Chapter 272: Draw Your Blade, Rival
As the world's legitimate reincarnator in this Saekano doujin setting, Chen Fan — the doujin protagonist — was experiencing a degree of mental bewilderment he hadn't encountered since arriving.
He watched the display screens as the mysterious figures disappeared, one by one, in the span of a moment.
The satellite footage showed only what remained: the ground carpeted with alien creature carcasses, the earth beneath reduced to pulverized rubble. Where these people had gone and how they'd vanished, he had no idea, and no one could give him an answer.
The genuinely surprising thing was what happened to his system the instant they disappeared.
It came back online. Clean. No errors.
For ten days and ten nights, his mind had been filled with cascading error codes — garbled strings like "ftihsydgxyil" on a continuous loop, making sleep nearly impossible and leaving him averaging two or three hours a night. The moment these mysterious figures appeared, his system had crashed. The moment they left, it restored itself.
Their presence was enough to affect a system. Mine.
The implications of that were uncomfortable to sit with. The system was his most reliable advantage — the golden finger he'd built this entire second life on. And it had been knocked offline by the proximity of people who were apparently operating on a completely different level of existence.
He didn't know, and couldn't know, that there had been systems far less durable than his. The one that had belonged to a certain other transmigrator in a different world had stopped functioning permanently — but that was because the Chat Group had killed its owner first.
Chen Fan should consider himself fortunate. He hadn't caused any canonical disruptions to this world's timeline, which meant his name hadn't appeared on any blacklist. The alternative outcomes for those who did make the list — Blackbeard Teach, and the one who'd preceded the recent mission — were instructive.
Both of them were dead.
"An entire major province reduced to flat ground." He couldn't stop staring at the imagery. "Not a single mountain visible. Even the smaller hills are gone."
He let out a slow breath and murmured to himself, "In my previous life, I cultivated through the spiritual awakening era and lived to three hundred and twelve before my accidental rebirth. At three hundred and twelve, my single most powerful strike was enough to collapse a large building."
"These people, casually, flattened a mountain range. Their splashback destroyed over a dozen cities. This is extinction-level, world-ending power. They are divine."
What he didn't know was that at least one member of that group was, in a meaningful sense, actually divine. The Shiba Inu Thor was arguably a god of thunder — not the thunder god of Western classical mythology, but the gap between "arguably" and "actually" was narrow when the subject could channel lightning at that scale.
Chen Fan smiled faintly, tired.
"The mess they've left behind is going to be a problem, though. The economic damage from that much destroyed territory crossed into the trillions long ago. The alien creature corpses, if properly utilized, could cover some of the losses."
The group's synchronized disappearance from the satellite feeds had been visible to the entire planet simultaneously.
For ten days, every television channel, streaming platform, and news feed had been broadcasting the battle. This was an extinction-level event. No one capable of caring about their own survival had been looking away.
Now those feeds showed empty devastation, and the internet responded with characteristic intensity.
"It's over? Ten days and ten nights. I was living about fifty kilometers from the damage zone — I could feel the tremors every day, like a magnitude four or five earthquake."
"You were FIFTY KILOMETERS away and you STAYED? I evacuated all the way south to Guangdong Province to stay with distant relatives. I was absolutely terrified."
"Both of you can stop complaining. I LIVED in the combat zone. Thank god the government got us out in time. I took everything valuable I owned and ran. Otherwise I'd probably be dead."
"How did the government even know to evacuate people? How did they know in advance?"
"…Someone below this comment definitely knows."
"No they don't!!"
"Apparently a lot of people didn't believe the government and stayed in the affected cities. They're definitely all dead now, right?"
"Everything was flattened. The ground itself was stripped away. They're gone. Can't blame anyone but themselves for not following instructions."
"Doesn't matter anymore. The government is my idol now. I LOVE YOU!!"
"Unacceptable — draw your blade, rival!"
"Another rival appears — I'll kill you all!"
"The internet is chaos and I love it."
"Pfft — a whole theatre troupe in the comments."
"…"
Internet discussion was always more unfiltered than real-world conversation. In person, most people held back — social pressure, not wanting to make a scene, whatever. Shouting "I love [X]" on a public street invited strange looks and mostly just didn't happen.
Online, no mask required. Anything short of harassment could be typed and broadcast freely.
Eriri, as a resident of this world, had come home, opened her laptop, and was reading through the wave of commentary that had flooded every platform.
"No significant negative voices anywhere. The few critical ones that exist are disappearing into the sheer volume of positive reaction — they're not getting any traction. People aren't as easy to push around as they used to be."
She let out a small laugh, then thought of something, and her expression froze.
She checked the date in the corner of her screen.
"…No. No. The manuscript deadline is in one day. Can I even make that?"
A long pause.
"Or… could I go quiet for a week? One week of radio silence. People would understand, right? I was literally helping save the world."
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