Chapter 122: New Streaming Mission - Am I Playing Myself?

To understand the origin of this "Passerby" player, we need to rewind time to a day and night ago, right when Cynthia received that call from the archaeology team.

The midday sun carried warmth as it streamed through clean windows, casting golden light across the high-end oak dining table in the restaurant.

Kairos set down his chopsticks, the plate of braised pork ribs in front of him completely cleaned out.

When he first moved into the Cerulean Villa, Kairos had spent good money hiring a professional chef. Honestly, the food wasn't bad at all - after all, this was one of the world's top chefs.

But if he was being completely honest with himself, Kairos felt like his own cooking was probably a bit better...

He did have some real talent when it came to culinary skills.

If he didn't have this system, maybe opening a small restaurant would've been a decent way to make a living?

The thought flashed through his mind briefly. Kairos chuckled - but now that he had the system, he might as well focus on making games properly.

His gaze shifted to the other end of the dining table.

Chandelure's ethereal red flame body swayed gently, making soft sounds like a candle wick burning. A few wisps of pale red fire were carefully wrapping around a small piece of pork rib, slowly bringing it to its mouth.

Meanwhile, Gengar was a completely different scene - his purple head was practically buried entirely in the oversized food bowl specially made for him. His stubby claws gripped the bowl's edges as the thick, energy-rich food specially prepared for Ghost-type Pokémon disappeared at a visibly rapid pace.

Ever since these two Pokémon had tasted Kairos's cooking, they both strongly insisted on being called whenever he cooked, even if it meant eating fewer energy cubes.

Kairos could only nod and agree - eating some of his homemade food... counted as balanced nutrition, right?

"chande-lure!" Chandelure floated up lightly, circling around Kairos once. Its ethereal red flames flickered in a joyful rhythm, clearly conveying its intentions.

—I want to go out and play, the weather outside is nice.

Before Kairos could respond, a round face covered in purple goop suddenly popped up from the food bowl across the table.

Gengar rolled his trademark white eyes, his crimson pupils filled with disappointment, quietly grumbling in dissatisfaction: "Kekeke! Keke!"

(This guy! With such powerful strength! All he thinks about is playing! Conquest! Doesn't he understand the joy of world domination? No ambition at all!)

It complained while quickly burying its head back into the bowl.

As for me... I'm definitely not staying because this guy's cooking smells too good to leave...

This is called conserving energy! Yes, conserving energy!

As if to emphasize the legitimacy of this excuse, it stuffed another big mouthful of goop and pork ribs into its mouth, cheeks puffed up like two basketballs.

Watching Gengar like this, Kairos couldn't help but smile helplessly.

Fine, seeing how absorbed it was in eating, he'd save the discussion about teaching it game development for later.

That stuff was pretty complex even with system assistance - clearly not something that could be mastered overnight.

He stood up, gently stroking Chandelure's cool yet strangely warm flame crown: "Go ahead if you want to, just be careful."

The next moment, the ethereal blue flames jumped happily, and with a "chande" sound, it phased right through the wall and disappeared.

Kairos turned and headed back to his study, sitting down at the high-end, top-performance computer he'd recently bought.

The screen lit up, and Kairos skillfully logged into the game's backend management system.

A prominent number immediately caught his eye.

[Current Sales Volume: 116,402!]

This number made Kairos's eyes light up instantly. Not bad - in just one day, sales had increased by tens of thousands...

It seemed the promotional push was indeed working well.

He clicked on the New Game Festival's real-time rankings page. "Emerald" sat at the top of both the "Most Popular New Release" and "Total Sales" charts, with golden badges gleaming above the game's title.

"Perfect."

Kairos muttered to himself. Though he'd expected this, seeing his own creation top the charts still gave him a solid sense of achievement.

With a thought, the system's mission interface appeared before his eyes.

