Chương 424: CH57 (421), Standard Missions?! (2)
I had never been to that region of Rota before, so instead of leaving the castle/headquarters, I headed for the order's Teleportation Hub instead. The order had its own hub and offered teleportation services for its members.
Still, unlike the regular hub, the order's hub only offered three kinds of services. Mission as well as emergency destination delivery, transport between order centers, and finally the pick-up service. An emergency destination delivery was always free and came with a teleportation priority.
The mission destination delivery had two options. The first one was the free one, where the order would arrange a teleportation to your mission's destination as soon as a viable order porter was available. The second one was the chargeable one, where the order would arrange a teleportation to your mission's destination as soon as possible by any means, even if they had to arrange an outside porter.
Even then, the price was still cheaper by 20-30% than it would have been to use the regular Teleportation Hub, which was why order members preferred to make use of the second option if they were in a hurry. Yet, as the name suggested, this service could only be used for mission destinations and not as a personal transport service. Moreover, the service was only one-way.
Though, unlike the delivery, travel between order centers and the pick-up service could be considered as a personal transport service. The first one was pretty obvious as well as pretty cheap, and if you were on order-related business the service was free.
For the pick-up service, the order sent over a porter to bring you back to the order center you requested the pick-up from. This one always cost money, unless you were urgently called for by the order, but it was still useful for guys who had no Pokemon capable of teleporting, had never visited that particular order center or did not want to travel there by regular means.
I was going for the hub to make use of the free mission destination delivery. Once I made it to the hub, I directly went to the service desk and requested a teleportation to the area on the map I had been given. The clerk checked their system and told me that the closest teleportation point was near a village 14 km east of the area marked on the map and that the porter could be ready in about 15 minutes.
He also shared that the next best teleportation point was near a village 21 km south of the area and that the porter for this was the same one as the other, so I would have to wait 15 minutes for this one as well. I obviously chose the first point and took a seat in the waiting area after thanking the clerk.
I used the waiting time to consider my approach as well as to study the map some more, and just 12 or so minutes later I, or rather my order ID was called up. I met up with my porter and his Slowking, and after exchanging a short greeting, I was brought to my destination. Since my location was to the east of the target area, I began moving toward the west.
Once I arrived at the place marked as the usual Arbok border, I called out Horus/Xatu, Tatsumaki/Alakazam, Gwen/Gardevoir, Ali/Kirlia, and Enji/Arcanine. They were responsible for memorizing the area so that we could teleport around if necessary and look for signs of either Ekans or Arbok.
Circling the border was part of my plan to deal with the main mission, or mission No1, which was to investigate the reason the Arbok tribe had pushed past its territory. Once I knew that I would decide if I would try to dissuade them, forcibly stop them, or go back and report the details leaving the problem to the order.
Still, I could definitely keep an eye out for the objectives of missions no2 and no3. Mission no2 requested a batch of Ekans and Arbok regardless of their stage. The required minimum was at least 10 Ekans and 4 Arbok, but they would take as many as I could get.
The only requirement was that they had at least two-star potential. I looked it up, and the money they offered was around the same as the money one would receive by selling it at the alliance center.
Meanwhile, mission no3 asked for Arbok Shed Skin. The order points from the mission were static, but they would pay for however many skins I could deliver. Still, they asked for at least 25 D-Class Arbok Shed skins. As for the reward aspect, they used the same principle as mission no2.
I could attempt both these missions while doing my border check, without having to enter the Arbok territory any further. Admittedly, I doubted I would randomly come across some shed skin since I was expecting those to be in or close to their nests, but it should still be possible to come across them if I was lucky enough.
Still, at least I believed the chances for that one were higher than with mission no4 unless I was lucky or unlucky enough depending on who you were asking. Mission 4 requested 2000 ml of pure Arbok Venom coming from a gold-stage Arbok, so I would have to meet and either persuade or subdue a gold-stage Arbok to fulfill the mission goal.
Anyway, once I told everyone to keep an eye out for any Ekans, Arbok, their shed skin, or signs in general, I began walking along the border of the habitat. The border was around 31.5 km long, which would take me about 3 to 4 hours to circle since I was going at a sedated pace to observe the areas I was passing.
The whole territory was about 79 km² in size, but thankfully I would not have to check everything once I was done with my border check. Instead, I would focus my investigation on the main nest in the center and the area around it.
Nonetheless, my current job was checking the border, and the signs I found during the first 30 minutes showed that none of the Ekans or Arbok left their side of the area for more than a hundred or so meters. At least that was what I concluded from the sign those Pokemon left behind along the parts of the eastern border that I managed to check.
