Chương 622: CH3 (617), Dangling Surprises (1)
Unfortunately, my next few attempts proved that I had actually been lucky with my first catch. My second attempt resulted in a Magikarp, as did my third one. The fourth attempt was even worse. The line wiggled a bit after nearly 10 minutes of waiting before it stopped. I got suspicious when there was no further movement within the next 5 minutes so I reeled the line in. Well, it turned out that the bait had been successfully stolen.
Anyway, after 3 hours of fishing, nearly all I got aside from the first Goldeen were Magikarp. The only exception to that were the two Tentacool I fished out in between the Magikarp. I did hold out both to the camera so that I had something to show for now, but neither was enough to even get me into the rankings.
Thankfully I was not the only one with a lackluster catch history since most people only managed to catch Magikarp or Tentacool so far, but there were a few lucky anglers who managed to reel in some other Pokemon as well. Honestly, looking at everyone's captures so far, I kinda regretted not using the Goldeen I caught at the start since it would have probably ranked pretty well for now.
The organizers were displaying the current top 5 catches on the screen, but most only cared about the Top 3 since those were the ones that would get a prize. The current Top 3 catches, from bottom to the top, were a 61cm long Finneon, which was ~20% bigger than the average, a 157 cm long Seaking, which was about 12% above the average, and finally, a 102 cm long Mantyke, which was pretty much the average size for the species.
I was not surprised that Seaking's points managed to surpass Finneon's by a bit. It was a final evolution with an above-average size after all, so even if Finneon was considered rarer around these waters, Seaking surpassing it by 3 points, which honestly was not much, was acceptable.
Compared to that, the difference between Seaking and Mantyke was quite a bit bigger. Mantyke was obviously counted as a superior catch so even a regular-sized one was enough to get first place, with 136 points at that, surpassing the second place by a full 21 points.
Still, we were only 3 hours into the competition, and I did not believe I wouldn't be able to catch something impressive until tomorrow. I really wanted to have something to show before bringing out Fortuna/Togekiss or I would feel bad for myself since I did see myself as a rather lucky individual. I mean it was hard not to with my experiences so far.
I could not help but consider using my aura to help me with fishing. I'd simply had to use the rod as a medium to attach my aura to the bait. Aura was life energy after all, so I did not doubt that a bait full of life energy would be much more tempting/effective than a regular one. Yet, I chose to not do that since it felt like cheating to me.
The organizers did provide everyone with the same rod and bait to ensure the fairness of the competition after all, so using my aura to make my bait more tempting was wrong. I did not feel the same way about Fortuna because, unlike aura manipulation, luck was something everyone had, Fortuna just happened to be a bit more fortunate in that regard. Some might find that hypocritical of me but I saw a distinct difference between the two.
I continued to fish like a good boy after resisting the cookies of the dark side, and as luck would have it, my third catch after that turned out to be extremely hard to reel in. My catch was resisting rather strongly, and I actually had to use quite a bit of my true strength to keep reeling in whatever Pokemon had bit my hook.
I had to be careful with my strength and technique since my rod was making creaking noises, but exactly because of that, I was absolutely certain that had had something either quite strong or big and heavy, or possibly even both. Options like Gyarados, Tentacruel Wailmer, Mantine, or even Wailord came to mind and the great shadow that appeared when I finally managed to drag my catch close to the surface after a 4 or so-minute-long struggle backed up that assumption.
My struggle had not gone unnoticed and a crowd had gathered around me, which broke out into excited whispers when the big outline appeared. I was quite excited as well, and after allowing my catch to struggle for another minute to exhaust it a bit more, I focused and gathered my strength before performing one big pull. The Pokmeon resisted for a moment before the resistance completely vanished and my catch was pulled out of the water.
Everyone, including myself, stared in disbelief at what I had dragged out of the water. There, dangling from my rod was a little Wishiwashi, still struggling to break free from the hook. There were a few seconds of surprised/disbelieving silence before the first person broke out in laughter, which caused more people to start laughing as well.
I still could not believe what I was seeing, but my mind swiftly came up with an explanation of what happened. I most likely pulled out a single Wishiwashi from a "School Form" Wishiwashi, which explained the strong resistance and the big shadow below the water's surface.
The little Wishiwashi had none of the strength it had while being in synergy with its schoolmates in its school form, so it was still helplessly dangling from my rod, and I could not help but shake my head in disappointment at the way things developed. Out of all the things I could have fished out, I actually ended up fishing out the smallest fish/Pokemon in the sea.
Leaving aside the little Wishiwashi dangling from my string, I took a look at the sea and saw that the shadow could still be seen, though it was getting fainter, showing that it was swimming away. This meant that this School Form Wishiwashi had been formed by a true school of Wishiwashi and not the single one dangling in front of me.
