Still, no matter how interesting exploring the Hisui Secret Realm might be, Nova was not about to let it slow down his own progress.
This strange, dangerous world had a certain pull to it. Wave after wave of humans came here chasing the thrill of exploration, caring little for their own safety. Nova, however, was clearly not one of those people.
He did not have any grand dream to chase. For him, it was simply a matter of facing a problem and finding a way to solve it.
To come up with a real plan, Nova needed more information first.
"Mr. Vern, you keep saying the Ursaring come out to hunt at night and hide up in the mountains during the day. So why not just do the work during daylight hours?"
Mr. Vern gave a tired smile.
"If we want to build a path, we first need to find a fairly safe way across the volcanic crater."
"As for the ground itself, we already had trained geologists study it with proper equipment. This volcano is erupting slowly and steadily right now, and there are several cracks releasing magma at the bottom of the lake."
"Because the eruption is slow like this, the pressure inside the volcano keeps releasing little by little, so a sudden, violent explosion is unlikely."
"So the ground here is fairly safe, at least."
"The real trouble comes from the Pokemon."
"If we start clearing a trail through the mountain pass, the noise is bound to wake the sleeping Ursaring nearby. Once one fight starts, it never really stops."
"A few strong individuals claim certain caves as their own dens, but most of the rest just sleep wherever they happen to drop. A path might be clear of Ursaring today and still have one blocking it tomorrow."
"For now, all we can do is send Trainers out during the day, again and again, trying to map out a route the Ursaring won't bother with. But the Ursaring around here have unusually vicious tempers."
"Some of them have red eyes in particular. Those ones are huge, their attacks come in a frenzy, and they don't seem to feel pain at all. Every time our Trainers run into one, the pressure is almost too much to bear."
"Because of this, any exploring we do outside the volcano on the island can only happen by having Flying-type Pokemon carry our people."
"But that's not something we can rely on forever. Even for small-scale mining nearby, we absolutely need a solid walking route. Depending only on Flying-types to move supplies and goods back and forth is far too slow and inefficient."
"It's not just our Layered Peaks Gym either. Even a Gym that specializes in Flying-types might struggle to manage this."
The conversation kept circling back to the Ursaring.
Three details Mr. Vern mentioned stuck out to Nova.
Red eyes. Unusual size. Attacking like a mad dog with no regard for pain.
Put those three traits together, and there was no mistaking it. Nova felt certain that some unlucky Trainers here had crossed paths with a Boss Ursaring.
Facing something like that, even a strong Hisuian Trainer could be knocked out cold and dragged off if they let their guard down, let alone the physically ordinary humans working for the Layered Peaks Gym.
And based on what Mr. Vern described, there seemed to be quite a few of these Boss Ursaring roaming around.
This volcanic crater truly seemed to be a breeding ground for dangerous talent.
Now Nova finally understood the outpost's biggest problem. In short, they had no real way of dealing with the Ursaring scattered across the mountains.
So what could be done?
Forget the dozen or so Elite Trainers stationed here. Even if Mort himself came to fight hundreds of Ursaring all day long, throwing in a dozen Ursaluna of unknown strength and behavior would still leave him with a serious headache.
Luckily, Nova still had the memories of his past life to draw on. Compared to the people native to this world, his biggest advantage was simply knowing more, and knowing it sooner.
Nova understood clearly that Alpha Pokemon and ordinary Pokemon were not the same thing at all.
Ordinary wild Pokemon, even with their aggression boosted by this ancient, untamed land, would never come close to matching the destructive force of an Alpha Pokemon.
If both the Alphas and the regular Ursaring were treated as one single problem, then there really was no way to fix this.
Fighting even one ordinary Ursaring would draw the attention of every Ursaring nearby, pulling in more and more opponents. After half a day of endless battling, there would be no chance left to scout any usable path.
But if the ordinary Ursaring and the Boss Ursaring were treated as two separate problems, Nova suddenly saw a possible way forward.
He even suspected that these highly aggressive Alpha Pokemon were the ones striking first, and that the noise from those fights was what stirred up the Ursaring and Ursaluna elsewhere. So what if, for now, they simply ignored the ordinary Ursaring and focused only on capturing the Alpha Pokemon they came across?
He could not be certain about everything, but Nova felt fairly confident that once the Alpha Pokemon stopped causing trouble, clashes between humans and the wider Ursaring population would drop off sharply.
And after that? How should the ordinary Ursaring be dealt with?
Something Mr. Vern mentioned earlier had caught Nova's attention.
The Ursaring here seemed to be living in a very strange pattern. They slept through the day in hibernation, then rushed down to the lake at night to hunt Basculin.
This was where basic knowledge of animal biology proved useful.
Back in his past life, Nova had learned a bit about how bears behave. Bears hibernate when food is scarce, but when food is plentiful, they will stay active outside even through freezing weather instead of sleeping it off.
When a hibernating bear has not stored up enough energy to keep sleeping, it wakes up and searches desperately for food in the snow.
Nova remembered reading many news stories from his past life about bear attacks in winter, and most of them came down to bears driven half mad by hunger during hibernation.
The Ursaring near this volcano seemed to match that same pattern closely.
Because there was not enough food in this environment, they hibernated to survive, but grew too hungry partway through and were forced to sneak down to the lake at night to catch fish.
In other words, these Ursaring were only barely surviving here, stuck in a place with far too little food.
So maybe the problem was not as hopeless as it first seemed.
Nova recalled a joke he had seen back in his past life about a certain famous animal.
"Bears will never work as slaves, unless food and shelter are included."
Nova probably could not offer proper shelter, but as for food, that much he could truly guarantee in full.
Human society might fall short in plenty of areas, but when it came to industrial food production, humanity's factories would never run short on supply.
Of course, none of this would matter unless Nova dealt with those unreasonable Alpha Pokemon first.