Chapter 163: The Chat Group's Major Update
An hour wasn't short. By the time Ryū was starting to lose patience, the Chat Group chimed back to life.
[Dimensional Chat Group major version update complete. Time elapsed: 60 minutes. All 6 major updates have been fully applied. Please report any bugs.]
When Ryū checked back in, someone had beaten him to it.
Naturally, it was Yukari.
Eternally Seventeen: Ahhhhhh an entire hour!! Do you have any idea how long that felt?!
Eternally Seventeen: This Lady nearly went bald waiting.
RawrSoFierce: Noted… a bald Sage of Phantasms. Hisss. Can't even picture it. What would that art style even be?
RawrSoFierce: Actually — they say going bald makes you stronger. You should consider it. Shave off the blonde, gain the power. One punch levels Gensōkyō kind of power.
Eternally Seventeen: I am NOT falling for that, Admin!!
RawrSoFierce: Huh. You didn't bite. Your IQ must be functioning normally today.
Eternally Seventeen: What do you mean today — are you implying it usually isn't?!
RawrSoFierce: Correct.
Ryū answered without hesitation. Without a shred of diplomatic softening.
Eternally Seventeen: …
"…"
Yukari's internal state could be summarised in two characters she wouldn't say aloud.
She was this close to cracking open a gap, reaching through, and pressing a certain Admin's face directly into his keyboard.
The impulse lasted about two seconds before she talked herself out of it.
Because she couldn't beat him. She knew that. And even if she could open a gap to another world, she'd probably arrive just in time to have her own head grabbed and introduced to a keyboard at high velocity. The person getting their face dragged across the keys would almost certainly end up being her.
She let the thought go.
"One day," she muttered internally, "when I can crack a star, I'll challenge him to a proper match and we'll see. Sparring only though — taking it seriously would be insane. Knowing my luck I'd get killed and have nowhere to lodge the complaint."
She filed it under Future Problems.
Kaguya-sama: Back after an hour of enforced silence!!
Kaguya-sama: So what actually changed? The Protection Mode, the function upgrades — I honestly can't tell the difference. Everything looks the same.
Kaguya-sama: And that Membership Tier thing at the end. What even is that?
Kaguya-sama: Asking with genuine curiosity~
Admiral Kizaru: I had a look at the membership description just now~ Apparently you pay in Points to activate it~
Admiral Kizaru: Basic VIP gets you 3 Points of passive daily income, plus 24 free Arena hours per month~
Admiral Kizaru: Premium VIP gets 10 Points daily and 96 free Arena hours per month~ There are quite a few other perks besides those~
Crazy Diamond: I checked too — Basic VIP costs 100 Points a month. Even with 3 Points a day coming back in, you're still down 10 net. The free Arena hours are wild though.
Kaguya-sama: Ah… I think I more or less get it now.
"…"
Meanwhile, Ryū was going through the update notes in full. As Group Admin, he had access to the detailed breakdown — not just the summary.
Six updates total. Here's what they actually were.
① Cross-World Travel Function: Optimised
Previously, crossing between worlds required physically walking a 100-metre-long dimensional passage. Now it didn't. A thought was enough. No tunnel, no special effects, no theatrical entrance.
Just: intention, arrival.
In Ryū's estimation, the tunnel had always been visual flair and nothing else. It looked impressive. That was its only function. Getting rid of it saved the time spent walking 100 metres of corridor — which admittedly wasn't enormous, but it was something. A tidy quality-of-life improvement.
② Member Invitation Function: Optimised
This one caught his attention.
The original invitation mechanic had been random — characters just got pulled in. That still existed. But now there was a second path: targeted invitation via quest.
Specifically: if a character from another dimension was facing a crisis that wasn't part of their original story — caused by transmigrators, reincarnators, timeline butterflies, plot collapse — the Group would flag it as an Invitation Quest. Complete the quest, resolve the crisis, and the character could be invited to join.
Ryū turned this over.
So the idea is: find a dimension where someone's gotten dragged into a mess they were never supposed to face. Clean it up. Collect the person.
He could see it now. Routing out cross-dimensional interference — transmigrators wrecking canons, reincarnators destabilising timelines — and picking up new members on the way out. One operation, two payouts.
He was not entirely opposed to this.
The Points reward for completing Invitation Quests would presumably stack on top of everything else. More work, yes. More hassle, definitely. But if the numbers were good — a few thousand Points a run — the inconvenience became negotiable pretty quickly.
③ Protection Mode: Unlocked
This was the one that surprised him.
Reading the description, Ryū's expression shifted.
Protection Mode — as the name implied — protected Group Members. But not from external threats. From each other.
No Group Member could attack, injure, or affect another Group Member through any means. Combat abilities, illusions, indirect damage — none of it would land. Even Whitebeard throwing a full-force punch directly at Ryū's skull would do absolutely nothing.
Which was a fascinating thing to think about.
The stated reasoning was forward-looking: the Group's current membership was, on balance, reasonable. But there was no guarantee that would always be the case. If the Group ever pulled in a genuinely dangerous villain — someone with no interest in playing nicely — this would be the safety layer.
More practically: it meant that in any future large-scale battle, the Group Members could go completely unrestricted. No friendly fire. No holding back because your teammate was in the blast radius.
Call in the Wandering Earth for a direct planetary impact. Even if it craters everything within a thousand kilometres, your allies walk away without a scratch.
Ryū considered this scenario with quiet appreciation.
"That's genuinely useful. Some strong enough enemy shows up, you just summon the Little Planet and let it sit on them. Even Boros would be flat."
He spent a moment contemplating the image of the Wandering Earth simply parking itself on an enemy.
Not bad.
④ Arena: Unlocked
The Arena was straightforward in concept: a space where Group Members could spar, fight, and stress-test their own limits. PvP was available, but there was also a solo mode — the Arena would generate opponents calibrated to approximately the Member's own level for training purposes.
The cost structure was the issue.
Free access required a membership tier. Without one, you paid in Points: 100 Points for roughly 24 hours. For someone training seriously — say, 29 days out of 30 — that came out to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 Points a month.
Ryū had thought before that a training ground would be useful. His fundamentals were strong. His combat experience was not. Against the Nine-Tails, he'd fumbled the opening exchanges — experience would have let him close faster.
The Arena addressed that gap directly. And for the others in the Group, it would be equally valuable.
"Healing mid-session costs 10 Points regardless of severity. Death costs 20 to reverse."
He paused on that last part.
"…'Death' costs 20 Points to reverse. Which implies that whatever 'dying' in there means, it's not actually permanent. Otherwise there'd be nothing to reverse. So it's more like… a full sensory experience of losing, rather than actually losing."
He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He filed it in the same folder as the Membership tiers.
⑤ Membership Tier System: Added
Two tiers: Basic VIP and Premium VIP.
Basic VIP — 100 Points per month. Perks: 2 nickname changes per month. 24 free Arena hours. Profile picture functionality. 3 Points passive daily income. Custom chat bubbles, avatar accessories, decorative frame options.
Ryū stared at this list.
Chat bubbles. Avatar accessories. Decorative frames.
This was, without any attempt at disguise, a direct copy of that penguin company's premium membership package. Feature for feature. They hadn't even tried to file off the serial numbers.
Someone owes someone a licensing fee, he thought. This is brazen.
Premium VIP — 400 Points per month. Perks: all Basic perks upgraded. 10 Points passive daily income. 96 free Arena hours. Additional privileges not listed in the summary.
400 Points a month.
Expensive.
[End of Chapter 163]
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