Chapter 358: I'll Throw My Hammer At You
Kaguya's face stayed expressionless, but the killing intent bleeding off her without the slightest effort was enough to set anyone's nerves on edge — it was hard to even imagine what kind of battle she'd just walked out of.
And beneath that stillness, Minato could feel something else radiating off the black-haired girl: a thick, unmistakable sense of threat.
It was the same feeling he'd had, back when he was still a Chūnin, standing across from the Third Hokage — that same pressure, that same razor-sharp danger, unmistakably clear.
His expression hardened without his meaning it to, wariness creeping up from somewhere deep inside him.
Studying the girl in front of him, Minato chose not to provoke her. Instead, he spoke first. "May I ask who you are? And why you're here in Konoha? I don't recall anyone this strong among our people."
That casually-thrown stone alone had already given him a genuine sense of danger. If it had actually hit him, Minato had no doubt he'd have been hurt — quite possibly badly. For a single tossed stone to blow out a crater ten meters wide and one or two meters deep was frankly more destructive than an ordinary explosive tag. It would take two or three stacked together to hit numbers like that.
It left Minato with no choice but to stay on guard. If the girl in front of him turned out to be an enemy, she'd be an extraordinarily dangerous one.
But then — why, as Hokage of this very village, had he never once heard of her?
Was she something like Ryū — powerful, but keeping an unusually low profile, some kind of hidden master?
Surely not. One recluse of Ryū's caliber tucked away in Konoha was already enough to drop half the shinobi world's jaws. Now a second one?
And the more pressing detail — this black-haired girl looked genuinely young. Seventeen at most, if he had to guess.
Younger than Ryū, even.
Kaguya tilted her head slightly at Minato's question. Having sensed no hostility from this blond-haired man, she answered without much thought. "Just an ordinary traveler passing through. I'll be gone in a few hours."
An ordinary traveler?
What kind of "ordinary traveler" tossed a stone that made a Hokage feel like death itself was breathing down his neck?
That excuse was — wasn't that a little thin?
Minato didn't believe a word of it. If an "ordinary traveler" could pull off something like that, what did that make everyone else? And of all the coincidences, this frighteningly powerful "traveler" just happened to be this young, and just happened to be standing here in Konoha of all places. That wasn't a coincidence — that was outright suspicious.
Still, she'd given her answer, and pushing back too hard risked offending someone he had no business offending. Konoha was already barely standing after everything that had happened; picking a fight with some mysterious powerhouse on top of it would only make things worse.
As Hokage, Minato had responsibilities to weigh. So even though he was fairly sure Kaguya was making things up on the spot, he simply nodded along as if he believed her.
While he was still turning all of this over in his head, a strange glowing ring suddenly appeared over Konoha's crater. From where Minato was standing, he had a clear view of it, sparks and all.
Then, dumbstruck, he watched a Shiba Inu carrying a hammer step right out of it.
By the time the ring had sealed shut behind it, Minato still hadn't fully processed what he'd just seen, his face frozen in blank confusion.
Thor, having stepped through the Ancient One's portal, glanced around for a moment before his gaze locked onto a particular direction. A crackle of lightning flickered across his fur, and in the blink of an eye, he was standing right beside Kaguya.
Kaguya blinked, glancing down in mild surprise at the dog now beside her.
Ignoring Minato entirely, she asked, curious, "You're out too, doggo? How's it going in there?"
Thor panted, tongue lolling, clearly worn out — but he answered patiently all the same. "Woof woof! Woof woof! Woof woof woof..."
A few seconds of silence followed. Thor's expression shifted into something distinctly awkward.
Then his consciousness slipped into the Dimensional Chat Group, and he and Kaguya switched to a private chat window instead.
No other option, really — he was the only member in the entire group who couldn't actually talk. Even Little Sphere could manage human speech, somehow, but no matter what Thor tried, he just couldn't make it work.
I Am Thor, God of Thunder!: Things are holding up fine in there. Admin-sama and the others can manage — half the group's carrying more hidden cards than you'd believe.
Kaguya-sama: Good to hear. So, doggo, how many Void Beasts did you take down?
I Am Thor, God of Thunder!: Hm... twenty or thirty, I think? Can't say exactly — wasn't really keeping count.
Kaguya-sama: Huh? Sounds like we're about even, then.
I Am Thor, God of Thunder!: You got twenty or thirty too? This batch is way stronger than last time. If I hadn't gotten stronger myself, I might not even have qualified to come along.
I Am Thor, God of Thunder!: By the way, who's the guy with the bright yellow hair over there?
Kaguya-sama: No idea. Probably just some background extra from Admin-sama's world.
I Am Thor, God of Thunder!: A background extra, huh. Not our problem, then. I'm going to rest up for three hours and head back in to farm more Points.
Kaguya-sama: Yeah — any Void Beast corpse that's reasonably intact, not too badly torn up, is worth 1,000 Points.
Kaguya-sama: Honestly, this whole trip really has turned into a Point farm.
"..."
Minato, still standing there like a stunned mullet, had no idea he'd been completely written off by the girl and the dog both. He had no idea that, in their eyes, he was nothing more than a nameless background extra.
Had he known, he probably would have sulked about it for quite a while. Say what you like, he was still the Fourth Hokage of Konoha — there were few people in the entire shinobi world who didn't know his name.
And here he was, being treated as some throwaway extra...
He genuinely had no idea what to even say to that.
Watching the girl and the dog in front of him, Minato scratched his head and muttered under his breath, "...They've completely ignored me, haven't they? Is my presence really that thin — I can't even out-rank a dog?"
The words had barely left his mouth when his pupils shrank. A miniature Mjölnir went whistling past his cheek, missing his head by a hair.
Then he saw the strange dog pointing one paw straight at him, barking furiously — clearly hurling some kind of insult his way.
This dog... it actually understands human speech? Could it be some kind of ninja hound?
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