Wishiwashi were a rather interesting species due to their School Form since said form had actually two versions. The one made up of a lot of individual Wishiwashi, and the one formed by a single Wishiwashi relying solely on its ability "Schooling".
The Wishiwashi belonging to the latter group stored energy through its ability which it then used to produce water (energy) clones that helped it from its School Form. The water clones were practically drones that were like Lego blocks forming the school body, while the Wishiwashi was the brain piece that controlled the Lego/school form body.
This version was the one trainers had in their teams since it was impossible to capture an actual school of Wishiwashi due to the fact that a Pokeball could only be used to capture a single Pokemon, and even if the first version of the school form appeared like a single Pokemon, it was made up of a collective of Wishiwashi that were in synergy with one another.
That was also why the collective form could get much bigger than the ability form since a mega-large school of Wishiwashi could potentially "fuse" into an enormous "School Form", though there was still a limit to the size in nature since it was not easy for such a huge number of Wishiwashi to built the necessary synergy and maintain it, at least as far as we knew. On a side note, the biggest documented School Form Wishiwashi was around 30 meters long, which was already the size of a notable Wailord.
Anyway, I could not help but be disappointed by the result of my capture, and while I knew that a Wishiwashi would get even worse points than a Goldeen, I still pointed the rod with the by now no longer-struggling Wishiwashi at the camera. I honestly did not think all that much of Wishiwashi as a Pokemon, but maybe it was because of the effort I put into fishing it, I still went ahead and checked its status sheet to see if it might be worth capturing after all.
Yet, reality proved to be disappointing and I threw the Wishiwashi back into the sea when I saw that it had deep red potential. Seeing my actions the crowd gave me a pitying look before dispersing. I ignored them and just put another bait on the hook before I resumed fishing. I did not believe that I could not capture an impressive Pokemon, and I would stay here until midnight if that was what it took to do so. I did keep my word and did not leave the deck, not even for dinner. Instead, I ate a few sandwiches to fill my belly while I kept my eyes on the rod.
My efforts were somewhat rewarded over the next few hours since I kept catching Pokemon after Pokemon, with roughly only half of them being Magikarp and a quarter being Tentacool. The other 5 Pokemon belonged to different species, namely Chinchou, Remoraid, Carvanha, Feebas, and finally my best catch so far, a Lanturn.
The Lanturn was roughly 15% bigger than the average, and earned me 126 points, pushing me all the way up to second place. The first place still belonged to the Mantyke, but the now third place belonged to someone who caught a Wailmer, pushing the initially second-place Seaking to fourth place.
Unfortunately, neither Lanturn nor any of my other captures during the last few hours had decent potential so I released all of them back to the sea. I had actually intended to capture Lanturn as long as her potential had at least a yellow shade, but when it turned out that she had light orange potential I decided to let her go. There was a limit to my tolerance for bad potential after all.
Nonetheless, there were still 4 hours until midnight, so I continued to fish in hopes of catching a great one before leaving for the night. However, things did not go the way I wanted them to. Honestly, I did get a bit lucky and managed to capture a Seaking and even a Sharpedo. The latter actually tried to attack me after I dragged him on board, forcing me to kick his ass, which had the security and the other contestants googling in disbelief.
Still, both fish got a good score, though neither surpassed Mantyke's score. Sharpedo got second place, while Seaking got fifth place, which meant that 3 out of 5 spots in the Top 5 belonged to me. Unfortunately, while the two got a good score from the organizers, they got a bad one from me due to their bad potential.
Thankfully, I had made another lucky catch that while not getting a good competition score belonged to a good species and actually had good potential. The little Horsea did not even make it into the Top 10 on the scoreboard, but his deep green potential was good enough for me to ball him as soon as I saw his status.
I kept an eye on Horsea while he was undergoing Utopia's treatment, and when I rechecked his status afterward, I saw that he actually got lucky enough to have his potential raised to blue, which meant that his previous percentage had been above 40%. It had actually been at 86% since his new one was at Blue (46%), which was pretty awesome since it meant that Horsea could if he finished a complete limit break, raise his potential to light purple upon breaking through to the bronze stage.
Considering that, I decided that there was no harm in fully supporting Horsea since he had the potential to attain light aurora before the dark gold stage, and that was without adding in the two evolutions he could undergo to become a Kingdra, which was a great Pokemon by the way. I mentally placed him in the reserve unit along with Hypno and the others outside my current main team that I fully supported.
Anyway, yeah, while I did not manage to secure first place before retiring for the night, I did capture a future light Aurora potential Kingdra, so I was still satisfied with the way the day ended.
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This is chapter 1/4 for this week.
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