Chapter 61: A Shift in Mindset
RawrSoFierce: [image], [image], [image]… Mealtime! A friend treated me to ramen today—didn't have to spend a single ryō. Saving money feels good~
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: Shocking! The Admin is actually this stingy and cheap!
Kaguya-sama: Eh… Didn't Yukari-nee-sama just go into yet another hibernation?
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: Hibernation's already over. Refreshed and beautiful!
RawrSoFierce: So your 'hibernation' lasted a couple of hours.
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: To be precise, this one slept for ten hours during the day!
RawrSoFierce: How is that any different?!
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: It is different! A couple of hours is a single-digit number. Ten hours is a double-digit number. That, right there, is the difference.
RawrSoFierce: (¯e(#¯)╮╮o(¯皿¯/)
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: (¯皿¯)＝○(＃)3¯)
[Member "The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden" has been muted by a Moderator for 1 minute]
[Member "The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden" has been unmuted by a Moderator]
Kaguya-sama: Σ(°△°)︴
* * *
Faced with yet another earth-shattering battle unfolding before her eyes, Kaguya Shinomiya could only shiver.
In the end, the Admin's Grand Mute Technique delivered the finishing blow.
A total and complete annihilation of Yukari-nee-sama.
Yukari-nee-sama: utterly defeated!
Poor Youkai Sage.
Kaguya had already lost count of how many times Yukari-nee-sama had been muted—muted for innuendos, muted for picking fights with the Admin. Adding it all up…
It was probably five or six times by now? Maybe even seven or eight.
The undisputed champion of courting disaster in the Dimensional Chat Group—that title belonged to Yukari-nee-sama, no question.
She never learned her lesson.
Just kept provoking the Admin, again and again.
* * *
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: Unforgivable! The Admin is abusing his powers again! And why am I the only one who's ever been muted?!
RawrSoFierce: Because you're the only one who keeps making innuendos and crossing the line…
RawrSoFierce: Oh, and you're also the only one who keeps picking fights with the Admin.
RawrSoFierce: [image] See this button? One little tap, and you're muted for 999 days. Nine. Hundred. Ninety-nine. Days of silence. (manual smug face)
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: …Admin-dono, do you think this one is pretty?
RawrSoFierce: Silence, shameless old youkai! Do not attempt to seduce a pure and innocent young man!
Kaguya-sama: Shocking! Just like Yukari-nee-sama, the Admin—who has lived for who-knows-how-many-years—is calling himself a 'young man.' Is this the decline of morality, or the fall of the humanoid form…
RawrSoFierce: Pfft… Yukari, did you corrupt Kaguya-chan?
The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden: No, it wasn't me, I didn't do it. Triple denial.
* * *
Ryū ate his Ichiraku ramen while splitting his attention to chat in the Dimensional Chat Group.
He was starting to think that if he kept this up, he might actually unlock some kind of "multitasking" skill one day. The odds were not insignificant.
But he quickly noticed two pairs of eyes staring at him.
Slightly taken aback, he turned and asked curiously, "What are you two looking at? Uh… aren't you hungry?!"
Might Guy: "…"
Kakashi: "…"
Guy glanced at his own bowl—still only half-finished—then looked at the stack of eighteen or nineteen empty bowls next to Ryū. He couldn't help but question the nature of reality itself. Was he dreaming right now?!
He was a taijutsu-focused ninja. When it came to appetite, Guy's needs were considerable.
You could say his appetite wasn't far off from the Akimichi clan's.
After all, training in taijutsu demanded massive amounts of nutrition and calories.
And yet today he had made a staggering discovery…
What it truly meant for there to always be someone better.
He hadn't even finished one bowl, and Ryū was already on his twentieth! And the Ichiraku owner, who was hand-pulling the noodles, didn't even look surprised—as if this were perfectly normal.
Guy swallowed nervously and couldn't help asking in a small voice, "Ryū-san, are you sure eating this much… won't wreck your stomach?!"
Ryū paused for a moment, instinctively looking down at his midsection.
Then he shook his head. "I'm maybe twenty percent full. As for actually wrecking my stomach… that would probably take triple digits."
Might Guy: "!!?"
Kakashi: "??!"
Was this really a normal human being? Triple digits—a single bowl of Ichiraku ramen was enough to fill an average adult. Even for a ninja with a larger appetite, two or three bowls would do it.
Even for someone like Guy, a taijutsu specialist—
Twenty bowls was his absolute maximum.
Twenty bowls was only double digits!
Triple digits meant at least a hundred!
* * *
Truthfully, given Ryū's longstanding preference for playing it safe and keeping a low profile, he shouldn't have been flaunting this kind of monstrous appetite in front of two ninja.
After all, in a situation like this, even if he gave off zero chakra, it was still far too eye-catching. Anyone with half a brain would start sensing something was off.
But the growth in Ryū's strength had brought about a shift in his mindset.
That timid, overcautious weakling mentality from the beginning had long since been shattered by his rising power. The mental shift hadn't been instant—Ryū still preferred to keep things low-key, at least within Konohagakure.
But 'low-key' didn't mean 'cowering' the way he used to.
If he kept clinging to that frightened little rabbit mindset forever…
Ryū felt he would struggle to make any further progress.
Even with the Dimensional Chat Group serving as his cheat code.
So loosening up a little now? Not a big deal. At the very least, when it came to self-preservation, he was more than capable.
Six Powers at Perfection tier—the culmination of nearly ten thousand Points. A physique massively enhanced over multiple rounds of investment. Low-tier Observation Haki and Armament Haki. Two to three thousand more Points' worth of Devil Fruit upgrades…
All of it combined had sent Ryū's combat power skyrocketing.
Within the Dimensional Chat Group, aside from the Little Wandering Planet—that special existence—
His strength could absolutely rank in the top three.
First place definitely belonged to that purple old hag.
Second was currently Whitebeard.
Third, without question, was Ryū himself.
But none of this was something Might Guy or Hatake Kakashi knew.
* * *
Kakashi couldn't help studying the peculiar man he'd only met today.
He didn't even know why, but the question rising in his mind tumbled out before he could stop it: "Ryū-san… are you really not a ninja?"
Ryū's answer was breezy: "Nope."
☆☆☆
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