This is a dim, cramped little room.
Inside, a gaunt figure sits at a messy table, his pale face flushed with an excited crimson glow as he stares at the fluorescent computer screen.
He's a disheveled, naked teenager. Next to him lie worn-out clothes and shorts, along with a massive pile of trash, junk, and tissues.
In fact, the most abundant thing in this room is tissues.
They're all crumpled up, except for one large, untouched roll on the table.
"Squeak, squeak..." The small wooden stool constantly groans under the weight.
A closer look at the screen shows pages upon pages of various female characters from Pokémon anime and games.
Cynthia, Caitlin, Sabrina, Lorelei, Serena, Dawn, and more...
One after another, they're the "otaku's favorite" pictures: revealing clothes and seductive poses...
Full breasts, voluptuous buttocks, long legs, slender waists, delicate feet, inviting tongues, and the sweaty, slick, mysterious valleys...
The beautiful and tempting images make the blush on the teenager's face even more intense.
"Huff..." The boy breathes heavily, his eyes locked on the key parts of each image... His left hand, hidden under the table, is busy with something.
In the dim light, a tubular shadow is faintly visible, appearing even thicker and longer than the boy's forearm!
"Hiss... huff..." As the content on the screen becomes richer, the speed of his mouse clicks and the frequency of the stool's rocking get faster and faster...
"Crack!" Just at the critical moment, a static sound rings out, and the entire room plunges into darkness.
The boy freezes in the dark, then slowly rises. The massive "column" bangs against the table with a dull thud. His bare chest reveals prominent, protruding ribs.
He takes a deep breath: "Fatty! Why is the power out again—"
"Bang!" The next second, the rotting wooden door is violently kicked open by a thick thigh.
"You don't pay rent but have so many demands! The cable's broken, come fix it!"
Sunlight streams in from outside, making the already plump figure look extraordinarily robust and huge.
"Hey, hey, hey! Can you please knock before you come in next time?"
The boy frowns, quite displeased, and pulls on his shorts...
Having his momentum broken at such a crucial moment has put him in a very bad mood.
The woman glances at him, and that terrifying... thing makes her heart skip a beat. To be so scrawny and yet have something so large, he's a freak...
"How about you become our live-in son-in-law? You wouldn't have to live in this hellhole anymore," she thinks with a bit of a fancy.
As the saying goes, a good craftsman must first sharpen his tools. She's also curious why Yu Bai, with such a "divine tool," hasn't latched onto a rich woman yet...
Yu Bai squeezes through the gap where the landlady is blocking the doorway and says, "Stop dreaming..."
"I'd rather starve to death than be with a three-hundred-pound fatty like you... I'd get crushed to death in bed!"
With that, he nimbly climbs towards the roof where an old cable antenna is.
"Bah! I'm more worried you'll wank yourself to death and make me a widow!"
Ignoring the fat landlady's curses, Yu Bai climbs on his own.
Yu Bai, 25 years old, an orphan.
He's been doing odd jobs in this city since he was a child, but he's never liked any of them. Always laid-back, he only does what's absolutely necessary.
For example, only eating a couple of bites when he's about to starve...
That's why he chose to live in this condemned building owned by the landlady, which is slated for demolition.
However, despite his extremely low demands for material life, his pursuit of the spiritual world is extremely high.
The only thing he truly loves and indulges in is the Pokémon world.
Aside from the Pokémon themselves, it's the various girls in it...
For some reason, he only feels something for these "2D" characters.
He even saved money for two years by only eating ten meals a month to buy a second-hand computer.
Just so he could see his "wives" at any time... and release his emotions and stress...
Just as the landlady saw, the "vast and abundant" Yu Bai is exceptionally powerful in certain aspects...
The moment Yu Bai connects the cable, the landlady's old TV from '82 downstairs powers on. A news report blares from it:
"In today's broadcast of Pokémon Journeys, episode 132, Ash successfully defeated Leon and won the Pokémon World Coronation Series. It has been 25 years since Ash's journey began on April 1, 1997, to his victory on November 11, 2022..."
Although the old TV's sound is noisy, he can hear the news clearly.
Yu Bai, who usually has a still heart, can't help but feel a ripple of emotion.
April 1, 1997, is his birthday.
And he has always followed in Ash's footsteps... to experience the world he longed for.
To yearn for the girls he desired...
"The defeat in Sinnoh, the regret in Kalos, the doubts in Alola, they've all been shattered at this moment..."
With a sigh, Yu Bai stretches. He wants to go back and continue his "studies."
He hopes the power outage didn't break his old computer...
"Crack..." Just as he takes a step, a crack appears in a dilapidated roof tile above his head.
The feeling of unease just surfaces in Yu Bai's mind when the sensation of falling arrives.
"Rumble... Bang!" The second floor of the small house instantly collapses, and Yu Bai falls from the roof into the rubble...
"Yu Bai?!" The landlady rushes up in a panic to check on him.
But halfway there, the world pauses for a moment, and a pearly white light descends next to the unconscious Yu Bai inside the house...
"Bang!... Bang, bang, bang!... Crash..."
Faintly, Yu Bai hears a sound like shattering glass. The next moment, a sensation of tearing and corrosion fills his senses. His veins bulge, blood streams down, and his face contorts in a gruesome grimace... In an instant, he loses consciousness from the pain.
Afterward, the spatial channel concealed by the white light closes.
"Yu Bai...?!" Looking at the empty ruins, the landlady is stunned.
Pain... so much pain... a bone-chilling pain, as if his flesh is being sliced away and his bones scraped and marrow extracted...
And yet, despite this deep, bone-piercing agony, his consciousness remains terribly clear...
He can only endure, adapt, until he finally goes numb...
Yu Bai can feel his life slipping away, or rather, his soul dissipating.
He doesn't know where he is or how long it has been.
On the verge of death, a pure white light suddenly appears. In a daze, he thinks he hears a voice:
"Goodbye, Arceus... Say goodbye to your world! Oh, wait... it's mine now, ha ha ha ha!"
Pokémon world, Spear Pillar on Mount Coronet.
A black figure laughs up at the sky. Next to him, a expressionless Dialga and Palkia watch as the fragmented form of Arceus slowly dissipates in the air.
However, the movements of the two spatial-temporal dragons are uncoordinated. Upon closer inspection, their curves are a bit strange, as if they were clumsily shaped from clay, with dents and bumps...
More than half of Arceus's remains have dissipated. The black figure in the sky shows an impatient look: "Let's go, it's time to claim this perfect world... Heh heh heh!"
"Swoosh!" The three figures vanish...