AN: Friendly reminder that this story now has a
Discord and a
Patreon.
The Discord is for anyone wishing to have better contact with me, wishing to give feedback in an area that won't receive as dramatic a response, or just hang out and tell me about their day.
The Patreon is now on CH 14, and will be on Chapter 16 next Friday.
This is CH 11, so I hope you enjoy.
I'll admit I'm not a super fan of the fight scene, I rewrote it three times. But that's why my Ino quest is a thing, to give me more fight scene experience. Wish I could update it more, but a busy schedule is not one that loves me.
Enjoy!
"Think Sakura, they're goblins." As more and more of the small creatures appear in the air like it's just a normal thing to do, they start to get a little more active. At first they were very static, as if loading in, but their patterns are getting more and more complex by the second. Twitchy is a good word she'd use to talk about their sporadic increase in animation.
She's right in the middle of their camp, which is probably the worst way a random encounter system could function. It also raises a lot of questions about her other encounters, like why is this the first time she's being given a notification about it, and why are they fantasmal creatures instead of nuke-nin? She reaches down for her sword, only to have a brief moment of quivering will. The sword is changing who she is, and it's doing it very fast. She can't blame the sword entirely, the system is impacting her ways of thinking and her experiences are also making huge changes, but she doesn't really want it to be her one and only option if the changes are even remotely what she estimates. Relying on a corrupting source is kinda how Siegfried turned into Nightmare.
The sword wants blood, but she can be more than that. Kakashi already scolded her about over reliance on any singular technique, and she's learned three jutsu already since she got here. Small and largely pointless, that doesn't mean she can't use them. That's it, she'll get through this fight without her sword. They're goblins, they're low level mobs in every game that's ever existed except maybe some of the less savory ones on the internet.
Challenge Alert: Eliminate all 26 goblins without drawing your sword.
Reward: 200% exp for any skills used during the dispatching. |
That kind of solidifies her goal. Instead of her sword, she draws two kunai knives. She knows the theory, but was always below average on putting the kunai into practice. The difference between theory and reality is effort, and her efforts went towards games and hiding her true nature for so long it became a second nature entirely.
She doesn't even have a kunai related skill, so at two hundred percent exp in active combat, she should get one. With that resolve understood, thought through, and fully realized, it's time to move. She thinks very quickly, it allows her to take much longer thinking - to her time perspective - than most people, but even that has to end and it does with the sound of a bolt firing from behind her.
Goblins with crossbows? That's not fair. She spins on her heel, figuring out the angle based on the sound of its release and the way it wizzes through the air. Adrenaline, a quick mind, and a mixture of Genin Dexterity allows her to kick its side and send it off into the dirt without even having looked at it. Could she have done that before she got these powers?
Fuck no. Not a chance.
That was some nonsense, but it's just the first nonsense among a hundred other nonsenses to enter this fight. Sasuke is nowhere to be seen, Naruto's back with Tsunami and Inari, and Kakashi's likely napping like a babe in his dark dwelling.
Can she take on twenty six weak opponents herself?
No.
Can she do it with several conceptual skills giving her massive advantages against weak opponents, and a proactive go getter attitude?
Yeah, she imagines she can.
A quick blur of glances marks them all in her mind, a photographic memory helping her in a way she's pretty sure is cheating even without her powers. Eight in the trees, five with crossbows, three with rocks. Sixteen on the ground, charging at her from all directions.
A camp with a campfire, traps around the edges, a bear trap, wire traps- she's on the move. The ones she runs right towards are surprised for all of a second before they have their scrappy swords slashing at her. They're of no consequence, she speeds up from a mild run to full speed instantly using Genin Agility the moment she's within range and jumps right on over them. She uses her dexterity to roll as she lands, grabbing a bear trap and hucking it right at them. It snaps shut just as it lands on the face of a little green man, and the gruesome crunching of bone and rending of flesh is a little much even for her. "Holy shit." She's stunned just long enough for her Genin Dexterity alone to save her from another bolt, her head tilting aside just in time for it to miss and embed itself in a tree.
She wants to grab it and huck it back like a kunai, before her brain connects the dots and remembers that she just has kunai. "How long has it been since I've used these?" She asks herself, implanting one of the two already drawn kunai in the skull of the nearest green miniature trying to take out her legs. She jumps back, leaving the clearing entirely and entering the thick tree line so most of the shooters can't get a bead on her. Then it's simply a matter of running right up a tree and launching herself off of it with silent steps. She watches as they follow her into the trees, looking around all confused as to where she could have possibly gone.
She's happy to learn goblins are stupid, and starts to creep along the branches in an effort to get to one. She finds it's easy to get behind one without an issue. The remaining drawn kunai inserts itself in his throat. She takes just enough time to grab his loaded crossbow, before she lets him fall into the clearing below a bloody gurgling mess. It takes a moment longer than she'd like to figure out how to aim the crossbow, but luckily not so long anyone notices. She manages to get a bolt through one's forehead before the corpse she just made hits the ground with a wet smack. The next falls with his crossbow, removing that option, but that's fine. She just wanted to see if she could. She tosses the now ammo less weapon down below, and gets back to climbing so she can sneak up on the remaining six highly alert entities in the trees. They've clearly noticed the demise of their two friends, so she has to be careful.
It's not hard to get a shuriken into each and every one despite caution slowing her down. She gets above them in the trees, and simply throws down. She should have really trained shuriken throwing more than the academy required before this, with more alert opponents it wouldn't work at all, but her powers deemed it reasonable to give her an incredibly easy engagement. Throwing down works, and soon enough ranged support is eliminated like the joke it is.
