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[ Congratulations! The Art Publishing System has been upgraded, Level 8 ]
[ Feature Unlocked: Monopoly ]
[ Monopoly: One of the laws of the Art Store — the power to monopolize art. From now on, you will earn double the money made by anyone who sells your art outside the Art Store, whether with your permission or without it. You can also benefit in Art Coins through these art pirates! ]
It was just before dawn when the blue window appeared before Rob's eyes.
The young man sat in his usual chair behind the store counter in Konoha, the small lamp the only light on, the returned stacks of Volume Ten arranged before him in small, even towers. He raised his eyes to the window hanging in the air, read it once, then read it again.
"Monopoly…"
he murmured quietly into the empty store.
'So someone is stealing my art.'
And as if the System had heard the thought, a second window slid into place beneath the first.
[ Unauthorized points of sale detected: 214 ]
[ Distribution: Land of Tea, Land of Rivers, Land of Grass, Land of Waterfalls, the archipelago of the Land of Water, the western trade routes… ]
[ Most common production method: hand-copying — one week to ten days per volume ]
Rob read the lines slowly, one by one.
Two hundred and fourteen points of sale. In lands where he had no stores, and where his stores would not reach anytime soon. People he had never seen, sitting in the corners of marketplaces, copying by hand, page by page, on cheap paper — a full week's work for a single volume… and then selling it to those who could not travel.
And every one of those copies, from this moment on, would pour double its profits into his account.
'Pirates risking their lives to smuggle my volumes across borders… just to pay me twice what I'd earn from them myself.'
Rob leaned back in his chair slowly and looked at the ceiling of the store for a moment.
'May God bless every one of them.'
Then he shook his head slowly, and on his lips was something impossible to confirm as a smile.
'In the shinobi world — where forbidden techniques, scrolls, weapons, and secrets are stolen every day… the first thing people decided to steal from me is a comic book.'
…
Afterward, Rob opened the System Store.
The interface was as familiar to him as the palm of his own hand. A long list of items, refreshed with every level, each one with its price written in Art Coins. There was no mystery whatsoever in it for him; from the earliest days, Rob had been one of this store's very best customers — this store that no one but him could see.
He scrolled slowly through his old purchase history.
The barriers that protected all nine stores from any break-in, fire, or surveillance seal — the ones that had sent the most formidable intelligence divisions of the five villages home empty-handed. The transfer seal that let him move between his stores in the blink of an eye, so that he could open the Konoha store in the morning and be arranging the shelves in Kirigakure by evening. The self-printing machine that copied the volumes without a single human hand — without which he could never have met the demand of one village, let alone five.
And at the very bottom of the log, among those items that had changed the course of everything, there was one small line — bought in a moment of weakness, and never once regretted:
[ A broom that never wears out — 50 Art Coins ]
'The best fifty coins I've ever spent in my life.'
Then he scrolled back up to the number he had originally come to check.
[ Art Coin Balance: 999,430 ]
He stared at the number for a long time.
He knew the value of these coins well. He knew what they bought, had tested what they bought, and had built his small empire piece by piece out of this silent blue store. But the prices grew with the levels, and the new items unlocked recently were no longer measured in thousands — but in hundreds of thousands.
And the System, as always, had never once explained why.
The System does not explain. It announces, monitors, tallies, and unlocks features and items on schedules it alone decides… then falls silent. A blue box that knows everything and justifies nothing.
But Rob had long since learned to read it another way.
He did not read what the System said — he read what it did. First the stores in the five villages. Then the giant screens above the squares, the anime airing at the very same moment from Konoha to Kiri. And now this "Monopoly," which turned even the thieves of the small countries into a distribution network working on his behalf, pouring coins into his balance while he slept.
Every feature, from the very beginning, had been moving in one direction.
Spread the story wider. Farther. Deeper.
And every new item in the store, with its swollen prices, seemed to be telling him: gather more. What's coming is bigger.
'And the question you will never answer me…'
Rob thought, watching the lamp's reflection on the glass of the interface.
'…is: where exactly are you trying to go with all of this?'
He closed the interface and rose to open the store.
…
With sunrise, the store opened its doors as usual.
Konoha was still living to the rhythm of the week's events: the latest anime episode that people could not stop talking about, Volume Ten that had upended every discussion, and the Chunin Exam finals whose countdown now occupied every tongue.
