"My young friend," Julian murmured, matching the screenshot resolution on his terminal with a slow, thoroughly satisfied smirk, "it is an executive necessity to let you experience the calculating layers of human nature ahead of schedule. These archives will serve as a spectacular commemorative gift to present to General Jing Yuan when our paths cross again."
As for the lieutenant's escalating baseline mortification? Julian didn't grant the variable a single decimal of his attention. He had merely delivered a vital piece of psychological conditioning to the boy's ledger. When the data packet cleared the channels, even the Divine Foresight would owe him a formal letter of appreciation.
Julian closed his menu, stepping back into the primary spatial elevator to rejoin the Oak Family's executive escort.
Although Sunday's analytical processors were mildly triggered by the absence of the vanguard lieutenant, the director prioritized his corporate schedule. He systematically guided Julian down the corridor into a high-tier executive conference lounge, bypassing further small talk to lay down the capital distribution models, construction milestones, and backend revenue splits.
The master ledger closed on an absolute, multi-phase financial commitment. The Great Sept officially authorized an investment of twenty billion credits into Arceus Studio's accounts, dedicated entirely to printing the foundational landscape files for the Kanto, Johto, and upcoming Hoenn server blocks.
The structural engineering phase carried a strict six-month delivery ceiling. According to the development curves, the Kanto restricted zone would clear its optimization loops ahead of schedule, opening its gates to the public within a brief two-month window.
Furthermore, the contract mandated that should Arceus Studio log any untelegraphed structural anomalies within the Memory Zone, the Family's dream-weaving divisions were legally bound to adapt the environment as rapidly as the data allowed.
Once the public servers initialized their transaction routines, the net revenue streams would process through a strict 60/40 structural split: sixty percent routed directly to Arceus Studio's treasury, forty percent locked by the Penacony finance board.
The Framework of the Tariff
With the physical asset allocations signed, the two directors shifted their focus to the dynamic rules governing the dreamscape.
Julian methodically overhauled the server-side behavioral constraints, applying the data loops he had pre-coordinated alongside Silver Wolf and Stephen. Aside from the localized trade tokens—which couldn't be decoupled from Penacony's existing economic engine without fracturing the planet's sovereign banking stability—every single rule adjusted with clean, narrative ease.
Regarding the banking limitations, Sunday remained fiercely unyielding; the token transaction fields directly impacted the foundational interests of the Great Sept. Recognizing the political barrier, Julian smoothly shelved the variable, allowing the director to push the remaining technical revisions through the queue.
Besides, the raw user traffic collected during this beta phase remained an invaluable reference matrix. The specific coordinates where wealthy tourists logged high-density dwell times were, by extension, the most mathematically efficient coordinates to place premium item vendors and gacha gates.
For the unmapped sectors, they could simply utilize an advanced AI macro to project the economic trends.
"Then I shall remain within your excellent care for the duration of this testing cycle, Mr. Sunday," Julian smiled, leaning back as the final interface authorization flashed green.
Sunday's fingers froze against his terminal. He had been so intensely hyper-focused on securing a clean financial markdown against the developer's blueprints that his processors had completely overlooked a vital logistical detail: to supervise the server-side data handshakes, the master director of Arceus Studio would have to maintain a continuous, physical residence within the hotel suites for weeks—perhaps even months.
That granted the out-worlder an open, unguided window to step within his sister's personal space every single afternoon.
"Mr. Sunday?"
Sensing the sudden, icy silence locking the director's posture, Julian offered a quiet, polite reminder.
"Ah... of course," Sunday recalculated instantly, his porcelain mask snapping back into alignment. "During this operational interval, the Family will ensure your accommodations clear our highest luxury parameters. I highly encourage you to explore our secondary dream hours; you may locate a completely fresh layer of creative inspiration amidst our cultural sectors."
Sunday's vocabulary was saturated with exquisite hospitality, but his internal command tracks were already firing a priority sequence: Clamp down on Robin's schedule immediately.
He held zero leverage to restrict Julian Reed's physical movements without triggering a severe breach of contract with a key commercial partner, but restricting his own sister's itinerary was an entirely manageable task.
Julian watched the director's eyes turn pristine and distant. As an active Pathstrider of Elation, his emotional radar was exceptionally sharp; he could clearly register a distinct, low-frequency wave of rejection radiating from the man across the glass.
But reviewing his own actions, his data logs were spotless. He had arrived carrying a multi-trillion-credit win-win blueprint; there was zero logical foundation for the host to harbor an organic hostility.
After running the variables through his thoughts without a clean conclusion, Julian simply attributed the cognitive dissonance to the passive influence of the Harmony's planetary aura. The continuous mental synchronization within the Asdana system occasionally warped a traveler's baseline perception, causing minor emotional lag. There was no secondary explanation.
The Flight of the Songstress
The moment the signatures cleared the encryption blocks, Sunday systematically routed the technical directives down to the construction bays. Simultaneously, Julian took his place alongside the chief dream architects, dropping a continuous series of physical requirements and structural revisions into their consoles.
Sunday's initial containment strategy was well-engineered. He utilized a massive mountain of urgent, uncataloged domestic family ledgers to lock Robin within her private office, assuming the administrative drag would consume her cycles for a week.
