Our reappearance attracted quite a bit of attention from those staying in the grand chamber. Unlike before where we drew looks every time we reentered the grand chamber, a bunch of them actually came up to us. They asked me if I could bring out my fighting types so that they could spar with the local fighters as well as act as coaches.
I personally saw no reason to refuse but I made it clear that it was up to whether my fighters were willing or not. I let my second thought stream explain the situation/request to all of them, and most ended up agreeing though some chose to sit this one out. I naturally told them that that was perfectly fine, and once all of them had made their decision, I brought out those who agreed.
Po/Pangoro, Tyson/Machamp, Kimura/Hitmonform, as well as Anubis/Lucario appeared beside us, and after leaving them to deal with the locals, I along with my hat, aka Mothra/Butterfree, and my shadow, aka Hades/Gengar, headed for the 20th tunnel leading to a training room connected to more homes for me to check out. We unfortunately did not manage to go through all the tunnels of the Grand Chamber by the time I decided to call it a day after returning from the 42nd tunnel a bit past 8 p.m.
Still, instead of rushing through the final 11 tunnels, I chose to stop and enter Utopia to have dinner with my own folks. Disturbing anyone at this hour would be rude, and I already felt a bit bad about the few family dinners we temporarily interrupted during the last 2 hours. While it might have only been 2-3 minutes each time, it still felt awkward, especially since we knew we would be interrupting but I did not want to call it a day too early since I wanted to be done before lunch tomorrow. At least all of them got a dessert from me in return for the disturbance, so that was something, right?
As for the haul of these 22 tunnels? Well, with the preview given by the previous tunnels, I was not too disappointed with the turnout. There were no major finds like a Mega Stone, but we did come across valuable stuff such as a Dark Stone, and a Druddigon Claw. While I had no use for the first one since Utopia was already capable of producing those, the latter was briefly moved to Utopia for a quick analysis since it could be used for supplements and some other stuff such as ballcrafting.
All in all, I ended up letting Utopia analyze 12 "new" materials/items, which was not bad at all for a day's work considering how big Utopia's list of analyzed materials/items had already become. I naturally tried to trade for the original in exchange for some supplements and other useful stuff, mostly to reward the owners since I did not want to leave without at least attempting to give them something in return. However, only 7 accepted the offer, so the other 5 were left with the original but otherwise empty-handed while I essentially got what I needed for free.
Anyway, since Anubis and the others had already been sent back over an hour ago, I directly entered Utopia upon reentering the grand chamber. Everyone was already waiting for us, so we quickly started our own slightly belated dinner. I mentioned that we would be finishing with the Secret Power system tomorrow, hopefully before lunch, and that the regular Meteor Fall exploration would resume after lunch, which meant that the live stream would resume as well for those interested in seeing what we saw.
That garnered some interest since I had stopped the livestream during the home visits. Another topic that attracted attention was the influx of fighting types that would happen tomorrow as we left the fighting type's Secret tunnel/cave system, though the general interest was more regarding whether Tyson and co were planning to take the newcomers under their wings since the new arrivals were still too weak to serve as sparring partners for most of them.
Only Larvitar, Anortih, Wartortle, Beldum, and Vendrak/Salandit showed any real interest among the main team members on that front. Vendrak had been fully focused on his training since our arrival in Fallabor City, only stopping to participate in some Battle Club battles. He had been pumped after I told him that he was close to reaching the conventional limit, so his eagerness to train was not surprising. He finally reached that point yesterday and relaxed a bit, which was why he was happy about getting more opponents to fight/spar with.
Nyx/Umbreon brought up Lunatone, who was still in the PokeBall. She asked if it was fine to leave it there since I had mentioned before that I planned to let it out today; At least that had been the case before our exploration plan had been affected by the whole Secret Power system we had found. Nonetheless, I could not help but smile at her show of compassion and I definitely appreciated her concern, so I assured her that Lunatone was fine since a 2 or 3-day delay would not affect it at all due to Lunatone being in stasis mode and the fact that it was a rock type.
The conversation veered to its usual direction after that, and once dinner was over, we played a few games before I called it a night for everyone. The next morning we resumed our exploration right after breakfast. The first three tunnels and the 16 homes I checked in them ended without any interesting finds, but it appeared that my luck finally decided to throw me a bone because what I was seeing/reading right now was definitely more than interesting.
The Hariyama this home belonged to had somehow managed to find a gem that fell off or broke off of a Carbink. This could potentially be huge news, even bigger than the possibility of Minior still roaming around somewhere deep within the Meteor Falls. While the existence of wild Minior in Hoenn, particularly the Meteor Falls had been known, even if it was a matter of the past, there was zero knowledge of the existence of wild Carbrink in Hoenn.
