After the chain of explosions subsided—
Inside the sealed underground chamber, shattered limbs were scattered across the ground.
Tera was left with only half his body, lying there in terror.
"Why… why am I still alive like this?"
With injuries like these, anyone else would have died long ago. Yet he was still conscious.
He didn't remember possessing any ability like this.
His gaze finally fixed on two white shapes drifting through the enclosed space.
Two snow-white fish swam leisurely through the air, as if the sealed chamber itself were a flowing river.
"Closed Room Swim," Akira's calm voice echoed.
"As long as it's a sealed space where this ability exists, no one inside can die. They won't even feel pain."
Tera's eyes shifted toward Akira.
Akira was slumped against the wall. Both his legs and his remaining arm were gone, his body badly scorched, clearly on the brink of death as well.
Yet he was alive—kept that way by the same ability.
"This… this ability is cheating, isn't it?" Tera said in disbelief.
"If you can use this, doesn't that mean you can never die? Can chakra really do something like this? I've never heard of a jutsu like it."
"This ability probably wasn't meant to work this way in the original setting," Akira replied flatly.
"This game really doesn't respect the source material."
If he remembered correctly, in the original work, only those bitten by the Nen Fish were prevented from dying.
Here, it had become: as long as the fish exist in a sealed room, no one inside can die.
The difference was enormous.
What he had originally dismissed as a trash skill now looked suspiciously like a god-tier ability.
Though, to be fair, its activation conditions were extremely strict.
[Closed Room Swim (Lv.3) | EXP 0/400 | Trait: None]
This skill had always been part of Akira's plan.
He just hadn't expected it to be this powerful—and this convenient.
Without a mutual-destruction strategy, he couldn't think of any way to drag Tera into the real trap.
The outside traps were just misdirection.
This underground chamber was the true killing ground.
And Akira himself had been the bait.
"What are you even talking about?" Tera couldn't understand Akira's words.
He spoke calmly instead, "I just want to know… when will I die?"
"Just a player reviewing game mechanics. You don't need to understand," Akira said lightly.
"And you don't need to think about dying anymore. You'll stay like this forever."
Of course, that was a lie.
The Nen Fish had two conditions for existence.
First: a sealed room. Once that condition failed, the fish would vanish.
Second: Nen—now replaced by Akira's chakra.
Akira strongly suspected the altered effect of the Nen Fish had something to do with chakra, but he had no proof.
At present, both the fish and their 'immortal' states were sustained by Akira's chakra.
Once his chakra ran dry, the fish would disappear.
And with them, their lives.
Tera's eyes trembled as he stared at the white fish swimming in the air.
He didn't believe Akira—but he couldn't stop thinking.
If he was right, killing those two fish would mean death.
Living forever like this was torture.
Unfortunately, both his arms had been blown off. Unable to form seals or even stand, he could do nothing but lie there.
"At least you'll stay here with me," Tera said with a malicious grin.
"That's not necessarily true," Akira replied softly.
Before Tera's eyes, Akira's injuries began to fade at a visible speed.
Burn marks vanished.
Missing limbs rapidly regenerated.
In the blink of an eye, Akira was fully restored—his body intact, even his clothes clean, as if freshly washed.
That was… excessive.
Akira clenched his fist, walked over, and stepped on Tera's chest.
"What do you think now?"
Leveling up restored the body to peak condition.
Akira had originally worried whether missing limbs would cause complications—and he still had [Archangel's Breath SS-3] as a backup.
Turns out the level-up recovery was even more absurd than he'd imagined.
Tera stared blankly at Akira.
That arm—he had personally cut it off.
And now it was whole again.
That kind of instant regeneration…
"Are you… a god?"
No ninja could do something like this.
Anyone who surpassed the limits of ninjutsu deserved to be called divine.
"God or not, we'll talk about that later," Akira said, looking down at him.
"What I really want to know is—how did you find me?"
The method was far too absurd.
Akira had crossed countless cities, yet Tera had still tracked him down.
He didn't believe it was a jutsu.
There had to be something else—something Akira didn't know.
And deep down, he already had a vague suspicion.
Tera let out a short laugh.
"You really want to know? Then why should I tell you?"
Life or death no longer mattered to him.
Akira replied indifferently,
"We've got plenty of time. I'm not in a hurry. You'll tell me eventually."
He lifted his foot, then casually pulled out a kunai and threw it.
The blade pierced straight through Tera's body, destroying his lung.
Tera's head tilted slightly as his breathing failed.
Closed Room Swim prevented death and pain—
But it didn't prevent suffocation.
"Pain can be endured with willpower," Akira said calmly.
"But what about suffocation? How long do you think you can last?"
"And even if you don't die or feel pain, hunger still exists. Some things are worse than pain."
The softer Akira's voice became, the more naked the threat felt.
Tera tried to speak, but without functioning lungs, no sound came out.
Akira had already anticipated this.
A faint green glow lit up his hands.
He was, after all, a medical ninja.
Temporarily repairing damaged lungs was well within his ability.
The procedure was quick.
Tera finally gasped for air.
"Now you can talk," Akira said, flicking blood off the kunai.
Tera spat out a thick glob of phlegm like a projectile. Akira barely dodged in time.
"If you want to know," Tera sneered,
"Try again in your next life."
He bit down hard—severing his own tongue to prevent speech.
Akira shook his head.
"I already told you. We have plenty of time."
"Why rush?"
The interrogation continued.
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