The Supreme Chief's private office occupied the absolute apex of the World League headquarters, spanning an entire dedicated top floor. A colossal, custom-engineered marine biosphere tank dominated the center of the room, inside of which dozens of rare Water-type Pokémon drifted in a synchronized, fluid ballet.
A magnificent Milotic parted its elegant jaws, projecting a hauntingly beautiful, resonant melody across the glass, while an Altaria perched nearby pitched its throat to provide a seamless, harmonic accompaniment.
Julie formally escorted Feng Che and Sabrina across the plush carpet, positioning them before Chief Sky's expansive mahogany desk as she quietly served them hot porcelain cups of tea.
"Feng Che, Sabrina... considering the monumental strategic contributions you have both rendered on behalf of the World League during this deployment," Chief Sky began, his expression hardening with an intense, authoritative gravity, "I have decided to formally present you both with an executive opportunity to claim an Elite Four seat."
"The prerequisites demand that you challenge and successfully defeat four active regional Elites in a continuous showcase circuit. Once you secure those victories, you will be permanently reassigned to overseas jurisdictions to serve as their governing Elite Four pillars."
"However, I must be direct—the regions currently slated for these reassignments are exceptionally volatile, fractured, and thick with political and material danger. I require you both to weigh this reality with absolute gravity before committing."
"Chief Sky, my resolve is absolute," Feng Che replied immediately, his eyes burning with an unyielding, serious focus. "The sharpest blades are forged in the hottest fires, and the rarest blossoms only endure the bitterest frosts. If a trainer refuses to brave the tempest, how can he ever expect to command the rainbow? Please, ensure you assign the most grueling, high-attrition duties directly to our itinerary."
"He speaks the truth, Chief Sky," Sabrina chimed in smoothly, her tone cool and unwavering. "Please, leave the vanguard to us."
"Superb! Splendid! Splendid!" Chief Sky let out a rare, resonant laugh, slapping his palm against the mahogany finish. "It seems my initial assessments of your character were entirely flawless. I shall personally authorize the scheduling for your promotion circuit immediately."
"Furthermore, consider this a personal endowment from my private archives. Your performances on the island were exemplary, and these logs contain the sum of my life's analytical insights regarding tactical cultivation."
"One details the core methodologies for tempering advanced Dragon-types, while the other addresses the cognitive synchronization parameters for high-level Psychic-types. Take one each."
Chief Sky extracted two heavy, leather-bound journals from his central drawer, sliding them across the desk toward the young pair.
Feng Che flipped open the heavy vellum cover of his copy, his eyes immediately catching a series of razor-sharp, silver-inked calligraphy strokes summarizing the ultimate parameters of Dragon Command.
"I will push through the scheduling for your circuit as quickly as the bureaucracy allows," Chief Sky added, his tone turning measured. "However, you must remember that I do not command absolute dominion over the World League's central council. The political factions opposing my office will ensure the baseline difficulty of your proctors is set to an absolute, punishing maximum. Steel your minds for a brutal sequence of matches."
"But rest assured—even if an unforeseen variable compromises this specific circuit, I will systematically engineer a secondary legislative window to secure your reassignments to those outer regions regardless."
The Unbroken Link
Once Feng Che and Sabrina stepped through the heavy office doors and out into the sweeping, panoramic glass corridor, Sabrina's gaze softened significantly, her large eyes fixed on the young man beside her with a rare, quiet tenderness.
"Sabrina, the moment this promotional circuit concludes and our seats are locked in, we are making our relationship entirely public," Feng Che said, his voice laced with a thick, unvarnished affection. "I cannot wait to formally declare to the entire world that you are my girlfriend."
"Hmph... you smooth-talking, ridiculous man," Sabrina whispered, her cheeks flushing a delicate shade of pink.
Yet, despite her sharp words, she reached out, sliding her slender fingers into his palm until their hands were tightly interwoven, their fingers locking together in an unbroken, synchronized grip.
"Let's head straight down to the central treasury sub-vault," Feng Che suggested, gently squeezing her hand. "We should claim our Legendary-grade catalysts before the council attempts to tie them up in administrative red tape."
"Alright," Sabrina nodded softly.
With a subtle surge of her internal psychic core, a bright flash of violet energy enveloped them both, instantly triggering a short-range Teleport that vanished them from the corridor.
The Keep of Legends
The spatial rift opened smoothly inside the high-security perimeter of the World League's primary resource vault. As they rematerialized, they immediately crossed paths with Steven Stone, who was just walking out of the verification sector, a pristine, armored security brief clipped to his wrist. Given his deep, unyielding obsession with heavy geology, Feng Che knew without asking that the Hoenn Champion had selected an exceptionally rare, legendary-grade Steel or Rock-type mineral catalyst to fuel his Metagross.
After exchanging a casual, respectful nod of greeting with Steven, the pair strode deeper into the subterranean vault.
The sentinel assigned to guard the central treasury was a magnificent, exceptionally ancient Slowking.
