Kairos followed the Ghost World member toward the faction's border.
The scenery along the way was even bleaker than what he'd seen in the passage earlier.
Despite being closer to the outer perimeter, the suffocating sense of pressure hadn't let up at all. The fog was thicker than before, visibility dropping to barely a dozen meters in any direction.
Dark shapes kept cutting through the mist, trailing piercing shrieks as they hurled themselves at the trainers holding the defensive line. The fighting here was clearly getting worse.
The Ghost-type Pokémon just kept coming. They didn't seem to care about losses, throwing themselves in wave after suicidal wave against the defenders. The trainers on the line, for their part, had mostly been pushed to their absolute limits.
Every face looked hollowed out with exhaustion. Even during brief breaks, nobody let their guard down. They kept their Poké Balls clutched tight at all times, like they expected a ghost to claw up through the ground at any second.
That kind of relentless mental grind was worse than any physical beating.
As he walked, Kairos took in his surroundings without making it obvious and struck up what passed for casual conversation with his guide.
"Hey, I never actually asked about the Ghost World faction in detail. Besides Will, how many other Faction Masters do you have? And roughly what level are they?"
The member stumbled slightly, clearly not expecting the question. But he glanced back at Kairos's easy expression and answered straight.
"As for that, our Ghost World faction has three Faction Masters total. You've already met Lord Will, and he's unquestionably the strongest. The other two..."
He paused for a moment, as though sorting his thoughts.
"One is Lady Anla, the only female Faction Master. She runs cold, and her strength sits at the mid-tier Champion level. Her main partner is a Mimikyu, and her methods are... pretty brutal."
"The other is Lord Karis. Built like a wall, always wearing sunglasses. Also mid-tier Champion level, and he commands an incredibly powerful Darkrai. Solid on both offense and defense, though he's still a step behind Lord Will."
Kairos gave a small nod.
Two mid-tier Champions and one high-tier Champion.
That was actually a serious lineup.
In any region, a single Champion-level trainer was considered the absolute ceiling of power. The Ghost World faction had produced three of them at once.
And yet, even with that, they were still being ground down by this ghost uprising.
That said a lot. Raw individual power from the top wasn't enough to plug the gap anymore. Whether it was the sheer volume of Ghost Pokémon or the concentrated strength at the heart of the disturbance, elite fighters alone couldn't turn the tide.
The only real option was to mobilize every available trainer and make up that enormous shortfall in numbers.
With that thought still turning over in his head, he tossed out another casual question.
"One more thing. Is the Ghost World faction short on people?"
The guide's step faltered noticeably. The man turned around with a blank look, like he couldn't understand why anyone would bother asking something so obviously self-evident right now.
Still, he gave an honest answer.
"Short? Desperately."
He let out a long sigh, voice heavy with resignation.
"Honestly, this is a mess of our own making. For a long time, our faction was way too exclusionary. Plenty of elite trainers tried to join and got turned away at the door, so our numbers never grew. Now that we're actually in a crisis, we just don't have the bodies."
"We've been trying to recruit recently, but the results have been pretty bad. The people willing to come in aren't up to the standard, and they can't handle the kind of environment the Ghost World demands.
At the root of it, the Ghost World has been getting more chaotic, resources are drying up, and the benefits we can offer have taken a real hit."
He caught himself there, seeming to realize he'd said more than he probably should have. Some of this was internal. But then again, the person walking next to him was someone even Lord Will treated with clear respect. He wasn't exactly an outsider. A little more openness wasn't going to hurt.
Kairos listened and nodded slowly.
Exclusivity, resource drain, shrinking benefits, declining recruit quality.
A textbook death spiral. If nothing broke the cycle, the Ghost World faction would eventually just be worn down and swallowed by the endless tide of ghost Pokémon.
"Thanks."
Kairos stopped walking and said it simply.
Before the guide could react, Kairos swept his hand through the air in a light motion. A talisman glowing with a soft violet light materialized out of nothing and was held out toward him.
"Small thank-you, for showing me the way."
The man took it by reflex. Then he looked at it and completely froze.
The energy pulsing through the talisman was so pure, so dense, that the pressure rolling off it was enough to make a person's very soul shake. Nothing in the range of ordinary resources could come close to this.
