Something stirred inside him. Deep, restless, hungry to move.
Kairos let the energy uncurl from wherever it had been sleeping and felt it snake through his limbs like liquid electricity.
He couldn't just sit here anymore. Had to test this.
The garden behind the villa seemed as good a place as any.
Afternoon sunlight hit his face when he stepped outside, warm and golden, but honestly? He barely registered it.
The buzzing sensation crawling under his skin demanded attention. Practically screamed for release.
His eyes landed on a cluster of decorative stones near the lawn's edge.
One of them, bigger than his head, easily fifty pounds, caught his interest. He crouched down, wrapped his fingers around it, and pulled.
The thing came up like it was made of styrofoam.
"What the..."
No strain. No effort. Like lifting a pillow.
Curiosity got the better of him. He wound back his arm, whipped it forward, and the stone flew.
Gray blur cutting through air with this weird whistling sound, arcing impossibly high, sailing clear over the fence, past those trees way in the distance, and then... gone. Just gone.
Kairos stood there blinking like an idiot.
That wasn't normal. That wasn't even remotely human.
A thick-trunked tree nearby became his next experiment. He wrapped his arms around it and gave it a yank.
The ground cracked. Roots groaned and snapped. The whole damn tree came up like he was pulling a weed from a flower pot.
He set it aside carefully, dusted off his palms, and stared at his hands.
So. He'd become Hercules, apparently. Or maybe, and this thought made him snort, a human Pokémon. Some kind of fighting-type trainer who could actually, you know, fight.
Not that trainers typically needed to throw hands. That's what your team was for.
But having a backup plan? Never hurt anyone. Couldn't always expect your Pokémon to bail you out of every weird situation life threw at you.
Though technically speaking, he wasn't really a trainer in the conventional sense anyway...
The enhancement wasn't just strength, either. He'd noticed his eyes tracking that stone's flight path with crystal clarity: every rotation, every wobble in its trajectory.
Dynamic vision upgrade. Comprehensive physical boost. The whole package.
Wild.
---
Back in his room, computer humming quietly, Kairos pulled up his system inventory and focused on the S-rank reward he'd been itching to examine.
[Storyline Branch Key]
The description materialized:
S-rank consumable item.
After activation, any game created by the host featuring branching narrative choices will automatically evolve into richer, more expansive independent storylines.
No manual design required. Emotion points generated from evolved storylines receive a 300% multiplier.
Self-evolving stories. Triple points. Zero extra work.
He let out a low whistle.
This thing was genuinely impressive.
Instead of every branch leading to a handful of pre-scripted endings he'd painstakingly mapped out, choices would ripple outward like actual timeline fractures.
Players making decisions that genuinely reshaped the game world. Unpredictable. Immersive. Alive.
If he'd had this earlier...
That Rayquaza sequence alone. Lance and Cynthia's emotion points, tripled?
He did the math real quick and immediately wished he hadn't. The missed potential made his chest hurt.
Whatever. Future gains would make up for it.
Mystery Dungeon popped into his head: the project his programmers at Dream Factory were grinding away on.
Randomness, narrative depth, player-driven storytelling... actually a perfect match for this key.
Speaking of which, how was their progress coming along? Hopefully those professionals could surprise him.
Many hands, lighter work, fresh perspectives; all that good stuff. And with him as the quality control safety net, the final product couldn't possibly turn out terrible.
He filed the key away mentally and opened the quest panel.
The forum-building mission showed 9,800 participants. Two hundred more and phase one would complete.
He'd checked a couple days ago; place was already buzzing with strategy threads, discussion posts, even some entrepreneurial souls hawking paid guides.
Two hundred people? Final stretch. Probably done by tonight.
Dismissed that notification. Moved to the main quest.
First requirement: looking more achievable by the day. Emerald had cracked 6.5 million copies in this world and showed no signs of slowing down. Ten million was basically inevitable at this rate.
Money? Not a concern anymore. He could buy whatever caught his fancy.
The real headache was requirement two. Create something using the Advanced Production Module, then hit five million sales.
And unlocking that module demanded 50,000 emotion points.
Current balance: just over 46,000. Even with Lance's recent 5,000-point threshold reward, he was still short.
What could the Advanced Module actually do? The curiosity gnawed at him. The Intermediate version had already exceeded expectations...
Wait.
That other world. The one connected through his Dimensional Communicator. Wasn't there a mission requiring 10,000 emotion points from there?
He remembered uploading Dark Phantom to their platform and watching the points skyrocket.
Given their massive player base and how completely novel the game was to them, 10,000 should've been pocket change ages ago.
So why no completion notification?
He yanked open the Communicator's sub-quest panel.
The number made him freeze.
Cumulative emotion points from World Two: 90,127
Ninety thousand. Sitting there. Stagnant. Hadn't budged in... how long?
That made zero sense.
Dark Phantom had landed in that world like a meteor: groundbreaking, unprecedented, the kind of thing that should've generated sustained buzz for months.
