Chapter 20: Back to the Leaf
[ Group Quest 1: Travel to the world of "One Piece"and eliminate the Illegal Reincarnator Marshall D. Teach! ]
[ Quest Complete. Click → [Claim Reward] to receive your prize! ]
[ The two Members who accepted this Quest may remain in this world for 1 more hour. Return to your home world now? YES / NO ]
The notification materialized for the three who had participated in the quest — Yagami Ryū, Yukari Yakumo, and Whitebeard. Only they could see it.
Kaguya Shinomiya, The Little Wandering Planet, and Josuke Higashikata could not.
Because those three had not taken part.
Kaguya had been excluded because her presence wouldn't have contributed anything practical. The Little Wandering Planet was excluded because it would have struck friendly targets. As for Josuke — he was a new recruit who had only just joined the Dimensional Chat Group a few days ago. His participation was never seriously on the table.
The Group Quest mechanic had a particular quirk: beyond the two members who had formally accepted the quest, any Group Member who was already present in the target world at the time of completion also received the quest reward.
Which meant Whitebeard qualified on a technicality — a passive participant, more or less.
Aboard the Moby Dick, Yagami Ryū stared at the notification floating in the back of his mind and broke into a wide, relieved smile.
RawrSoFierce: "Looks like Blackbeard Teach is thoroughly, completely dead. Which means… we just won by doing absolutely nothing?!"
And truly, for Ryū, this had been a carry. He had done almost nothing the entire time — beyond eating, drinking, and enjoying himself, he'd mostly been chatting with Whitebeard and Yukari, or spamming messages in the Dimensional Chat Group with everyone else.
He'd been purely ornamental from start to finish.
And he was now walking away with a quest reward worth a full 3,000 Points.
Whitebeard and Yukari Yakumo, however, saw things differently. From their perspective, Yagami Ryū — the Admin of the Dimensional Chat Group — had been the single most valuable contributor. Because Ryū had been the one to reveal Blackbeard Teach's escape route.
Without that intelligence, the quest would almost certainly have failed.
The time limit was only ten days. In a world as vast as this one, tracking down one man named Blackbeard within ten days? That was like dredging a single needle from an ocean floor.
If Ryū hadn't named Fish-Man Island as Teach's destination, they'd have been stumbling around the New World like headless chickens.
Ryū took a screenshot of the notification and posted it to the Dimensional Chat Group.
RawrSoFierce: [Image] Quest complete. About five days total.
Edward Newgate: [Image] Quest complete on my end as well. Blackbeard Teach is thoroughly dead — I suppose he'll keep Thatch company now, wherever they've gone.
Edward Newgate: Hm… I won't pretend my feelings aren't complicated. He was my son, once.
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: [Image] Quest complete for this one as well. @Edward Newgate — ease up, young fellow. Dwelling on these things ages the skin terribly. Keep your mind clear and untroubled~
RawrSoFierce: Looks like the quest reward lets you request something specific — high-tech gear, exotic pets, whatever you want, as long as the value stays within 3,000 Points.
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: An open request rather than a fixed item? How delightful.
Ryū glanced around. This was the world of One Piece, not his home — and collecting a reward in a strange world felt like asking for trouble.
The ship was full of Whitebeard's sons, true enough. But who knew if there wasn't a snake in the grass somewhere? The Whitebeard Pirates were an enormous crew. There were bound to be a few unsavoury types lurking in the ranks.
Better to be safe. He'd return to the Hidden Leaf Village first. Collect the reward at home, on his own turf.
RawrSoFierce: @Edward Newgate — it's getting late. I'm heading back to my home world.
Edward Newgate: Mm. Thank you, Admin-dono. And Yukari-senpai — my gratitude to you both!
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: Only one hour left to linger… mm. This one supposes she'll go window shopping. There are still so many things left to buy.
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: Suddenly feeling an urge to bring a Sea King back to Gensōkyō.
Kaguya-sama: The group's only ordinary person weeps tears of pure envy.
The Little Wandering Planet: The group's only ordinary person weeps tears of pure envy.
Crazy Diamond: The group's only ordinary person weeps tears of pure envy.
RawrSoFierce: The group's only ordinary person weeps tears of pure envy.
Kaguya-sama: Admin-dono, the Planet, and the new kid — really, was that necessary?! *sniff sniff* I'm clearly the only ordinary person here.
Having done his duty as a copy-paste machine, Ryū withdrew his consciousness from the Dimensional Chat Group, exited the world of One Piece, and returned to the world of Naruto — specifically, to a modest two-storey house in Konohagakure.
He stepped out of the swirling white void of the Dimensional corridor and looked around at the familiar surroundings.
He ran a finger across the tabletop. A thin, faint layer of dust.
He muttered under his breath: "Looks like I left the window open when I left… but the time flow between both worlds seems to be running at a 1:1 ratio, at least."
He crossed to the wall calendar and flipped five pages forward, landing on the 15th.
Then he went and quietly shut the open window.
He let his consciousness sink back into the Dimensional Chat Group, located the [Claim Reward] link, and tapped it.
[ Please specify your desired reward. ]
Ryū furrowed his brow and thought.
The thing he lacked most, without any question, was combat ability.
He hadn't thrown a single punch during this entire quest. Which meant he hadn't exposed the fact that he was, at his core, completely useless in a fight.
But he couldn't count on that staying hidden forever.
Being the Admin of the Dimensional Chat Group while being this weak — honestly, it was a bit embarrassing to even think about.
To increase his combat power, the most logical avenue was his Devil Fruit. He'd already eaten the Paramecia-type Decompose-Decompose Fruit, and its abilities needed to be developed and unlocked through deliberate effort — but that development took time.
He turned the options over in his mind for several minutes, weighing the costs and benefits of each.
Finally, Ryū made his decision: "Two thousand Points toward physical enhancement. The remaining thousand toward Devil Fruit proficiency."
The moment he finalized his choice, the full 3,000 Points' worth of rewards were dispensed simultaneously, exactly as requested.
A strange sensation arose in his body, making his expression go faintly peculiar.
And his mind suddenly filled with knowledge — an enormous amount of it — concerning the development techniques of the Decompose-Decompose Fruit.
As though ten-odd years of hands-on experience with his Devil Fruit had been deposited directly into his head.
Both sensations hit at the same time.
He felt strange all over.
Not the pain he'd braced for. Not the pleasure he'd half-expected either. Something else — a kind of spreading numbness, but not purely that. Something that didn't have a clean word for itself.
Time passed, one second at a time. The sensation in his body persisted for roughly ten minutes.
His mind worked quietly, slowly absorbing and integrating the flood of new Devil Fruit experience.
When the ten minutes were up, Ryū opened his eyes.
He flexed his right hand into a fist without thinking.
He murmured to himself: "Is it already done?! It feels like… everything has changed."