Chapter 75: Glass-Cannon Shinobi
In the end, Ryū didn't have to pay the medical bill. When he carried Guy into the hospital, he ran straight into Kakashi—hobbling along on crutches, and still wearing that black cloth mask even as an inpatient.
Kakashi covered Guy's medical expenses without being asked, adding only: "I knew this would happen."
Clearly, being Guy's best friend meant Kakashi understood the bowl cut all too well.
Not having to foot the bill? Everyone was happy.
Ryū could hardly afford it anyway. In this life, the inheritance left by his parents—a sum that should've lasted a lifetime if he'd been even mildly frugal—had already lost a full tenth of its value. All of it spent on food. One or two months of his new appetite had devoured what should've been a lifetime's worth of savings.
Paying someone else's hospital bill on top of that would've been pouring salt on the wound.
At this rate, am I going to have to go mug some crooked merchant somewhere?
Like, say, that "Boss Gatō" over in the Land of Waves?
Hmm. If I remember right, that guy's loaded.
And definitely not a good person.
You could even say he's one of the few Naruto villains who never got a redemption arc. Or maybe… a minor villain like him just wasn't worth Kishimoto's time to rehabilitate.
"Guess I'll cross that bridge when I actually run out of money."
Ryū shook his head lightly and cleared the thought.
* * *
Hatake Kakashi and Might Guy were, without a doubt, the cream of Konoha's next generation—geniuses among geniuses. Their future ceilings sat at Kage-level at the bare minimum, with potential to surpass even ordinary Kage.
Take the Guy of the future: he'd very nearly kicked Madara's teeth in.
Take the Kakashi of the future: the man became the Sixth Hokage.
Even now, Kakashi ranked among the stronger jōnin. He was probably less than a year away from being promoted to Elite Jōnin.
And Guy had the Eight Gates—that broken cheat code of a taijutsu system. Once activated, the Gates multiplied his base combat power exponentially.
Earlier, he'd only opened the Fifth Gate—the Gate of Closing—and had already hit the speed of sound.
From what Ryū could tell, Guy should be able to open at least one more Gate beyond that. Meaning he could reach at least the Gate of View.
Possibly even the Seventh Gate—the Gate of Wonder.
As for whether Guy could open the Eighth and final Gate—the Gate of Death—Ryū had no way to know. That wasn't something you could just guess at.
"Between Guy and Kakashi—even though only Kakashi holds a jōnin rank while Guy's technically still a chūnin—Guy's real combat strength is no lower than Kakashi's. Which means jōnin-level opponents shouldn't give me much trouble."
"Of course, that's also because neither fight was a real life-or-death battle. If Kakashi or Guy were fighting seriously, they wouldn't be this weak. They'd each have at least a few more gears to shift into. Though even with those extra gears… still not much pressure, honestly."
* * *
Ryū reflected on his current arsenal. His Six Powers had all reached Perfection. His physical stats had been enhanced with nearly ten thousand Points' worth of investment. On top of that, he had both Observation Haki and Armament Haki as force multipliers. And then there was his Devil Fruit—the Decompose-Decompose Fruit—less developed than his hand-to-hand skills, but already freed of its weakness.
All of that combined, reaching Kage-level…
Made perfect sense.
Running through the Kage-tier powerhouses in the Naruto world—setting aside certain broken outliers whose destructive output blew past the normal Kage ceiling—the average Kage-class shinobi was roughly equivalent to a Warlord of the Sea.
It wasn't that their combat ability was lacking. It was that their stamina was, generally speaking, terrible.
And there was one other fatal weakness: they were absurdly fragile.
Take Kakashi as an example—a jōnin—and a single kick from Ryū had nearly done him in. He'd held back, too. Without that restraint, Kakashi's spine would've snapped.
Tsunade from the original series was the same. Very few people dared take one of her punches head-on—not Orochimaru, not Jiraiya, not even Sarutobi Hiruzen.
Ryū's constitution, on the other hand, was genuinely terrifying—nearly ten thousand Points sunk into raw physical enhancement. He might not match Whitebeard's even more absurd physique, but in terms of pure bodily durability, drop him into the One Piece world and he could slug it out with someone of equal strength for ten days and ten nights without breaking a sweat.
If he threw a full-power punch at Sarutobi Hiruzen and the old man didn't dodge… those ancient bones would fall apart.
"When did I get this strong without even realizing it? Come to think of it—my Observation Haki and Armament Haki are still only at Low tier. If I ever scrape together enough Points to upgrade them to Intermediate… could I pass for an Admiral?"
* * *
The impact of Haki on overall combat strength went without saying. Between two fighters of seemingly equal ability, if one wielded Haki and the other didn't—the moment the Haki user activated it, they could annihilate the other in the blink of an eye.
That was the beauty of Haki: a pure force multiplier.
Of course, it wasn't as outrageously broken as the Eight Gates…
Opening the Eighth Gate reportedly granted more than ten times the combined power of the Five Kage.
That wasn't a "force multiplier" anymore.
That was straight-up hacking.
The kind that cost several thousand yuan.
"All in all, my growth rate has been… kind of absurd. It almost feels unreal. But then again, if I think about those transmigrators in web novels… my progress is probably on the conservative side, right?"
He thought back to some of the brainrot fiction he'd read on certain websites.
The kind where you deal 9,999 damage per swing. Where every skill is maxed from day one. Where you glare at water and it gets pregnant…
Once he thought about it that way, Ryū suddenly felt his own rate of progress was perfectly reasonable. After all—without a point of comparison, there's no suffering.
* * *
He hadn't yet fought anyone truly at his level, but his self-assessment was likely close to the mark.
He'd find an opportunity eventually—spar with someone of genuinely equal strength. When that chance would come, though, was a matter of luck.
Too bad the Dimensional Chat Group didn't have a sparring-partner feature.
If only there were some kind of training arena that could generate an opponent perfectly matched to his level. A simulation battle like that would be ideal.
"Forget it. No point wishing for something like that. Who knows when the next Group Quest will drop. But even if it doesn't come anytime soon, I shouldn't be wasting time. At the very least, I should be practicing my Haki."
Ryū had thought of an excellent method for training his Haki, and he planned to put it into practice starting tomorrow—a way to sharpen both his Low-tier Observation Haki and Armament Haki.
You could tell just from looking at the Point costs for upgrading tiers: Haki's growth ceiling was substantially higher than the Six Powers'.
So when it came to training priorities, Ryū leaned toward Haki.
Of course, his Fruit ability deserved some attention too. He couldn't just eat a Devil Fruit and then ignore it forever.
And he couldn't rely solely on Points to develop his powers.
At this stage, Points were still an incredibly precious resource.
Even saving a few hundred here and there…
That was still a win.
☆☆☆
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