I came across a few iron-stage Ekans as well during my investigation, and seeing how they fulfilled the condition of mission no2, I captured them. While none of them were sapient since that usually happened somewhere between (high) bronze and (low) silver stages for their species, they were still intelligent enough, so I asked them if they had an idea what was going on, but they didn't, so I simply recalled them and put away their balls.
I resumed my trek and at some point, I began seeing signs of Ekans and Arbok moving past their border and heading further outside. This happened at the point where I would consider myself closer to the northern border than the eastern one.
I came across a few more Ekans that I captured but none of them were particularly strong or sapient, and even the singular Arbok I happened upon was only at the (high) bronze stage and apparently a recent evolution since it had yet to achieve sapience. I had hoped an Arbok would know more, but after a round of questions, I learned that he knew nothing important as well, which I attributed to his recent evolution.
Still, I at least managed to learn that they were told to expand their usual hunting range in the north or west, so that was something. I, now knew that they were deliberately expanding toward the north and west, even if Arbok, and consequently I had no idea why.
It took just a few minutes after that before Enji alerted me that he was smelling a batch of Ekans along with some Arbok not too far from us. That was the first time I came across a group instead of a single one of them. I was a bit excited since an advancing group like that probably knew what was going on, or rather, I was assuming that at least the Arbok in charge knew what was going on.
We headed toward them and stopped once Enji said that we had come pretty close. I then asked Horus and the others to determine the number of the group, and we learned that there were 20 Ekans along with 3 Arbok. Moreover, 5 of the other party were definitely showing signs of sapience.
Now I had a choice to make, I could either go in guns blazing and fight it out with the group, even if it would be a short battle seeing how strong my side was, or I could use the smart approach. I decided to use the smart approach.
I brought out Optimus/Butterfree and had him send over a big cloud of Stun Spore and Sleep Powder. While poison types, including the Ekans line, were rather resistant to the effect of the powers and spores, that could change depending on the strength difference and move mastery.
We waited a few seconds before heading towards the target group, and from what I saw only the three Arbok were still capable of moving. Still, all of us could see that they were not completely unaffected. The strongest one among the trio was at the (mid) silver stage, while the other two were at the (low) silver stage.
It was Optimus who rushed out first on our side, probably because it was his first strike that they resisted. He rapid-fired two Electrowebs at the weaker Arbok to entangle them for a few moments, before using Psychic to immobilize and attack the leader.
He followed that up with a Psybeam at the upper body before whacking Arbok across the head with a Steel Wing for good measure, laying it out on the ground, unmoving, clearly out cold. Only after that did he turn his full focus on the other two Arbok that were clearly surprised by how quickly their boss had been dealt with, seeing how they had stopped trying to get out of the Electroweb.
When Optimus showed signs of attacking them, the two simply lay down and shouted that they were surrendering, causing Optimus to stop and look in my direction. I gave him a nod and he retreated back to my side after warning the Arbok that they better behave. The Arbok looked at me when I stepped closer, but they did not try anything when they noticed the Pokemon around me.
I chose to ignore them for a moment and looked at the unmoving Ekans, and I noticed that four of them were still awake, just unable to move and drowsy to different degrees. A quick telepathy check showed that the two other sapient ones were among them and the other two seemed to be pretty close as well.
Moreover, these four seemed to be the strongest among Ekans, with all four being at the (high) bronze stage. All four showed their submission when they noticed me focusing on them which earned them a nod from me.
Deciding to deal with them first, I pulled out 16 regular Pokeballs and 4 Great Balls, before I used the regular Pokeballs to capture the sleeping Ekans while using the Great Balls to capture the four that were still conscious. The quartet did not even struggle, so their capture went even faster than that of the sleeping ones. Still, in the end, no one broke out of their ball, and I pocketed them all with a satisfied smile.
With the addition of these Ekans, I had more than cleared the number of requested Ekans in mission no2, and once I captured the 3 Arbok, I would have the four requested Arbok as well. With that happy thought, I turned back to the Arbok. I decided to capture them first before interrogating them, so I told the two that were still awake not to struggle before I pulled out another 3 Great Balls, which I promptly used to capture the Arbok.
As I suspected, the two that I warned did not struggle at all and were swiftly captured, but I was surprised to see that the leader was captured nearly as quickly as the other two. This meant that his unconsciousness was a bit more serious than expected, so I would have to deal with that first before I could interrogate him.
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Azrail93
Azrail93 Thank you for reading.
This is chapter 5/5 for this week.
If the second goal gets fulfilled, the number of advanced chapters will range from 6 to 10 depending on the patron tier. I will also release 2 bonus chapters if goal 2 is met.
Sketches, drawings of the MC, Variants and maps can be found on my Patre’on. A patre’on exclusive Legendary Lore series can be found there as well.
patre*on.com/Azrail93
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