Time flies, even more if you establish a routine. Before I knew it, a week had passed, and although nothing too notable had happened, the slow and steady progress had its own charm.

  The first few days I was busy fixing my shovel, as the shaft had broken when I used it to bat the Shadow Ball in my battle against Cap. The process itself wasn't complicated. I just had to infuse it with Ghost-type aura and, with the right intention, it would almost regenerate on its own.

  It was a little more difficult having to wait for the two broken parts to stick together, as they did so at an incredibly slow pace, and without the spade (which no longer even looked like a toy, having kept its bone appearance), my control over the aura was greatly diminished, making it impossible for me to speed things up.

  While I was repairing my second most precious possession at the speed of a water snail, I spent my time instructing the Corphish, looking more than anything to entertain myself for a while.

  With The Red Tide (official name approved by Mr. Krabs) I limited myself to giving them a few tips. I told the little ones that, to avoid injustice in their eternal struggle, the best thing to do was to divide into groups of 3. That got their attention, as they were starting to get tired of the cssic free-for-all with temporary alliances, and they all gathered around me to see how they could improve their game.

  Honestly, it was pretty boring spending all day doing the equivalent of gluing the ends of a broken stick, and I was curious about what the little crustaceans would be able to achieve if they followed my instructions, so I drew a basic line formation in the sand on the beach, expining the roles each team member would py if they decided to listen to me.

  The one in front would take care of the vanguard and keep the enemies at bay, the one in the back would watch the rear and thwart ambushes, and the one in the center would provide support by being the eyes of the team and attacking from a distance. They could rotate positions whenever they wanted, and the role of ‘leader’ would fall to the oldest brother in the group unless they agreed otherwise, encouraging them to change teams at intervals to find the brothers with whom they had the most synergy.

  Simple, but effective and entertaining, perfect for the little Corphish.

  With those instructions, the ‘Red Crustacean Horde Game?’ adapted to the new meta and ‘evolved’. By adopting that setup, even their older brothers were unable to keep up when a couple of teams ganged up on them. They made me feel both proud and afraid of the monster I was creating, but much more the former than the tter.

  For The 24 Cws (also approved name), I divided their training between physical and special. The special training was the same as what they had done on the first day, using their aura in 'external/special moves' and practicing using them in various ways. The physical, on the other hand, was much more like conventional training, exercising their bodies by learning and using ‘internal/physical moves’ such as Harden, Knock Off, Double Hit, and, for the more advanced ones like Mr. Krabs and Pincitas, Night Ssh and Razor Shell.

  That also helped me to understand how things worked in that world.

  The physical and special divisions still existed, but only for attacks, not defenses. At the end of the day, it didn't matter if one was hit by Razor Shell or Bubble Beam, a yer of aura naturally covered all Pokemon and it took the brunt of the hit. Once the yer was broken or the Pokemon's aura dropped too low to maintain it up, the ‘pocket monster’ would always faint, ending the fight in a simir way to the anime.

  Did that mean my knowledge of the games was useless? Not at all.

  From what I could observe, the types worked almost the same as I thought, affecting mostly the nature of each individual's aura and this yer that I had yet to name appropriately. On the other hand, the stats were still there, but most had acquired other purposes.

  Attack and Speed ??remained unchanged at first gnce, working just as the name suggested. Defense, I figured, dictated the thickness and hardness of the aura yer protecting me, and HP was the amount of total aura I had left (as a quick aside, I discovered that I did, in fact, have full aura capacity after eating too many berries, and the only way to increase it is through training or fighting).

  With Special’ Attack and Defense, things got a little weird.

  The first one was not very complicated, but it was complex. The Special Attack, from what I was able to notice, influenced many different things; such as the control, focus and distance at which I could use the aura outside of my body, its quality and density when I used it in moves and, in essence, the ease with which I could bend this wonderful energy to my will.

  It was like the ‘magic’ stat in a conventional RPG, but if this stat meant something more than a number in an Excel spreadsheet made in an afternoon.

  The second one, on the other hand, I didn't quite understand. Special Defense worked like something simir to stamina, with some hints of improving the concentration, preventing moves from being easily interrupted, and a couple more things I couldn't figure out.

  Honestly, it was a fascinating topic and I was already starting to think of tree names to use as a surname, but I preferred to leave these things for when I returned to civilization, since that was another matter; I had finally decided.

  When I finished repairing my shovel, all my doubts and worries vanished like that yogurt you left in the fridge the day before. My mood improved a lot, going from ‘good’ to ‘great’.

  That was a little odd, as I hadn't really felt bad those days I spent fixing my shovel, but in retrospect, my indecision arose right after that battle, so the breaking of the spade, in some way, affected me. I wasn't heartbroken as the Pokedex entries said, but I could see how a normal Sandygast, with its ‘limited intelligence’, would desperate at not knowing how to handle the situation.

  It was also a bit worrying, depending so much on an object to keep my mood healthy, but I guess experience taught me that I needed to be a little more careful with my shovel, and it was better to take note of this in a safe environment than to find out the hard way in an uncertain future.

  With the lesson learned, I moved on with my life and modified my schedule. My goal was to thoroughly explore that isnd before I left, but I still needed some way to do that st bit, so the ‘explore the isnd’ part temporarily became ‘gather resources’.

