"I knew there would be an official competition after the Contest feature launched! Call me a prophet!"
"First place prize money is a cool hundred million credits?! Even dropping down to eighth place guarantees a clean million. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm dropping everything to research advanced Contest routines right this second!"
"Don't day-dream, friend. Only eight contestants are being selected from the entire galaxy. Do you have any idea how massive the global player base is right now? Clearing the qualifiers is statistically less likely than winning an IPC lottery."
"Winning the lottery is pure luck, but this track relies entirely on creative strength! I sat out the Master Tournament since high-intensity combat isn't my style, but for a Contest that evaluates pure aesthetics, I am going to make my voice heard loud and clear."
"Wait, why was the Master Tournament's grand prize only ten million while the Contest gets a hundred million? This division of assets isn't fair!"
"The actual regional combat champions haven't even complained, yet the bystander upstairs is already getting anxious."
"I've spent months sharpening my team's type coverage for the next Master Tournament, but visual flair has always been my fatal weakness. Staring at that hundred million credit prize pool is making my stomach turn..."
"Our beloved Robin is confirmed as a central judge for the Universe Grandeur Celebration. I am incredibly curious to find out who the studio is signing for the remaining four seats."
"If there's no physical venue for an offline bracket, how are they going to manage the live broadcast feeds for the audience? A small local crowd lacks the grand atmosphere needed for a celebration, but establishing stable, live network coverage across multiple star-systems means the bandwidth costs will be astronomically higher than just renting a planet stadium!"
The launch of a tournament involving every single player across the known universe naturally triggered an unprecedented storm. The moment the announcement cleared the studio's data ports, it caused an absolute sensation. The official comment section violently shattered its baseline metrics, exceeding ten million unique hits within seconds, and crossing a staggering hundred million lines of engagement just a minute later.
Seasoned creators and media professionals understood the math perfectly: for a cosmic tournament of this scale, backed by such a gargantuan player population, the prize pool was merely a side dish.
Anyone exceptional enough to fight their way into the top eight of the Universe Grandeur Celebration would have their face displayed before billions of active consumers across the galaxy. The moment their routine aired, they would be set for life. Whether they chose to host strategy streams, produce breakdown videos, or secure corporate product sponsorships, the incoming wealth and fan loyalty would be near-limitless.
One only had to look at the veterans of the previous Master Tournament. Even the players who placed in the bottom tier of the top thirty-two found immense success. The second they unlatched a personal live stream to demonstrate advanced combat micro-management or simply broadcasted casual matchmaking, fans flocked to their channels like an absolute tide.
The top four champions of that tournament were either naturally mysterious or carried unique social identities that made it inconvenient for them to operate as public figures. But outside that inner circle stood Guinaifen, a proud member of the Elite Four.
She had started her career as a rising local streamer, but after her spectacular run in the Master Tournament, her profile surged until she became the undisputed top content creator across all galactic platforms, holding a massive lead over her closest competitors.
Similarly, players like Lei Yue and Zhao Hu, who had left unforgettable impressions during their matches, were jokingly dubbed the official "Gym Leaders" of the Electric and Fighting-type Gyms by the community. The two happily leaned into the joke, establishing custom in-game servers where they accepted public challenges from netizens and offered personal coaching. The resulting wave of popularity they enjoyed was terrifying.
There was simply no alternative; opportunities to project one's identity across the entire universe were incredibly rare.
The planetary connection fees required to maintain live, uninterrupted cosmic internet links were traditionally exorbitant. Running a broadcast of that scale couldn't even be categorized as a strategic loss to gather public interest; it was a massive drain on corporate capital.
Because the financial parameters were so heavy, the Interstellar Peace Corporation rarely authorized such extravagance unless they were managing a critical system-wide emergency. Even the famous Interstellar Peace Broadcast was kept strictly to a legacy radio format to keep operational expenses manageable. The galaxy's beloved idol, Robin, had built her immense fame the traditional way—traveling tirelessly from world to world to deliver offline performances in person.
Currently, Arceus Studio was the only entity in the galaxy daring enough to spend that mountain of money on seamless, universe-wide networking.
Consequently, it wasn't just the core players shifting their focus to the tournament; celebrities, major internet personalities, and ambitious outsiders who dreamed of becoming household names overnight all locked their sights onto the bracket. With the massive success of the Master Tournament serving as a clear precedent, no one was willing to leave their name off the registry.
Discerning corporate brands recognized the shift instantly, flooding the studio's outreach channels to secure premium advertising slots.
Topaz was the first to strike. As a primary shareholder in the studio's expanded corporate line, she possessed early access to their internal development logs.
She immediately authorized a staggering one trillion credits from her personal department fund to purchase the absolute naming rights for the tournament, gifting the promotion to a high-end luxury clothing brand backed by the Strategic Investment Department. Following her lead, dozens of intersystem corporations forwarded their own partnership requests. By the time the registration window closed, the collected advertising fees alone had accumulated to over three trillion credits.
