I was right, my mum had not been pleased. After I had returned from the dungeon, my parents, having heard my return, came up to check on me and my mum's face looked as white as chalk upon seeing my shredded shirt, complete with blood stains.
It had taken me half an hour to calm them both down and explain what had happened and assure them that I was fine. That had been the opening of the floodgates for my mother to start lecturing me, mostly on how irresponsible I had been going into a situation when I had been given prior warning by ways of the mission details that things were going to be much harder than I had suspected.
At the same time my dad, not being the type to give lectures, just gave me a silent look, one I was familiar with. The last time I saw that look was a few years ago, when I was riding high on just advancing a rank in my Karate classes and wanted to try immediately for the next rank. When my instructor advised against it I had taken to openly challenging one of those there that held the rank to prove myself ready, and then proceeded to get my butt kicked and laid out flat with my dad looking down at me. The same look that said "You did something stupid and you know it."
And I did. I knew it was completely stupid of me to do so, especially now looking back, but I knew I needed to be able to handle myself better, I needed to be prepared for what was coming, the war and every other curveball this world could throw at me, I needed to be stronger and if that meant taking risks then so be it. But not at the risk of my own life.
Unfortunately neither of my parents felt the same way, while understanding as they may be, they didn't want me to get in over my head. And so they had grounded me from entering the dungeons again until I had a proper grasp of my magic.
It was an overall empty gesture, all three of us knew it, if I really wanted to go back into the dungeon I could at any time and there was nothing either of them could do to prevent it. But I decided to follow it, while using the time to prepare, plan and improve myself now after what I had gone through and discovered.
With a hint at what I had been possibly missing from my spell casting I took to spending more time in Pokémon home to practice after that, wanting to figure out just what it was, and two hours into my next practice session I had figured it out, it was a mix of all three.
Wand movements, Incantation and visualization were only half of the equation, a wizard or witch needed to do more than just wave their wand to do magic, they needed to push their magic to obey, they needed desire to affect the exterior world, and a firm will to change it, all to get their magic to work. All the while emotion amplified their magic to achieve greater effects.
However fueling your magic with emotion caused the witch or wizard to expend more of their magic in their spell work, draining them faster.
'It's also a slippery slope' I thought as I sat at the edge of the lake in Pokémon Home, my wand in hand as I remembered how, from what I knew of them, the three unforgivable curses needed extremely dark emotions and desires to be cast.
'It's no wonder they get so twisted, constantly casting spells that need emotions like those to power them, if all dark magic is like that, even in the slightest way, then casting those spells again and again would warp anyone's mind, regardless of their age or mentality' I thought with a grimace, while making a mental note to never look up how to cast such spells, not even wanting the temptation of casting them. Because while I might have already known the incantations for each, I did not know the wand movements.
With a sigh I stood up and turned slightly to look over the grassland clearing that had changed a lot since I had first seen it. The last three weeks since my second dungeon dive had given me plenty of time to set up a proper base of operations here in Pokémon home
My gaze flickered over the slowly growing berry tree fields that my dad and I had spent the evenings slowly planting and expanding upon. For now it was just the basic berries. Oran, Cheri, Chesto, Pecha, Rawst and Aspear berries. We'd taken to diving up the fields to specialize in one type of berry each, and slowly the tree count had been growing thanks to me selling off each harvest for more funds.
With each tree producing ten berries every four days, and even selling them back to the store at half the price I could buy from the store, my profits had been steadily growing. Within just three harvests in the last three weeks, I now had five of each tree, meaning we were harvesting and selling three hundred berries every four days, for a total profit of twelve thousand Pokédollars, an amount that would only grow rapidly in time with the number of trees I would plant.
As it stood I had a nice little nest egg building up, but I was reluctant to buy more trees for the time being, the main reason being was that it took time to harvest them all. With thirty trees it took me and my parents a couple of hours at a time to pluck them all, so for the time I didn't want to expand any more than what we could handle on our own. Though I did have a couple of ideas for how to expand things rapidly once I was in Hogwarts, but that would have to wait.
Turning I began to walk back to, currently, the largest structure in my Pokémon Home, the Pokémon center. Yes, part of the reward I had gotten for that rat nightmare battle had been a fully built and equipped Pokémon center, something that I had found amazing when I had first spawned it from my inventory. It had come equipped with multiple instruction manuals on how to operate the treatment machines inside, but I had decided that with the likelihood that my Pokémon numbers would boom in the future it would need to be manned at all times so I had taken to using my latest Pokémon token to do so.
Stepping in through the doors I smile seeing my mum at the front desk, manual in hand with my latest Pokémon, Happiny, sitting on her lap reading along with her a serious look on her tiny face, that really just made her look even more adorable than she already was.
"Yo, still hard at work studying?" I asked with a chuckle.
Looking up from the manual my mum smiled at me, "oh yes, she's such a studious little thing, which only makes her all the cuter" she giggled as she hugged Happiny closer with one arm.
"Hap-Happiny-Hap!" Happiny half heartedly complained at the distraction from her studies.
"Oh sorry sweetie," mum apologized, though I could tell by her tone she didn't really mean it, she had been practically inseparable from the little pink puffball since I had summoned her from the system.
I just shook my head in amusement, "anyway, I'm done with my practicing for today, I'm gonna head out, you want to come with or are you gonna stay a while longer"
Mum bit her lip for a moment as if torn on what she wanted to do before looking down at Happiny and sighing, "I guess I'll go too, I still have some experimenting to do" she said as she picked up Happiny from her lap and set her back on the seat alongside the manual to let her keep reading.
I chuckled softly, knowing exactly what she meant by experimenting. As a way of trying to apologize for my endangering myself in the dungeon I had bought her the general poffin recipe from the store, a little pricey at two thousand Pokédollars but she had been placated by it, and she had been even more appeased when I gave her a steady supply of berries to experiment with.
The fact that poffins were actually edible by humans was another plus, it had been an interesting experience tasting both the berries and their poffin counterparts, each had a unique taste, but can honestly say I prefer the Oran berries and their poffins over the others so far, it had a unique taste that was a cross between blueberries and pears and something else I just couldn't place but enjoyed nonetheless.
As my mum came to my side and put her hand on my shoulder I raised a hand to Happiny, "Keep studying well Happiny, we'll be depending on you" I said, getting a determined cry of "Happiny!" before with a mental command we vanished from Pokémon home.
Chapter word count: 1548