Join my p@treon for more chapters
[email protected]/Tempest_29
The first task waiting for everyone wasn't training at all — it was building a place to sleep. This training camp would run for at least two or three weeks, and since all twenty-odd students would be living inside the secret realm for that entire stretch of time, proper shelter had to come first.
For some reason, David and the others only now realized that their supplies included sleeping bags, but no tents anywhere in sight. That was a real problem. No one could reasonably spend twenty days sleeping out in the open with nothing but a thin bag between them and the ground, and even assuming nothing went wrong along the way, it would still be thoroughly miserable.
When someone brought this up, Teacher Dominic simply said, "If you want to live comfortably, build your own house. You can use anything you find out there — but fair warning, materials might be easy to spot, and a lot harder to actually get." Then he walked straight into his own tent, a proper large camping tent he'd clearly brought just for himself.
At first, nobody understood what he meant. Then it became clear.
"These logs look good — we can use them for the house," David said, eyeing a few straight, sturdy trees nearby. Lucario stepped forward at once, ready to carry them back.
Before it could take a single step, an Infernape burst out of the bushes, glaring at David's group — or more specifically, glaring straight at Lucario.
[Name: Infernape] [Energy Level: 42 (Professional Stage One)] [Aptitude: Light Purple]
"Not this again," David muttered, rubbing his forehead with a sigh as the Infernape squared up for a fight without so much as a warning.
That was when it clicked — the meaningful little smile Teacher Dominic had worn before disappearing into his tent. The moment they'd stepped into this realm, the real training had already begun.
David had originally planned to throw his house together quickly and then go find Teacher Dominic to talk strategy. He'd always loved watching wilderness-survival videos back when he lived in Cloudspire, but between school and everything else, he'd never had a real chance to try any of it himself. Now that the opportunity had finally landed in his lap, he was more than ready to put on a show and prove he'd learned something from all those hours of watching.
Except every single time he reached for materials, some Pokémon would leap out from the surrounding brush and demand a battle before he could even touch the wood. The better the material looked, the tougher the Pokémon guarding it seemed to be — as if the whole forest had been arranged specifically to test him. In the short time it took to gather logs for his planned wooden house, David had already fought — and won — three battles in a row. Since he kept picking out the finest, straightest logs he could find, refusing to settle for anything less, the Pokémon defending them weren't pushovers either, and this Infernape in front of him had reached a proper Professional-level ranking, no small feat for a wild Pokémon.
The two Pokémon clashed almost instantly, neither one wasting a moment before the fight began in earnest. Infernape opened with a Flamethrower straight at Lucario's face, the flames roaring forward with clear intent to end things quickly.
"Bone Rush — cut through it!"
Aura surged around Lucario's paw, forming a long, glowing sky-blue staff in an instant. The Bone Rush came down hard, slicing the blazing stream of fire clean in two. The divided flames kept barreling backward, slamming into a pair of trees behind it, the wave of heat strong enough to make David's clothes whip in the wind.
This Infernape's strong, David thought, genuinely impressed. In his mind, he'd already nicknamed it "Flamethrower," given how it fought — a close-combat specialist that had still managed to train its Flamethrower to this kind of raw power. That combination alone told him its strength was nothing to take lightly.
"Now — Extreme Speed!"
At the command, Lucario shot forward like a streak of blue lightning. Between its natural speed and the priority granted by Extreme Speed, Infernape — fast as it was — never stood a chance to dodge.
"Infernape!" it cried out in pain as the hit connected cleanly.
"No time to waste — Lucario, finish it with Water Pulse!"
While Infernape was still reeling from the blow, Lucario stomped down hard enough to crack the ground beneath it, then burst forward to close the distance before its opponent could recover in the air. A sphere of Aura-charged water gathered in its paw, and with one firm push, Water Pulse slammed into Infernape, sending it hurtling even further backward before it finally dropped.
Lucario didn't even bother looking back to check the result of its own attack. It simply turned, walked back to David's side without hesitation, and hoisted the pile of logs they'd already gathered onto its shoulders as if nothing had happened at all.
David had once told Lucario that a real man never looks back at an explosion — and since there hadn't technically been an explosion, Lucario figured the first half of that lesson still counted.
"Great work, Lucario!" David said, giving it a thumbs-up.
The moment praise landed, Lucario's whole demeanor shifted — the cold, guarded warrior melted into something closer to a big goofy puppy, grinning without a trace of its earlier intensity. David reached out and patted its head, same as always. At least Lucario stood around 1.8 meters tall, so patting its head was easy enough — no need to settle for its leg the way he did with Salamence.
"Come on, let's keep moving. We've still got a lot more to collect."
With that, David and his Pokémon pressed on, heading deeper into the forest in search of whatever materials still awaited them. There was still plenty of work left to do before the day was through, and from the looks of it, every log and every stone would have to be earned the hard way.