This was a dark, cramped little room.
Inside, a skinny figure sat before a messy table, a pale face flushed with excitement as he stared at the glowing computer screen.
This was a disheveled, naked young man. Beside him lay old clothes and shorts, along with piles and piles of trash, waste, and toilet paper.
Or rather, the most abundant item in this room was toilet paper.
However, it was all wadded up, with only one large roll remaining on the table.
"Creak, creak..." The wooden stool continuously emitted sounds of being overburdened.
Upon closer inspection, page after page on the screen displayed various female characters from Pokémon anime and games.
Cynthia, Caitlin, Na Zi, Lorelei, Serena, Dawn, and so on...
Flipping through them, they were all revealingly dressed, alluring figures—the otaku's favorite images...
Full breasts, plump buttocks, long legs, slender waists, delicate feet, fragrant tongues, and sweat-drenched, slippery mysterious valleys...
Each beautiful and seductive image deepened the blush on the young man's face.
"Huff..." The young man panted heavily, his eyes fixed on the key parts of each image... his left hand under the table was doing something unknown.
The tubular shadow, vaguely visible under the dim light, appeared even thicker and longer than the young man's forearm!
"Hiss... exhale..." As the content of the pictures grew richer, the young man's mouse-clicking speed and the stool's rocking frequency became faster and higher...
"Pop!" Just at the crucial moment, a faint electrical crackle sounded, and the entire room plunged back into darkness.
The young man froze in the darkness, then slowly propped himself up. The massive pillar struck the table with a dull thud, "Bang," revealing his bare chest with clearly protruding ribs.
Taking a deep breath: "Fatty Sis!!! Why is the power out again—"
"Crack!" The next moment, the decaying wooden door was violently kicked open by a thick thigh.
"You never pay rent and you have so many demands! The cable's broken, come out and fix it!"
Sunlight poured in from outside the room, making the already corpulent figure appear exceptionally robust and huge.
"Hey, hey, hey! Could you please knock next time before coming in?!"
The young man frowned, somewhat displeased, and pulled on his shorts...
Things going wrong at a crucial moment always put him in a bad mood.
The woman glanced at him. That terrifying... thing made her heart pound. He was so thin, yet it could grow so large; he was simply a freak...
"How about you become our live-in son-in-law? You wouldn't have to live in this godforsaken place anymore," she was somewhat tempted.
As the saying goes, to do good work, one must first sharpen one's tools. She was also quite puzzled why Yu Bai, possessing such a divine tool, hadn't yet found a rich woman to support him...
Yu Bai squeezed through the gap where Fatty Sis was blocking the doorway before speaking: "Don't dream..."
"I'd rather starve to death than be with a three-hundred-pound fatty like you... lest I get crushed to death in bed!"
Having said that, he quickly climbed onto the roof, where an old electrical cable antenna was located.
"Bah! I'm more afraid you'll masturbate yourself to death and leave me a widow!"
Ignoring Fatty Sis's curses, Yu Bai continued to climb.
Yu Bai, 25 years old, an orphan.
He had scraped by in this city since childhood, doing everything but liking nothing. Always easygoing, he only ever did the bare minimum.
Like only thinking about eating a few bites when he was close to starving...
That's why he chose to live in Fatty Sis's dilapidated house, which was slated for demolition.
However, despite his extremely low material demands, his pursuit of the spiritual world was exceptionally high.
And the only thing he liked and was constantly immersed in was the Pokémon world.
Besides the Pokémon themselves, it was the various girls within it...
For some reason, he only felt something for these two-dimensional characters.
He even went so far as to eat only 10 meals a month, saving money for two years to buy a second-hand computer.
All so he could see his 'wives' anytime... and release his emotions and stress...
Just as Fatty Sis had seen, the 'vast and rich' Yu Bai was exceptionally powerful in certain aspects...
The moment Yu Bai reconnected the cable, Fatty Sis's 1982 television downstairs powered on, and then a news report came from it:
"In today's broadcast of Pokémon Journeys, episode 132, Ash successfully defeated Leon to win the Pokémon world Coronation Series. From April 1, 1997, when Ash set off, to November 11, 2022, when he won the World Championship, 25 years have passed..."
Although the old television's sound was noisy, it was clear enough for him to hear the news.
Yu Bai, whose heart was usually like still water, couldn't help but feel a ripple.
April 1, 1997, was his birthday.
And he had always followed in Ash's footsteps... to experience the world he longed for.
To yearn for the girls he desired...
"The defeat in Sinnoh, the regret in Kalos, the doubts in Alola—all were shattered at this moment..."
With a sigh, Yu Bai stretched. He was going back to study his 'learning materials.'
He wondered if the power outage had broken his old computer...
"Crack..." Just as he took a step, cracks appeared in the old, dilapidated tiles above the small room.
A sense of unease had just risen in Yu Bai's mind when the feeling of weightlessness arrived.
"Crash! Bang!" The second floor of the small room instantly collapsed, and Yu Bai fell from the roof into it...
"Yu Bai!" Fatty Sis rushed up in a panic to check the situation.
But halfway there, the world paused for a moment, and a milky white light descended beside the unconscious Yu Bai in the small room...
"Bang! ...Bang, bang, bang! ...Crash..."
Vaguely, Yu Bai heard a sound like breaking glass. The next moment, a sensation of tearing and erosion filled his senses. His veins bulged, blood flowed freely, and his face twisted into a grotesque grimace... In an instant, he painfully lost consciousness.
Then, the spacetime tunnel, concealed by the white light, also closed.
"Yu Bai...?! " Looking at the empty ruins, Fatty Sis froze.
Pain... too much pain... bone-chilling pain, as if his flesh was being cut away and his bones scraped clean...
Yet, despite this deep-seated pain, his consciousness remained terrifyingly clear...
He could only continuously endure, continuously adapt, until finally, numbness...
Yu Bai could feel his life slipping away, or rather, his soul dissipating.
He didn't know where he was, nor how long he had been there.
In his dying moments, a pure white light suddenly appeared. In a daze, he seemed to hear a voice:
"Farewell, Arceus... Say goodbye to your world! Oh no... it's mine now, hahahaha!"
Pokémon world, Mt. Coronet summit, Spear Pillar.
A black figure laughed up at the sky. Beside him, the expressionless Dialga and Palkia watched Arceus's fragmented form slowly dissipate in the air.
However, the movements of the spacetime duo were not coordinated. Upon closer inspection, their body contours were also somewhat strange, as if they were clay sculptures clumsily kneaded by fingers, uneven and bumpy...
Arceus's remnants had already more than half dissipated. The black shadow in the air showed impatience: "Let's go, to receive this perfect world... Heheheh~!"
"Whoosh!" The three figures vanished...