While everyone in the conference room was discussing, a figure pushed open the door and walked in.
This person was none other than Dream Factory's boss, Nova. The moment he entered, everyone unanimously fell silent.
There was no choice—anyone could badmouth him behind his back, but nobody dared say a word to his face.
After all, this was their direct supervisor, and nobody joked around with their livelihood.
Nova sat down at the front of the round table and swept his stern gaze over everyone.
"Have you all looked at what I sent you? Does anyone have questions?"
As soon as he finished speaking, a slightly overweight man, trembling, raised his hand and spoke:
"Um, boss, while their pixel art technique isn't much stronger than ours, it is pretty impressive. Our art team probably can't catch up to or surpass their level in the short term."
"How about we don't do pixels like them, but switch to 3D or 2D instead? After all, pixel games aren't our specialty."
Nova frowned when he heard this.
"If we're going to completely crush them, we have to make exactly the same thing—and do it better than them!"
He looked up at everyone.
"I'm investing 1.6 billion yen into this project for development. Your departments can divide it up yourselves. I'm giving you one week to make something better than theirs. Can you do it?"
Everyone present lit up when they heard this—1.6 billion yen in funding! Even though this money would ultimately be spent on the game, the boss had rarely been this generous!
After all, Nova was normally such a penny-pincher, he wouldn't even pay proper overtime.
And now everyone had this much money to develop... a pixel game!
This was basically like using a cannon to kill a mosquito.
No matter what, they were top talent in the game development industry. With sufficient funding, achieving this would naturally be no problem.
At most, the timeline was a bit tight.
As for whether this kind of plagiarism—even stealing the spotlight—would corrupt their conscience...
They could only say that, knowing this was dirty work, they really had no choice...
When you're under someone's roof, you have to bow your head.
Moreover, anyone who couldn't accept this sort of thing had already been fired on their first day at Dream Factory.
At this moment, another person at the round table raised their hand—a young man with round glasses who looked young but already had a bald spot.
Clearly, this was a programmer.
He looked troubled as he said:
"Boss, their game code isn't that advanced, but the AI they've integrated..."
The man held up his phone with his other hand, playing the video of Iono having voice interactions with NPCs and her own Pokémon in Emerald.
Nova glanced at him and snorted coldly.
"Renn, and you call yourself our lead programmer? You don't actually believe that, do you? Programming has made you stupid?"
"That's obviously fake AI—fixed responses triggered by commands."
"Besides us, which game company on the market has mastered AI technology? What's the current state of this stuff—don't you all know?"
The programmer named Renn seemed like he wanted to say more, but Nova cut him off directly.
"Doesn't the AI R&D department have new breakthroughs? Just integrate our new AI."
"Add some command-based responses, and it'll definitely be better than their fake AI."
Since Nova had spoken, Renn could only nod obediently.
"Alright... boss."
Nova lit a cigar and stood up.
"Fine, get to work. Within a week, I want to see your results."
"Before our Pokémon World releases, your game's progress must be more than twice ahead of Emerald!"
"Remember, this is very important to the company. Anyone who can't deliver can get lost!"
Night was falling.
Kairos let out a long breath and clicked the upload button, completing this update.
After upgrading the production efficiency module, he found his game development speed was much faster than he'd originally imagined.
Just this evening alone, he'd successfully created the maps for Dewford Town, Granite Cave, and Slateport City.
Actually, if he'd worked at normal speed, there would have been enough time to complete both the rival battle and the battle with Paul.
But this time, Kairos spent a large portion of his time on one thing—the cave for the rock titan "Regirock"!
Based on his memory, people in this world didn't seem to understand the existence of legendary Pokémon.
Many people didn't even know most legendaries existed!
Under these circumstances, he was very curious—how many emotion points would his carefully crafted content bring?
Speaking of which...
Kairos opened the sales backend to check the game's sales numbers and was surprised to find sales had reached over 18,000 copies!
Clearly, as he'd predicted, Emerald's reputation was gradually spreading across the internet.