Rob listened to all of it from behind his counter, the way he listened to it every day.
A customer swearing that the thick-browed boy would become a legend. Two men arguing about Orochimaru in lowered voices, glancing over their shoulders between one sentence and the next. An old woman buying a second copy of one of the volumes because the first had "gotten soaked with tears" — she specified nothing more, and Rob did not ask.
It was an ordinary working day.
Then, near evening, while he was arranging the front shelf, a faint blue flicker glinted at the edge of his vision.
[ Weekly Report: Broadcast of the Latest Episode ]
[ Total viewers across the squares of the five villages: new record ]
[ Highest attendance rate: Kirigakure ]
[ Observation note: In Kirigakure, the crowd remained in the square for 40 minutes after the episode ended. The System has never recorded a similar case before. ]
Rob's hand stopped mid-motion.
He read the last line twice.
Forty minutes. An entire crowd, in a village that had taught its children that hearts are tools, standing beneath a screen that had gone dark… and not leaving.
The System did not explain why. The System does not explain.
But Rob did not need an explanation. He knew which episode had aired this week, knew which arc it had brought to a close, and knew — better than anyone — that the people of the Mist had not been watching some stranger's story.
They had been watching a mirror.
He remained standing before the shelf for a long moment, his hand still resting on its edge.
Through his stores, Rob had seen every kind of reader. He had seen those who read coldly, those who read like men dissecting a corpse, and those who read while commenting out loud on every page. He had seen those who laughed, those who raged, and those who threw the volume down only to come back to it an hour later, pretending they had never thrown it.
But an entire crowd refusing to leave an empty square for forty minutes…
'I showed them their future.'
The thought was not new to Rob. It had lived with him since the very first day, since the first customer opened the first page. But it had always been a large thought, a general one, an abstract one: I showed them the coming war. I showed them the betrayals. I showed them their dead.
Tonight, the thought stood before him at its true size: an entire square full of people, beneath a darkened screen, who did not know how to go home.
Rob stood before the shelf, and in his head was a single question — addressed to himself, because no one else would ever answer it:
'When someone sees their future in art… does it change?'
The blue box, naturally, said nothing.
So Rob answered himself, slowly, the way he lined the volumes up in a single row:
'Art does not decide the future. Art only shows it.'
'As for what the beholder does with what he has seen… that belongs to the beholder alone.'
Then he returned the last volume to its place on the shelf and switched off the display lamp.
…
Late that night, Rob sat behind the counter once more and opened the System interface for the last time that day.
And he stopped.
[ Art Coin Balance: 1,000,000 ]
One million.
The first day's earnings from "Monopoly" — five hundred and seventy coins from stores he had never visited, pirates he had never seen, and readers in lands whose names he did not know — had been what finally pushed the counter past the number it had been slowly climbing toward since the very first day.
Seven zeros behind the one, glowing quietly in the darkness of the store.
Rob stared at the number for a long time — not with the astonishment of a man who did not know these coins' worth… but with the calculations of a man who knew it all too well.
One million coins. A balance that could buy half the store's catalog in a single purchase. A balance he had never dared accumulate before, because every stage of his empire had devoured his savings before the previous one was even complete.
And now, for the first time since the beginning, the money was flowing in faster than he could spend it.
'Level eight… a balance with seven zeros… and new items no longer priced in the thousands.'
Rob looked through the store's glass at sleeping Konoha, where the Chunin Exam awaited its finals, where Jiraiya awaited a boy who did not yet know he was being awaited, and where an old Hokage awaited the answer to a question that would not let him sleep.
Finals the whole world would attend. The eyes of all five villages on Konoha. And a blue box gathering coins for him as though preparing him for something.
"Very well, you silent box…"
Rob said quietly, rising from his chair.
"Let's see what you're going to offer me to buy this time."
And in the darkness behind him, the blue window lingered a moment longer than usual…
then went dark in silence, as it always did, without saying a thing.
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Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 203: Volume 11 of the Naruto Manga Is Here!
Chapter 204: The Training Begins, and the Snake's Seal!
Chapter 205: Volume 11 Reaches the Four Villages!
Chapter 206: Our Ally, the Sand, Is Tied to the Sound!
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