The bipedal, majestic creature stood perfectly upright, a heavy, cream-and-orange striped collar wrapping around its neck like a sovereign ruff. The massive Shellder crowning its head peered backward with a singular, unblinking compound eye, its reverse shell encrusted with a deep, blood-red gemstone that thrummed with raw mental friction.
At that moment, the Slowking was resting casually in a reinforced executive chair, one webbed hand propping up its chin while it lazily sipped a chilled, glowing berry tonic through a straw.
As its consciousness expanded to scan the new arrivals, its psychic sensors immediately registered that both Feng Che and Sabrina possessed exceptionally dense, high-frequency internal cores. Recognizing them as elite human Psychics, the creature's ancient demeanor shifted, a distinct ripple of professional respect and affinity coloring its mental signature.
"Greetings, young masters. I am the presiding guardian of this central repository," Slowking's resonant telepathic voice vibrated directly within their minds, its frequency indicating a baseline power sitting at the absolute apex of the Champion rank. "You may address me as Slowking."
"A pleasure to meet you, Master Slowking," Feng Che replied, offering a measured bow as he extracted three silver authorization cards from his spatial ring. "We have come to claim our allocations. These are our verified Legendary-grade resource tokens."
"Ah, you are Feng Che—the individual who claimed the absolute top spot on the camp leaderboard. Exceptional pedigree," Slowking noted, its eyes crinkling with amusement.
"Our central repository currently houses exactly 153 separate Legendary-grade assets. Protocol permits me to deliver a comprehensive, itemized breakdown of every single artifact to you textually. However, a manual recitation would exhaust several hours of our time. If you permit it, I can simply utilize my mental core to compress the raw data-profiles of all 153 assets and inject them directly into your cognitive matrices as a unified memory strand."
"Haha, I appreciate the generous offer, Master Slowking, but I must respectfully decline," Feng Che laughed softly. "If I am forced to process the exact metrics of 153 separate legendary treasures, my mind will spend every waking hour obsessing over what I couldn't take. The temptation would be far too loud."
"Instead, perhaps you could filter the selection for us based on our specific cultivation paths? My partner requires a premium, high-purity Psychic-type catalyst. As for myself, my current roster consists of some exceptionally ravenous Dragon-types—specifically my Deino and Dreepy lines—so I require top-tier Dragon-type resources to sustain their growth."
"Psychic catalysts... I have precisely four assets that satisfy that baseline threshold," Slowking explained, scratching the back of its Shellder crown thoughtfully.
"A pristine Soul Dew fragment; a raw Z-Ring Spark harvested from the primary aura of the Radiant One, Ultra Necrozma; a compressed Psychic Core left behind by a Dusk Mane manifestation; and a matching Lunar Core recovered from a Dawn Wings manifestation. Only these four."
"Sabrina, select the Radiant Spark from Necrozma," Feng Che instructed calmly, his voice steady. Ultra Necrozma was arguably one of the most terrifyingly high-order deities in the cosmos; any catalyst directly tied to its sovereign light would possess an incomparable baseline purity.
"Haha! You two have successfully picked clean the absolute crown jewel of my Psychic collection on your very first guess," Slowking chuckled deeply, its telepathy radiating genuine warmth. "I was actually preparing to secretly guide your intuition toward that exact choice."
Unown H & The Core Shells
Slowking executed a flawless Ally Switch, warping space to materialize a heavily shielded, reinforced obsidian case directly into its hands.
The moment the latches clicked open and the lid parted to reveal the glowing Necrozma Spark, a violent, primordial frequency suddenly erupted from the core of the crystal. Feng Che's Aura flared instantly as a dark, geometric silhouette shot out of the light—a Primordial Unown shaped precisely like the letter H.
The ancient symbol hovered for a fraction of a second before dissolving into a mist of pure, raw psychic particles that surged forward, tunneling straight into Feng Che's mind.
BOOM!
His mental seas erupted as his internal psychic capacity expanded exponentially under the influx of the ancient script, his internal reservoirs multiplying until his baseline presence effectively mirrored that of a high-order, human-shaped Psychic Pokémon.
"And these are your allocations, Feng Che," Slowking continued, entirely unbothered by the metaphysical display as it slid three matching, silver-gray alloy cases across the iron counter.
Feng Che unlatched the containers one by one. Resting inside the custom velvet molds were three palm-sized, ancient dragon egg fragments.
One was completely encased in a layer of absolute, unmelting blue frost; the second radiated a fierce, roaring white heat that seemed to burn with a pure, colorless fire; and the third fragment strobed continuously with violent, pitch-black arcs of localized electricity.
These were the complete, preserved shell fragments of Unova's legendary trinity—Kyurem, Reshiram, and Zekrom—each fragment heavily saturated with the dragons' primordial comprehension of universal laws.
Feng Che closed the lids with meticulous care, sealing the priceless artifacts into the deepest sectors of his spatial ring.