Nova was not picking on the Geodude colony out of spite. He simply had no other choice.
On its first day of life, Trapinch had eaten through every piece of corundum Nova had brought back from the Uninhabited Area of the Cengluan Mountain Range. All of it, gone by evening.
On the second day, Trapinch started working through the rest of Nova's gem supply.
The jewels and minerals that Nova had originally set aside for it were not spared. One by one, Trapinch picked them up, cracked them open with its powerful mandibles, and swallowed the pieces whole. High-quality gems worth far more than plain corundum disappeared in a single bite each. By the end of the day, Trapinch had consumed gems worth at least one and a half million in value.
Purer gems were more nutritious for Trapinch, that much was clear. But Nova's savings were not going to survive that kind of daily expenditure.
On the third day, Nova made a trip to the local stone market and bought a batch of discarded mineral scraps, the lowest-grade offcuts the dealers were practically giving away. It was barely enough to get Trapinch through lunch.
That same afternoon, Nova gathered his team and set off for the Cengluan Mountain Range.
He finally understood why trainers on the forums cursed Dragon-type Pokemon with such feeling.
"May your next team be eight Dragon-types."
"Recommending someone to raise a Dragon is not advice. It is a trap."
"Once you commit to a Dragon-type, your wallet is finished."
Who could sustain that kind of appetite without owning a mine?
Dragon-type Pokemon had a well-earned reputation for eating enormous amounts while contributing very little in return during their early stages. Ask them why and the answer was always the same: they were storing energy, preparing for the great transformation that came with evolution. That was the justification. Whether it felt like a fair trade was another matter.
The Deino line was the most extreme example. A trainer could invest years of resources raising one all the way to Level 64, only for Zweilous to finally evolve into Hydreigon, and then watch their expensive powerhouse get knocked out by a single Play Rough on its first outing.
In a game, none of this mattered much. Training a Pokemon to competitive standards cost time, not money. In the real world, raising a Pokemon meant spending real money at every stage. Food, medicine, training materials, all of it added up fast.
The true measure of a Pokemon was never just raw strength. It was whether the investment was worth it.
Trapinch could technically survive on sand and dirt. It would not starve. But feeding it low-quality materials meant slow growth, slow evolution, and a Pokemon that would not be ready for battle for a very long time. The whole point of Trapinch was what it became after evolving. Its body would essentially be rebuilt from the ground up, a process that demanded enormous energy. Without proper nutrition, the Early Bloomer trait meant nothing. It would still take years.
Battling with it was not an option either, at least not yet. Most first and second stage Dragon-type Pokemon were poor fighters. They lost more often than they won, and getting knocked out repeatedly was not going to earn anyone experience points worth mentioning. Trapinch was an even more specific case. Until its bond with Nova was strong enough, putting it into a real battle was dangerous for everyone involved. One bad situation, one opponent that pushed it hard enough, and the Berserker trait would activate. Nova had no interest in finding out what that looked like before the groundwork was in place.
And the most reliable way to build that bond, besides spending time together every day, was feeding it well. Feeding Trapinch dirt and scraps was a reliable way to ensure it stayed in a permanently bad mood. Nova preferred to keep all of his limbs.
This was also part of why Nova had been stalling on the offer from Mort Cotterill. Mort had already reached out about a slot to enter the Mt. Silver Secret Realm, a place where a Pseudo-Legendary Pokemon could potentially be obtained. Nova had not said no outright, but he had not said yes either. Trapinch alone was already stretching him thin in every direction. Adding a Pseudo-Legendary to the team right now would have been a disaster he did not need.
The silver lining was that Nova had already found a mineral vein before Trapinch even hatched. The corundum in the Uninhabited Area was low grade and the location was out of the way, but it was real, it was accessible, and for the time being it was exactly what Nova needed. At least until Trapinch completed its first evolution, that vein was going to be essential.
That was what had led him back to the valley and to the Geodude colony.
To make the arrangement work, Nova first stopped at a Pokemon Mart and purchased a Max Revive.
The Max Revive was one of the more impressive products of modern medicine in the Pokemon world. It worked by stimulating an organism's metabolism directly, significantly boosting a Pokemon's natural recovery in a short window of time. Even a Pokemon that had been badly injured and was close to fainting could be brought back to functional condition quickly with one of these. In dangerous situations in the field, where a trainer's primary Pokemon needed to stay battle-ready, a Max Revive could be the difference between a close call and something much worse.
Naturally, it was not cheap. A standard Revive cost ten thousand League Coins per unit. A Max Revive ran twenty-five thousand. Despite the price, they regularly ran low in stock. Some trainers, particularly wealthy ones, carried entire bags full of Max Revives when heading into high-risk territory. It was an extravagant approach, but in a genuinely lethal Secret Realm, having enough recovery items on hand could compensate for nearly any setback.
According to Aresdra, that was part of why her parents had not left much behind when they disappeared on the Western Plateau. Adventure income was reasonable, but the cost of equipment and supplies for each expedition was staggering. Even someone as accomplished as them had essentially spent everything he earned keeping himself properly equipped. Supplies like Max Revives were something an explorer heading into dangerous territory could never have too many of.
Nova had never developed that habit. For one thing, he was fairly confident in his ability to read the field and avoid situations that would wipe out his team. Staying inside the Norlandia Alliance's wild areas and away from obviously dangerous locations meant a total party knockout was unlikely. For another, he had spent too many years without the budget for expensive items to think of them as part of his standard kit. When Nidorino was his only partner, buying a Revive at that price would have been impossible anyway. He had gotten used to moving without a safety net, and that habit had carried over even as his team grew stronger.
In Nova's view, the real threat was never wild Pokemon. It was other trainers.
In a serious battle between two trainers, there was no pause to restore a fainted partner and wait for them to recover before continuing. A Max Revive was useless in that situation. What mattered in trainer-versus-trainer combat was raw preparation, experience, and the ability to read the opponent, not a pocket full of healing items.
For threats of that kind, Nova had a different kind of preparation entirely.
Since catching Corvisquire, he had always had a strong defensive presence beside him. Corviknight and Marshtomp were the steadiest members of his team, reliable and durable in a way that made Nova feel secure even in unfamiliar territory.
Supplies that would not improve his performance against other trainers were not something he saw much reason to carry.