"How are our technical alignments holding up? This time, players from the newly unsealed Interstellar Peace Corporation markets are participating in the queue simultaneously, so we must guarantee our clusters can handle a massive surge in volume."
Inside the virtual conference room of Arceus Studio, Xuan Qiu was presiding over the launch operations via a floating holographic projection.
"Everything is locked down," Cai Xing reported smoothly, scrolling through her administrative logs. "We have initialized server partitions capable of managing eight billion concurrent user handshakes. Furthermore, our office has cleared an emergency backup protocol with the Sky-Faring Commission, allowing us to borrow their local server resources at a single moment's notice."
"With those networks connected, our absolute traffic threshold can comfortably peak at twenty billion."
Xuan Qiu nodded, his shoulders relaxing. The second-generation client had recorded seven billion total sales, and after the studio's trade restrictions were formally unsealed by corporate high-ranking officials, an additional six billion legacy units were moved across the star-lanes. Even if his office combined those historical brackets with the massive wave of consumers generated by their winter marketing campaign, a twenty-billion safety net would cleanly prevent a single system crash. Now that the company's bank accounts were overflowing with trillions of credits, ensuring a flawless, premium consumer experience was infinitely more vital than squeezing extra margins.
"All units, initialize final system diagnostics and await the release hour."
With tech geniuses like Silver Wolf and Stephen actively monitoring the studio's firewalls from the shadows, Xuan Qiu only needed to cast his eyes over the basic infrastructure logs; secondary network security threats were completely out of his mind. Sitting back in his virtual chair, he felt a rare wave of pure leisure wash over him.
"Director, we are tracking a colossal influx of player hits on our primary storefront."
"Maintain steady observation loops. Automatically unlatch the backup partitions the exact second the baseline user metrics cross our safety boundaries."
Watching Cai Xing coordinate the massive department teams in such a flawless, orderly fashion, Xuan Qiu nodded in silent satisfaction. This feeling of being able to completely trust his staff was wonderful. If his internal system weren't so completely useless, he would have gladly pulled it out of his soul to give it a good thrashing, forcing it to paint the assets for him so he could spend his days playing as a regular trainer, chasing his childhood dream of becoming a true Pokémon Master.
"The clock has struck. Open the sales queue."
Xuan Qiu kept his eyes glued to the real-time telemetry monitors. A sharp, vertical line violently shot up across the graph, instantly breaching four billion unique transaction confirmations before the steep slope finally softened, climbing upward at a steady, heavy angle.
"User numbers are crossing our baseline safety threshold! Requesting authorization to unlatch the Sky-Faring Commission's servers."
"Authorization granted. Open the valves."
Every single time he witnessed millions of citizens from different worlds scrambling to purchase his software, Xuan Qiu couldn't help but feel a profound, burning sense of creative accomplishment. After all, Pokémon was a child he had manually raised from a few lines of basic script back in his early days. Seeing his work loved by an entire galaxy left him feeling deeply gratified.
By the arrival of the half-hour mark, the volume cleared seven billion copies before the velocity showed its first noticeable deceleration. Still, the global receipt counters firmly notched ten billion total purchases after a single hour of live operations.
Looking at the world charts, it was clear that due to the massive differences in local planet time zones, millions of players had stubbornly stayed up past midnight just to buy the client the exact frame it cleared the queue. The primary catalyst for the rush was the steady stream of spectacular leaks posted by the Closed-Beta testers over the last two weeks, which had left the community so incredibly hungry for the Hoenn content that they refused to wait a single secondary longer.
Confirming that the global rollout had cleared its critical hurdles without a single server hitch, Xuan Qiu checked out of the operations loop, turned off his projection, and prepared for his daily energy containment drills. Even if Madame Herta was currently occupied with her own projects, he still needed to show a proper level of professional dedication, didn't he? Thankfully, the space station maintained highly specialized testing cells equipped with heavy spatial dampeners; otherwise, he would have been terrified of accidentally flattening a research wing while trying to tame Yveltal's turbulent power.
A full day had passed since the battle on the docks, and the Astral Express had long since replenished its storage vaults. However, because Stelle still needed to cooperate with Herta's laboratory staff for a few more diagnostic evaluations, the train remained quietly anchored against the Support Cabin's docking ring.
Having wrapped up her research tasks for the afternoon, Stelle walked back through the train's airlock doors, only to find the main parlor strangely empty. The sole occupant was Pom-Pom, who was furiously pushing a vacuum cleaner across the soft red carpet.
"Where did the rest of the passengers go?" Stelle asked, tilting her head.
"Oh! It's our newest passenger!" Pom-Pom chirped, pausing the machine to wave a furry paw. "Today marks the official galactic release hour for the third-generation Pokémon client, pom! Since the space station's security grids are stable and there are no active operational duties to clear, everyone immediately locked themselves inside their private cabins to submerge into the game!"
