Time quietly passed by, and as evening approached, in a villa in Cerulean City in the Kanto region.
Kairos pushed open the kitchen door, and a delicious aroma immediately wafted out along with thick smoke. He had finished preparing today's dinner.
As soon as he opened the door, he saw the figure that appeared before him, burning with gentle flames - it was Chandelure.
Ever since advancing to Elite Four level, the aura emanating from it had grown stronger day by day, as if the power of the Rare Candy was still having lingering effects.
Thinking about this, he even had a premonition that if things continued like this, combined with the knowledge and supplements from the Pokéblocks he provided daily, Chandelure might even automatically advance to Champion level someday.
Kairos suddenly snapped back to his senses. Since he was so wealthy, and Chandelure seemed to have no objection to getting stronger, naturally reaching Champion level or even higher would be great.
As the saying goes, if you want to get stronger, you either work hard or spend money, and right now, after selling so many copies of his game, what he lacked least was money.
He might as well see if he could spend money to buy more Ghost-type resources for Chandelure to use.
Well, if possible, he could also buy some for Gengar while he's at it. After all, it was technically his employee now, so giving some employee benefits would be quite reasonable.
With this thought, Kairos smiled and nodded at Chandelure.
"Out playing again?"
"Chan—"
Chandelure swayed its body, its lamp fixtures colliding with clear ringing sounds, and nodded, confirming Kairos's question.
"I haven't seen you around much lately. I figured you were out playing. Oh, remember not to scare people."
Kairos couldn't help but remind it with a warning.
Chandelure was now an Elite Four-level Pokémon. If such a being appeared in the city and was discovered by others, it would probably immediately cause a sensation and panic.
Although Chandelure's personality would definitely never harm humans, it would undoubtedly bring him quite a bit of trouble.
Strictly speaking, when Pokémon reach this level of strength, according to this world's League official regulations, they must be registered with the League authorities.
But his current identity was quite special - he could be considered a League ghost [someone with no official records]. According to the system, no one in the world could search for his identity information, so naturally there was no possibility of registration.
Consequently, both Chandelure and Gengar were also ghosts in the system.
But since they usually lived in the villa anyway, being ghosts in the system was fine.
After reminding Chandelure, Kairos placed the dinner he had prepared on the dining table, while also contemplating his game development progress for the day.
After handing those complicated trivial matters over to Gengar, his production efficiency had made another leap forward. In just today's time, he had successfully created all the geographical content of the island where the Psychic-type gym was located, as well as the terrain of the Shoal Cave above it.
Besides that, he had even created a preliminary version of the epic battle between Rayquaza, Groudon, and Kyogre according to his ideas.
Although there were still many places that needed polishing and modification, he should be able to create the finished product within the next two days.
He couldn't help but stretch, walking toward the study, planning to inspect Gengar's work results for the day.
After all, today was Gengar's first day making games. He had learned yesterday and started working today. Kairos had braced himself to clean up a mess, but the reality far exceeded his expectations. Gengar had fully met his mental benchmarks by creating the basic content for both Team Magma's base and Team Aqua's base.
Although the system deserved some credit, undoubtedly, Gengar had already shown its talent in this area.
"Not bad at all, keep it up. Being able to do this well on the first day, I'm starting to think I might not need to work anymore."
Kairos smiled and patted Gengar's shoulder, praising it, which earned him a proud snort from Gengar.
"This kind of simple stuff - how could this ghost possibly not figure it out?"
"Come on, as promised, your reward."
Kairos pointed toward the table and quickly walked out. Gengar followed behind him and immediately saw the huge bowl of braised pork ribs on the table.
Its eyes immediately lit up as it dove headfirst into the bowl.
Kairos then took out double portions of Pokéblocks from the cabinet and poured them into the bowl in front of Gengar according to their previous agreement. This guy's strength was clearly inferior to Chandelure's, but the amount of food it ate daily far exceeded Chandelure's.
This guy was definitely inefficient with energy usage - if you ranked it by power consumption, it would definitely be a five-star energy waster.
Amid Gengar's voracious eating sounds, Kairos also sat at the table and began eating dinner.
At the same time, he started thinking about another matter. Today, while making the game, he had tried to open the game system to create "Dark Phantom," but was told by the system that he needed to complete at least the first playthrough content of Pokémon Emerald before he could create other games.
The first playthrough content of Pokémon Emerald referred to the protagonist completing the three legendary Pokémon battle, then defeating the last gym, and successfully challenging the League through Victory Road to become Champion. The level requirements for players weren't high, and from the perspective of the overall first playthrough process, only less than a third of the content remained.
So Kairos wasn't in a rush. Since there were such restrictions, he'd finish the game at hand first.
After all, as long as he finished it, he could develop new games - there was no requirement that players had to complete it.
He was already somewhat impatient to use virtual reality technology to create "Dark Phantom."
He picked up a piece of pork rib and put it in his mouth, glancing at the time on his phone. There was still a week before the New Game Festival settlement, and he was undoubtedly in first place.
However, what puzzled him was that Dream Factory's new work still hadn't shown any movement even today, which was considerably later than the release time he had predicted.
But calculating the time, it should probably happen in the next couple of days.
Just as Kairos was pondering, a line of deep red notification suddenly popped up before his eyes.
[Ding! Please note, host, this cycle's shock point settlement has begun!]
[You have gained a total of 3,100 shock points from various livestream audiences and regular game players!]
[You have gained 700 shock points from special character: Red!]
