Chapter 130: A Wasted Trip
Sakura of the Tohsaka: ...Um, I don't really understand most of what you've been talking about, but — thank you. All of you.
Terrible Tornado: You're little, you don't need to understand all of it. Just know that basically everyone with the Matou name is bad news, and bad people need to be taken out!
Crazy Diamond: Pfft — is that really appropriate to say in front of a kid?
Terrible Tornado: ...Fine. Basically everyone with the Matou name needs to be dealt with.
Kaguya-sama: Admin — are you coming along this time?
RawrSoFierce: Yeah, why not. Nothing else going on.
RawrSoFierce: I've unlocked crossing permissions for everyone who signed up. One thousand Points gets you through to the Fate world.
Kaguya-sama: LGTM!
Eternally Seventeen: LGTM!
Terrible Tornado: LGTM!
Edward Newgate: Breaking the echo chain — all set on my end, dimensional gateway open. [Image]
"..."
The Sakura situation had turned out to be more of an emergency than expected.
Ryū hadn't thought it would come to a head this fast — he'd assumed he had at least another six months. In the end, they hadn't deliberated long at all: fifteen minutes of chat, one workable plan, and that was that.
He unlocked crossing permissions for everyone who'd signed up, watched his 1,031 Points drop to 31 in an instant, and stepped through the dimensional gateway that opened before him — identical in shape and size to the ones that appeared for Group Quests.
"The Type-Moon world... the power levels there run way deeper than One Piece. Though maybe not as deep as One Punch Man — one bald demon king takes a single hop and nearly craters the Moon. Who knows what Saitama-sensei's absolute best would actually do to a planet."
He caught himself and let the thought go. Cross-universe power comparisons were a fool's errand and he knew it. Just idle speculation. He wasn't here to tangle with Type-Moon's top tier anyway.
The gateway sealed behind him roughly fifteen seconds after he passed through — closing slowly, completely. The thousand Points covered a round trip. There was no second toll on the way home.
If it cost a thousand each direction, that would be highway robbery.
A few minutes after Ryū left, a knock came at the front door.
Knock knock knock...
Knock knock knock...
"Hello? Is anyone home? Hello? ...Is there really nobody home?"
The ANBU chūnin standing outside, arms wrapped around a large wooden crate, scratched his head in mild frustration. He knocked again. Silence.
Eventually he gave up, turned around, and headed back the way he'd come, muttering under his breath. "Well... looks like no one's in. I'll have to come back tomorrow. No idea why the Fourth Hokage wants to send gifts to a civilian anyway. And this box is heavy. My arms are going numb."
Some distance away, in an unassuming shadowed corner of the street, a pair of vertical pupils watched the ANBU depart in silence.
The gaze drifted upward to the unremarkable two-story house, and the owner of those pupils let out a quiet, dry laugh.
"Not home? Poor timing on my part, it seems. And it looks like Namikaze Minato is already moving to cultivate that Ryū boy's loyalty. Tsk."
The murmur faded, and the figure turned to leave.
Orochimaru had come with a plan: find some way to get close to Ryū and extract the secrets of his physical technique. A body like that — that kind of absolute physical power — had to be backed by a cultivation method. Possibly one with no side effects whatsoever.
That was enormously appealing to him. He wanted it.
By whatever means necessary.
And yet somehow, inexplicably, Ryū wasn't even home today.
A completely wasted trip.
Meanwhile, in the Fate world — somewhere in a small grove near the outskirts of a manor estate.
Sakura Tohsaka, barely four years old, had slipped away here alone. The grove sat about three or four hundred meters from her family's large Western-style home.
She had invested enough Points into her own development by now that she was, in practical terms, more capable than most adults. Walking a few hundred meters to a quiet patch of trees by herself posed no real danger.
Still, she was nervous.
Because she knew, from the Dimensional Chat Group, that the older members were about to cross over and appear right here, in her world.
First meetups made adults nervous even under normal circumstances. For Sakura, who was barely past four, meeting people from other worlds entirely — people she'd only ever spoken to through a chat interface — was a different level of occasion entirely.
Five of them, at that.
Ryū from Naruto. Tatsumaki from One Punch Man. Yukari Yakumo from Touhou Project. Whitebeard from One Piece. And Kaguya Shinomiya, from whichever series had the longest title currently represented in the Group.
A pale, delicate hand settled on top of Sakura's head.
It ruffled her hair gently — thoroughly, enough to leave it a little disheveled.
Yukari Yakumo's clear voice floated in from directly behind her.
"My, my~ Sakura-chan is just as adorable in person as on video. We've had video calls before, but seeing someone in the flesh is a completely different sensation."
"...Yu — Yukari-nee-san."
Sakura recognized the voice at once, and knew immediately whose hand was on her head.
They'd video called within the Chat Group before. She knew what everyone looked like, what they sounded like.
"So this is what the Admin calls the Fate world — the Type-Moon world, the Heroic Spirit world." A voice drifted in from Sakura's left — young in pitch but carrying an oddly mature weight. "Feels just like back home, honestly."
A girl with dark green hair floated a few centimeters off the ground, arms crossed, scanning the surrounding trees with flat, unreadable eyes.
"My power isn't being suppressed at all," Tatsumaki noted. "Good. Full output available if I need it."
"Gurararara — Little Tornado! And Lady Yukari! Didn't expect you two to beat me here."
A booming laugh scattered birds from every branch in the vicinity. A figure over six meters tall stood at the edge of the grove — head and crescent-shaped mustache visible above the surrounding treeline.
Whitebeard had arrived.
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