four exist among us, actually. This room houses more than three beings.” Samantha showed her bandaged arm to Erika. “Do you feel the life force of the spirit sealed within?”
I’m too tired for this shit.
Erika just sighed and sat back down limply. “I’m gonna go back to sleep.”
She pulled the thin bedsheet back over her body, using it as a blanket. There was no pillow to support her head, but she didn’t care.
“Samantha, please, just stop talking for a second.” Milly grabbed Erika’s hand and hoisted her up out of the mattress, and on to her feet. “We should go grab dinner, there’s an onboarding event the monks are doing, so we shouldn’t miss it. Cmon, Erika?”
Erika inhaled sharply and grabbed her pokeballs, before running some water from the shower and splashing it onto her face. “Sure. Why not. Let’s grab dinner.”
The dining room resembled the room Erika shared with Milly and Samantha, only it was much larger, and there were large depressions in the ground next to low hanging tables for people to sit down in.
A monk was sitting cross legged at the table on the far right with three other candidates, and when Erika and her friends walked in, they waved her over and motioned for them to sit down.
“Beth,” one of the girls offered. “The guy sitting next to me is Vesia, and the other guy is Marvin.”
“And I’m Aiden,” the monk introduced himself, sipping on a glass of water. “Even though there’s only six of you here so far, we’re going to go through the onboarding anyway so that you don’t have to wait until tomorrow for the others to arrive.”
He slid over a jug of water to the middle of the table, and started pouring for everyone. “Is everyone here at least aware of the history of Sprout Tower? No? I can see two heads shaking. That’s fine too - not all of this is publicly available information. I’ll give everyone a basic rundown just in case.”
“Sprout Tower originally began its life as Kofuku Tower.” Aiden started, pausing to clear his throat temporarily. “It was established roughly 1,300 years ago by the Violet Shogun of the Johto, a Titled Pokemon whose trainer was a notorious bandit turned warlord. The name of Violet Shogun’s trainer has long since been lost to time, but what is remembered are the atrocities he committed - with his trainer, Violet Shogun pillaged numerous cities and subjugated more than half of Johto before his trainer was finally struck down by an alliance of multiple sovereigns and two titled pokemon.”
Erika listened carefully, drinking in the information because she was one of the two heads who had shook their heads no earlier
“Fleeing with numerous injuries and on the verge of death, Violet Shogun fell into a deep coma and woke up almost a decade later. He was surprised to discover a mortal man - not even a trainer, taking care of him, carefully tending to his wounds and watering him. This man was a monk - the first monk of what came to be the present day Sprout Tower - and his name was Shenzu.”
Aiden stopped talking and looked deeply at everyone present. “Violet Shogun is a carnivorous plant pokemon - a Victreebel, bloodthirsty by nature, cruel and merciless. He committed numerous atrocities and crimes against nature, and yet, he was shown kindness at his weakest by a mortal, a mortal who gave up more than a decade of his life to tend and care for him. Try to imagine what Violet Shogun would have been feeling.”
“Why?” Erika couldn’t help but ask. “If he was so cruel and bloodthirsty, and had committed so many atrocities, why would Shenzu save him?”
“That was the question Violet Shogun asked Shenzu,” Aiden agreed. “Why save him? Why go to all that effort to save a monster?”
“Because all life is precious,” Aiden declared solemnly. “Even the most wicked sinner’s life is precious, and Shenzu believed that so deeply he sacrificed ten years of his life to vindicate his philosophy. Shenzu believed that sincere effort could change the heart of a monster, and turn darkness toward the light, and he shared these beliefs with Violet Shogun.”
“Overcome with guilt for his wicked actions, Violet Shogun renounced his former life and changed his name…” Aiden’s voice trailed off. “To Lotus Buddha. He vowed to chant scriptures for the rest of his life, and to spend his life saving other wicked sinners from the sea of bitterness, just like his friend Shenzu. Although Shenzu died two decades later, Lotus Buddha has endured the passage of time, protecting this monastery - Sprout Tower, even until today.”
Samantha shot up from her seat, her eyes nearly bugging out. “How brilliant! The wise old mentor turns a being of evil into a shining light of JUSTICE! The power sealed within my arm is practically trembling in excitement!”
Everyone present except Aiden glared at her, and Milly started gritting her teeth. “Samantha…”
“Sorry.”
“You have an interesting vassal,” Aiden commented to Milly, apparently not offended by Samantha’s actions. “I can see that the two of you will be troublemakers.”
Milly looked outraged. Erika secretly thought it was funny that Milly had been lumped in with Samantha, but that was the price of associating with lunatics.
“Let’s move on,” Marvin suggested.
“Yes, let’s,” Erika agreed.
Aiden composed himself. “Now that we’ve covered the history of Sprout Tower, we should talk about what you’ll personally be doing here. During this month-long smelting trial, you and the other candidates will hone yourselves in ascetic seclusion to polish your minds and iron out the deficiencies that may be present in your aura. You will learn to communicate with nature, learn to deeply sense aura, and properly prepare yourself for the process of reaching the External.”
“I assume you all know what the External is right?”
“It’s the externalization of aura,” Milly interjected. “Turning intangible aura into tangible aura, bringing your aura into material reality, and making it solid.”
“A valid explanation, if somewhat imprecise,” Aiden allowed. “Externalization is slightly more than that, but you understand the general premise.”
“I find that people focus far too much on the practical parts of the External,” Aiden explained with a little disappointment. “Turning aura solid is the biggest visible change that happens when you reach External, but it is quite frankly the least important part.”
“I’ve know what’s coming next,” Beth said from the side. “You’re going to tell us about the Teachings of the Unreal World.”
“You’ll find that every monk here believes in the Teachings of the Unreal World,” Aiden replied. “Why don’t you explain it to the people here who don’t understand?”
Beth shrugged. “There’s not a whole lot to it. Aura is widely held to be a manifestation of the soul - you guys aren’t gonna argue with me on that one right?”
Seeing that no one was objecting, Beth continued. “People who believe in the Unreal World are convinced that humans who cannot awaken aura aren’t considered “real beings,” since their definition of a real being is one which has a soul. Only real beings with souls can attain nirvana after death. Those without souls will continue to be reborn again and again, living in a constant cycle of misery and death.”
“Isn’t that a good thing though?” Erika asked, confused. “Being reborn again?”
“Not necessarily,” Aiden cut in. “In the Teachings of the Unreal World, it is believed that those who commit sins and accumulate bad karma will reincarnate as prey pokemon, rocks, plants, or baser pokemon species with less intelligence. Living in this constant cycle of reincarnation is miserable, and the only way to escape this cycle - to attain perfect peace, is to become a ‘real being’ - to attain a soul.”
“And awakening the aura is supposed to do that?”
“If we consider the belief that aura is a manifestation of the soul, then yes,” Aiden agreed.
“That’s not all,” Aiden added. “As an initiate, your aura is still incorporeal, intangible, formless - it is unreal. The goal of externalization, of becoming an External, is to corporealize, to make your aura tangible - to make it real. A thing of a material, the real world. Only such people will be able to escape the cycle of misery and cross the sea of bitterness after death.”
So it's spiritual mumbo jumbo basically. Erika didn’t dare to voice her thoughts though. It might be true, but does that really matter to me? What happens after I die is of no consequence to me. I live my life for the now - the instant that I exist. What comes after is worthless.
They ended the brief onboarding after that, leaving Erika to finally get a good night’s sleep.