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A shrill sonic boom tore through the air, its piercing scream echoing through the forest with such force that Kael's ears rang in pain, leaving him deaf for a brief instant.
A streak of dazzling silver-white light plunged from the sky like a meteor.
Violent, fragmented air currents whipped across the clearing in chaotic bursts.
Grass seeds and shredded leaves were swept into the air under the howling gale.
In a single moment, the forest was overwhelmed by a terrifying display of raw force and crushing pressure.
Kael's small body was briefly lifted off the ground by the raging wind.
He paid no attention to the slicing pain tearing across his body like countless blades.
His full attention had already locked onto the sudden intruder before him.
Its silver-white hide reflected the sunlight with a blinding sheen, as though its body were covered in a strange, solid suit of armor. One look was enough to make anyone understand how formidable its defenses were.
Its wingspan stretched to nearly ten feet, imposing and deadly, with deep crimson metallic feathers that looked as though they had been soaked in blood. They gleamed in the air with murderous sharpness.
At flight speeds nearing two hundred miles per hour, those steel-like silver wings were the perfect tools for killing.
Skarmory.
A dual-type Steel/Flying bird Pokémon.
Though it had no evolution, its base stat total of 465, combined with its naturally gifted body, was more than enough to make it one of the forest's coldest and most efficient killers.
Kael's expression darkened.
His blue eyes were heavy with grim focus as he stared ahead.
There—
The Zigzagoon that had just charged at him, determined to fight to the death, had already become a cold corpse beneath Skarmory's razor-sharp steel talons.
Soft white particles of data drifted from its body like sand scattering in the wind.
Blood spraying.
Limbs twitching.
Before Pokémon: World had even launched, its developers had already announced that they intended to build an enormous ecosystem nearly indistinguishable from the real world.
That was an absurdly difficult goal.
A complete ecosystem required water, soil, climate, living organisms, and countless interdependent variables.
And that wasn't even touching the unique histories, cultures, and societies shaped by the coexistence of humans and Pokémon in each region.
Just the pure wilderness food chain alone was enough to defeat even top-tier game architects with decades of experience.
The reason Pokémon: World earned the title of a next-generation game wasn't just because of its neural virtual technology.
Its true miracle was the unprecedented realism of its ecosystem.
With the rapid advance of science, problems that had once loomed before the gaming industry like immovable mountains had finally begun to yield.
Artificial intelligence with computational power rivaling supercomputers.
Neural virtual devices representing the cutting edge of human innovation.
Those were the keys.
The former could translate the countless variables of real ecosystems into a functioning game world.
The latter provided the stable platform that allowed that computational power to truly operate.
Eight years.
Nearly three thousand days of tireless development.
And under the relentless work of more than a thousand developers at Nintedo, this masterpiece—one that fused reality and virtuality—had finally reached store shelves.
Although technological limits still left some rough edges and imperfect logic within the game, there was no question that Pokémon: World now stood at the very top of the industry.
And with the help of AI coordination, certain long-standing issues from older games had finally been resolved.
Or at least brought into balance.
One of those was what Skarmory had just displayed:
Hunting.
In truth, Pokémon as digital lifeforms in the game didn't actually need to eat.
Fully simulating the metabolism of every species would have multiplied development costs several times over.
But if they didn't hunger, then predators would stop hunting.
And if hunting stopped, prey populations would explode, and the entire food chain would collapse.
So after considering that, Nintedo had chosen a practical solution.
They manually implanted hunting behavior into the Pokémon database.
That way, they could avoid the massive production costs while still keeping the game world's ecosystem relatively stable.
A perfect compromise.
And when a Pokémon was "hunted," a portion of its data stream would split off at death and flow into the predator, granting it a slight enhancement.
A form of metabolism simulated entirely through data.
What Skarmory had just done to Zigzagoon was clearly one example of that process.
But Zigzagoon wasn't its only target.
Kael stared at the Skarmory before him, every muscle in his body taut.
He didn't dare move.
Because he could feel it clearly.
The cold air around them was thick with killing intent.
Within that crushing atmosphere, it felt as though countless invisible blades were already pointed straight at him.
If he showed even the slightest intention of fleeing, the next thing waiting for him would likely be the agony of death.
What do I do?
Kael's mind raced.
But no matter how hard he thought, he couldn't come up with a solution.
The gap in power between them was too wide.
Every possible move felt weak.
Pointless.
And yet—
He wasn't panicking.
On the contrary, a strange smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"How long has it been…"
"How long since I last felt this?"
That sensation of walking on the edge of a blade.
Of teetering over a bottomless abyss where one wrong move meant death.
The helplessness of inhabiting a weak, newly reborn body.
The tension of living at the very bottom of the food chain, where danger lurked everywhere.
Ever since his life as Machop, he hadn't felt this kind of raw, overwhelming thrill.
Whether it had been the Zigzagoon before, or the Skarmory now—
Both had brought him face to face with true mortal danger.
And strangely enough…
It excited him.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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For early access to advanced chapters on P-atreon:
P-atreon/iamxeno
(Just remove the - hyphen to access normally)
Thank you so much for your support and for reading!