This was the kind of top-tier item that could only be found in the most dangerous depths of the Ghost World, the kind that would sell for a fortune on the open market with buyers lining up and no sellers to be found. His hands trembled faintly as he held it, overwhelmed by the terrifying Ghost-type energy contained within, too lit up with excitement to string together a proper sentence.
"This... this is way too much! I... I can't take this!"
His words said one thing. The hands locked around the talisman with no intention of letting go said something else entirely.
Kairos waved it off, signaling there was no need for ceremony, and kept walking.
The guide had no choice but to bow several times over, offering repeated thanks, before carefully tucking the talisman into the innermost pocket of his jacket. The grin on his face refused to go away.
The two of them talked as they walked, and before long they reached the border of the Ghost World.
A massive portal stood there, radiating a calm white light. It was the only passage back to the real world, the same one Kairos had entered through.
Just as they were about to approach, two fully armed guards stepped out and blocked their path.
"Halt!"
One of them barked sharply, eyes narrowing with clear suspicion.
"We're in a wartime state. Entry and exit are strictly prohibited without authorization. Passes out, and state your reason for leaving."
The Ghost World member's expression hardened. Without a word, he reached into his jacket and produced a specially issued identification card, holding it up in front of the two guards.
Will's personal emblem was stamped prominently across it.
The two guards, who'd been bristling with authority a moment before, went completely still the instant they saw it.
The color drained from their faces almost immediately. They lowered their heads and stepped aside without another word.
The guide put the card away and turned to Kairos with an explanatory tone.
"Sorry about that. Things in the Ghost World have gotten bad enough that a lot of people are trying to desert and run, and fewer and fewer are coming in to help. Orders from the top are to scrutinize anyone trying to leave. That's why they reacted that way. Hope you understand."
Kairos gave a calm nod. He did.
In times like these, tight enforcement was a necessity. Without that checkpoint, there'd probably be nobody left willing to stay and fight.
He walked to the edge of the portal and felt the familiar energy signature pulsing from within, then stopped.
He turned his head slightly and glanced at his shoulder.
It was empty now, but Marshadow had been perched there the whole time.
"Do you want to come out with me?"
Kairos asked inwardly.
The shadow stirred. Marshadow glanced at the white-glowing portal, then looked back at the fog-shrouded Ghost World behind them. It hesitated for a moment before finally shaking its head.
"Nah, I'll pass."
Marshadow scratched its head and muttered.
"I'll keep an eye on things here. Feels safer. Besides... that guy's out here handling everything alone. He's probably running on empty. I'll stick around and help."
The "that guy" it was referring to was, of course, Will.
For all the sniping remarks it had been throwing his way just moments ago, when it actually mattered, it was clear Marshadow genuinely cared about him.
Kairos heard it out and didn't try to talk it out of staying.
Given the situation, staying here was genuinely more useful than heading out. And with Marshadow nearby, if something went seriously wrong on Will's end, he'd hear about it right away.
"Alright. Take care of yourself."
Kairos gave a brief nod, then stepped forward into the light of the portal.
His silhouette blurred and gradually dissolved until it was gone entirely, swallowed by the border of the Ghost World.
The moment he stepped through, a heavy wave of dizziness hit him, and the ground beneath his feet seemed to shift. But having gone through it once already, it didn't rattle him much this time. He steadied himself, and within moments he'd adjusted to the disorientation that came with spatial transit.
A few minutes later, Kairos stepped out of the transport hall and looked up to find the world had changed.
The sky, which should have been bright, was darker and heavier than when he'd first entered the Ghost World.
Thick, oppressive storm clouds pressed down over the entire city, carrying a weight that made the air feel almost difficult to breathe.
Then again, that made sense.
If things on the Ghost World side had already deteriorated that far, it would be strange if the real world showed no reaction at all.
There was clearly some kind of connection between the two. A ghost uprising on that scale was almost guaranteed to produce ripple effects like this. And if the legendary Giratina actually managed to break through its seal, a darkening sky would be the least of anyone's problems. If that creature escaped from the Ghost World...
Kairos shook his head and clicked his tongue softly.
This Pokémon world was a lot less safe than he'd originally figured.
