Chapter 165: Genuinely Hard to Wrap Your Head Around
Premium VIP: 96 free Arena hours per month. Healing and revival within those hours still cost Points — but with 700 Points left to work with after the membership fee and the mandatory 1,000-Point reserve, that was effectively unlimited resurrection time for the duration.
The math worked out cleanly. 500 Points for Premium, leaving 1,200 of his usable balance. Hold 700 as revival float, keep 1,000 untouched as emergency reserve. 96 hours of continuous combat in the Arena, full spend-to-win revival rights throughout.
Straightforward.
Of the six update items, Ryū ranked the Arena as one of the three most useful, alongside Protection Mode and the new invitation mechanic. But something about Protection Mode had been nagging at him since he read it.
If Protection Mode covers self-inflicted damage too — not just attacks from other Members — then theoretically, opening the Eighth Gate right now would do nothing to me. Zero backlash. Zero cost.
The Eighth Gate. The Gate of Death. The technique that burned out its user's body entirely in exchange for power that briefly exceeded everything.
If Protection Mode neutralised that downside—
That's not just useful. That's a completely different tier of useful.
He'd test it in the Arena. Shortly.
First: membership.
He opened Premium VIP. Balance dropped from 2,200 to 1,700.
He glanced at his profile. There it was, just beneath his username — Premium VIP, in small golden characters, complete with an animated shimmer effect.
He stared at it.
This is QQ. This is exactly what QQ does. Character for character, effect for effect. Not even attempting to be subtle.
You're going to get a cease-and-desist letter at some point. Can a Dimensional Chat Group even receive legal correspondence? Probably arrives and gets ignored.
He shelved the thought and navigated to the group functions panel. A new option had appeared: Arena.
He tapped in.
Two modes.
Solo Mode — enter alone. The Arena generates opponents calibrated to the user's own power level. Each one battle-hardened, each one carrying unpredictable and unusual abilities.
Versus Mode — multiple Group Members enter together. PvP in any configuration: 1v1, 1v2, 2v2, or theoretically 1v100 for anyone feeling sufficiently self-destructive.
He selected Solo.
96 hours free. Good call on Premium. Without it, two and a half hours in here would've cost me around 10 Points. The pricing is genuinely aggressive.
He had no idea what the Chat Group needed Points for. Some kind of operational energy cost, maybe. He didn't know and didn't particularly want to spend time thinking about it. Thinking about it would achieve nothing.
He tapped into Solo Mode.
His awareness shifted.
The next moment he wasn't in his Konoha living room anymore.
He was standing in the middle of a vast grassland. Open in every direction, grass rippling in a light wind. The sky above was overcast — dense clouds packed low, the kind of sky that looked like it was deciding whether to storm.
The breeze touched his face. The grass moved.
Ryū crouched and snapped a blade between his fingers. Examined it briefly, then put it in his mouth.
Bitter. Distinctly bitter.
Convincing, he thought, spitting it out. This doesn't feel like a genjutsu. Everything's tactile. But you can supposedly revive with Points, which implies it isn't real in the conventional sense. Genuinely hard to work out.
He reached back to rub the back of his head, feeling a slight chill—
Wait.
Hold on.
He grabbed at his head.
His hand closed on nothing.
Ryū's expression went blank.
A large red 死 — DEAD — materialised in front of him.
And a prompt:
[You have been eliminated by an Arena creature. Spend 20 Points to revive? Countdown: 10 seconds. If no selection is made within 10 seconds, you will be automatically removed from the Arena. Re-entry will require a 1-hour cooldown.
10… 9… 8… 4… 2…]
"REVIVE!"
His balance ticked down 20 Points. His eyes narrowed.
His Observation Haki had detected nothing. Not a flicker of intent, not a whisper of killing presence, not a single advance warning — and he'd been decapitated in the opening seconds.
Head removed cleanly. Enemy position: unknown. Enemy appearance: unknown. Enemy count: unknown.
Genuinely hard to wrap your head around.
…WHERE IS MY HEAD AGAIN—
[You have been eliminated by an Arena creature. Spend 20 Points to revive? Countdown: 10 seconds. If no selection is made within 10 seconds, you will be automatically removed from the Arena. Re-entry will require a 1-hour cooldown.
10… 9… 8… 4… 2…]
"…R-revive!!"
The grassland returned.
This time Ryū's entire body locked up the instant he reappeared. Every muscle coiled. He knew what he was dealing with now — or at least what he wasn't dealing with. Whatever this enemy was, it could bypass Observation Haki entirely. Not just the ambient sensing layer. The predictive layer too. Even the short-range future-sight that let him read attacks before they landed — nothing. Complete blank.
An opponent that hard-countered his primary detection system, while operating at roughly his own power level — that wasn't a fair fight. It was something strictly stronger in practice, even if the numbers were notionally even.
Fine.
If Observation Haki can't find it, stop relying on Observation Haki.
He stopped reaching outward with his senses. Closed that layer down entirely. Let the body run on instinct rather than prediction.
There.
"—NOW!"
Armament Haki surged across his palm in an instant, a black sheen spreading from knuckles to wrist, and he threw his fist at the open air in front of him — not at anything he could see or sense, but at the place his body had already decided was correct.
The wind pressure detonated. A sound like a crack split the air. Hundreds of metres of grassland peeled upward in a single rolling wave.
Something invisible — something his eyes still couldn't find — went flying backward through the air and hit the ground hard.
"Two decapitations," Ryū said, rotating his neck. "Consider that fifty percent paid back."
Getting your head removed was, it turned out, extremely unpleasant even when you hadn't technically felt it happen. The absence was disturbing in a way that was difficult to explain.
He'd definitely connected with something. His fist had struck a real target. But his Observation Haki had read nothing, and his eyes still showed empty air.
Pure instinct. Body before brain.
The Arena had, in two deaths and one clean hit, told him something important about where his training needed to go next.
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