Chapter 21: The Bowl-Cut Kid Next Door
Ryū could feel it with crystalline clarity — his strength had increased, and not by a trivial margin. By exactly how much, he genuinely couldn't say; it wasn't like he had precision instruments on hand to measure himself.
Two thousand Points' worth of physical enhancement. What kind of ceiling could that push an ordinary person's constitution to? That was a question for later.
For now, he could at least make a rough estimate.
He turned his attention to the immense, unfamiliar power thrumming through his body.
His gaze drifted to the tabletop beside him — that thin, faint layer of dust still sitting undisturbed on the surface.
He hesitated. Then steeled himself, and brought his palm down.
BANG!!
All four table legs let out a tortured groan under the load. The entire table shook violently. Dust erupted upward from the surface in a cloud.
Then came the crack of splitting wood — one leg simply snapped.
The table tilted sideways and crashed to the floor with a heavy thud.
A table that had been thoroughly solid — the kind you could probably drop from the second floor without a scratch — now had one leg sheared clean off and a visible dent pressed into its surface. Another fraction more force and the whole thing would have come apart.
And this was Ryū using less than twenty percent of his strength.
As for why he hadn't gone all out to see what would happen — who in their right mind slams a table with full force and expects it not to hurt?
"Less than twenty percent nearly wrecked it. Twenty percent probably finishes the job. And this was a solid table — the kind you could probably drop from the second floor without a scratch."
He had a rough, fuzzy sense now of just how dramatically his constitution had shifted.
He found himself idly wondering: if he hit a brick-and-mortar wall with everything he had, would it cave?
If the answer was yes, that was something. One punch per wall, like a human wrecking ball.
Unfortunately, the Dimensional Chat Group didn't come with anything like a status screen or attribute panel. Ryū was left to guess at his own numbers.
Whatever the exact figure, he was certain of one thing: he was at minimum twenty times stronger than he'd been before the transfer. If 2,000 Points didn't deliver that much, the currency was embarrassingly cheap.
Points, it turned out, held their value just fine.
"On top of that, I've now got all this Decompose-Decompose Fruit experience sitting in my head. Add the physical overhaul, and the only thing I'm actually missing is real combat experience. Am I strong enough to beat a Chūnin right now?"
He muttered it to himself, then let the question go.
He wasn't about to go challenge a Konohagakure Chūnin to a sparring match just to find out.
His current strength wasn't what mattered right now — what mattered was keeping a low profile. At least until his abilities reached the level of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju. Even in the Naruto world, standing out before you were strong enough to back it up was a good way to die.
And honestly, even if he did reach Hashirama's tier, he still wouldn't go around advertising it.
Ryū was the type who preferred to develop in the shadows — quietly, steadily, without drawing attention.
Besides, the power ceiling of the Naruto world wasn't Hashirama Senju. The later arcs of Naruto descended into complete chaos on the power scale — every other character ended up Kage-tier by the end, and the whole thing became something between a runaway escalation and a full structural collapse.
He pulled his attention back from the wandering thought and turned it toward the Dimensional Chat Group — because he'd just heard someone ping him.
The moment he entered the group, he was greeted by the 99+ unread messages symbol.
His cheek twitched.
Did these people have nothing else to do? No school to attend, no hibernation cycle, no galaxy to drift through?
RawrSoFierce: Who just pinged me?! Too many messages. Not reading all that.
Crazy Diamond: Admin-dono! It was me, it was me!
Crazy Diamond: I just heard from Kaguya-sama and The Eternally Seventeen-Year-Old Maiden that you know our futures — so I wanted to ask about mine… like, for example, am I going to marry someone hot?
RawrSoFierce: Your future, huh… hold on, how old are you right now? Do you know someone named Jotaro Kujo?
Crazy Diamond: Mm, never heard that name. As for my age — I'm sixteen this year.
RawrSoFierce: Sixteen… so you're in your first year of high school?
Crazy Diamond: Yeah.
Ryū paused, frowning slightly.
Sixteen-year-old Josuke Higashikata, first year of high school. If he was remembering right, Josuke met Jotaro Kujo during his first year — and everything that followed was the opening of JoJo Part 4.
Come to think of it, the JoJo world had a lot of interesting things in it.
Hamon.
Stands.
And those strange bows and arrows that could turn ordinary people into Stand users.
RawrSoFierce: Anyway — when you eventually run into someone called Jotaro Kujo, watch out for your family's safety. Especially your grandfather. By the way, Jotaro isn't a bad guy. He's your nephew — even though he's ten-odd years older than you, he really is your nephew.
Crazy Diamond: Jotaro Kujo… got it! Understood!
Crazy Diamond: Thanks, Admin-dono!
RawrSoFierce: ()
At that moment, Ryū's consciousness snapped out of the Dimensional Chat Group — because he heard it.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Even, rhythmic knocking on the front door downstairs.
He opened the window he'd just closed and looked down from the second floor.
There was a man standing below — dressed like a shinobi.
A ninja. Ryū had read all of Naruto in his previous life. He knew the names and faces of nearly every notable shinobi, right down to every member of Akatsuki. But that was in a story. Here, in the flesh, he was just a civilian. He'd never attended the Ninja Academy. He had no reason to know any ninja personally.
He went downstairs and opened the door.
The face on the other side stopped him cold.
"Hey! Ryū-kun! I hadn't seen you around for a few days — I was starting to think something had happened. Ahaha, looks like you just went out somewhere! I was actually about to break in, I was so worried."
Standing in front of him was a young boy with a bowl cut and thick eyebrows, dressed in a green jumpsuit, grinning wide enough to show every tooth.
He looked around fourteen or fifteen — noticeably younger than Ryū, who was seventeen.
Memories from the body's previous owner bubbled up, surfacing in rapid flashes.
Ryū stared at the face in front of him with an expression that could only be described as deeply unsettled.
"You're… Might… Guy?!"
It clicked immediately. He hadn't thought he knew any ninjas — but he'd been so focused on his new circumstances that he'd nearly forgotten: he didn't need to have gone to the Academy. The memories of this body's original owner told him everything.
Apparently, whether by coincidence or fate, the house next to Ryū's was the Might family home.
His next-door neighbor was Might Guy.