"A new method?"
"Yeah. Don't overthink it for now. Use Pepper Breath on that rock."
Qingliu pointed at the boulder a short distance away.
Agumon was a little puzzled, but orange flames still swiftly gathered into a blazing fireball in his mouth and slammed into the boulder.
Boom!
The flames burst apart with a dull thud.
Once the smoke and dust cleared, a fist-sized crater appeared in the center of the boulder.
Agumon pursed his lips at the sight of the crater, while Qingliu looked completely unsurprised.
The attack had certainly worked, but compared to the size of the entire boulder, the damage was barely a scratch.
At this rate, who knew how long it would take to shatter the boulder?
Then... what exactly could make Pepper Breath more powerful?
Agumon looked at Qingliu.
"Every time you fire Pepper Breath, do you quickly draw on your energy, compress it into a fireball as fast as possible, and then attack?" Qingliu asked.
Agumon nodded. "I have a rough threshold in mind for Pepper Breath. As long as the flames and energy reach that threshold, the Pepper Breath I fire will hold its shape."
"Then have you ever tried going beyond that threshold and building up as much fire as you possibly can in your mouth before releasing it?"
"But once I go beyond that threshold, Pepper Breath won't hold its shape anymore," Agumon asked, puzzled.
Qingliu shook his head. "You just need to build up energy and flames the same way. Whether it's still Pepper Breath afterward doesn't matter, because if you succeed, it won't be Pepper Breath anymore. It'll be... Small Explosion."
Small Explosion involved building up Pepper Breath inside the mouth and releasing it all at once, making it far more powerful than Pepper Breath.
However, Agumon didn't have this move in his move list. Or rather, it wasn't a move this Agumon could normally use; only certain other Agumon variants could learn it.
One clear difference between Digimon and Pokémon was that Pokémon had fixed evolution paths, and even when those paths branched, the number of branches was very limited.
Digimon were different. Their evolution paths formed a web, allowing them to evolve into a bewildering variety of forms.
The classic example was Tai's Greymon undergoing a "Wrong Evolution" into SkullGreymon. In fact, that was a natural evolution path for Greymon too. If SkullGreymon evolved to mega, his final form would be Machinedramon, one of the Dark Masters.
Yes, that was the mechanical evil dragon Digimon WarGreymon had taken out in a single strike with his Dramon Destroyers.
With this web of evolution paths, almost every different form at the same stage had its own unique traits and moves.
For instance, WarGreymon had Terra Force, while Machinedramon had Infinity Cannon.
Small Explosion was a move that could be learned by variants such as Agumon S, the partner of Marcus Damon, and BlackAgumon, who could evolve into BlackWarGreymon.
If Qingliu had transmigrated to the Digital World, he wouldn't necessarily have been confident that he could teach Agumon his cousins' moves. But this wasn't the Digital World. It was the Pokémon world, where learning could turn someone into a little move master.
Under this world's rules, it was perfectly reasonable that Agumon might be able to learn Small Explosion, right?
Qingliu thought it was perfectly reasonable, so he had Agumon start trying.
Things didn't go smoothly at first. Because of muscle memory, whenever the energy and flames reached the threshold, Agumon would naturally form them into Pepper Breath and attack.
After gradually overcoming that problem, the next hurdle was controlling the flames at their limit.
Put simply, for humans to push their bodies to their true limits, they had to keep challenging their current limits, repeatedly pushing against that boundary and expanding it until it could go no further.
Agumon now had to keep trying, repeating the process over and over until he finally found that limit and mastered it.
Once... twice...
Ten times... twenty times...
Fifty times... a hundred times...
Until he was utterly exhausted.
"Hah... hah..."
Agumon panted heavily, down on his knees. Even with how easily Pepper Breath came to him, a hundred rapid repetitions left him too tired to stand steadily.
"Take a little break. Try these."
"What are they?"
Agumon looked curiously at the cubes Qingliu offered in his palm, then picked them up with his claws, tossed them into his mouth, and chewed.
"They're called Pokéblocks. They're made by mixing Berries like the Oran Berries you ate earlier with two or three other kinds. Both their effects and their taste are much better than ordinary Berries," Qingliu explained.
"Now that you mention it, they really are. They're sweet and sour, with a little tartness. They taste great. And..."
As he spoke, Agumon rolled over and stood up. "I'd just used up all my strength, but now I feel like I could use Pepper Breath again without any trouble."
"The Pokéblocks you ate are specially made for Dragon-type Pokémon. That type suits you best, so they'll have the greatest effect."
Qingliu smiled as he watched Agumon begin bouncing around again.
"Great! Then let's get back to training."
With that, Agumon turned toward the boulder, flames beginning to churn in his mouth.
"No matter how effective Pokéblocks are, they still take time to digest fully."
Qingliu pulled him back, took the Heal Spray out of his backpack, and sprayed it all around Agumon's mouth.
"Sss!"
Agumon immediately sucked in a sharp breath, his body stiffening as his face twisted.
Seeing his reaction, Qingliu said helplessly, "Even if you have some resistance to fire, you can still get hurt when you use it too many times without controlling its power properly. Hold still for now. Let me treat the injuries around your mouth."
"...All right."
Agumon sat back down and quietly waited while Qingliu worked.
Only the occasional sting from the strongly irritating Heal Spray made him grimace and suck in a sharp breath.
Once the Pokéblocks in his stomach had been digested and the medicine had taken full effect, Agumon began his second round of training under Qingliu's direction.
Soon came the third round, the fourth... and the tenth.
More than half a day slipped by unnoticed.
The moon overhead cast a gentle silver glow. Beside Qingliu, Agumon had just finished resting after the tenth round and was tirelessly lifting his head, gathering flames, and firing them in an endless cycle.
Soon, dozens more shots of Pepper Breath had been fired. After more than half a day, the boulder was riddled with densely packed craters, and fragments around them slowly broke away under the repeated impacts.
Even so, the boulder still showed no sign of splitting.
"Ninety-seven... ninety-eight... ninety-nine... a hundred. Good, that round's over."
But even after Qingliu finished speaking, the flames in Agumon's mouth showed no sign of stopping. Instead, he kept building up power.
Qingliu frowned. "Agumon, a hundred shots is the limit of your stamina. Keeping this up will only cause unnecessary injuries. Stop right now."
Agumon, who had always listened closely to Qingliu, refused with a look for once.
Because he seemed to have... caught a faint sense of how much fire he could withstand.
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