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Morning.
The entrance of Azure Crystal Marine Park.
People crowded together, all kinds of visitors moving back and forth through the plaza. The enormous flow of people made even the wide entrance square feel packed and congested.
Two days had passed since the live broadcast incident at the Bibarel Cup Fishing Tournament.
Initially, the incident of a Pokémon attacking a human inside the park led to a significant decline in the number of tourists visiting Azure Crystal Marine Park. On the day the incident ended, the number of canceled reservations even broke the park's historical refund record.
According to the predictions on online forums and discussion threads, after this incident, Azure Crystal Marine Park should have been finished for good. Decline, collapsing revenue, and eventual closure were supposed to be unavoidable.
After all, for a profit-driven open park built for tourists, no matter how beautiful the environment was, no matter how much freedom it offered, and no matter how cheap the tickets were, if the lives of visitors could not be guaranteed, everything else was meaningless.
Especially when the accident had happened during a highly rated live broadcast, the negative impact it created was almost impossible to measure.
By now, many people around the world had already linked "Pokémon attack" and "Azure Crystal Marine Park" together in their minds.
Even if they traveled to Azure Bay City in the future, they would likely avoid the city's marine park altogether.
And yet, at this moment, Azure Crystal Marine Park, which should have been deserted, was showing an unusually prosperous scene.
This left the nearby residents deeply confused.
Some sharp-eyed citizens of Azure Bay City even noticed that every single tourist heading into the marine park was carrying a Trainer's Poké Ball.
Hundreds, even thousands, of Trainers had gathered together.
A dramatic sight like this would usually only appear at world-class events such as the League Conference.
And yet, right now, it was happening at a marine park that had just suffered a Pokémon attack incident?
This strange situation, pushed forward by the citizens of Azure Bay, reached the front page of the local forum that same day and sparked widespread discussion among the locals.
Some citizens had even gone up to ask those Trainers directly, but the answers they received were basically all vague excuses like "sightseeing" or "training."
Even now, the forum still had no reasonable explanation for the matter.
So what was the reason?
The answer was actually very simple.
Besides being professional Trainers, these people also had another identity hidden underneath.
Players.
The original Bibarel Cup Fishing Tournament, although a major event within Azure Bay City, had been broadcast live to the entire world.
Because of the host Crystal, its ratings had even reached a historic peak.
As a result, the impact caused by the broadcast incident was unprecedentedly huge.
That afternoon, the entire internet had basically exploded.
Under those circumstances, it was impossible for the massive number of players inside the game world not to hear about it.
Although most players mainly focused their actions in the game around raising and training Pokémon, many exploration-type players liked studying the core of Pokémon: World, this next-generation game, from every possible angle.
Perhaps it was history and culture.
Perhaps it was science and art.
Or perhaps it was advanced technology developed around Pokémon.
For an event that had such a wide impact among NPCs inside the game, they would naturally hear about it through various channels.
Then someone casually posted it on the player forum.
What followed was obvious.
Boom.
The forum exploded.
The players did not care how many NPCs had been injured.
They did not care whether the Bibarel Cup Fishing Tournament could continue.
What they cared about was the top-tier Sobble that had appeared inside Azure Crystal Marine Park, the one with Deep Purple quality and Dark Gold individual potential.
A cute Pokémon with enormous growth potential, a level that was not too high, a style that had not yet fully settled, and incredible room for development.
To players, its appeal was no different from light in the darkness to moths, or blood in the water to sharks.
On the very first day after the forum post appeared, countless players whose starting locations were near Azure Bay City rushed over through every method they could find, searching for any trace of Sobble.
And the number was still increasing as time passed.
In just a few more days, the massive Azure Crystal Marine Park would probably be filled from top to bottom by locust-like players, leaving not a single empty corner behind.
As for the park officials, they had originally thought they were completely finished and were preparing large-scale layoffs to reduce expenses.
Now that so many Trainers had suddenly come to visit, they were naturally overjoyed. As for the small actions those Trainers carried out inside the park, they chose to turn a blind eye.
As long as things did not go too far, they had no intention of interfering.
At the park entrance.
While the players were each using their own methods and preparing to search the park for traces of Sobble, one slender, graceful figure stood quietly on the street, looking somewhat different from the rest.
Bright golden pupils.
Delicate features.
Fair skin.
And those two strangely familiar orange-yellow twin ponytails, swaying gently in the air.
"Sigh."
Wendy looked up at the four large words, Azure Crystal Marine Park, and let out a deep sigh.
By now, she no longer had the excitement she had felt when she first entered the game, as if she had opened the door to a brand-new world.
Because of her, her brother's guild had wasted far too much manpower, resources, and most precious of all, time on the matter of capturing Sobble.
The guild, which had originally been firmly ranked among the first tier, had now been pushed down by other competitors.
Although Jacob had not blamed her, Wendy blamed herself deeply.
She felt that she had ruined her brother's career.
It was unforgivable.
Originally, she had already been close to quitting the game and returning to real life, but the extremely popular "Sobble Appears" post on the forum two days ago had made her stay in the virtual world.
Although her brother Jacob had told her that, compared with before, the news about Sobble was now public. They had lost their information advantage and could not compete with other powerful guilds at all.
But Wendy still refused to give up.
She wanted to try to see whether she could make up for the losses her brother had suffered because of her.
What if she really managed to capture that Sobble?
Unfortunately, that tiny possibility did not happen to her.
Even after spending two full days searching day and night inside the marine park, she had not found even the slightest trace of Sobble.
Now, more and more players from all over the world were arriving here, making her chances even slimmer.
"Sigh~"
Unable to stop herself, Wendy sighed again.
She raised a hand and rubbed her eyes, which were so exhausted that they could barely stay open.
"I'll log out and rest first. I'll come back tomorrow."
"I heard Azure Bay City has a Gym. Maybe I can go there to clear my head. Who knows, I might even find some news about Sobble."
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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For early access to advanced chapters on P-atreon:
P-atreon/iamxeno
(Just remove the - hyphen to access normally)
Thank you so much for your support and for reading!