Chapter 237: Back to Konoha
[Tasks 1 and 2 are now complete. Click → [LINK] to claim your reward! Rewards will be added to your Points balance automatically — check your inventory!
Admin "RawrSoFierce" and member "Kaguya-sama" may now choose to leave the Star Hero world, or remain for up to one hour before automatic return.]
With this notification, both Ryū and Kaguya knew all three quest tasks had cleared. Pity that pulling Maidang into the group had required all three completing first — otherwise he could have gotten a head start on free Points earlier in the process.
On the rubble, Ryū watched Maidang's expression shift — surprise, then something hesitant, like he had something to say and wasn't sure he should.
The invitation's come through, then.
"Go ahead and accept," Ryū said, smiling. "That's the 'us' I mentioned earlier. You'll be part of it. Though it's your choice — accept or decline, whichever you want."
Maidang processed this, then nodded slowly. He didn't fully understand what was happening, but the message now sitting in his head — Dimensional Chat Group — connected immediately to something. Wait. My rescuer is from this same group?
He'd caught the important detail. After a moment's hesitation, he confirmed.
A prompt appeared asking him to set a nickname.
Nickname... like an alias, probably. Nothing creative came to mind on short notice. He remembered the option to change it monthly, so he just entered his own name for now and figured he'd revisit it later if something better occurred to him.
[Ding! "Maidang" has joined the Dimensional Chat Group]
The chat interface populated in his head, full of unfamiliar handles that made his eyes swim a little — "Wandering Little Planet," "Eternally Seventeen," names that sounded genuinely strange out of context. He briefly wondered if he was the only one using his actual name, until he spotted "Edward Newgate" further down the list — clearly also a real name, presumably.
He looked up at Ryū. "So... am I actually part of this group now?"
"Yes. Go check the group announcement — small red dot, top right corner. Read through it and you'll have a baseline understanding of what the Chat Group is."
Maidang tapped it. The announcement was long — a thousand, two thousand characters at least. He braced for the reading time.
Wandering Little Planet: Welcome, new member! Confetti! That quest cleared fast.
Kaguya-sama: I actually timed it — from when the Admin and I crossed over to the new member joining, total elapsed time was 45 minutes. Under an hour.
Crazy Diamond: Incredible efficiency, genuinely unbeatable.
Kaguya-sama: Mostly because the quest was easy. Those Reincarnators didn't show any "veteran" qualities at all — felt like rookies the whole way through.
Terrible Tornado: Brutal assessment from Kaguya. If those Reincarnators could hear that, they'd probably take it badly.
Eternally Seventeen: So envious — why couldn't I get a slot?
Edward Newgate: Gurararara — why hasn't the new member surfaced yet? Shy?
RawrSoFierce: Still reading the announcement. Give it ten, fifteen minutes. Could be half an hour if he reads slowly.
"…"
Not quite the half hour Ryū had joked about, but Maidang spent a genuine twenty minutes working through it carefully.
When he finally pulled his attention back from the announcement, he found that Ryū — who'd been sitting on the broken wall a moment ago — was already gone.
"Already left, huh." He murmured to himself. "Dimensional Chat Group. So this is what connects different worlds together. Sounds incredible."
If he hadn't happened to be selected by this group, those "Reincarnators" would have killed him. The announcement had given him a basic understanding of what that term meant, even with just a brief mention.
Maidang: Um — hello, everyone. I'm Maidang, the new member. Thank you to the two seniors who saved me earlier — I'm not actually sure which two of you it was. Sorry, this is a bit awkward!
Crazy Diamond: That'd be these two! @RawrSoFierce @Kaguya-sama
Crazy Diamond: The first one is our Admin. The second is Yukari-senpai's close companion, Kaguya Shinomiya.
Maidang: Ah? What does "close companion" mean, exactly? Is there a subtext I'm missing?
RawrSoFierce: The new member is twelve years old. Can we not say things like that in front of a kid? You'll corrupt him.
Maidang: @RawrSoFierce @Kaguya-sama — thank you both so much!
RawrSoFierce: No thanks needed. Though you should probably thank @Eternally Seventeen too — the talisman that saved your life was hers.
RawrSoFierce: Don't get too close to her, though. Bad influence.
Eternally Seventeen: Unacceptable! Do I look like the type to corrupt children? Slander! I'm calling my lawyer over this one!
RawrSoFierce: Ahem. By the way — I sent you a private red packet earlier. Did you not claim it?
Eternally Seventeen: A private packet? Huh, I missed it entirely. The stingy Admin actually sent me one privately — that's hard to believe.
I'm Rolling In It: A private packet?! Did the Admin do something with Yukari-senpai and is now trying to pay her off quietly? Disgraceful. Textbook bad boyfriend behaviour.
RawrSoFierce: ???
[Group member "I'm Rolling In It" has been muted by the moderator for 2 hours 50 minutes.]
Ryū could swear under oath that mute wasn't him. The only two people in the Chat Group with mute privileges were himself and Yukari.
Which meant it had been Yukari.
The cost of provoking the wrong person, apparently. Tony was going to need to develop better filtering on his commentary going forward.
Getting Marvel's most famous motormouth to genuinely shut up — only a Chat Group moderator with that much patience exhausted could pull that off. Currently, Stark sat firmly at junior-member status in this particular hierarchy.
He let the thought go. Back in Konoha, he checked his balance.
"15,500 Points from this run. 14,000 from the quest completion, 1,500 from Watch recoveries."
His reserves had recovered nicely. Sacred Ground really was, functionally, a reliable Points farm. The Reincarnators were weak individually, but each Watch was worth 500 — practically livestock waiting to be processed.
Pity they're too eager to make trouble. If they'd just quietly built up strength for a while before causing problems, the payout might have doubled by the time they got noticed.
A small regret, in the way that watching genuinely poor strategic decisions always produced a small regret. Move fast, die fast.
He started planning the allocation.
His main focus was the physical combat path — Observation Haki and the Six Powers had already had their breakthrough cards applied, so neither needed immediate attention. Life Return was the priority — newly learned, room to grow.
Mastery level required 5,000 Points from Beginner. Perfection level required another 12,000 on top of that. 17,000 total. Even counting his reserve, he wasn't there yet.
"5,000 into Mastery now. Save the remaining 10,500 toward the 12,000 needed for Perfection — close the gap fast, then go straight to Perfection in one push."
5,000 Points left his balance. Life Return jumped to Mastery level, and the deeper understanding of the technique settled into the back of his mind.
He'd just finished absorbing it when a familiar voice called from outside.
"Ryū-sensei! Are you home? Great news — really great news! Huh? Not home? I swear I heard something just now—"
Ryū's mouth twitched.
He recognised the voice before the sentence finished. "Sensei" alone was enough to identify the speaker.
Does this bowl-cut kid have nothing else to do, ever? Isn't he supposed to have missions as a chūnin?
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