The neon glow of the city skyline bled through the blinds, casting jagged stripes across the cramped studio apartment. It was 2:00 AM in Oakhaven City, and the only sound in the room was the desperate whirring of an overworked laptop fan.
Leo Vance sat hunched over the desk, his dark hair a mess, his eyes bloodshot and fixed on a folder titled [Eevee's Color Match].
"Come on," he muttered, tapping his foot nervously against the floorboards. "Just go through. Please."
He dragged the folder into the upload box of the 'Alliance Indie Hub' website. He held his breath as the progress bar inched forward. Green. Steady. Almost there.
He clicked Confirm.
A heartbeat of hope—then the screen seized. A harsh buzz sounded, and a jagged red 'X' slashed across the monitor.
[Error 404: File Corrupted. Deletion Imminent.]
Poof.
The folder on his desktop didn't just fail to upload; it vanished. Gone. Scrubbed from existence like digital lint.
"Are you kidding me?!"
Leo slammed his fist onto the cheap particle-board desk, the force of it rattling his empty coffee mug. He shoved his chair back and stood up, pacing the three feet of walking space the room offered.
"That's the fifth time. The fifth time in three days!"
Leo Vance wasn't from around here. A week ago, he'd been a lead game producer at a top-tier studio on Earth. He'd gone to sleep after a crunch session and woke up here—a world that looked like Earth, smelled like Earth, but had Pidgeys nesting on the power lines and Growlithes walking on leashes.
The Pokémon world.
Ideally, this would be the part where he grabs a starter Pokémon and sets off to become the Champion.
Realistically? He was broke.
The body he'd inhabited belonged to an orphan with zero savings, no connections, and rent due in forty-eight hours. The idea of becoming a Trainer was a joke. PokéBalls cost money. Potions cost money. Pokémon food cost money. If he caught a Pokémon right now, they'd both just be starving under a bridge together.
Leo rubbed his face, trying to stave off the migraine building behind his eyes. He needed cash, fast.
Naturally, he'd looked into his old profession. On his first day, he'd scoured the internet, expecting to find a booming industry. What he found instead was a wasteland.
Technology here was advanced—smartphones, VR, high-speed internet—but the entertainment industry? It was Stone Age stuff. Movies were boring documentaries. Music was generic elevator tunes. And video games...
Leo sat back down and pulled up the "Top Charts" on the Alliance Game Store.
#1 Best Seller: Angry Geodude.Price: $14.99
He clicked on the gameplay trailer. On screen, a low-poly Geodude rolled down a straight, gray road. You pressed the spacebar to jump over rocks. That was it. No music, just a crunching sound effect. If you survived for ten minutes, the Geodude evolved into a Graveler and rolled slightly faster.
"Garbage," Leo whispered, shaking his head. "It's absolute hot garbage, and it has five million downloads."
It should have been a goldmine. With his experience, Leo could port a few classics from Earth, revolutionize the industry, and retire to a private island with a shiny Gardevoir butler.
But there was a glitch in the matrix.
Every time he tried to make a game, it vanished.
He'd started simple. [Pac-Man: Starter Edition]. He spent two days coding a maze game where a Charmander ran away from ghosts. Deleted.
He tried a casual mobile game. [Diglett's Gold Mine]. Deleted.
And now, the match-3 puzzle game. Gone.
"What is going on?" Leo groaned, leaning his head back against the chair. "Is this computer haunted? Is it a Rotom? Show yourself, you little electric gremlin."
Silence.
He looked at his bank account balance on his phone. $4.50. Not even enough for a Moomoo Milk.
"I'm going to be homeless," he realized, the panic setting in. "I'm going to be the first transmigrator in history to starve to death because I couldn't code a candy crush clone."
Suddenly, the air in the room shimmered.
A translucent, golden interface materialized directly in front of his face, hovering in the air like a hologram.
[7-Day Buffer Period Concluded.][Safety Protocols Disengaged.]
[Ding! Congratulations, Host. The "Ultimate Pokémon Game Designer System" has been activated!]