If not for the game's high price of 5,927 yen, this sales figure would probably be ten times higher...
Sigh, he wondered when he'd be able to actively price his games...
If this were a free game... he didn't dare imagine how many copies it could sell.
But high prices had their benefits too.
Kairos glanced at his bank account balance of over 82 million yen and couldn't help but smile slightly.
Life was getting better!
With this much money, he definitely wouldn't keep living in this crappy rental. He could move somewhere with better scenery.
So where should he go?
How about checking out the Hoenn region? He'd heard the scenery there was pretty nice.
Just as Kairos was thinking, he suddenly realized something.
—Wait, where was Litwick?
He hadn't seen him since this afternoon.
He thought about it.
Litwick seemed to have gone out to play and had greeted him before leaving, but he'd been absorbed in work at the time and hadn't paid much attention.
Actually, it was pretty normal for Litwick to want to go out and play.
According to his description, he'd been stuck in a dark, terrifying space before. Now that he'd finally come to the outside world, he'd naturally be curious about everything around him.
He'd wait for Litwick to return and talk about moving tomorrow.
Kairos stretched.
He'd have to remind Litwick when he got back—it was fine to go out and play, but don't let anyone see him.
Otherwise, a Ghost-type Pokémon without a trainer appearing in the city could scare plenty of people half to death.
In Iono's livestream:
"Mareep, use Thunder Shock!!"
Along with Iono's extremely excited command, a bolt of electricity flashed by, and Archen's figure fell from the air, its HP bar emptied, completely losing its ability to battle!
Roxanne's figure appeared.
"Your perseverance is as admirable as rock itself. Even over a hundred failures couldn't stop you. Please continue forward—I believe you can go much further!"
As the Knuckle Badge appeared on screen, Iono couldn't help but let out a celebratory cheer.
"Yeah!! Finally beat it!!"
The chat in her stream started scrolling.
[How moving—how many resets was that? Must have been a hundred at least?]
[Didn't you see what Roxanne said? It's already over 100 times; she even moved the NPC ]
[Hahahaha, I suspect Roxanne couldn't help but go easy on her.]
[Congrats streamer, congrats streamer.]
Through over a hundred battles, Iono had finally found a perfect timeline and barely claimed victory in the gym battle.
The first thing she did after finishing the battle was activate voice interaction to praise all three Pokémon on her team.
Yes, three Pokémon, not two.
After discovering that two Pokémon simply couldn't beat Roxanne, Iono had to make another trip around Petalburg Woods and was lucky enough to encounter a Pikachu, which she successfully caught.
"Mareep, beautiful finish!"
"Pikachu, your paralysis was super clutch—I wouldn't have known how to deal with that Archen otherwise!"
"Joltik, high five!"
Her face was radiant with a brilliant smile—she was clearly genuinely happy right now.
After claiming victory in the gym battle, Iono didn't continue pushing forward with the game's progress like Cynthia had, but instead stopped in Rustboro City.
She explained her thoughts to her viewers:
"Being able to win this time, the berries' recovery effects were actually pretty key, but I found those berries when I was wandering around randomly."
"So I'm thinking—might this game have placed some items that players can pick up or obtain in other places too?"
"The next opponents are going to be tough anyway, so might as well prepare properly before continuing."
With that, she started searching systematically, beginning with the first room in the bottom left of Rustboro City.
As it turned out, through Iono's trial-and-error approach, she seemed to have discovered an important gameplay mechanic.
Namely, useful and valuable items could be lying around anywhere on the roadside.
NPCs in rooms might also have unexpected rewards if you just chatted with them.
In just a few dozen minutes, Iono had turned over almost all of Rustboro City, with quite impressive results.
[Stardust] and [Pearl] that could be sold for money.
[Quick Claw] is a held item that gives Pokémon a chance to ignore speed differences when attacking.
A precious evolution stone that could evolve Grass-types—[Leaf Stone].
Even a HM that could teach Pokémon the special move "Cut"...