Not that sitting around thinking about it would help anything.
The immediate priority was to stay focused and deal with the problem in front of him, to handle the looming catastrophe before the seal gave out entirely.
Kairos scanned his surroundings and made no move toward home.
Time was the critical factor.
He did a quick circuit of the streets of Goldenrod City and spotted a private internet café that looked reasonably low-key. He paid for a private room at the front desk and headed straight inside.
Once the machine booted up, the system loaded onto the terminal as well.
He got to work immediately, rapidly building out the game's framework inside the system.
With the system's help, the process moved fast.
The basic framework came together in short order, and a fresh game prototype appeared on the screen.
But that was only the start. The real work was everything that still had to fill it: model textures, plot scripts, all the painstaking detail work that would take serious time even with the system lending a hand.
Not that he planned to carry all of it himself.
That's exactly what the crew at Dream Factory was there for.
Those developers had already proven through their actual work that they knew what they were doing. There were enough of them that as long as he provided the core framework, handing the content work over to them would get everything done as fast as possible.
But there was still one critical problem blocking his path.
To pull off what he had in mind for this game, the framework alone wasn't going to cut it. He needed two specific modules to accurately replicate the Ghost World's conditions inside the game.
The first was:
"Special Advanced Module: 'Region Form, Conceptual Expansion Pack'"
One of its functions read:
"Terrain Scan and Replication: You may use this module to scan all areas of your current world, learn all terrain types and special zones belonging to this world, and automatically generate game content replicating them into the game, or view them as a map."
But that alone still wasn't enough.
The module could scan terrain, but it seemed to give only a simple red dot marker for infected Ghost Pokémon. That was nowhere near enough information. Players needed to know the specific location, strength level, and movement patterns of each Ghost Pokémon. A single red dot wasn't going to cut it.
He pulled up his personal panel and checked his current emotion point balance.
Even though he'd been running nonstop these past few days, his point accumulation hadn't slowed down at all.
The massive player base on the Second World side was generating a steady stream of emotion points every day, and combined with what he'd already stockpiled, the total was substantial.
Seventy-five thousand points.
That was a serious number by any measure.
With that many points, buying several mid-tier modules wouldn't even make a dent, and even the moderately priced high-tier modules were well within reach.
Since resources weren't the issue, the path forward was obvious.
Kairos was just about to search the shop for a relevant auxiliary module when the system's notification chime went off.
"Detected that the host currently possesses the 'Region Form: Conceptual Expansion Pack.' Upgrade conditions have been met."
"Would you like to expend twenty thousand points to upgrade it to 'Advanced Special Module+'?"
An upgrade?
Twenty thousand points was a bit steep, but it was within an acceptable range.
"Go ahead."
A clear chime rang out, and twenty thousand points vanished in an instant.
A moment later, a notification confirming the successful upgrade popped up.
The display in front of him shifted dramatically. The Ghost World map, which had still looked somewhat hazy before, underwent a sweeping transformation.
The map sharpened significantly. Terrain outlines that had previously only shown in rough form were now rendered in full three dimensions with precise detail.
Zoomed in, you could even make out the twisted trees and jagged ravines scattered throughout the Ghost World.
But that wasn't the biggest change.
The biggest change was this: across the newly detailed terrain, countless colored dots were now spread in dense clusters. Red dots marked Ghost Pokémon. Green dots marked human trainers.
Every single dot was pinned clearly on the map.
Kairos tapped one of the red dots, and a line of detailed data appeared immediately.
"Gengar, 'Mid-tier Gym Leader Level', located in Outer Ghost World Zone B3. Current status: Berserk, advancing toward the defensive line."
"Ability: Shadow Tag. During battle, the opponent finds it extremely difficult to flee. Specific effectiveness scales with the difference in strength."
"Held Item: None."
"Known Moves: Shadow Ball, Will-O-Wisp, Foul Play..."
He looked it over, then tapped a green dot.
"Alliance Trainer: Ann. Located in Outer Ghost World Zone A2. Strength level: High-tier Elite Four."
"Current status: Pokémon critically injured. Personal stamina severely depleted."
Kairos's eyebrows shot up.
Now that was exactly what he needed.
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~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones