Julian smiled, but to Stephen, it looked like the classic grin of a greedy corporate executive.
The boy genius desperately wanted to throw a threat right back at him. But after a quick calculation, he realized Julian was staying right here on the space station. Madame Ruan Mei could cross paths with him at any moment, and the second she did, Stephen would lose all his leverage.
He was completely backed into a corner.
Staring at Julian's smug, smiling face only made him more annoyed. "You just wait," Stephen huffed. Without another word, he snapped his fingers and cut his digital projection entirely.
"Is everything alright, Mr. Julian? Did an incident occur?"
The moment Stephen vanished, Arlan arrived with a squad of security guards. The space station's sensors had just flagged a massive, localized energy spike in this exact laboratory, and he had rushed over to secure the perimeter.
Catching sight of the miniature Rayquaza still floating behind Julian, a warning bell rang in Arlan's head. He immediately dropped into a tense, defensive stance.
Yanqing had also sensed the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure. Sometime during the conversation, he had pulled his consciousness out of his testing capsule and was now nervously staring at the emerald dragon coiled near Julian's shoulders.
"It's nothing at all, no need to be nervous," Julian reassured them, raising a calming hand. He dialed back his Pathstrider current, and the little Rayquaza smoothly dissolved into light particles. "I was just running a few minor software experiments alongside Stephen."
Arlan and Yanqing finally let out a long breath, relaxing their posture.
Arlan wasn't particularly surprised; he knew that anyone capable of working as an equal partner with a member of the Genius Society was bound to wield terrifying power.
Yanqing, however, felt completely thrown off. In all his past interactions with Julian, he had pinned the developer down as a regular civilian—focused entirely on his code, maybe a bit mischievous, but fundamentally ordinary. He hadn't paid much attention to the Pokémon Julian summoned before, since little creatures like Pikachu and Eevee didn't exactly radiate a high threat level.
But the moment that dragon appeared, the young swordsman realized he needed to completely re-evaluate the man he was assigned to protect. In fact, he was starting to seriously question his master's orders. Does a craftsman who can call down a cosmic leviathan like that really require a Cloud Knight bodyguard?
"Oh, by the way, Arlan, since your team is already here," Julian said, breaking the silence as he gestured to a small object on the table. "Could you please have someone deliver this little guy up to Herta's private office? It's a development asset for Stephen."
Julian waved his hand, and the pink-and-blue Porygon2 floated gently into the air, settling down right beside the security chief.
Arlan didn't recognize the magnificent emerald dragon from before, but he instantly knew what a Porygon was, considering every single player was restricted to a single gift unit on their account. Asking zero questions, he gave a firm nod, picked up the device, and led his guards out of the room.
"What are you standing around dazed for? Let's get back to the server tests," Julian laughed, lightly tapping Yanqing's shoulder before sliding back into his virtual reality capsule.
The lieutenant stood frozen for a second, then shook his head to clear his thoughts and climbed back into his own seat.
He could only map out two possibilities for General Jing Yuan's true strategy. First, his master genuinely didn't know the absolute scale of Julian's hidden strength—though his tactical mind rated that probability as extremely low. The second option was that the general knew exactly what Julian could do, and had attached him to the developer's transit for an entirely separate, unstated reason.
Since his master hadn't spelled out the plan, Yanqing figured he didn't need to overthink the metadata. His sole duty was to stay anchored to the developer's side. With his mind made up, he pushed his worries away, booted up the system, and submerged back into the game world.
The Buzz on the Net
Across the star-lanes, the moment Cai Xing received Julian's authorization log, her office immediately initialized the selection process for the third-generation regional Closed-Beta.
Aside from granting automatic entry to the top-tier coordinators who had cleared the highest metrics in the Legendary Adventure brackets, she meticulously combed through the server databases to invite a broad pool of highly active daily users. Since the studio had only recently opened its front gates to the IPC's markets, their corporate integration was still gathering velocity, but she made sure to prioritize influential gaming streamers and video content creators. When the official public launch hour arrived, these players would serve as her premier promotional vanguard.
Because the scale of the expansion was massive, the news that the Hoenn regional client had entered live testing swept through the community forums like a wildfire. Thousands of desperate fans flooded the boards, frantically trying to purchase beta entry keys from anyone willing to sell.