Besides these, there was a whole bunch of miscellaneous small items like potions and berries.
Iono briefly organized her bag and went to the shop, selling everything she couldn't use, including the Leaf Stone. The 15,000 yen debt in the top left instantly became a positive 10,000 yen!
Seeing this scene, Iono couldn't help but smile.
"I knew it—the game's this hard, the developer would at least leave players some way to survive."
The chat was scrolling rapidly.
[Reborn: I Am the Supreme Trash King]
[Shocking! Famous Electric-type Gym Leader streamer actually makes a living collecting trash—what cruel truth lies behind this?]
[The streamer's like a bandit, going into people's houses and rummaging through everything. Isn't there an Officer Jenny to arrest her?]
Seeing these comments, Iono couldn't help but blush slightly and cough softly, defending herself:
"...In games, you can't call it collecting trash. This is called reasonable resource utilization."
Then came incomprehensible words like "trainers must be frugal" and "training Pokémon costs money too," making all the viewers burst into laughter, filling the stream inside and out with a cheerful atmosphere.
After ransacking Rustboro City, Iono was about to leave when she suddenly noticed a run-down little house in a corner of the city that she seemed to have missed before.
Her eyes immediately lit up—her intuition told her there might be good stuff inside!
After all, the more precious items she had found before were often the hardest to locate.
The valuable stuff was all dug out from nooks and crannies.
She immediately excitedly controlled her character to enter that house, but the scene that greeted her was somewhat disappointing.
Inside the room, there wasn't even furniture—just an empty table and a middle-aged man sitting behind it.
Clearly, this didn't look like a place that would have any hidden items.
Just as Iono was about to leave disappointedly, an exclamation mark appeared above the middle-aged man's head, and he quickly walked forward.
"Hello, young lady. Have you by any chance seen her?"
The man handed over a photo showing a blonde young girl holding a Shroomish with a brilliant smile.
"She's my daughter Alice. She came to this region to travel a month ago, but suddenly disappeared. I'm searching everywhere for her now."
The man's voice was full of anxiety and urgency, his haggard, stubble-covered face showing expectation, as if he really wanted to get some information from Iono.
Faced with this situation, Iono tried hard to remember but could only press the interaction button and answer softly:
"Sorry, I haven't seen your daughter either... but I'll be traveling in this region next. Don't worry! If I find her, I'll definitely bring her to see you."
Hearing this, the man slumped back into his chair, the light in his eyes instantly dimming.
"Alright... young lady... sorry for bothering you..."
He murmured softly, with infinite pain.
"Sigh, what should I do? I don't have the money to go to the next city anymore."
"Alice, my Alice... where are you? Daddy misses you so much..."
Hearing this, Iono fell silent for several seconds.
She suddenly input a command.
On screen, her character walked forward and placed a money pouch on the table.
Then she walked out of the room.
At this moment, her character's balance in the top right corner of the screen had completely zeroed out.
"I'd probably just lose this money anyway, might as well leave it for someone who needs it."
"That uncle must really miss his daughter..."
The stream chat immediately started scrolling frantically.
[Holy crap, I'm tearing up.]
[Streamer's really kind. I support you.]
[This is why I like Iono—her values are genuinely good]
[There might be scammers in games too—what if he's trying to con your money?]
[Yeah, clearly doesn't know how cruel society is]
Just as the chat was debating whether Iono had done right or wrong, the door of that run-down house behind Iono suddenly opened.
The middle-aged man rushed out with tears in his eyes.
"Thank you, miss, really thank you! With this much money, I can go look for her again!!"
"...This is our family's heirloom gem. Please accept it!"
With that, he pressed a small box into Iono's hands and hurried away.
"Eh?"
Iono paused, looking at the box.
Inside lay what looked like a glass ball—a small round stone that was pale purple mixed with red and yellow spirals.
What was this?
As Iono wondered, a brilliant golden notification suddenly popped up on the screen!
[Item: Mega Ampharosite (Special)]
[Description: A mysterious stone that might unleash incredible power?!]
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~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones