"There are around 5-6 tribes of Primeape, including us, inside this forest. But why do you ask?", asked Gorn.
"Because we are going to conquer every one of them."
"What? But that is nuts!!!"
"And why is that nuts? We only have 400 members in the tribe. Do you think that you can work directly under God Nedes with that kind of strength? So, we must expand."
Gorn controlled its anger as it also knew that Axel was not telling any lies.
"But how are we going to do it? We are very weak. We cannot compete with them.", said Gorn.
"Leave that to me. Just give me the details of all the tribes of Primeapes."
Conquering and annihilating were two different things. In this realm, a tribe could annihilate another tribe if it wanted. But there were some restrictions when a tribe wanted to conquer another tribe.
The first requirement was that a tribe could not conquer a tribe of another species of Pokemon. That meant a Primeape tribe could only conquer another Primeape tribe.
Of course, if a tribe or the members of the tribe wanted to join a completely different tribe, then it was allowed, but there were also some restrictions on it.
Also, when one thinks about conquering, one would think about going to war, but here, it was very different. The hell rank tribe didn't want there to be a unity among the tribes, but they also didn't want the tribes to be united. So, in order to control it, there was a rule while conquering which was that it would not be an all-out war but competition.
Competition between the tribe members.
The rules of the competition were something that could be decided by the tribe itself, but normally, it was just the strongest member of the tribe would challenge the strongest member of the enemy tribe, and the winner would get to control the whole tribe.
So, why was Gorn, the leader of the Primeape tribe, afraid of conquering other tribes?
It was because it knew that it was not strong enough. Actually, the Annihilape under it was stronger than itself and even the Annihilape was not strong enough to fight against other tribes and win.
So, why had other Primeape tribes not conquered their tribe? It was because of two reasons. First, each of these tribes was very far away, and the Primeape tribe under Gorn was too weak. Both in quantity and quality.
"I am not telling you that we challenge them now. I know that we cannot possibly beat any of them. But I want to know how strong they are. Give me all of their details. After that, I will make a plan for training, and we will proceed slowly."
Gorn visibly relaxed after hearing what Axel had to say.
"Tomorrow, the merchant Machamp will arrive, and we can buy the information from them. I do have some rudimentary information, but it might not be correct as I got it a few years ago."
Axel had no problem waiting for a day. He was also training for himself. He realized that his detection range of aura is quite weak. If there were no Pokemon like Lucario with him, then he and his team would be vulnerable.
"Let's improve that."
The aura stone that Lucario had given him had a lot of information and techniques. He browsed through them, and he got one that he was looking at. This was an advanced version of 'Aura sense'. While 'Aura sense' helped him detect any lifeforms in a limited area in perfect detail, this move 'Aura expose' had 2-5 times area coverage, but it didn't give him a detailed sense. It only gave him a brief sense of danger or powerful lifeforms.
Currently, Axel's 'Aura sense' had an area coverage of 500-meter radius. But this new move would have an area coverage of 3000-meter radius. With a 3 km radius of detection, Axel was confident that he would be at least ready for any ambush, unlike before.
Sitting in a meditative position, Axel started to train. This was not a move that could be learned in a day or two. It needed extensive preparation and training. Yet, in a single day, Axel had made some progress. It was only possible due to his high mastery of 'Aura sense'.
###
A month had passed since that day. Everyone was training, and some of them were close to ranking up. Axel's new training plan for the Primeape tribe had been like a miracle. He had been training his Pokemon for years, and with his experience, some of them had even reached pseudo-king rank.
Garry had made a lot of progress in the past month. It had not only increased the capacity of rage inside its body but also upgraded 'Rage clone' to have emotions. This led to the clone cultivating rage inside its body. But that was not all that it had done. It had also been trained in other existing moves and upgraded some of them.
The new environment had really helped all of his Pokemon develop faster. Togekiss was close to reaching king rank, and the only thing holding it back was the creation of a new attacking move.
Axel had long realized that while it had a good amount of control-type moves, its fairy attacking moves were not so deadly. Also, the 'Rage clone' was now inside the seal, and it was growing slowly and refining itself. Annihilape had taken the duty of training Garry and other Primeapes in doing so.