[Main Mission: Rookie Champion (S)]

[Mission Requirement: Successfully achieve first place in the "New Game Festival" with your created game]

[Mission Reward: 2,000 Emotion Points, Random Advanced Crafting Module x1, Special System Item Chest (A-rank) x1]

[Mission Description: Rumor has it there's a new game at the New Game Festival with explosive content - everyone who's played it is over the moon!]

This was the earliest main mission he'd received, and now the New Game Festival had less than two weeks left before the final rankings.

Kairos's eyes scanned the mission description as he pondered.

Pokémon Emerald had already crushed several major studio releases, and even second place was trailing by at least double the sales. Now the only real competition for the championship position was Dream Factory's new release.

Calculating the timeline, Dream Factory should be starting to promote their new game in the next couple days.

He wondered what kind of new game they could produce.

With this thought, Kairos's gaze moved down to another mission.

[Side Mission: Sales King (S-rank)]

[Mission Requirement: Within 15 days, achieve 300,000 sales for any game you've created! (Current Progress: 116,402/300,000)]

[Mission Reward: A-rank Special Item Chest x1, Invitation Card x1, 2,000 Shock Points]

This mission had plenty of time remaining - a full two weeks. At the current pace, 300,000 was easily achievable. If he could win the Star Game Festival championship, just that one day's traffic would probably add at least 500,000 sales to Pokémon Emerald...

Of course, that was Kairos's conservative estimate, so he wasn't too worried about completing this mission.

Speaking of which, he'd made so much money recently - might as well throw some more into promotion.

But in this mission's rewards, that gleaming golden Invitation Card was the real prize.

Kairos had already decided that the moment he got this item, he'd immediately use it to invite Mewtwo to play the game, thus determining Team Rocket's current situation.

So... had Mewtwo been created yet?

Thinking of this legendary Pokémon who'd left the deepest impression on him in childhood, Kairos felt anticipation rising in his heart.

Finally, his gaze settled on the bottom of the interface - a task box with a unique dark gold glow and more complex structure.

[Continuous Mission: Pocket Empire (SS-rank)]

[Stage Goal: Reach 100,000 registered users on the dedicated game forum "Pocket League." (Current Count: 25,600/100,000)]

[Current Hype Value: 1,100]

[Current Stage Reward: Random Intermediate Special Module x1, Random Advanced Pokémon Item x1, System Shop Gacha Function Unlocked]

[Ultimate Goal: Reach Total Hype Value of 1,000,000 (Current Progress: 1,100/1,000,000)]

Kairos leaned back in his chair, stretching his somewhat stiff neck.

The forum's user growth rate wasn't slow at all - from zero to over 25,000 in just one day. A player community centered around "Emerald" was organically forming and growing. The first stage mission should be completed soon.

Of course, it helped that he'd directly embedded the forum's address into the game itself.

But seriously, wasn't this ultimate goal requirement a bit too outrageous?

The game had already sold 100,000 copies, but the hype value had only reached one-thousandth of the total requirement?

Sheesh... this system had even bigger ambitions than his own.

At this point, Kairos shifted his thoughts, and the system interface vanished. He opened his browser and entered the address for that player-created forum that had been integrated into "Emerald."

As the page loaded, an atmosphere full of vitality yet clearly tinged with rookie enthusiasm hit him immediately.

The forum's homepage was no longer empty - it was now filled with colorful hot topic titles:

[Newbie SOS! Just left the starting town and got destroyed by some Youngster's Poochyena! What do I do? Online and waiting!]

[Mind blown! I found a different-colored Zigzagoon in Route 101 grass! Is this a bug? Picture attached!]

[Rational discussion: Torchic, Mudkip, or Treecko - which starter gives the smoothest opening?]

[Can someone please tell me which way the Petalburg Gym door faces? I've walked around three times and still can't get in!]

[Learn from my painful mistake! Always save before battles! Getting one-shotted by NPCs out of nowhere is torture...]

The posts were filled with the characteristic confusion, excitement, and frantic scrambling of newcomers encountering such a vast world and complex training/battle system for the first time.