  At midnight, just after waking up, I began to wander around the forest surrounding the beach in my bipedal form, looking for wood with the idea of ??making a raft. I was not a carpenter, far from it, but I could learn as I went along and, with the help of Mr. Krabs, his brothers and Cap, I saw myself capable of making it without too many problems. Nothing like a sharp spade and 500 cws releasing high-pressure water to cut logs, after all, although precision was another matter…

  The forest itself gave me an empty feeling. Maybe it was because I only went there at midnight, or maybe because I didn't go very far, but I didn't see anything interesting. I came across a couple of Hoothoot guarding some berry trees, as well as some Bug-type Pokemon like Caterpie, Wrumple, Dustox, and Nincada, but they were minding their own business and wouldn't even speak to me unless I got too close to ‘their territories’.

  Overall, it was a bit of a monotonous experience after the second day. 4/10, I kept doing it out of obligation.

  In the morning, just as the sun was rising, I gave some advice to The Red Tide and trained the use of my moves, especially the Ghost-type ones. In the afternoon, I instructed The 24 Cws and built my raft, helped by the Mr. Krabs' skillful pincers.

  From time to time, I also had friendly fights with Cap, which I always lost.

  The Wingull wasn't even joking when he said he hadn't used a quarter of his power in our first battle. The old sailor was a true master of hand-to-wing combat, far more so than one would expect from a member of his kind, and he wasn't afraid to dive down from the clouds to chase me once I figured out how to deal with the rain, remaining undefeated until now.

  His Liquidation was fearsome, nearly untouchable as he closed in with a combination of Acrobatics and Aerial Ace to deliver a powerful, super-effective blow, further empowered by his absurd Agility-enhanced speed. I suspect that was also one of the reasons he didn't want to evolve, since doing so would mean losing a lot of that grace and fluidity in exchange for a power that, honestly, he neither needed nor suited his fighting style.

  The first time he did that, he shocked me so much that I was unable to even defend myself, hitting me squarely and breaking a couple of my ribs, which was a thing. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed (even though he was ughing his head off inside), and it helped me to learn an aspect of my Ground-type that I had overlooked until then, but that's a story for another time.

  By the way, what I came up with to deal with his Rain Dance was, actually, stupidly complicated to find even without the stress of combat. After study my ability in depth, I discovered that it works by absorbing part of the Water-type aura from incoming attacks, infusing that energy into the sand hit (turning it into that ‘special sand’) and increasing the density of my protective yer of aura in that specific area.

  That meant that, the rainwater, not having been created entirely by aura, part of it filtered through my Defense, and it turns out that my ‘skin’ made of that special sand must have been the most permeable thing in the damn universe, since normal water passed through it like if it was nothing and turned the rest of my body into mud.

  That's when I asked myself, “Can I influence the properties of the sand that my ability creates in some way?” The short answer was yes; the long answer was that I needed a master's degree in chemistry or have enough willpower to turn that special sand into something simir to cy.

  Since I didn't have the former, I used a mix of the tter with my usual trial and error method to achieve the same result, managing to become, in theory, completely invulnerable to mundane water even if I lost consciousness. The downside was that I had to keep my ‘skin’ hydrated so it wouldn’t get stiff and limit my mobility, but it was a small price to pay in exchange for honing my ability, now being able to get the Defense bonus without taking any damage when eating a Water-type attack.

  Curiously, my normal sand body was rich in oxygen and my bones didn’t weigh much, so I was able to float in water. Swimming wasn't in my pns, and I only discovered this when I wanted to test how waterproof I was in practice, but it was nice to know that I can enter a pool without instantly becoming into nightmare fuel for other swimmers.

  Even so, I would stick with my original pn of building a raft. Although I couldn't physically get tired and I could have just tried to swim to an inhabited beach, it didn't seem like the best idea. Not to mention that my attempts at swimming until then had been limited to thrashing around uncontrolbly as the waves carried me back to the nd.

  It was better if I could hold on to something on the long journey ahead.

  Anyway, in a nutshell, this is how I spent the whole week. On the evening of that day, 7 days after my first battle against Cap, Mr. Krabs finally managed to perfect his use of Razor Shell, and a white glow enveloped him. I don't know if it was a resonance effect or something, but instantly, Pincitas was also enveloped in that pale energy, even though he hadn't yet become as strong as his older brother.

  The phenomenon itself was very interesting. That energy was still aura, but it was completely different from anything I had seen before. It didn't seem to have any type; it didn't seem to come from nature as such. It was aura in its purest state, full of life, full of potential, bordering on what could only be interpreted as Divine.

  Nonetheless, it would be wrong to attribute it entirely to Arceus, I think. That energy emerged from within, enveloping the Pokemon and granting it a form more suitable to its wishes, an evolved form from the previous one. It was strange, since that energy had no will of its own, but seemed to assimite the one of its bearer, and something more…

  Perhaps the will of the world itself?

  As I said, very interesting. I wanted to take a deeper look, but I felt like my head was starting to hurt just thinking about it. I wasn’t surprised that Professor Rowan had dedicated his entire life to researching a phenomenon like that, I was tempted to do so myself.

  Approaching my two friends, I wanted to congratute them wholeheartedly for having achieved it. I knew that both Mr. Krabs and Pincitas had been working hard to evolve, almost as hard as I had. Their desire to protect their family drove them every day in training, pushing their limits every afternoon, so they deserved a big celebration.

  Unfortunately, any thoughts of having a mythical beach party were cut short when one of the fastest little Corphish, completely exhausted, washed up on the beach shouting, “Big Brother, Sandy, Cap! It's horrible! All our food, our supplies... They're gone!”