Chapter 352: The Curtain Rises
"Yara yara, looks like chit-chat time's over. This Void Beast's presence feels a lot stronger than the ones from last time! And that opening underground isn't exactly small either."
Yukari used the moment to steer the conversation firmly away from earlier topics, pulling everyone's focus back to the actual business at hand.
And the actual business, of course, was dealing with the Void Beasts invading the Naruto world.
As the ground kept splitting, collapsing, and buckling upward, the massive form of a Void Beast gradually came into view.
The sound of the earth tearing itself apart cracked through the air like thunder, dust and debris swallowing nearly the whole village whole — in a single instant, Konoha became rubble in truth.
Even the famously indestructible Hokage Monument had already come apart by this point, not a single trace of it recognizable anymore.
Ryū's brow furrowed slightly — looked like even with the best luck in the world, his house wasn't escaping its fate as rubble.
He swept his right hand forward, hard, sending out a terrifying blast of pressure, like a hundred air cannons firing at once.
The dust choking the sky was swept clean away in an instant, laying bare the shape of a Void Beast —
a body the size of a mountain range, terrifying beyond belief.
At this point, even the naked eye could make out the dimensional rift underground.
Several more massive claws were already gripping the rift's edges — clearly more Void Beasts were trying to climb through.
Anyone looking down from high above would have seen the entire village reduced to one massive crater, as if a meteor had struck dead center.
Even the wilderness surrounding the village hadn't been spared, massive fissures splitting the land like canyons, daunting just to look at.
"Looks like I got here about ten seconds too late, hm? What a body on that thing — unbelievable. Gives the dark creatures from the Dark Dimension a real run for their money."
The Ancient One's figure materialized in the Naruto world, and taking in the massive Void Beast before her, she couldn't help murmuring to herself.
A tremendous surge of magic erupted from her all at once, and in that single instant, the entire sky and earth flipped a full 180 degrees.
Calling it "the world turned upside down" wouldn't be an exaggeration in the slightest.
Once it was done, a bit of sweat beaded on the Ancient One's forehead. She let out a breath and said, resigned, "These things are just too massive. I had to open up a much bigger mirror-space than usual."
"Any Void Beast that climbs out of that rift will get pulled straight into the mirror-space. Just try not to let the fighting spread too wide, though — the space might not hold up against a battle on that large a scale."
Yukari watched the shifting space around them with visible surprise, her eyes full of genuine wonder — the Ancient One's mirror-space had clearly caught her off guard.
Knowing the Ancient One could cast this kind of magic was one thing; actually standing inside a mirror-space herself was something else entirely.
She gave a light laugh. "Don't worry, I'll reinforce this space with some spell cards. Go ahead and fight all-out, no problem at all."
The instant she spoke, a gap-passage tore open behind her, and countless spell cards wreathed in shimmering light came pouring out in a torrent — a truly stunning river of light.
Card after card streamed out of the passage and quickly fused into the mirror-space, its overall durability jumping considerably in an instant.
Every one of those cards was something Yukari had idly cranked out day after day, long before she'd ever joined the chat group — thousands of years' worth, no telling exactly how many she'd stockpiled.
What she'd just sent out was only a tiny fraction of that millennia-deep reserve.
A single drop in an ocean, really.
Not the slightest pang of regret over spending it.
"Gurararara! Straight into a mirror-space the moment we arrive, and another round with these Void Beasts on top of it. Looks like we're in for a proper brawl!"
Whitebeard's hearty laugh was as unmistakable as ever — hear that "gurararara" and there was no need to guess who was talking.
As the chat group members finished crossing over one by one, the number of Void Beasts climbing out of the rift had already reached over a dozen!
Some bigger, some smaller, though the "big" ones were mountain-range scale and the "small" ones weren't far behind — their sheer size alone was overwhelming.
Not that any of that pressure registered with the chat group's members, of course — to Ryū and the others, these were just so many oversized chunks of meat.
Each Void Beast's intelligence was fully on par with an ordinary person's.
The moment they found themselves inside the Ancient One's mirror-space, their first reaction was...
Huh, looks like we took a wrong turn somewhere.
Out in the chaotic void beyond the dimensional rift, they'd sniffed out a tiny crack between worlds, catching the scent of an absolutely mouthwatering "World Source."
So they'd spent centuries tearing that tiny crack open by brute force, widening it into a full-blown rift.
Right as they'd been about to burst through and gorge themselves, they now found, to their shock, that this didn't seem to be the world they'd meant to invade at all.
That once-tantalizing "World Source" scent had vanished entirely, replaced instead by a bunch of strange creatures — odd little "bugs" the likes of which they'd never once encountered in all their time in the chaotic void.
That's right — to the Void Beasts, Ryū and the others looked more or less like insects. Even Whitebeard, a good six-plus meters tall, registered as, at best, a slightly oversized bug.
The kind you could carelessly stomp a dozen of flat with a single step, without even trying.
"A reasonably intact Void Beast corpse is worth 1,000 Points. Can't promise we'll keep every single one in one piece, but if you want to maximize the payout, best not to pulverize them into mush — that only nets you 100."
Ryū gave everyone the heads-up before the fighting started. A thousand Points a corpse might not sound like much on its own.
But what about ten intact corpses?
That's 10,000 Points right there!
And a hundred intact corpses? That's a full 100,000!
Every little bit adds up.
"Gurararara, a thousand Points a corpse, intact. These Void Beasts are worth a lot more than reincarnators, huh."
Whitebeard let out a booming laugh, then gripped the hilt of his bisento in one hand, thick veins already coiling up his forearm.
The rubble at his feet seemed to lift ever so slightly off the ground, the air around him churning wild and violent.
"...HAAH!!!"
The colossal slash Whitebeard cut loose with his bisento tore through everything in its path like a crescent moon —
and that single strike —
was what raised the curtain on the battle to come.
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