"Boss, I've sent over the full proposal for gym construction, leader selection, league operations, and the surrounding logistics," Cai Xing's message read.
Cai Xing worked with remarkable speed, delivering the comprehensive blueprint to Julian in just a few days.
Julian had borrowed a quiet office aboard the space station with Asta's permission, turning it into a temporary headquarters to manage company matters while awaiting the incubation of the biological eggs.
The document was extensive. Building a galactic league spanning multiple star clusters was a massive administrative undertaking, but Julian didn't need to get bogged down in the minutiae. His role was simply to ensure the core philosophy remained intact.
Reading through the drafts, Julian felt genuinely impressed.
The physical Gyms and regional league tournaments would combine high-resolution holographic projections with electromagnetic force-field generators, giving battles a tangible, immersive weight.
The competitive path was clearly mapped: Trainers began with local Gym challenges, advanced to the Regional Professional League, faced the Regional Elite Four, and finally earned the right to contest the Regional Champion.
Once a competitor broke into the top thirty-two of the Professional League, they earned a base salary paid directly by the company, matching or exceeding the income of a standard civilian career.
For the Elite Four and the reigning Champion, the compensation packages and tournament purses matched the highest echelons of professional sports across the cosmos.
Remarkably, funding these payouts would not drain the company's reserves. The entire circuit would be fully sustained by Gym admissions, tournament ticket sales, local merchandise, and broadcast rights, leaving ample room for net profit.
Beyond the matches themselves, the economic boost to local sectors was staggering.
The active player base for the core game alone had surpassed ten billion, not counting casual fans of the animated shorts or those who bought branded apparel.
The Pokémon League was fast becoming the only cultural phenomenon capable of bridging factional borders on a truly universal scale.
By comparison, Penacony's Charmony Festival and the martial tourneys of the Xianzhou were famous, but their barrier to entry was high, and their reach remained dwarfed by Pokémon's inclusive appeal. Only Pokémon could command a profitable, unified global audience across millions of light-years.
Given the immense value involved, Cai Xing had wisely proposed charging regional authorities a licensing fee for the right to host a sanctioned Gym, which could also be traded for favorable local trade policies.
Cai Xing had also suggested taking the open-world projection tests conducted after the Masters Tournament and anchoring them directly around the Gym hubs.
Using localized projection fields, entire city districts could be turned into living habitats where digital Pokémon roamed freely, allowing citizens to capture and interact with them in the real world—an advanced, full-scale evolution of Pokémon GO.
Julian approved without hesitation. Laying this groundwork would make the public far more receptive when physical, living Pokémon were eventually released into the universe.
Yet despite the brilliance of the framework, one critical detail gave Julian pause: the selection process for Gym Leaders.
A Gym Leader was far more than an early-game boss for challengers to defeat. They served as mentors, teachers, and guardians of local order.
If living Pokémon were to integrate into physical society down the line, Gym Leaders would bear heavy responsibilities in wildlife management, habitat preservation, and community guidance.
Cai Xing's initial draft had proposed simple open tournaments, awarding the Leader title to the last competitor standing.
That approach guaranteed raw battle strength, but it offered zero assurances regarding a candidate's temperament, ethics, or leadership skills. Furthermore, the lack of an ongoing review mechanism proved that Cai Xing was still viewing the system purely through the lens of a video game.
Julian sent the draft back with detailed revisions. Though puzzled by the unusually strict standards for what seemed like a promotional role, Cai Xing adapted quickly, returning a refined protocol that met Julian's expectations.
Under the new plan, applicants would pass through an extensive screening process, where the true responsibilities and community duties of a Leader were laid out before the tournament brackets even began.
In terms of compensation, Leaders would receive a generous base salary alongside a 0.1 percent share of their Gym's operating revenue designated as an operational maintenance fund.
Whether the Leader used those credits to hire support staff, upgrade arena facilities, or fund local training initiatives was entirely up to them, provided every credit was accounted for under strict transparency audits.
Gyms would undergo biannual administrative reviews. Passing two consecutive reviews granted the Leader an additional 0.1 percent personal profit bonus.
With Pokémon's current commercial reach, a 0.1 percent cut from a thriving planetary Gym was astronomical, easily running into hundreds of millions of credits. In dense, high-income metropolises, that bonus could reach into the billions.
Conversely, failing an audit resulted in an immediate 0.05 percent penalty deduction. Two consecutive failures meant instant revocation of the Leader's license, paired with clear legal liability clauses for negligence.
Satisfied with the balance of incentives and accountability, Julian gave Cai Xing the green light to notify regional leaders and prepare a formal announcement.
Invitations were dispatched to various planetary authorities in the morning. By the afternoon, delegates had already crowded into the central conference hall of the company's Luofu branch.
Every faction that held sway in the galaxy possessed sharp long-term vision. The commercial windfalls and cultural prestige of securing a sanctioned Gym were far too immense to ignore.
Alongside delegations from the Xianzhou, the IPC, and the Family of Penacony, envoys had arrived from systems as distant as the Principality of Talia, the ocean world of Lusaka, and vonwacq, all desperate to lock in a construction slot.
Notably, the IPC had sent two separate representatives: Topaz, representing the Strategic Investment Department, and a man around thirty named Romint, representing the Traditional Projects Department.
The Xianzhou Alliance had deployed only a single diplomatic liaison from the Luofu Realm-Keeping Commission to handle the six flagships, making the internal split between the IPC departments painfully obvious.
"The Pokémon portfolio has been managed by the Strategic Investment Department from the very beginning," Topaz said coldly, crossing her arms as she turned a piercing gaze on her colleague. "After spending months trying to sabotage the project from behind closed doors, where does the Traditional Projects Department find the nerve to show its face here?"
Topaz pulled no punches, exposing the rift right in front of the other delegates. Knowing Julian's temperament, if Romint failed to offer a proper explanation for his department's past obstructions, he would never secure a single Gym contract. He would be lucky not to be shown the door immediately.
"Come now, Miss Topaz. Yesterday's rivals can easily be today's most reliable partners," Romint replied smoothly, offering an unbothered, practiced smile. "Besides, commercial real estate and regional development fall squarely within our department's purview. It is only natural that we take a seat at the table."
Though he kept his tone light, Romint was inwardly cursing up a storm.
To even step across the threshold of this meeting room and wipe the slate clean for his department's earlier interference, he had been forced to pay ten times Topaz's original seed capital in punitive credits.
He had only recently taken the desk after his short-sighted predecessors were ousted during the cleanup. Swallowing the financial penalty to clean up their mess was infuriating, but he could only bite his tongue and endure it, directing his silent anger at the retired executives who had landed him in this hole.
"Hmph. Shameless as always," Topaz muttered under her breath.
The Traditional Projects Department did oversee legacy infrastructure, but that applied strictly to established corporate worlds.
New developments across the frontiers were traditionally claimed by either the Building Department or Strategic Investment, operating under the unwritten rule that whoever cultivated the sector retained jurisdiction.
Yet the Traditional branch was notorious for muscling into new ventures the moment an external project showed immense profitability. The resulting friction had kept relations between the departments icy for years, held back from open brawls only by the stern authority of the board of directors.
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