Kairos had no idea that his incredibly evil laughter had just scared a certain "little one" in the room.
Speaking of which, since he was going to rely on streaming to earn emotion points, he naturally needed to go where the audience numbers were highest.
He opened his browser and clicked on the "Psyduck" streaming platform to register for a streamer account.
But when entering his identity information, he found himself stumped.
—No matter how he entered his personal details, the result was always a string of garbled text.
"Huh? A bug?"
Just as he was feeling confused, a system notification appeared before him:
[Ding! Please note that since the host's transmigration, the newbie protection function has been activated. The host's identity has been strictly protected—no one can investigate or obtain the host's information.]
[Remaining protection time: 4 days, 3 hours, 23 minutes]
[Renewing protection for one week costs 10 emotion points. The cost increases with each renewal.]
Looking at this information, Kairos suddenly understood.
No wonder when he'd registered on the gaming platform before, his identity information had also turned into garbled text—he'd thought there was a problem with the League's website.
Turns out it was because of the system's influence!
He tried clicking confirm on the webpage in front of him, and sure enough, even with all that garbled information, a "Registration Successful" notification still popped up.
"Renewal only costs 10 points?"
Kairos rubbed his chin.
This function was really useful...
This way, even if his games became completely popular later on, he wouldn't have to worry about being targeted by others.
Of course, what he was most worried about were rival game companies or this world's villainous organizations.
After all, he still didn't know what Team Rocket, Team Galactic, and the other villain organizations were like in this world.
What if some villain boss discovered he knew too much and sent people to silence him?
With this identity-hiding effect, he didn't need to worry about that.
This also reminded Kairos to be more cautious and low-key in real life.
As for online...
That was fair game!
After all, as long as he didn't court death, no one could figure out his real identity!
With this thought, Kairos closed the panel in front of him and opened his streaming room.
But he didn't immediately start streaming. Instead, he clicked on a desktop icon and launched "Battle Road"!
That's right—Kairos's plan was to first stream himself playing this Dream Factory "masterpiece."
On one hand, this was the only relatively mature online battle game on the market.
On the other hand, it was a perfect opportunity to carefully study the game's mechanics.
As the saying goes: know yourself and your enemy, and you'll never be defeated.
Creating a virtual Pokémon battle game was undoubtedly a step Kairos would inevitably take.
After all, many things Dream Factory couldn't achieve in game development would be no challenge at all for him—as long as he had higher-level modules!
As cheerful music played and the game started up, Dream Factory's logo appeared.
A gentle female voice prompt followed:
[Welcome to the world of Battle Road! Please enter your player name!]
After thinking briefly, Kairos quickly typed on his keyboard and decisively entered four characters:
[Decent Person]
After successfully registering his account, Kairos spent a few minutes completing the game's tutorial and roughly understanding the game's mechanics.
In a sense, Battle Road was also a turn-based game, but unlike Emerald, the battles were presented more realistically.
The general battle flow involved players inputting voice commands through their microphone to direct their Pokémon's next actions.
The game program would then take some time to calculate and simulate, displaying the confrontation between both players' Pokémon under those commands several seconds later.
After one round ended, both players would input new voice commands for the next round.
While this wasn't real-time command battling due to the significant delay, realistic commands like "dodge to the left" and "use Flamethrower toward the sky" could still be implemented.
Considering this world's game development standards, this kind of technology was already world-leading—at the very pinnacle.
No wonder Dream Factory could still maintain Battle Road's position as the most popular game even while slacking off...
However, for Kairos, this kind of battle game definitely wasn't satisfactory.
Just as he switched back to the main interface from the tutorial, a huge notification box flashing with rainbow colors popped up directly on the screen.
[Congratulations! You've unlocked the limited-time first purchase bonus!]
[Spend ¥2,535 to get the limited costume "Psyduck Hat" and one random "Designated Purple Pokémon Unlock Card"!]
Kairos was stunned for a moment and closed the notification box, but more boxes immediately flooded in.
[Cumulative Top-Up Event now active! During the event period, cumulative top-ups of ¥13,325 will earn you the rare item "Special Red Pokémon Box"!]
[Summer Rebate! Different top-up tiers will return different amounts of Crystals!]
[New season launched, Battle Pass online! Unlock Premium Version for just ¥7,978, instant level 20!]
Looking at the dazzling array of payment promotions before him, Kairos's mouth twitched involuntarily.
Now this felt familiar.
Way too familiar.
Battle Road, as a free-to-play game, clearly had no shortage of built-in payment features.
This familiar style vaguely reminded him of a certain old acquaintance...
Shaking his head slightly, Kairos closed all the interfaces and opened the "Pokémon" screen—only to be slightly stunned.
As a battle simulation game, every single Pokémon in here actually needed to be unlocked.
They were divided into five tiers: white, blue, green, purple, and red.
The more popular and powerful the Pokémon, the higher its color tier.
For example, pseudo-legendary Dragon-types like Garchomp and Dragonite were all "red," and unlocking each one required 1,000 "Crystals"—the game's premium currency.
Converted at top-up rates, that was a full ¥10,307!
In other words, building a powerful team might easily cost several thousand yen.
To go further and unlock over a hundred powerful Pokémon to expand the pool would cost tens of thousands!
Even for a professional trainer, that wasn't pocket change.
The only good news was that spending money didn't increase a Pokémon's in-game stats.
Otherwise, Kairos estimated that online comments and posts bashing Dream Factory would multiply several times over...
۞۞۞۞
~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones