"Phew..."
Julian Reed let out a long, shaky breath after hitting send. The sudden silence of the archives made him feel strangely hollow.
He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. Why was he so worked up over this? Was it just the money? That was part of it, sure, but as he sat there, he realized it was something simpler. It was that old childhood wish—the one where you'd look at the sky and hope to see a Charizard flying by. In a world like this, with the bio-tech of the Xianzhou and the digital miracles of the IPC, bringing Pokémon to life wasn't just a fantasy. It was a possibility.
He smiled to himself and stood up. He couldn't just sit around waiting. He had a job to do. He activated the automated cleaning drones, watching the small, hovering robots begin their silent sweep of the massive library. Even if the game development fell through, he still had this fallback. A quiet life among the scrolls wasn't the worst fate.
In a room bathed in neon and the hum of high-end hardware, Silver Wolf was currently commanding a galactic fleet.
The battle was a stalemate, a grinding war of attrition in deep space. She was focused, her eyes darting across a dozen holographic displays. But she was too focused on the front. A small, undetected fleet had slipped through a blind spot she'd left in her rear. By the time the proximity alarms blared, it was too late. Her defenses crumbled under a precision ambush.
"Dammit! Lost again!"
Silver Wolf threw her hands up, more annoyed with her own oversight than the loss itself. "Who even puts half their fleet into a flanking maneuver? That's just reckless!"
She glared at the victor's name on the screen: Fruit Shop Part-timer.
"You again," she hissed. The guy was a ghost. He never replied to her invites, but he always showed up in matchmaking to ruin her day.
She sighed, sliding off her VR headset and reaching for her handheld terminal to cool down. A red notification dot caught her eye on the mail icon. Usually, she ignored these. Being a top-ranked player meant her inbox was a graveyard of fan mail and people begging for carry-services.
She went to delete all, her thumb moving with habitual speed. But just as the screen cleared, a string of text caught her eye.
Miss Silver Wolf...
Her hand had been too fast. The mail was gone. But a deletion was a minor speed bump for a hacker of her caliber. Seconds later, she had bypassed the game's local server, recovered the data packets, and reconstructed the message.
"Interesting. He knows this handle belongs to me? Someone did their homework."
She pouted slightly. The guy was lucky she'd even noticed the text before wiping it. She clicked the attachment: a video file labeled Pokémon.
She wasn't worried about viruses. In this galaxy, there wasn't a piece of malware she couldn't dismantle in her sleep. Not even Screwllum's logic gates intimidated her—though she'd never admit that out loud.
"Ugh... this art style is ancient," she muttered as the video started. "This dev team must be working out of a basement."
But as the video played, her critique softened. Julian had been smart; he hadn't sent the whole series. He'd sent a curated highlight reel.
She saw a young boy and a yellow electric mouse standing against a storm of birds, a desperate moment of reconciliation that felt surprisingly raw. She saw a race featuring a flaming horse and a turtle, ending in a brilliant flash of evolution. Then came the scenes of pure interaction—the charm of creatures that felt like more than just data.
Finally, the battles. Julian had layered in high-energy music, elevating the simple animations into something that felt like a grand spectacle.
Silver Wolf sat back, her eyes reflecting the glow of the screen. "I have to admit... if a game actually captured the spirit of this world, it would be a monster hit."
But she knew the industry. Most producers would just slap a skin on a generic mobile RPG and call it a day. She wanted to know if this "Julian" was a visionary or just another suit looking for a payout.
Beep-beep.
In the Luofu archives, Julian's Jade Abacus chimed. A friend request. He practically lunged for the device. The ID matched one of the top accounts he'd messaged.
He accepted instantly.
Julian: "Are you... Silver Wolf?"
Silver Wolf: "Just Silver Wolf. I saw the video. That animation—what kind of game are you actually planning to build around it?"
Julian felt his heart race. This was the moment. She was interested in the world, but she was skeptical of the execution. If he told her it was a basic turn-based grind with 8-bit graphics, she'd block him in a heartbeat.
He didn't waste time with words. He sent over the full proposal—the modernized, open-world, high-fidelity vision he'd stayed up all night drafting.
He understood gamers like her. They didn't want a simplified substitute for a world they'd fallen in love with. They wanted to live in it.