Even accounting for initial hype dying down, complete stagnation? Something was wrong.
What the hell happened over there?
His mind cycled through possibilities. Nothing stuck. Not enough data, too much speculation.
Frustration coiled in his gut.
That world wasn't just an emotion point goldmine; it was his gateway to the third world.
Without hitting the 10,000 milestone, no forward progress.
Forget guessing. He needed eyes on the ground.
Decision made.
He'd go check things out personally. Besides, he'd been meaning to investigate the legendary Pokémon situation there ever since unlocking that registry...
No time like the present.
Kairos stood, instinctively reaching for Chandelure, but a quick search of the villa turned up nothing.
That ghost had been annoyingly elusive lately. Here one second, vanished the next.
Fine. Gengar, then.
They hadn't been partners long, but between collaborative game development and shared meals, a decent rapport had formed.
Bringing Gengar along made sense. Plus, with his new ridiculous strength and Ho-Oh's feather as an emergency trump card, what could really go wrong?
He found Gengar in one of the back rooms, completely absorbed in gameplay.
Stubby purple hands flying across controls, round face scrunched in concentration, navigating some cave system he'd probably helped design. Testing his own work.
Kid had gotten skilled under Kairos's tutelage.
"Gengar. Need a favor."
Gengar spun around looking utterly bewildered (clearly interrupted at a crucial moment) his expression basically a giant purple question mark.
When Kairos explained they were visiting another world, Gengar's eyes went dinner-plate wide.
Mouth gaped open big enough to fit a Poké Ball inside.
"Relax, it's not dangerous."
Kairos held up the rainbow-feathered band on his wrist, the one pulsing with faint but unmistakable life force.
"Just stick to my shadow, keep watch. Anything weird happens, we've got each other's backs."
The feather's aura radiated outward. Warm. Peaceful. And underneath that gentleness, an absolutely terrifying depth of power.
Gengar studied Kairos, then tentatively reached out with his senses toward the feather... and immediately flinched.
What in the actual...
How had this guy produced ANOTHER insane artifact after just a few days?
The energy contained in that thing felt like it could dissolve him where he stood.
And something about Kairos himself felt different. Fundamentally changed from before.
Whatever. Overthinking hurt.
Another world did sound kind of interesting, actually...
Gengar nodded.
His body melted downward like shadow becoming liquid, sinking soundlessly into the darkness at Kairos's feet.
Only his signature white eyes and crescent grin remained visible (barely) in the gloom.
"Let's do this."
Deep breath. Focus. Dimensional Communicator activated.
The brick-like device hummed its familiar tone. Space warped in front of him, folding and twisting until a swirling vortex of deep midnight blue yawned open.
Kairos stepped through without hesitation. Light consumed his figure instantly.
Behind him, the villa room fell silent. Only the computer screen continued its soft, steady glow.
---
Dizziness faded. Solid ground met his feet.
Something was immediately, horribly wrong.
The air reeked. Ozone and machine oil hit him first (sharp, chemical, intrusive) followed by the sour rot of garbage left too long in summer heat.
This wasn't right.
Gone were the gleaming futuristic streets from his last visit. No soaring glass towers. No clean sidewalks.
Instead: decay. Chaos. Squat buildings cobbled together from corrugated metal and cheap concrete, walls streaked with grime and splattered with neon graffiti that probably meant something to someone.
Roads cratered and pooled with suspicious puddles. Discarded machine parts scattered everywhere like mechanical bones.
Rust-eaten pipes crisscrossed overhead, allowing only slivers of weak light to filter through.
The atmosphere pressed down; thick, oppressive, hard to breathe.
Kairos froze. Scanned his surroundings.
An urban slum? Had the transport glitched? Was this even the same world?
Before he could process further, movement. A rustling noise from behind a pile of abandoned metal drums.
Three figures emerged. Young men. Scruffy. Blocking his path with expressions that said friendly wasn't on today's menu.
"Well, well. Fresh meat."
The leader (neon-green hair, toothpick dangling from his lips) gave Kairos a slow once-over. His gaze snagged on the relatively clean clothes.
"You look like you've got coin, friend. Funny thing: we're running a bit short ourselves. Maybe you could help us out?"
His two buddies snickered, beckoning with grimy hands.
Three Pokémon materialized.
A Electrode rolled forward, its red-and-white shell wrapped in crude metal armor, LED strips flickering unstable crimson.
A Magnemite hovered beside it, original screws replaced with complex mechanical assemblies, magnetic poles thrumming with barely-contained charge.
And a Joltik: tiny thing with a miniature battery pack strapped to its back, legs glinting with metallic augmentation.
Kairos studied them.
Same world. Confirmed.
All three Pokémon bore unmistakable mechanical modifications, consistent with this dimension's technological obsession.
And their energy signatures? Pitiful. Weak enough that he barely registered them as threats.
At his feet, his shadow rippled.
Gengar had sensed the danger. Ready to surface.