When Cai Xing transmitted the financial summary to Julian's terminal, the developer stood frozen in genuine surprise. He had fully prepared his studio to stream the entire eight-week broadcast at a significant financial loss, viewing the cost as a necessary investment to stabilize the public's mental parameters.
He never could have guessed that instead of bleeding capital, his studio was about to walk away with a monumental profit.
But after taking a quiet moment to review the economics, the logic clicked perfectly. While other wealthy syndicates had attempted large-scale cosmic streaming in the past, their productions rarely delivered a stable return on investment, frequently failing to capture the public's long-term attention. Even the Corporation's internal media branches struggled to maintain a consistent audience. Brands were naturally hesitant to risk massive advertising budgets on an unproven concept.
But with the Master Tournament standing as a historic triumph, Arceus Studio had already proven its capabilities and cemented a fanatical, multi-billion-person consumer base. The moment the news cleared the servers, the capitalists rushed in to secure their piece of the cake.
The opening week of the qualifiers was scheduled to go live in exactly seven days. The community strategy boards were already convinced that the first week offered the absolute highest probability of a successful run. Players figured that as the weeks progressed, the community would naturally study the judges' scoring habits and adjust their routines, causing the competitive pressure to skyrocket.
Driven by this theory, a colossal wave of players flooded the first week's registration queues, hoping to clear the path before the meta stabilized.
Thankfully, the tournament architecture required applicants to pass through a comprehensive automated screening system first. The algorithm would filter the ocean of submissions down to the top sixteen performers for each bracket, at which point the studio's internal panel would step in alongside the automated judges to deliver the final scores. Had Julian been forced to make his human staff manually grade every single entry from the opening turn, his entire operations team would have collapsed from sheer exhaustion.
To handle any potential community backlash regarding the automated scores, the studio implemented a brilliant, transparent solution: any highly controversial entries, along with the full routine videos of the sixteen approved players, would be posted directly to the official storefront for public evaluation. If eighty percent or more of the active player base voted that a rejected routine was equal to or greater than the verified top sixteen, that contestant would automatically be granted an extra slot in the live broadcast.
The Sovereign of Ruin
While his studio managed the tournament infrastructure, Julian spent his hours tucked away inside the space station's reinforced cells, dedicating his focus to mastering his new Destruction energy to manifest Yveltal.
After several days of intense, calculated practice, he had finally cleared the critical hurdle. He could now draw upon the dark current without triggering a violent internal riot, allowing the energy to flow smoothly in accordance with his thoughts.
However, when it came to managing the physical proportions of the creature, the sheer mass of the Destruction energy proved too vast to compress completely. No matter how tightly he focused his mind, the absolute smallest template he could manifest possessed a staggering twenty-meter wingspan, with its long, hand-like tail extending well over ten meters behind it.
While the creature remained an absolute giant, the structural dimensions of the Herta Space Station were grand enough to accommodate its presence comfortably. It simply lacked the clearance to step inside a standard laboratory room.
But Herta didn't care about the logistics at all. The exact second the titan materialized, she ordered her teams to move their heavy diagnostic instruments straight out into the open docking bay, initializing a comprehensive analysis of Yveltal's energy field.
"Magnificent... simply too perfect," Herta murmured, her eyes wide with scientific fascination as she scanned the cascading rows of data illuminating her screens. "I have never encountered a biological form that displays such a flawless, unblemished harmony with the Path of Destruction. If Nanook were to suddenly vanish from the cosmic balance sheet, I wouldn't harbor a single doubt that this entity would immediately inherit the vacant seat as the next Aeon."
"Isn't that description a bit too exaggerated?" Julian asked, scratching his neck as he stood beside her console.
He felt her evaluation was pushing past the boundaries of logic. No matter how terrifying Yveltal's native lore parameters were, it was fundamentally a creature that governed the natural cycle of mortality and decay; destruction and annihilation were simply its functional duties. When compared to an Aeon—an entity whose absolute existence transcended standard physics and philosophy—the dark dragon was still miles away from that cosmic threshold.
Besides, if they were evaluating pure compatibility with the current of ruin, shouldn't the elite generals of the Antimatter Legion, whose bodies had been manually rewritten by Nanook's own hands, register a higher affinity?
"Though the phrasing sounds theatrical, the mathematics don't lie," Herta countered, her fingers tapping the console to lock the data files. Her porcelain face turned back to look at him, her eyes sharp and dead serious. "Because the energy alignment clears our metrics with zero friction, the Yveltal you have manifested right here has already bypassed standard Pathstrider limits entirely."
She pointed toward the massive, crimson sovereign floating silently in the containment field. "In terms of raw output and environmental presence, this creature has officially cleared the threshold to stand as an authentic Emanator."
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