Leo blinked. He waved his hand through the text; it was intangible, projected directly into his vision.
[This System provides high-efficiency development tools to assist the Host in becoming the world's premier Pokémon Game Architect.][Newbie Gift Pack: Technology Modules Unlocked. Please check the dashboard.]
Leo stared at the floating text, his brain catching up. "Wait. The buffer period... The safety protocols..."
He read the next line of text, and his blood pressure spiked.
[Notice: To prevent timeline destabilization and dimensional rejection, the Host is restricted to creating content centered around Pokémon logic. Non-compliant software (Generic clones, Earth-based IPs) was automatically purged during the buffer week.][You're welcome.]
"I'm welcome?" Leo let out a short, incredulous laugh. "You wiped my hard drive five times because of 'dimensional rejection'? You couldn't have sent a memo? I almost sold my kidney for rent money!"
He took a deep breath. Okay. No use yelling at a hologram.
He analyzed the situation. He had a System. It helped him make games. The catch? They had to be authentic Pokémon games. No asset-flipping Pac-Man. It had to be the real deal.
He looked at the dashboard. Two blue cubes were rotating in the center of the UI.
[Module 1: Retro Pixel Engine (Level 1)]Description: Instantly generates high-quality pixel art assets and animations based on mental imagery.
[Module 2: Basic Scripting Logic (Level 1)]Description: Automates low-level coding and bug-fixing for simple 2D environments.
[Currency: Emotion Points (EP)]How to earn: Harvest intense emotional reactions from players (Joy, Rage, Shock, Grief, Awe).[Current Balance: 0 EP]
"Fast generation..." Leo mumbled, his developer instincts kicking in.
He opened his empty coding software. He focused his mind on an image. Pikachu. Classic stance. 16-bit style.
Zzzzt.
In the blink of an eye, a perfect, adorable pixel-art Pikachu appeared on his canvas. It even had a little idle animation, its ears twitching.
Leo's jaw dropped. "Okay. That... that is incredible."
Back on Earth, that single sprite would have taken an artist an hour to perfect. He just did it in a millisecond.
"I don't need a team," Leo realized, a grin spreading across his face. "I don't need a budget. I am the team."
But he needed to start small. He only had the basic modules. He couldn't make a 3D open-world masterpiece yet. He was limited to pixels and simple scripts.
"Authentic Pokémon experience... Pixels..."
The answer was obvious.
Pokémon: Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald.
The Generation 3 classics. The games that defined a childhood for millions on Earth. They were perfect for his current tech level. The nostalgia, the music, the exploration—it would blow the minds of people who thought "Angry Geodude" was peak gaming.
Leo reached for the keyboard, ready to start typing the design document for a faithful recreation of Pokémon Emerald.
His fingers hovered over the keys. He paused.
He glanced back at the System's currency requirements.
[Harvest intense emotional reactions from players.]
"Intense emotions," Leo mused.
Sure, a standard playthrough of Emerald was fun. It brought joy. But joy was a slow burn. Joy was safe.
If he wanted to unlock the advanced modules—VR tech, 3D engines, AI integration—he needed volume. He needed players to feel something explosive. He needed them to scream.
He thought about the gaming community on Earth. What created the most engagement? What got streamers yelling and chat rooms spamming?
Difficulty. Unfair, brutal, soul-crushing difficulty.
The people of this world had never experienced a Nuzlocke run. They had never felt the pain of a Kaizo trap. They were soft. They thought rolling a rock down a hill was hard work.
Leo's smile shifted. It wasn't the friendly smile of a game developer anymore; it was the predatory grin of a dungeon master designing a death trap.
"A faithful remake is too nice," Leo whispered to the empty room. "They need to learn what it means to be a true Trainer."
He didn't just want them to play. He wanted them to suffer. He wanted them to break their keyboards in frustration and then immediately buy another one because they were addicted to the challenge.
He clicked on the "New Project" icon.
He typed in the title, his keystrokes loud and deliberate in the silent apartment.
[Project Name: Pokémon - Ultimate Emerald (Lunatic Edition)]
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