But that was not all. Weezing, Aerodactyl, Lairon, and Bisharp were also very close to their rank up. Axel was amazed that Bisharp could reach the rank-up condition in a month. This was solely possible due to Oni's training schedule. Every day, Jishnu would come home fully battered in wounds, even unable to have dinner. Axel was worried that this would break it, but as per Oni, a Bisharp could take this type of training.
Oni gave it some sort of medicine in a liquid, which healed its body to maximum efficiency the next day.
By seeing the knowledge and experience of the nightmare rank tribe, Axel thought of having some allies of different Pokemon species that were in his team for their faster growth. But that was very hard to do.
###
Currently, Primeape was using 'Rage fist' while Annihilape was training it. With the intervention of Axel, Annihilape's training had also changed, and it had gotten more effective. It could finally feel that it was on the verge of ranking up to pseudo-champion rank.
As it saw Garry improving with every punch, Annihilape had an epiphany. It told Garry to continue the training, and went a bit too far and started to train its 'Rage fist' too. It was submerged in its own training for hours, and then suddenly, its whole body started to glow.
Everyone was surprised to see what had happened. Then they knew that it was ranking up. Instantly, all of them were happy. This was a new growth, a new sealing for all of them. Finally, they could have a pseudo-champion rank Pokemon.
The rank-up process went on for 10 minutes, and finally, it gave out a loud roar, which caused a mini earthquake as the glow vanished.
Annihilape looked even more intense and dangerous right now. It closed its eyes and sat on the ground to concentrate. The rush of rank-up was getting up in its head. But since it had already evolved its ability 'Vital spirit', it knew how to control itself.
After a few minutes, it opened its eyes and it was finally ready to move. The leader came to it and asked, "How do you feel?"
"I feel a lot stronger. Some of the fuzzy concepts had cleared inside my head, and I feel that my control of infinity energy has increased."
"So, are you ready to battle another tribe?", asked Axel.
"Not right now. I might need a few days to get used to this new rank. A lot of things that were confusing to me had been cleared, and now I need to test it.", said Annihilape.
Axel nodded and went to discuss with Gorn.
The merchant Machamp had given them the current information on the various tribes of Primeapes. They were expensive. Axel also told them to give them any new and existing information if there was any in the future.
Just two days ago, the merchant Machamp came up with good news. A tribe 5 days away from their tribe had recently been in a fight with another tribe. Even though they had won, they had lost a lot of king rank and pseudo-king rank members. Their leader, who was a pseudo-champion rank Pokemon had also been gravely injured.
This was the perfect time to conquer a new tribe. Since Annihilape had just ranked up to pseudo-champion rank, it was the perfect time.
As Annihilape started to train the new concepts, Axel felt that it was stronger than a normal pseudo-champion rank. It might be due to its solid foundation or due to its high potential.
Whether it could win against the wounded leader of the other tribe remained to be seen.
###
"Weezing, how close are you to upgrading your move?", asked Axel.
For the past month, Weezing had not been sitting still. It wanted to rest for some days, but when it saw Bisharp training every day to the limit, it had to step up. The thing that it lacked the most was the low mastery of its poison-type moves.
Having the passive move '2 Heads', its training time had increased, and it had also learned some poison-type moves. One of the requirements for its evolution was to create a new poison-type move.
Creating a new move for Pokemon that didn't have its core was difficult. But Weezing's stats had grown a lot after its evolution, so putting that condition was the right thing to do.
###
After almost a week, the team was ready. Annihilape was at the center of it. Axel had selected 5 pseudo-king rank Primeape and 10 king rank Bisharp for this trib. The trip was going to take around 6-7 days.
They had already planned everything to the letter. Axel didn't want to go out as he had already suffered before, but he had no choice. Gorn had to be in the tribe, and so did Oni.
This time, Axel was taking Lairon, Weezing, Bisharp, and Lucario with him. This was because most of them were close to their rank-up, and some of them needed battle experience.
Foods had been packed for the entire journey, and now they were ready.
"Are you all ready? Ok, let's go.", said Axel with a determined voice.