Nidorino scraped at the ground with its front feet, carving a small hollow into the otherwise flat lawn. It was simply in its nature. Nidorino that could not evolve were driven by a deep, restless irritability written into their very genes — a relentless urge that pushed wild Nidorino to smash apart rocks in search of the rare Moon Stones that could finally give them peace.
Nova pressed the Moon Stone firmly against Nidorino's forehead with his palm.
The dark stone flared instantly into a brilliant white light that poured into Nidorino's body. Like a chain reaction, Nidorino's entire form erupted in that same radiance, and within the glow of Evolution, its body began an extraordinary restructuring. Its already large frame swelled further. Its four-legged posture shifted and rose, reshaping into an upright stance. The light of Evolution faded slowly.
Nova looked at his partner — fully evolved at last — and felt something settle warmly in his chest. Pride, mostly. And a quiet sense of relief.
The Cultivation System's scanning feature displayed Nidoking's data in front of him.
Species: Nidoking
Level: 47
Ability: Poison Point
Hidden Ability: Sheer Force
Traits:
Toxic(Extremely Toxic — doubles the chance of poisoning the opponent, and doubles the damage dealt to Poisoned or badly Poisoned targets.)
Large Frame (Body size far exceeds the species average. Physical Defense, Special Defense, and Attack are significantly increased. Speed and Evasion are slightly reduced.)
Psychic Heritage (Psychic power inherited from ancestors. Grants a small bonus when using Psychic-type moves.)
Special Force (Grants a damage bonus when using Special moves.)
Moves: Confusion (Inherited), Horn Drill (Inherited), Thunderbolt, Toxic, Toxic Spikes, Stomping Tantrum, Sludge Bomb, Venom Drench, Poison Sting...
Cultivation Directions:
Strengthen Special Attack. Once certain requirements are met, the trait Special Force can be upgraded to Elemental Mage. Strengthen Toxicity. Once certain requirements are met, the trait Toxic can be upgraded to Lethal Toxin. After completing both of the above, choose to strengthen the Ground type. A new trait can then be obtained: Poisonous Terrain.
The Cultivation System had handed him three detailed training paths all at once, but Nova was too caught up in the joy of watching his partner complete its final Evolution to focus on any of them right now. Reading through all those long descriptions could wait. Training a Pokémon was never something that could be rushed, and there would be plenty of time to plan later. For now, Nova just wanted to take in the basics.
And those basics were more than satisfying.
The Hidden Ability had shifted from Hustle to Sheer Force — exactly as Nova had hoped. That alone made everything worth it.
As for Nidoking's size, Nova estimated it at around three and a half meters tall. Standing in the open clearing, it looked less like a Pokémon and more like something that had wandered off a movie set. Its presence was enormous — in every sense of the word.
The trait readout confirmed it: Nidoking had gone from Large Frame to Super Big Fellow. If the previous Nidorino had been a sturdy off-road vehicle, this Nidoking was a main battle tank.
Standard educational materials in the Norlandia Alliance listed Nidoking's average height at 1.4 metres — a figure derived from measurements of thousands of individuals across both wild and captive populations. Nova's Nidoking stood at more than twice that height. The difference between it and an average specimen was, quite simply, the difference between a giant and an ordinary person standing next to one.
The sheer range of individual variation within a single species never failed to impress Nova. Pokémon truly were remarkable.
The combination of its massive frame and the dense, keratinised armour that had fully developed through Evolution made Nidoking look like something out of ancient myth — a great armoured beast standing ready for battle. Just having it stand there beside him, Nova thought it was genuinely, unreservedly cool.
The little girl nearby, who had moments ago been insisting Nidorino looked like a rhinoceros, stood completely rooted to the spot. She tightened her grip on her grandfather's hand and told him, very seriously, that she wanted to become a Trainer and have a big monster of her own just like that one.
Her grandfather sighed with tremendous patience. "Why not ask for the moon while you're at it, little one? At least then these old bones of mine might have a fighting chance of getting it for you."
Nova crouched slightly and reached up to give Nidoking a pat on the head, the way he always used to — then stopped and realised the problem. At 1.7 metres, he could just about reach Nidoking's lower back. The head was a different matter entirely.
Nidoking, however, seemed to understand. It bent down, lowering its broad head toward Nova's chest, and waited.
Nova gave it a firm, affectionate pat.
Nidoking's thick tail swung happily back and forth, slapping against the grass with enough force to leave a trail of small craters across the lawn behind it.
From a short distance away, the park's security guard was watching all of this with an expression that had moved well past irritation and into something closer to suppressed fury. Nova caught the look and gave an awkward smile. The only thing standing between him and a very pointed lecture about public property was the three-and-a-half-metre armoured Pokémon standing at his side.
He would almost certainly be paying a fine for the lawn before this was over. But there was no getting around it. The size that made Nidorino — and now Nidoking — such a formidable battler came with real-world consequences, and Nova had accepted that trade-off a long time ago.
Besides, large Pokémon causing unexpected damage in public spaces was hardly unusual. Every city across the Norlandia Alliance dealt with incidents like this from time to time. It was treated as a fact of life, much like traffic accidents.
Since Nidoking was clearly comfortable and in good condition, Nova reached into his bag and took out the three Technical Machines he had purchased at the Pokémon Mart two days prior.
In the Pokémon games, TMs were represented as simple coloured discs. The reality was more involved. In practice, they worked somewhat like a portable music player from Nova's previous life — a device and a disc, together. The difference was that where a music album could be swapped in and out freely, the data stored in a TM was one-time use only. Once played, the disc was spent.
Nova pressed the output interface of the first TM against Nidoking's temple and activated it. The move data encoded on the disc transferred instantly — a direct stream from the device into Nidoking's cerebral cortex. Within seconds, Nidoking had the knowledge of how to use Flamethrower encoded into its mind as naturally as any move it had learned in the field.
All three TMs were used within a minute.
Nova could never use one of these without marvelling at them a little. If something like this had existed in his previous life, students everywhere would have worshipped it as something close to a miracle. Press a button. Knowledge enters the brain. Done. Every student's dream, right there in a small disc.
Of course, things in the games were simplified for the sake of balance — each Pokémon was limited to four moves at a time, and learning a new one meant forgetting an old one. In practice, that was not how it worked. There was no reason a Pokémon that had just learned Flamethrower would suddenly forget Poison Sting, a move it had used its whole life.
That said, the real-world limit was not so different in effect, if different in reason. While a Pokémon could technically know any number of moves, using a move well required regular practice, repeated application in training and battle, and built-up muscle memory. A Pokémon's time and energy were not unlimited. The moves it could truly rely on in a fight were always going to be a smaller, more refined set — the ones it had put in the hours to master.