Chapter 271: Rewards and Return
The task completion notifications had arrived. Ryū exhaled properly for the first time in ten days. Six-figure Points were not something you wanted vanishing on a technicality.
He claimed everything without hesitation, then ran the numbers.
Task 1: 30,000 Points. Task 2: 72,000 Points — base reward of 30,000 plus 42,000 in kill bonuses from his 172 Void Beasts. Task 3: 30,000 Points. Combined total: 132,000 Points.
The first time in his entire time in the Chat Group that a single event had produced that kind of return. Applied to his own strength, the ceiling on what 132,000 Points could achieve was genuinely difficult to estimate. Approaching star-busting capability, perhaps? He'd need to actually spend them and test the results in the Arena to know.
He didn't touch the Points yet. The task notifications were visible only to him as Admin, so he screenshotted each one and posted them to the group.
RawrSoFierce: @All Members — task completion notices are up. ［image］［image］［image］ — three quests. Just think about claiming and the Points transfer automatically.
Crazy Diamond: It's finally over?? I spent ten days quaking fifteen kilometers from the epicenter.
Crazy Diamond: HOLY — I just received 90,000 Points. Is this real?!
RawrSoFierce: Of course it's real. Task 1 is 30,000, Task 2 is 30,000, Task 3 is 30,000 — what else would 90,000 be?
RawrSoFierce: You didn't kill any Void Beasts, so no extra bonus, but the base reward is all there.
Ying Zheng The Sovereign: This sovereign has also received 90,000. Observation Haki, Armament Haki, the Six Powers, the sword style — all of them can finally be raised to Perfection.
My True Form Is Cola: Instantly Admiral-tier. LEGEND! I also got 90,000!
Kaguya-sama: Just clearing 100,000. The extra 10,000 must be from my Void Beast kills.
Eternally Seventeen: Admin-sama got 100 more Points than me! Unacceptable — why is this happening?
RawrSoFierce: Because the Void Beasts you killed were mostly fragmented or reduced to dust. The quest stated it clearly — the more intact the corpse, the higher the bonus.
Eternally Seventeen: I regret everything. If I had known, I would not have vaporized them all… aaaaah! Unbearable! Unbearable!
Kaguya-sama: Admin-sama is at 132,000, and Yukari-nee is 100 below that — so she's at 131,900?
Wandering Little Planet: @Little Sakura of the Tohsaka — Sakura-little-sister, repeat after me: "Envy causes osmotic crisis!"
Little Sakura of the Tohsaka: Envy causes osmotic crisis.
Edward Newgate: Gurararara! Josuke kid — could you fix this old man's weapon? My old companion is nearly in pieces.
Crazy Diamond: On it, Whitebeard-ojii-sama!
"…"
Once every member had claimed their rewards, the mood lifted — genuinely and noticeably, despite the fact that ten days and nights of maximum-intensity combat had left everyone running on fumes.
The sheer size of the numbers made the exhaustion irrelevant. Looking at six-figure rewards made the body's complaints feel distant.
Every participating member had received at least 90,000 Points — except Sakura, whose strength wasn't at the required level, and Wandering Earth, whose scale made participation geometrically incompatible with Task 1.
After appropriate investment, the Chat Group would gain at least one star-busting-tier combatant. The rest of the group's combat strength would make corresponding leaps. Ninety thousand Points spent on almost anyone — even a theoretically ordinary subject — would produce extinction-level combat capability.
Then Yukari's voice came from directly behind him, carrying a note of mild plaintiveness.
"Speaking of which, Admin-sama — can we go home now? I feel very strongly that I need a bath."
Ryū blinked, then nodded. "Yes. Anytime."
The quests were done. Every Void Beast was dead. The Spiritual Core was intact. There was no further reason to remain in the Saekano doujin world.
The carcasses blanketing the ground — they could stay. This world's nations could deal with them. Unintentionally destroying a dozen-odd cities in the course of saving the planet seemed like fair grounds to leave the cleanup materials as compensation. The bodies had no practical use for the Chat Group members anyway.
With no reason left to stay, the group members departed one by one. Even Eriri — a native of this world — triggered a return. She'd been transported here through the Chat Group's crossing system as a quest participant, so her return destination was wherever she'd been standing before the quest began.
The two hundred and fifty thousand square kilometers of former combat zone was now empty of living people. Or mostly empty — some of the stubborn holdouts who had refused the official evacuation orders were also present, in the sense that their component elements had become part of the local ecosystem. They had joined the Void Beasts in contributing to whatever unusually fertile landscape this region was about to become.
Ten days and ten nights of war. And then: sudden silence.
The transition felt unreal — to everyone watching from outside the zone, and perhaps to the combatants as well. The people of the Saekano doujin world had been watching continuously for ten days straight. When the last Void Beast fell and the footage simply stayed still, many of them sat with the footage for a while before their minds caught up.
A dreamlike quality settled over everything.
Very slowly, the world began to make noise again.
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