Looking at the notification before him, Kairos couldn't help but freeze.
Red? This big shot came to play Emerald too?
While Kairos was surprised, the system notifications before his eyes continued to refresh constantly.
Besides Red just now, there was subsequently a long string of Elite Four and Champion names all providing him with emotion points. There were Elite Four members he was familiar with like Lorelei and Lance, as well as several Elite Four members from other regions whose names he didn't even remember.
There weren't any Champions, mostly Elite Four members, but the quantity was quite substantial - more than a dozen people.
Seeing this, Kairos understood what was happening. His game had finally spread within the upper circles of these trainers, which was also a good sign.
However, he clearly knew there was probably only one reason for this - Cynthia and Lance had told others about the game's reward system.
According to Kairos's understanding, the current situation in this world wasn't particularly good. The Ghost World alone was already giving the League quite a headache.
Although with the power of those top trainers, they should ultimately be able to solve the Ghost World uprising problem, besides the Ghost World, several dark organization forces lurking in the shadows were also quite powerful and watching hungrily.
Once something went seriously wrong at this critical juncture, the entire world would probably explode like a spark igniting an oil barrel.
And Cynthia was probably anxious to improve the strength of these Elite Four and Champions because of this, which was why she shared the game.
Otherwise, there was no way to explain why so many Elite Four members were playing Emerald simultaneously. The game's appeal alone probably wouldn't mean much to these Elite Four and Champions.
But clearly, judging from the shock point values he had currently obtained, when they were attracted into the game by Cynthia's words, they were still amazed by Pokémon Emerald itself and unconsciously began delving deeper into this game.
Kairos's gaze lingered on the final golden notification before him.
[Ding! Congratulations host, you have gained a total of 8,700 emotion points from special characters this cycle!]
[Combined with the points generated by your gameplay videos spreading online, your total emotion point income for this cycle is 14,300 points!]
14,300 points! Looking at this number, Kairos couldn't help but put down his bowl and take a deep breath.
He had to admit, this kind of one-time large income felt great, but the bulk of this came from these Elite Four members who had just encountered the game. As newcomers just starting to play this game, the emotion points they provided for the first time would be greatly increased, then gradually decrease as time went on.
But as long as he could successfully unlock their emotion thresholds, he could restore their emotion point production efficiency back to what it was now.
But speaking of emotion thresholds, Kairos suddenly realized a problem.
After he had sent both the Mega Evolution gift box and Rare Candy as rewards to Cynthia, she should have gotten the Mega Stone long ago.
Even so, her emotion threshold still hadn't broken through? She wouldn't have been afraid to eat the Rare Candy and failed at Mega Evolution, would she?
That shouldn't be right? If that were the case, how could she possibly notify these Elite Four and Champions to come play the game?
The more Kairos thought about it, the more he felt his speculation was correct. Then the only explanation for why Cynthia couldn't complete her threshold breakthrough should be what the system said - it had to be the right medicine for the condition. Even the shock that Mega Evolution brought her wouldn't work.
As for Cynthia, after seeing that battle between the three legendary Pokémon, she should be able to smoothly complete her threshold breakthrough, right?
After all, for Cynthia herself, the Pokémon from myths and legends were what could most shock her. Both her first and second threshold breakthroughs were related to legendary Pokémon.
Kairos's heart couldn't help but fill with anticipation. Judging from Cynthia's current game progress, witnessing the battle between the three legendary Pokémon probably wouldn't be long now.
He hadn't forgotten that as long as her emotion threshold broke through, he would gain a special ability related to Cynthia.
To be honest, Kairos was quite curious about what kind of ability related to Cynthia would be like.
It couldn't be related to legendary Pokémon, could it?
Just as Kairos was pondering, the notification before his eyes instantly disappeared, and a completely new notification suddenly appeared. This time it came with celebratory trumpet sound effects, representing the completion of some mission.
[Ding! Detected that your game sales have reached 300,000 copies!]
[Congratulations! You have completed S-rank side mission - Sales King!]
[Mission requirement: Within 15 days, achieve 300,000 sales for any game you create!]
[Mission reward: A-rank Special Item Box x1, Invitation Card x1, 2,000 shock points]
Looking at the notification that refreshed before him, Kairos instinctively opened his phone and switched to the game's sales backend, finding that indeed, the game's sales had just reached exactly 300,000, and in just this brief moment, sales had increased by another 2,000 or so.
Keep in mind this wasn't a weekend - this sales speed was clearly quite explosive.
It seemed that whether it was his livestreaming, the paid promotional campaigns from before, or the traffic brought by Emerald's recent popularity, they had all significantly increased this game's sales.
However, regarding this number of 300,000, Kairos was already somewhat numb. Compared to his ultimate goal, this was certainly far from enough.
Although the population of this world couldn't compare to his previous world, there were definitely still 100 million people. 300,000 sales really wasn't much.
Forget about other things - right now he should first claim this mission's rewards.
The next moment, as Kairos focused his thoughts, three familiar golden orbs appeared directly before his eyes.
The first orb naturally represented the 2,000 shock point reward.
But honestly, after experiencing that recent harvest, Kairos was starting to look down on this amount of points.
As for that A-rank Special Item Box, Kairos also skipped right over it. His gaze fell directly on the final orb.
System Special Item - Invitation Card! This was the key to this mission's rewards!
He took a deep breath, reached out a hand, and touched that golden orb.
Amid countless flowing lights, a small card instantly appeared in Kairos's hand!