Chapter 168: Someone's Been Running Inappropriate Trains of Thought
Kaguya Shinomiya had just stepped out of the Arena when she walked into this.
She stood there, reading the chat log, mildly confused.
She'd gone into the Arena at the same time Ryū had — the moment it unlocked, she'd jumped straight in, burning Points on a Premium VIP membership because she had a reasonable stockpile and the feature looked worth testing. What followed had been three days of dying. Her first encounter with her assigned opponent had lasted less than a second; the thing's speed and strength edged slightly past hers, and her combat experience — already several hundred times thinner than Ryū's — had made up the deficit exactly zero. She'd died. She'd revived. She'd died again. Sixty times in total, at twenty Points apiece, before she finally tore the thing apart piece by piece. Sixty revivals, 1,200 Points. Premium VIP, 500 Points. Three days, 1,700 Points total. Balance remaining: a round thousand.
She'd come out of the Arena wanting to express — in strong terms — that the Arena was not a facility designed for normal people.
Instead she'd found Yukari muted, multiple members apparently convinced she had been killed sixty times in some other fashion, and a conversation she was struggling to parse.
Why had Yukari concluded that Ryū was responsible for any of it? She'd been in Solo Mode. One player, zero company. And she would never be foolish enough to spar with the Group Admin, who was objectively the most dangerous person in the chat.
She scrolled up further. Read it in full.
The blush started at her cheeks. Migrated to her neck, her ears, her forehead.
In the original version of her life she would have had absolutely no frame of reference for this. Six months in the Chat Group, however — and under the personal mentorship of a certain gap youkai — had broadened her education considerably. She'd even watched some "artistic short films" at Yukari's enthusiastic recommendation.
So she understood. She understood the entire thread. Completely.
Yukari-nee-san was driving again. In plain view of the Admin. No hesitation whatsoever.
And she dragged me into it. "Died sixty times" is a perfectly ordinary sentence about a game feature and somehow it became — THAT.
She did not understand the mechanism by which a normal person's brain reached that destination. Was everything filtered through this lens for people who thought this way? Could a man handing another man a bottle of water be construed as something sinister? Was there no safe sentence left?
Kaguya shuddered.
If I keep spending time around Yukari-nee-san I might end up the same way.
She considered the current membership of the Chat Group. Sakura — pure. Whitebeard — dignified. Wolffy and Ying Zheng — too busy with research and empire-building respectively. Everyone else existed on a spectrum that probably had Yukari at one end and—
Actually. She thought about this carefully.
The Admin. Who everyone assumed was the responsible party in the group.
The Admin had, on multiple occasions, demonstrated driving technique that made Yukari look like a student with a learner's permit.
Kaguya had noticed. She was perceptive. It was, in fact, her defining characteristic.
She decided she was not safe anywhere.
(If Ryū had known what Kaguya was thinking, he would have disagreed at considerable volume. Comparing his perfectly restrained conversational style to Yukari's was an insult of the highest order. He could, if he wanted, run conversational circles around that gap youkai without breaking a sweat. The difference in skill was, in his private estimation, roughly the difference between a professional and a hobbyist. He kept these opinions to himself.)
Meanwhile, back in Konoha, Ryū set down the phone equivalent and rolled his shoulders.
The power was there now — present in a way it hadn't been before, woven into the body rather than accessed from it. He could feel the difference.
"Even after getting killed nineteen times — ahem, twenty — by that thing," he murmured, "the gains are real. In the Naruto world right now, anything below Six Paths tier shouldn't be able to touch me."
The Six Paths-level combatants were still more than a decade away. Maybe twenty years. Enough time that by the point they arrived, the Naruto world in its entirety might be something he could hold in one hand and squeeze.
He'd think about that when it became relevant.
What was immediately relevant was the state of his house.
The gaming PC Tatsumaki had sent him — a gift, delivered cross-dimensionally — was sitting under a visible layer of grey. That specific sight caused him physical discomfort. The PC was, alongside the house itself, the most important object he owned in Konoha. Seeing it coated in three days of accumulated dust was not acceptable.
He found a broom.
Then stopped.
Something's off.
He walked to the window near the far wall. Closed, latched, undisturbed — the dust on the frame showed no fingerprints, no smear marks. But something had changed in the air of the room. A trace. Faint, but there: the specific quality of a space that a stranger had recently occupied.
Not Guy. If Guy had entered the house, the door would have been removed from its hinges.
Not Kakashi either. Kakashi was too careful, too aware of the social cost of this kind of intrusion.
Which left — Minato, possibly. Hiruzen. Orochimaru. Danzō.
Ryū eliminated Minato immediately. The man operated transparently. This wasn't his approach.
The others, though.
Someone wanted to know how an ordinary civilian with no special background ended up at this power level. Reasonable question, honestly. They won't find anything.
The Chat Group existed in his mind — in his consciousness. There was nothing in the room to find. Any search would come up empty. If they somehow managed to locate the Group anyway, the only appropriate response was admiration.
"Whoever it was will show their hand eventually," he said. "I'm not in a hurry."
He retrieved the broom.
The knock at the door arrived three seconds later.
Three sharp, rhythmic raps. Then three more. The timing was precise — the knock of someone who had done this many times.
Who knocks with that much practice?
He opened the front door.
An ANBU operative. Cat mask. Holding a large wooden crate with both hands. The operative's posture communicated something Ryū could only describe as the emotional state of a lost traveller finding a familiar landmark after a very long time.
"One month," the operative said, in a voice suggesting genuine feeling. "One month. You're finally home."
Ryū: ???
The operative caught themselves. Composed. Continued in a more professional register: "You are Ryū-dono, correct? The Fourth Hokage entrusted this to me one month ago with instructions to deliver it personally. Please accept it. Good day."
The crate was placed on the doorstep. The operative disappeared in the standard fashion.
Ryū looked at the crate.
Then it clicked.
"…Minato's payment. He promised a reward. One month ago."
He looked at the door. Looked at the crate. Thought about the perfectly rhythmic knocking technique.
"That ANBU has been coming here every day for a month."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"I stood up an ANBU operative for thirty consecutive days."
Crazy Diamond: Moral of today's story: never provoke the Admin. Look at what happened to Yukari-senpai. Terrifying.
RawrSoFierce: Didn't you join in just now?
Crazy Diamond: !!! ∑(°Д°ノ)ノ
Crazy Diamond: Admin is the greatest!! Unmatched!! Number one in the universe, forget just this world!! And anyone who says otherwise will answer to Josuke Higashikata personally, I'll track them down—
I'm Rolling In It: I can smell the survival instinct from here.
Kaguya-sama: Um… can someone explain what's going on? I can't follow any of this. Meow?
Kaguya-sama: Did I miss something important?
Sakura of the Tohsaka: @Kaguya-sama — Kaguya-nee-san, scroll up and read the chat history. You'll see why Yukari-nee-san got muted. Do grown-ups always talk like this? Is this normal?
Kaguya-sama: Chat history? Train of thought? Okay, let me look.
Half a minute of silence.
Kaguya-sama: …
(Her face was the colour of a ripe apple. She did not type anything further for several minutes.)
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