After being repelled, the Slakoth did something entirely uncharacteristic for its species: it actually stood up on its hind legs and took a slow, heavy step directly toward Stelle.
Its gaze was locked entirely on the blue fruit resting near her boots, but from that distance, Stelle couldn't quite see where its eyes were tracking. Watching the lazy creature suddenly stand up, she naturally assumed it was bracing itself to launch a counterattack.
Since the sloth's health pool hadn't dropped low enough to guarantee a secure capture, she decided to keep up the pressure.
"Grovyle, keep it up with Quick Attack!"
Bang!
The green companion blurred across the grass, slamming straight into the Slakoth and sending it tumbling across the dirt once more. But after sliding to a halt, the battered sloth stubbornly dragged its body off the ground, standing upright yet again.
"Ooh!"
After being knocked back twice in a row, the Slakoth seemed to grow genuinely furious at this strange trainer who kept interrupting its journey toward dinner.
With its eyes burning with rare fury, the creature suddenly rushed toward Grovyle with incredible, uncharacteristic speed. Its long claws began to radiate a bright, white light, clearly activating a powerful physical move.
"Grovyle, throw up some leaves to create a distraction!"
Several sharp leaves, shimmering with a faint green glow, shot through the air like throwing knives to intercept the charge. But the Slakoth simply twisted its torso a few times, letting the leaves deflect harmlessly off its thick fur without losing a single fraction of its forward momentum.
"Be careful, focus entirely on defense! Use Detect!"
Grovyle's eyes sharpened instantly, its senses heightened as the opponent's charging form seemed to slow down to a crawl in its vision. But the moment Grovyle parsed the exact trajectory of the attack, the grass Pokémon froze in utter bewilderment.
In that split second, the Slakoth reached Grovyle's position... and dashed straight past it.
Stelle and Grovyle both turned their heads, their eyes blankly tracking the creature's path. They watched the Slakoth dive onto the grass, shove the fallen Oran berry straight into its mouth, and immediately flop over onto its back with an expression of absolute, unvarnished bliss.
Stelle stood there, completely dumbfounded. "If you just wanted to eat the berry, you really should have led with that..."
She finally realized the wild Pokémon never harbored a single drop of desire to lock horns in battle; its entire motivation was anchored to that single snack. Looking down at the sloth, who was now resting flat on the dirt with a posture that clearly screamed, 'You can delete my health bar, I am not moving a single inch,' Stelle chuckled. She unclipped another Poké Ball and casually tossed it forward.
Ding.
The sphere clicked shut without a single struggle. Successful capture.
"I just wanted to see what would happen, I didn't actually expect it to stick," Stelle smiled, clipping the capsule back to her belt. Meeting such an entertaining, stubborn slacker on the road was a fun distraction, so she kept it on her roster before resuming her original journey toward the desert to track down a Trapinch.
Reading the Stars
Deep within the Divination Commission on the Xianzhou Luofu, the massive gears of the Matrix of Prescience slowly ground to a halt. Fu Xuan floated gently down from the central platform, her long robes settling around her boots.
The rows of Diviners who had been assisting her were completely drenched in sweat, letting out a massive, collective sigh of relief the moment the arrays deactivated. A few of the weaker scholars simply collapsed flat onto the floor in sheer exhaustion.
Qingque, completely ignoring any sense of professional decorum, threw herself face-first onto the tiles and immediately drifted off to sleep.
The reason for the brutal, marathon shift was simple: Xuan Qiu's high-stakes clash against the Lord Ravager and his warning that a high-ranking saboteur was actively hiding inside the fleet had captured General Jing Yuan's absolute attention. Fu Xuan had been forced to issue an emergency summons to her entire department, running continuous calculation loops through the Matrix since yesterday morning to trace the threads of fate.
Deducing cosmic causality was always an incredibly draining task, especially when the equations directly involved the survival of the Luofu, a general of Destruction, the gaze of the Hunt, and the path of Ruin. With so little baseline information to feed into the supercomputer, the mental toll on the operators multiplied exponentially.
Even Fu Xuan felt a heavy weight of exhaustion pressing against her temples, let alone her subordinate diviners. The ones still conscious were the most exceptional talents in the commission; the rest had long since been carried out by medical staff.
Thankfully, their hard labor had yielded a clear result.
The exact second the Matrix closed its ports, a holographic projection of Jing Yuan flickered to life in the center of the hall.
"You have endured a heavy burden, Fu Xuan," the general noted, his tone solemn. "What is the final reading?"
"The heavenly secrets flow, and the absolute clarity of the Path remains undecided," Fu Xuan began, her voice carrying its usual rhythmic, formal weight. "This specific intersection of the star rails closely mirrors a long walk along the absolute edge of an abyss; a single misstep across the terrain could violently overturn all cosmic phenomena..."
"Ahem," Jing Yuan coughed into his hand, looking slightly helpless. "Fu Xuan, please translate the reading into everyday terms."