But the director had vastly underestimated his sister's executive efficiency. Robin's data-processing speeds matched his own baseline; furthermore, Sunday himself operated as an absolute, unhinged workaholic. With the two siblings combining their cognitive focus, the massive backup of administrative files that usually siphoned Sunday's time vanished into the completed directories within forty-eight hours.
By the dawn of the third day, Sunday held zero legal or logical grounds to restrict her movements. Reassigning her to an external commercial performance circuit was out of the question; the very thought turned his blood cold.
The deep, lingering psychological scars she carried—and that stark, silver line tracing the side of her neck—were the direct consequences of her past tours across the volatile star-lanes of the Chaotic Planets. He would see the hotel crumble before he commanded her to board an out-world performance ship again.
Left with zero structural barriers, he had no choice but to grant her complete liberty, choosing to personally manage the core tasks that required her specific Halovian signature block.
Wait... she returned from the Luofu expansion carrying that exact same radiant shift, Sunday's fingers hovered over his terminal during a rare quiet interval, a sudden, horrifying calculation locking his thoughts.
Within the framework of human behavioral biology, the only variable capable of radically overhauling a guarded individual's baseline personality within a brief, seventy-two-hour window was a sudden, intense initialization of a romantic alignment.
Is it mathematically possible that Robin... has already chosen him?
The thought shattered his corporate composure. Sunday bolted from his executive chair, his tailored robes snapping as he sprinted toward the lift banks. As her older brother, he lacked the legal authority to rewrite her private thoughts, but he would damn well lock his eyes onto her perimeter before the out-world developer could advance his pieces across her board.
The Reality Vector
"What do you mean they aren't logging data inside the test matrix?"
Reaching the primary monitoring deck of the Pokémon Moment server block, Sunday's eyes scanned the terminal readouts. The active user slots for both Julian Reed and his sister registered an absolute zero. They had cleared the dream environment hours ago.
"The... the staff logged a fragment of their audio track before the submerge sequence unlinked, Representative," a technician stammered, keeping his head low. "The subjects were locked in an intense, low-frequency debate regarding a production vector that couldn't be compiled inside the memory pools. The songstress appeared exceptionally excited, manually pulling Mr. Reed out of the dream pool to transition back to the physical plane."
Sunday froze, his chest tightening as his cognitive processors spiraled.
The unguided liberty available within the dreamscape outscaled physical reality by a massive margin; any creative layout, any sensory interaction, and any industrial design could be manifested within the memory fluids with zero material cost.
The variables that explicitly required a transition back to the cold, rigid limitations of physical reality were notoriously rare. What specific, uncataloged activity could compel a handsome out-world developer and a hyper-popular Halovian superstar—who clearly shared an unvouched emotional resonance—to discard the privacy of the dream to touch the real world?
Robin, please do not break my heart, Sunday prayed silently, his fingers digging into his palms. You have known this craftsman for less than a standard week. Do not allow a fleeting elation to compromise the structural dignity of your path.
Submerging back into physical reality, Sunday initialized an emergency tracking sequence through his private security details.
Given her status as the premier voice of the Harmony, Robin's physical location was monitored by a dedicated Oak Family loop. Within three minutes, the data packet updated, pinning her coordinates to the high-security grid of her private recording studio.
The architectural layout was an isolated, premium clubhouse situated on the edge of the hotel's garden district. Sunday's memory files flagged a crucial variable: the moment Robin had received the encryption codes confirming Julian Reed's arrival, she had manually granted her entire engineering and production staff a paid operational holiday. The building was completely empty.
A silent, unguided sanctuary for two, entirely removed from the eyes of the Great Sept?
This was an absolute operational disaster.
Bypassing the standard limousine queues, Sunday threw himself into a high-speed flying starskiff, commanding the pilot to push the thrusters past the legal urban limits as they tore toward the studio basin.
The entrance plaza was a desert of silence, the primary glass doors locked with a crimson "Closed" status ring. The layout sent Sunday's stomach plunging into an absolute abyss, his heart hammering against his ribs like a stone dropping into the ocean.
He stepped through the side maintenance hatch, his boots making zero sound against the carpet as he followed a faint, warm light glowing from the interior lounge. As he rounded the primary corner, his eyes caught the silver armor of the vanguard lieutenant. Yanqing was crouching near the doorframe, his posture completely locked as he peered through a microscopic split in the frosted glass.
Hearing the rustle of tailored robes, the young sword master straightened up instantly, offering a sharp, slightly guilty nod to the approaching representative.
Seeing the Alliance's elite guard maintaining his watch at the threshold, Sunday let out a long, ragged breath, his panic easing by a fraction of a decimal. Robin would never permit an irreversible, unguided compromise of her dignity if an official Cloud Knight vanguard was actively maintaining a physical watch outside the door.
He stepped up to the glass, his ear catching a low, rhythmic murmur vibrating from the interior couch.
"Julian... isn't this pace a bit too aggressive?" Robin's voice echoed softly through the frame, her breath catching. "My structure... I don't think my frame can absorb a secondary injection so quickly."
Sunday froze on the tile floor, the words hitting his brain like a sheet of absolute, unyielding arctic ice. His mind went entirely blank, his consciousness plunging into a frozen void as the universe collapsed around his ears.
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