After lunch, under the fond smiles of his grandparents, David didn't linger. He headed straight back down to the secret room with Lucario.
"That child…"
The two elders exchanged a look and shook their heads, both smiling.
Back in the secret room, David's first priority wasn't the training notes and breeding insights his great-great-grandfather had left behind. Those could wait — if he ran out of time, he could simply copy them before leaving.
The two Urshifu scrolls were another matter entirely.
The scrolls had been made using some method that couldn't be replicated or reproduced. Whatever process had gone into their creation had left them carrying a quality that ordinary copying couldn't capture. In that sense, they were closer to legendary resources than anything else — and for Fighting-type Pokémon specifically, their value exceeded almost any second-tier legendary item David could think of.
Beyond the chance to learn Wicked Blow and Surging Strikes themselves, even a partial understanding of the deeper martial principles recorded within the scrolls would be a meaningful gain for any Fighting-type Pokémon.
Counting today, New Year's Eve was only one day away. Time was short.
If he truly needed more time, his grandparents would have allowed him to take the scrolls temporarily — he was certain of that. But it would be far better to make as much progress as possible while he was here.
"Lucario — these are precious resources. Study them carefully, alright?"
"Luca~ (Leave it to me.)"
Lucario met his eyes with a steady, determined look.
David had only said it out of habit. He knew Lucario's nature better than anyone. When it came to anything that could make it stronger, Lucario didn't approach things with effort — it approached them with everything it had. He had complete confidence in that.
Over the next several days, David and Lucario fell into a near-obsessive rhythm.
Every available hour, David was either working through his ancestor's notes on Aura or guiding Lucario through the scrolls. Since the notes could be copied later, he didn't rush through them — he focused his reading on the sections directly relevant to Aura training and application techniques.
What he found made him reflect on his own methods with some humility.
His previous use of Aura had been effective mainly because his Aura was unusually strong — a case of raw power compensating for rough technique. Even the Aura Sphere he had developed and used in training was, by his great-great-grandfather's standards, a half-finished construction — something cobbled together from Lucario's descriptions rather than built on a proper foundation.
The notes contained far more than that. Detailed methods for Aura Sphere. Documentation of techniques like Aura Punch — which David had thought he and Lucario had invented together — and Aura Armor used while in a connected state with a Pokémon. These weren't just theoretical notes either; they were practical, detailed, and clearly the product of decades of refinement.
Beyond offensive techniques, the notes also described projecting Aura outward to form defensive barriers against incoming attacks.
My great-great-grandfather truly earned his reputation as the strongest Aura user in the Alliance. The depth here is remarkable.
David had felt proud of Aura Punch and Aura Armor when he first developed them. Finding out that someone had accomplished the same thing — more completely — decades or perhaps a century earlier was a good reminder not to overestimate himself.
The likely reason these techniques weren't more widely known came down to two things: the scarcity of Pokémon like Lucario, and the rarity of humans with strong enough Aura to actually apply them. These were techniques that simply couldn't be passed on to most people.
Further into the notes, he came across a section on the Aura connection he had been using with his Pokémon. It was marked with particular emphasis.
The Aura of a Pokémon and its Trainer intertwine — one heart, one body, freely flowing between them. However: it is strictly forbidden to fully transfer one party's Aura to the other. Aura is the energy of one's own life. To give it entirely is fatal to the one who gives. Remember this without exception.
David sat with that for a moment.
If he recalled correctly, Sir Aaron — the legendary Aura Guardian from the distant past — had given his life precisely because he transferred all of his Aura to the Tree of Beginning. The warning in these notes wasn't hypothetical.
Lucario, meanwhile, was having the harder stretch of the two.
Having had no systematic martial arts training since birth, Lucario was starting from the ground up. David's grandfather sent his own ace Pokémon — a Mienshao that had reached the peak of the Champion stage — to serve as Lucario's instructor.
The days that followed settled into a tight routine: sessions with Mienshao, then time with the scrolls, then back to Mienshao. Over and over.
With Wicked Blow and Surging Strikes, Lucario's existing mastery of the Agile Style and Strong Style techniques from Hisui gave it a meaningful head start — the underlying principles weren't so different, and Lucario could draw connections quickly. Progress through the scrolls came faster than it might have for another Pokémon.
With Mienshao's teaching, Lucario's natural aptitude did the rest. It absorbed everything it was shown the way a dry sponge takes in water — completely and without waste, always pushing for more the moment one lesson ended.
For most Pokémon, the schedule would have been gruelling. Lucario treated it as the best few days it had spent in some time.
And in that way, the days passed quickly.
New Year's Eve arrived, and with it, the time to leave.
Thanks in large part to the connection between the scrolls' principles and what Lucario already knew, it had worked through roughly seventy to eighty percent of the content of both scrolls by the time they had to go. The rest it would absorb gradually, at its own pace, in the days and weeks ahead.
David made careful copies of all the notes and insights from the secret room, said his goodbyes to his grandparents, and set off.
A bullet train to the mountain capital city, then a transfer to the airport and his private aircraft — and with that, the busy, travelling half of the winter holiday came quietly to a close.