The general was well-aware that Fu Xuan did this deliberately. She loved using the most complex, difficult-to-parse phrases the moment she delivered a report, wanting to poke at him because he frequently left her with massive piles of paperwork. Even after surviving as a military general for several centuries, Jing Yuan sometimes found her academic riddles a bit difficult to unpack on the fly.
Fu Xuan hid a small, satisfied smirk before straightening her posture. "The Lord Ravager is indeed actively lurking somewhere within the borders of the Luofu. However, her presence is tightly shielded by the energy of Destruction. Given how scarce our current dataset is, the Matrix cannot pinpoint her exact coordinate."
"Furthermore, the calculations reveal she is brewing a massive, hidden scheme designed to fracture our society from within. If our forces fail to manage the crisis properly, a single wrong turn will lead the Luofu straight toward complete ruin."
Jing Yuan's brow furrowed deeply, his golden eyes clouding over as he fell into a heavy silence.
Total destruction? Is the threat profile truly that severe?
An open assault from a single Lord Ravager was a crisis, but the Alliance preserved more than enough military strength to break a direct siege—the fleet hosted multiple world-shattering generals, after all. Not every general of the Legion excelled at stealth and infiltration; breaking through their defensive borders undetected was a rare feat. If she was operating entirely from the shadows, Jing Yuan could roughly guess what species of trap she was trying to lay to put the fleet in such mortal danger.
"By the way," the general asked, breaking his silence. "Did the calculation loops yield any data regarding Xuan Qiu's situation?"
The fact that an Emanator of Destruction was willing to risk exposing her entire long-range campaign just to delete a video game developer from the server proved Xuan Qiu carried an asset the Legion feared immensely. Jing Yuan prioritized this piece of data highly.
"I was just about to unpack that section of the ledger," Fu Xuan replied, crossing her arms proudly. "Though his background remained obscured during my previous readings, the current charts reveal this young man possesses a brilliant star chart. His path is accompanied by immense good fortune and prosperous wealth, and his actions align perfectly with heavenly timing. He is a lucky star hanging high in our sky."
"His personal analysis of the situation runs completely true: the introduction of Pokémon has provided our long-lived citizens with a pristine, unyielding emotional anchor. This connection systematically lowers their internal stress levels, which will drastically reduce the probability of our soldiers succumbing to the Mara-struck condition."
"As for whether his studio's presence has completely bricked the Lord Ravager's long-term deployment plans, that is a variable too fluid to isolate through raw divination alone. However, since the enemy is desperate to eliminate him, our fleet will ensure his profile is granted absolute protection."
Fu Xuan tilted her head up, a confident smile touching her lips. "Besides, looking closely at the young man's current capabilities, unless a Star God personally steps onto the field to restrict his actions, even an Emanator would find it near-impossible to pin him down."
"I understand. You have done an exceptional job, Fu Xuan. Please focus on restoring your energy now; my office will coordinate our defensive patterns."
Jing Yuan nodded in deep gratitude, closed the communication link, and walked over to his massive desk inside the Seat of Divine Foresight to map out his counters.
"A Lord Ravager hidden in our waters..." he murmured, walking over to the wide balcony to gaze out at the sprawling, vibrant cityscape of the Luofu stretching across the starlight. "We truly live in a tumultuous era."
Unwinding in Hoenn
Back at the commission, after formally dismissing the remaining diviners to their barracks, Fu Xuan retreated to her private quarters.
Instead of climbing into bed to clear her physical fatigue, she walked straight over to her gaming capsule, initialized the visor, and submerged herself into the Pokémon client. Her administrative schedule had been completely packed over the last few weeks, causing her daily gaming hours to plummet. Since the Closed-Beta concluded, she had barely found the time to log in for a couple of short sessions.
Now that her official duties were clear and the upcoming security nightmare had been dumped entirely onto Jing Yuan's desk, she planned to thoroughly lose herself in the virtual routes.
"Ugh, Torchic is simply far too cute!"
The exact frame her character materialized on the route, Fu Xuan's very first action was to scoop up her starter Torchic and intensely cuddle the fluffy chick against her cheek.
"Chirp, chirp! Torchic~" the little creature chirped happily, actively rubbing its soft, warm feathers against her face to mimic her affection.
Feeling the comforting warmth of the tiny companion, Fu Xuan felt the entire mountain of mental exhaustion she had gathered from running the Matrix completely melt away. Her only real regret was that she hadn't cleared the regional champion requirements yet, meaning her beloved Eevee and Togepi from her older Kanto save files were still locked behind data-transfer firewalls. Had she been allowed to pull her legacy team into the new continent, she felt her mental health metrics would be completely maxed out.
Still, as a specialized trainer whose heart was entirely dedicated to building a high-tier Psychic-type roster, the launch of the third generation had provided her with a supreme, unyielding goal that she absolutely had to secure at all costs—Gardevoir.
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