Another two weeks passed in relative calm after the entrance examination, and while the outside world remained busy with preparations, announcements, restructuring, and the countless smaller matters that naturally followed an event of that scale, the pace around me had slowed enough that most of my days were spent overseeing adjustments rather than responding to emergencies.
The Pokémon Academy itself was finally ready to open.
The first batch of selected students had already begun making arrangements, departments were stabilizing, research divisions were expanding steadily, and public confidence in the Pokémon system had risen sharply after the Earth Liberation incident ended in decisive failure rather than disaster.
From the outside, everything appeared to be progressing exactly as it should.
Yet despite that—
My thoughts had increasingly drifted elsewhere.
Over the past two weeks, I had made it a habit to visit battle arenas across different cities and districts whenever time allowed, sometimes openly, sometimes without drawing attention, observing trainers of different levels rather than focusing solely on elites or academy entrants.
At first, I believed I was simply checking on the growth of the general population.
Then I noticed it.
Something subtle.
So subtle that no ordinary person would ever recognize it through observation alone.
But I had a system.
And the system tracked growth with precision far beyond human estimation.
Leveling efficiency was decreasing.
Not dramatically.
Not enough to immediately alarm anyone.
But enough for me to notice the pattern.
And once I noticed it—
I could not ignore it.
The decline was not limited to stronger Pokémon approaching higher thresholds, which would have been normal, but was occurring across nearly all ranges, including lower-level Pokémon whose growth should have remained steady.
If translated into simple game terms, what previously required five battles to achieve noticeable progress now required seven.
The difference sounded insignificant.
But over time—
It wasn't.
Because growth curves stacked.
A small reduction at the beginning became a major delay later.
I had confirmed it repeatedly over the past days, observing not only random trainers but my own Pokémon as well, ensuring the conclusion was not the result of environmental variance or inconsistent battle quality.
The result remained the same every time.
The efficiency of growth was slowing.
Primeape still trained relentlessly, but the gains were marginally lower than before.
Pidgeot's aerial refinement continued, yet required slightly more repetition to produce the same advancement.
Even Rhyhorn, who stood on the verge of evolution into Rhydon, had begun progressing at a subtly reduced pace despite training intensity remaining unchanged.
It was not enough to stop development.
But it was enough to matter.
And if it continued—
It would become a problem large enough to reshape the future of the entire trainer system.
I leaned back in my chair as these thoughts circled once more through my mind, my gaze drifting toward the evening sky outside the window while multiple theories arranged themselves in sequence.
There were several possibilities.
The first was environmental saturation.
Earth and the Pokémon world had merged imperfectly, and perhaps the initial phase had flooded reality with excess adaptive energy that accelerated early growth unnaturally before beginning to stabilize.
The second possibility was biological adaptation.
Perhaps both humans and Pokémon were gradually adjusting to the merged environment, resulting in diminishing efficiency as the initial surge settled into equilibrium.
But neither of those explanations fully aligned with the pattern I was seeing.
The third theory—
The one I considered most likely—
Was far more concerning.
The mysterious energy responsible for supporting the leveling system itself might be failing to keep pace with the expansion of the merged world.
As new regions, ruins, ecosystems, and spatial layers continued integrating into Earth, the scale of the world was increasing continuously, and if the energy driving Pokémon growth was finite or regenerating slower than consumption demanded, then the gradual decline I was witnessing now might only be the beginning.
I closed my eyes briefly as I considered the implications.
If my theory was correct, there were only two realistic outcomes.
The optimistic scenario was that the energy was renewable and merely adjusting temporarily while the merge stabilized, eventually reaching equilibrium once the world finished restructuring itself.
Growth would slow.
Then stabilize.
The system would persist.
The world would adapt.
But the alternative—
The alternative was catastrophic.
If the energy source continued diminishing without recovery, then the merged ecosystem itself might begin collapsing over time, weakening both Pokémon and the systems supporting them until eventually the Pokémon world could no longer sustain its existence within reality.
And if that happened—
Earth might slowly revert.
The Pokémon ecosystem would decay.
The extraordinary progress humanity had begun building toward over these past months would disappear piece by piece until only fragments remained.
A temporary miracle.
Followed by extinction.
The thought lingered heavily in my mind, not because I feared losing power, but because I had already seen what this world could become if allowed to grow properly.
People and Pokémon were adapting together.
Entire industries were changing.
The concept of partnership had begun reshaping society itself.
To lose all of that—
Would be more than regression.
It would be tragedy.
Outside, the sounds of movement drifted faintly through the evening air as trainers continued their routines and the city carried on unaware of the possibility forming quietly beneath its progress.
Most people still believed the merge itself was the challenge.
They did not yet understand that survival after the merge might prove even more difficult.
I exhaled slowly and opened the system interface once more, reviewing the growth records I had compiled over the past weeks, searching for inconsistencies, for flaws, for evidence that my conclusion might still be wrong.
But the trend remained.
Steady.
Small.
Persistent.
And that made it dangerous.
Because gradual problems were the hardest to stop once they became visible to everyone else.
By then—
It was often already too late.