"In fact, the Conductor needs to hurry along with these chores too, pom! March mentioned that the developers added a massive crowd of adorable new companions to the database this morning!" As Pom-Pom spoke, the speed of its little paws increased drastically, the vacuum hum rising in pitch.
"Pokémon?" Stelle murmured, tasting the strange word.
A faint, ghostly echo buzzed in her mind, as if her memory files preserved a trace of the word from somewhere nearby, though she couldn't quite pin down the coordinate.
"Ah, the Conductor forgot that your profile is still recovering from a major memory wipe, pom!" Pom-Pom explained, pointing a stubby finger out the massive observation window toward the stars. "Pokémon are the exact species of those two giant monsters you watched tearing through the void outside our platform yesterday afternoon!"
"But those titans were Legendary sovereigns—a highly unusual, high-tier classification, pom. Standard Pokémon are infinitely smaller and much more comforting to hold!" Saying this, Pom-Pom gestured toward a bright yellow, mouse-shaped plushie resting neatly on the window sill. "Look there! That's a custom decoration March purchased during her last planet transit. It's a Pokémon named Pikachu."
Realization suddenly illuminated Stelle's thoughts. She knew she had heard the title before; March 7th had screamed that exact word while the mechanical green dragon was absorbing the beast's laser breath. And if her mail logs ran true, March had forwarded a text yesterday evening mentioning that a craftsman named Xuan Qiu had gifted her a complete virtual reality visor along with a master key for a game—but because she was locked inside Herta's diagnostic pods at the time, she hadn't found the clearance to open the files.
But wait... wasn't that magnificent mecha-creature from the docks something manifested through Xuan Qiu's unique Pathstrider traits? How could a living cosmic sovereign be categorized as a commercial video game?
Seeing the quiet girl's brow furrow in deep confusion once more, Pom-Pom gave her a gentle pat. "If your mind desires a comprehensive breakdown of the lore, you should go knock on March's door, pom. She is always incredibly eager to share her favorite things with a new friend. Now, the Conductor must finalize these floor grids, so please clear the cleaning lane, pom!"
Pom-Pom politely pointed her toward the passenger corridor, then went right back to pushing its machine.
Wait... if the database is woven into a game, doesn't that mean I might preserve a statistical chance to look at Zygarde again?
Stelle's eyes flashed with a bright, intense light. The cool, unyielding majesty of that giant mechanical dragon remained vividly burned into her thoughts. Driven by a sudden, overwhelming curiosity, she marched straight down the hallway and knocked firmly on March 7th's door.
"Give me a single second!"
A muffled scramble echoed from inside the room before the lock unlatched, revealing March 7th, who was wearing her haptic visor pushed up onto her forehead. "Eh? Stelle? Is there an emergency with your diagnostics?"
March had assumed Dan Heng or Himeko had come to summon her for a pre-flight meeting, so finding the new passenger on her mat was a pleasant surprise.
"Pom-Pom mentioned that if my mind harbored questions regarding Pokémon, I should look for your coordinate..."
Before Stelle could even finish her sentence, March 7th's eyes lit up like twin stars. To a dedicated fan, nothing in the universe delivered a greater rush of pure joy than introducing a beloved obsession to an open-minded listener—especially when that listener looked genuinely captivated.
"The Conductor's calculations are flawless!" March laughed, grabbing Stelle by the wrist with zero hesitation. "When it comes to the deep lore of Pokémon, you have officially knocked on the premier door!"
"Let's head straight into your quarters so we can map out the data streams in detail."
March pulled her down the corridor toward the spare cabin. While the massive layout of the Astral Express naturally preserved plenty of structural space to accommodate her own room, because her entry into the crew had been an emergency transaction, the layout was still dressed with standard, minimalist furniture. However, the premium virtual reality capsule Xuan Qiu had custom-delivered was already safely installed in the center of the floor, its power arrays humming softly.
"Wow, your profile cleared an incredible stroke of luck," March sighed, her eyes widening as she ran her fingers over the sleek chassis of the capsule. "Catching Boss Xuan Qiu in a giving mood is a massive blessing. I had to grind through dozens of difficult high-tier bounty missions just to save up enough credits to purchase my own virtual visor from the IPC storefront!"
"Go ahead and slide into the seat. I'll configure the baseline alignment for your visor and walk you through the core rules."
Stelle obediently climbed into the capsule, letting the soft padding mold to her form. March 7th tapped the exterior monitor, pulling up the studio's official beginner tutorial video and streaming the feed straight to Stelle's lenses, adding her own enthusiastic commentary whenever a specific monster passed across the screen.
Within less than an hour, Stelle's mind had fully digested the structural baseline of the game. Through March's endless streams of explanation, she finally connected the missing links: Xuan Qiu was the master director behind the entire multi-trillion-credit franchise, and his mysterious Pathstrider capability allowed him to pull those digital creations straight out of the code, anchoring their living forms into the real universe.
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