Chapter 6: Making Progress

  Matty looked over his small clearing. Almost all of the saplings have taken root, and the berry farm is sprouting. He had spent two days cutting logs into boards and beams, preparing to put up a more permanent shelter. Although the saw and nails he had purchased from the blacksmith were rather expensive, he was able to make good use of them. One thing he noted, is that the blacksmith had a rather rare Pokemon for this area. It was a fiery red magma slug that could melt almost anything it tried to, but was put to use heating the forge. Apparently, it did not even eat regular Pokemon food, but required special types of rock. After he had started gathering and preparing all of the materials, he began setting up the plot for his future home. He had marked it out carefully and even started to do his best to level it.

  While he was doing this, he made sure that Grub was well cared for, but in this stage, it seemed he was living off of stored energy. He mostly just sat there and watched, basking in the sunshine and ever so often rocking back and forth gently. Aura was doing well too, but in a much different way. She seemed to take great pleasure in capturing invading pests in her webs and wrapping them to eat later. The large web on the edge of his property gave Matty the willies because of the many bulges, but he did his best to ignore it.

  After finishing cutting it into boards and beams, Matty left the timber to sit in the sun while he moved on to another project. Collecting sticks from a brushpile left over from the trees he had cut, he started burying the longer and thicker ones around his garden and orchard, and weaving smaller ones inside and out on the bottom. Fastening it all together with some silk from Aura, he soon had the start of a rudimentary fence.

  After another day, the fence was done, and he was able to rest easy knowing that the smaller pests would not be able to get in the garden and orchard. Checking on the wood he had left to dry in the sun, Matty remembered something he had heard during a trip to a lumberyard, that the wood would dry fully by one year for an inch of thickness, but building with wet it should be alright if he was careful.

  Setting aside the house project for now, Matty decided to double-check the farming part of his guidebook after carefully watering all the plants. According to the notes, it would take a total of three weeks for the rare berry plants (Tamato berries) to begin producing fruit. The other berries would only take two weeks, but they were not quite as valuable or nutritious. The orchard would take much longer, around six months to be mature, but Matty hoped the time would fly by.

  Re-reading some of the previous pages on common nuances, Matty noticed a new page on crafting techniques and materials. it detailed ways of treating wood, such as drying it by having a water Pokemon pull the water out, or having a fire type dry it out. It also detailed ways of crafting and preparing apricorn balls. One of the things Matty noticed most was that you could strengthen Pokemon thread by braiding or twining it into a stronger rope. The most basic way was to braid it by securing it to something heavy and winding as you go. Matty looked at Aura. The large spider was currently biting into a large Rattata-sized squirming bundle of silk. Shivering remembering the bite he had received from one earlier, he still wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.

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  Looking over to his small tent shelter at Grub, who was sitting leaning against the wall, Matty walked over.

  Looking up at its mother, all Grub could do was blink. Looking back and forth from his hand to face, Grub listened as they made strange and weird noises. Hearing one they recognized, they did their best to use the move.

  Talking gently to Grub, Matty was consoling him for not being able to move and use attacks, when its string shot move went off right in his face! Sputtering, Matty pulled the slick threads off his face and began securing them to a nearby log. He started tightly braiding, creating a sturdy-looking rope. When he was near the end of the string he had prepared, he went and got more from grub. Tightly securing the ends together, he soon had almost 5 feet of braided cord. Looking at the book, Matty was surprised to see that he could make a simple net if he made enough rope, and so production began.

  After hours of braiding, Matty’s wrists were sorer than he had ever felt them, but he was finally ready to begin knotting the net. Tying the lengths of rope together, and making a lattice pattern took a while, but after many hours of work, Matty finally finished. Excited to try it out, he walked over to the river. Seeing movement under the surface, Matty tossed the net and scooped up the small creature, tossing it on land.

  Struggling to flip over, was a small blue creature. It had a green lily pad leaf covering its body, and what looked like a yellow bill. Finally managing to flop over, it gave Matty a dirty look before trying to crawl for the river. Jumping in front of it to stop it from escaping, Matty grabbed an apricorn ball from his belt and prepared to throw it. What he wasn’t prepared for was the thing to spray him in the face with water and continue fleeing.

  Hearing the commotion, Aura scuttled over to the small creature and gave it a once-over. Seeing Leader fall to the ground, and watching the coward flee, she lept right for it and began savaging the Lilly pad with all her strength. As Matty wiped his eyes and saw the poor creature struggling to survive the vicious barrage of attacks, he threw the ball in his hand right toward it. Nailing it right in the face, he watched as it was sucked into the ball and disappeared out from under Aura. Aura jumped back, desperately trying to find the enemy that had somehow escaped her.

  The ball came to rest with a soft click, and setting it aside, Matty decided that it was probably best to teach Aura to listen to his commands- or at least try to before bringing out his new acquisition. Putting his house building and rope braiding aside, he did his best to teach her. The training was easier than he thought, though Matty couldn’t tell why. Aura perked up whenever her name was said, and she always did her best to learn attack names and basic commands. After an hour of training, he could get her to, with relative accuracy use moves and follow basic commands such as No, or Stop Biting That. Grub sat having seen the whole thing, wishing that he could practice as well, but he knew that he still had some time to go before he could evolve once more.