But this run was completely different from the loose, public test phases of their early Kanto days. The roster of candidates was locked from day one, and the studio held zero intention of releasing extra promotional keys to the market. It was only when Cai Xing noticed the public's excitement was turning dangerously volatile that she authorized a small, automated lottery on the official website to cool down the threads.
To completely brick the scalper markets, every single beta pass was hard-coded directly to a consumer's unique biological data. If your iris profile and DNA signature didn't match the server registration, the terminal would manual-reject the login.
On the opening morning of the test, the live-streaming directories suffered a hilarious system hitch. Dozens of top-tier creators simultaneously posted "Out of Office" notices, leaving the general Pokémon broadcasting category looking like a ghost town. However, a few clever mid-tier streamers wisely chose to stagger their hours, launching their own coverage to scoop up the massive wave of stranded viewers who had nowhere else to go.
Guinaifen, holding a spotless reputation as one of the server-first Elite Four masters alongside her massive streaming profile, was the undisputed queen of the directory. She had been buried inside the beta client since dawn. By the arrival of the evening hours, wanting to share a few drops of joy with her fiercely loyal fan base, she reluctantly saved her progress and launched a live broadcast.
The exact second her status flipped to online, a literal wall of text and frantic queries blotted out her screen:
"Guinaifen! How do the third-generation metrics look? Is the loop fun?" "How does the Contest system actually handle an execution? Is being a Coordinator worth the grind?" "What does the new regional legendary asset look like?!"
Every single comment boiled down to a single, burning question: Is the game good?
Guinaifen knew exactly how to manage an audience. She let out a long, heavy, and completely dramatic sigh, causing her viewers' hearts to sink instantly. Did the studio actually deliver a flop?
"Alas, my friends... I genuinely hate running a live stream right now," she pouted, leaning into her microphone. "Every single minute my hands spend managing this camera is a minute my avatar isn't exploring the Hoenn routes."
The chat instantly exploded:
"So it's an absolute masterpiece?!" "Wow, you're getting mischievous, sister! You almost gave me a heart attack." "Unsubscribed for a single second! My nerves can't handle that trick." "When is the open beta scheduled to drop? My Johto save file feels completely flat now." "To speak honestly, Arceus Studio's development velocity is terrifying. The second generation barely settled, and now the third is clearing the gates? A standard corporate firm takes entire years to compile an expansion of this scale."
"Listen to the parameters, family," Guinaifen laughed, raising her hands to stop the spam. "I've signed a strict non-disclosure covenant with the studio, so I can't reveal a single explicit visual coordinate or show you the raw balance sheets. But I can say this: Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are an absolute blast. It is super, super fun."
"Especially the Coordinator Contest Mode. For anyone who hates dealing with sweaty combat brackets but loves expressing their personal style and showcasing their team's charm, this feature is literal paradise."
"Everyone who watched the anime series understands the lore: standard battles are just one side of the coin; the core philosophy is about highlighting a companion's inner beauty. I don't know if Julian's team wrote a brand-new engine algorithm or if the baseline AI underwent another massive upgrade, but the real-time interaction with your Pokémon in this generation is incredibly strong. To put it simply, the visual execution of a Contest inside the game is ten times more magical than the show."
Finding her vocabulary slightly lacking to describe the full experience, she relied on simple, warm comparisons, keeping her reviews strictly anchored to concepts that had already cleared the anime broadcasts to avoid breaching her contract firewalls.
"Also, the new Underwater System is an absolute heaven for casual exploration players," she continued, her eyes shining as she recalled her sessions. "The deep-sea scenery is stunningly beautiful. The very first time my character dove into the trenches, if the oxygen timer hadn't flashed a critical alert, I would have stayed down there forever."
"The ocean isn't a vast, empty blue sheet like the previous two versions anymore. The design teams have populated the tides with an incredible variety of marine life and wild Water-types. If your legacy save file manages to anchor a connection with Lugia, the deep-sea navigation feels unbelievable. It's a shame data transfer is locked during the beta."
Though Guinaifen meticulously withheld any raw gameplay footage or explicit script leaks, the sheer, unvarnished excitement bouncing off her voice was more than enough to ignite her chat. The update boards on the official website were completely flooded within hours, millions of eager players demanding that Julian's studio open the gates and release the third generation immediately.
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