Reading those familiar questions and slightly clumsy exploration sharing, Kairos's smile gradually deepened.

These words were like a mirror, reflecting his own experience when he first stepped into the wonderful world of Pokémon - that clumsy yet pure joy and amazement of starting from scratch.

Many of these players weren't even trainers in the real world, had never seen the outside world or visited other regions, and didn't know much about Pokémon.

In comparison, this game was like an entirely new world to them.

Just thinking about that feeling was pretty great.

It was precisely this unfamiliarity with Pokémon and gaming that made such exploration especially precious, and the fun more pure.

While Kairos was pondering, a new system message suddenly appeared before his eyes:

[Ding! Congratulations host, you've received a new side mission: "Streaming Advancement"!]

[Side Mission: Streaming Advancement! (S)]

[Mission Description: As an excellent content creator, diversifying is what you should achieve.]

[Mission Requirement: Your streaming room concurrent viewership exceeds 500,000!]

[Mission Reward: Mysterious S-rank Special System Item Chest x1, 5,000 Shock Points, Random Advanced Module x1!]

Kairos glanced at the system's new popup mission. This time it wanted him to push his streaming numbers above 500,000??

Speaking of which, he'd been so busy fine-tuning the later content of "Emerald" that he hadn't streamed in quite a while.

"Streaming it is then... I had an idea from last time anyway."

He muttered to himself.

Kairos casually opened the backend to see how far players had progressed.

When the data loaded, even Kairos was stunned - not a single player had cleared the Flying-type Gym, Fortree Gym, yet??

While it was normal for most players to still be fumbling around the early game, even the top players shouldn't have such slow progress, right?

"Is it really that hard?" Kairos was genuinely surprised.

He casually checked the progress leaderboard. First place was still that familiar name - Strawberry Ice Cream, which was Cynthia.

Even her current game progress was still stuck at the Weather Institute.

"Oh, she should be close then."

Seeing this situation actually put Kairos in a good mood. Since players were generally stuck before the Flying Gym, he didn't need to create new content today. After all, he'd been working overtime the past couple days and had already completed all the storyline content past Mt. Chimney - more than enough for them to play.

As for whether streaming would expose his identity... new viewers would probably just think he was a skilled streamer taking on a challenging new game. They'd never imagine he was the one who made it. Kairos wasn't worried.

Having made up his mind, he directly opened the streaming software and started his stream.

The screen still displayed his previous stream title - "Ranked Climbing on Battle Road F2P Style!" - that Dream Factory game.

Kairos had just placed his fingers on the keyboard, not even having changed the title yet, when the previously pitch-black streaming interface exploded like someone had thrown a bomb!

Viewer join notifications flashed by so fast they blurred together, and the sidebar text became a complete mess.

The online viewer count shot up like a rocket, starting from single digits and exploding upward. In less than ten seconds, it broke through 20,000 and kept climbing frantically!

Then the chat started refreshing, instantly flooding the entire screen:

[Holy crap??? The streamer's live?! Am I seeing things?!]

[Missing person returns!! My youth is back! What kind of sketchy tricks are we learning today?]

[Front row for photos! Streamer, are you playing Battle Road today? The title hasn't changed!]

[Streamer, streamer! Stop playing that trash game! Go play that Pokémon Emerald! The one that's #1 in the New Game Festival! It's insanely good! (dog head)]

[Yes yes yes! Strongly recommend Emerald! Streamer, you absolutely have to try it! Guaranteed fun!]

[Streamer, hurry up and play Emerald! Please! I've been waiting to watch you play this!]

[Hahaha, bros, stop pretending! Don't you just want to watch the streamer suffer in Emerald?]

Chat messages flooded the screen like crazy, and Kairos was momentarily stunned.

He remembered that when he streamed before, while his channel had good popularity, it was never this outrageous, right?

—What the heck was happening all of a sudden?

(End of Chapter)