In fact, if we added the information I got on the cruise to Hoenn about the potential Carbink in the Orange Archipelago, this was the second possible wild Carbink anywhere on the whole northern continent. Well, at least the part accessible to humans. Hence, my excitement after my Observe revealed that the chipped gem the size of a child's fist I was checking came from a Carbink. I was really hoping that this gem was from a wild Carbink and not from one a passing trainer brought along.
I immediately turned to the Hariyama on my left and asked if they could share with me where they found the gem. Hariyama did not mind at all and told me that it was one of their Makuhita who had found the stone in the stream close to the uppermost waterfall after getting washed away during his training. I had the urge to curse when I heard that since it was the second worst news I could have gotten, right after hearing that they got it from a trainer's Carbink.
With Makuhita having found the gem at the bottom of the waterfall or close to it, there was an extremely high chance that it had been carried there from the channel in the wall. The one suspected of leading deep into the Meteor Falls and no one had followed until the end. There was a bit of good news if that was the case since it made the chance of it being from a captured Carbink minuscule, but it also meant that the Carbink could be anywhere in the deeper parts of the Meteor Falls, leaving me virtually no clues on how to find it.
I obviously attempted to trade/buy the gem, but Hariyama ended up resolutely refusing, so I took a chance to let Utopia analyze it before moving on, though with this discovery, seeing if I could luckily stumble upon the Carbink was added to my list of goals for the Meteor Falls. For the following few visits, my mood was high as were my expectations, though reality reminded me bit by bit that happenstances like the previous one were quite rare.
None of the homes I visited during my exploration of the final 7 tunnels had anything close to the Carbink Gem, much less the Mega Stone. It was not a total waste since I found 4 more helpful materials that I could use, but I could not avoid feeling a tad bit disappointed I guess. Still, I managed to stay on plan and finish checking all tunnels 1.5 hours before lunch, leaving me more than enough time to check out the tunnel leading to the private exit of the Secret Power system.
I made sure to check out the immediate outside area once we stepped outside the cave, and I even brought out Horus/Xatu as well as Tatsumaki/Alakazam so that they could memorize the place so that we could teleport over if we wanted to. I directly moved them back to Utopia once they were done, and we did not stick around to explore the area either since I wanted to get back to the main chamber to finish its exploration before getting sidetracked by yet another distraction.
Hence, I followed the tunnel back to the grand chamber, where I asked those present to pass the news that I was leaving to the fighting types that had joined me. It took less than 10 minutes for all 41 of them to gather before me. They came with their families, and after letting them say their final goodbyes, I recalled all of them before placing the balls inside Utopia, specifically Anubis' place, where Anubis and the other fighting types of my main team were waiting.
Once the balls appeared I released all of them and told Anubis and co that the newcomers' introduction to Utopia was up to them. My second thought stream then began checking their updated status sheets while I made my way out of the Secret Power tunnel system. I once again got to witness on a semi-large scale how overpowered Utopia was. Among the 41 fighting types, the ones with the lowest potential now had green potential.
The Tyrogue, Machop, and Hitmonchan that originally had light blue potential now had all blue potential, with Hitmonchan being the closest to deep blue, missing just 6%. Aside from them, a Machoke ended up with blue potential as well, while 9 mon now possessed light blue potential. Out of the 41 newcomers, 13 now had blueish potential, with 4 more among those with deep green potential needing less than 10% to upgrade to light blue as well. It was incredible to witness such a change.
Anyway, I let my second thought stream continue monitoring Utopia while I made my way down the puddle fall so that I could explore the lowermost floor/platform. That area not only had the fourth and final crater that could be found in the main chamber, but it also held the official exit toward the path leading to Rustboro City. Since the crater was both closer and more interesting to me I chose to start exploring the area adjacent to the stream.
I did glance at the stream when we walked beside it, and I could not help but note that this part of the stream was the deepest out so far. Still, the stream had to wait, so I turned my focus back to the dry ground, and just 10 minutes later, we were stepping into the crater. I saw a Drilbur playing with two Sandshrew, but they hurriedly dove underground the moment they spotted us. While they were pretty fast, I was able to dab the Drilbur with my psionic energy before they left. That allowed me to see that it had only deep orange potential, which was why I did not bother stopping or retrieving them.
Other than those three, we also saw a few Geodude, though they did not do much more than glance at us to see if we were going to bother them before resuming their sleep when they saw that we had no plans to disturb them.
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