An easy breath of relief leaves her. She could leave now if she wanted, but her quest notes she's only eliminated ten of twenty six, and she has the height advantage.
She reaches into her shuriken pouch, and channels fire chakra as strongly as she can into the metal. It's probably not good for the pouch, but she hasn't gotten it to the point where anything is catching fire so it should be fine.
After a few moments of catching her breath and focus, she does the most Naruto thing she can think of. "Shuriken jutsu, waste all the shuriken!" She announces with fervor, using her new technique name to grab and huck as many red hot shuriken down at the pissed off lemmings as she can before her pack is out.
That turns out to be more than she expected, but less than she wants. With all her ranged weapons gone besides one kunai she'd rather keep for fighting when she gets down there, she's reduced to six goblins. Most of which with horrific burns, and agonizing death screams she's happy she doesn't have to hear anymore now that they're very dead.
She imagines if she'd had a level system, this'd be worth a lot of experience at least. At least her skills are gaining exp. "Fuck it."
None of her jutsu are useful for range. The best she can do is drop down to the ground and engage them directly. She can't use her sword though, so it's best to try and get an advantage. That thought has her using the normal clone jutsu to create two versions of herself.
The clone jutsu is normally rather useless. It doesn't cast a shadow, it doesn't move grass, it doesn't smell or talk or make sound and attacks pass right through it because it's basically mist traveling in the wind. With goblins, she gets the feeling she'll fool them just fine. They idiots split up into groups of two to charge them each. Unfortunately clone jutsu does exactly what you do with no variance, so she can't make them be evasive while she eliminates her two. She just has to hope the brief delay until they figure it out is enough.
One takes a swing at her, and her dexterity kicks in without a thought. Her foot kicks out, slamming against the side of his sword and quickly overpowering it. The sword drops to the ground, held underfoot by her heel and a powerful application of tree walking keeps it there. Her second foot finds itself embedded in the creature's face, sending it rolling with more than enough time for her to react to the second's attack. She parries it easily with the kunai, sliding along the blade as she darts towards him. The sparks of the two blades dragging along each-other are vibrant and bright, but not as bright as the light that leaves his eyes. She finds herself several feet away, holding a severed head and holding back retching.
She doesn't have time for that.
She looks back at the four that remain with urgency and a readiness to create a wall to block them. She even has the earth chakra already built up in her hands.
Except, it's not needed, as she finds them still rapidly stabbing her non-tangible clones to death. If the situation were any less disgusting, she would sweat drop. "Oh wow, they really are that stupid. I have vastly over complicated this."
With that realization she walks up behind them, and jams the kunai into their spine one after another. "Yeah, waaay too overcomplicated. Next time I'll try stabbing first."
| Congratulations, you've killed all 26 Goblins in this Random Encounter, and earned 200% exp for doing it without your sword! Please open the random encounter chest! |
Looking for the chest, she can't help but be distracted by the messages popping up.
You have gained Novice Short Blade
You have gained Novice Throwing Weapons
You have gained Novice Stealth
You have gained Clone Technique Intermediate
You have gained Novice Crossbow
You have gained Trait: Neck Snapper |
"... I didn't even snap any necks." She points out, sighing to herself before shaking her head and putting on a smile for all those skills. She doubts she would have gotten them all without the bonus, and she's not about to complain about progress.
As shown at the end, that didn't need to be as hard as it was. Her reliance on her sword alone is what caused that, and she could improve greatly from branching out a bit before she becomes an idiot impaled to a tree again.
She chooses not to check her stats yet. It's just not time. Her finger hovers over the button to check, but the fear inside her wells up physically, and she just can't.
She'll check them, she's sure she needs to.
Just, not now.
Her eyes catch onto a bronze glow, and her feet take her to it. It's a chest. A straight up game chest, like the kind you'd find in a dungeon or when raiding an enemy camp. Filled with jewels and magical gear, she can't help but shake in giddy excitement as her fingers land on the top and begin to pry it open.
"Is that…"
It's not much. The chest has exactly two items inside it.
A thick scroll with no small amount of ornate symbols on it and a golden lock shimmering with magical excitement waiting to stop her from prying it open, and a lockpick.
"You gave me a damn skill check!?"
Pocketing both items, she resigns herself to learning how to pick locks soon. Or getting Naruto to do it, she's pretty sure he can pick a lock. The lock on his door at home is a bit of an odd one, it likes to lock itself and then they have to get a bunch of tools and undo it when they need it. Naruto's never once had that problem, and it's kinda been a month. She was meaning to buy him a replacement lock, but he just hasn't brought it up so it slipped her mind.
Until now.
The bloody scene around her slowly disappears. It starts in glints of light, flowing upwards into the sky and evaporating as if it was never here. First it's the weapons, then it's the bodies, then the camp. She watches the fire flow away as a last vestige, not even the blood coating her left remaining to tell the tale.
It says a lot. This whole scene says so damn much and she likes none of it. The demon twins didn't dissolve, she wasn't informed of them, she didn't find a chest or get a rewarding quest while fighting them.
They just existed, and then she snuffed them out. Does that mean they were real, or that the system is changing to better understand games? The fact that the goblin encounter was technically weaker than them despite being this far out has a lot of say in which is which, and her blood curdles a little bit just thinking about it.
It's not killing them that bothers her. Enemy ninja deserve to die, they're taught that in the academy. Even if it's not explicitly true, enough training is given on the concept that she knows how to shut out any sort of guilt.
It's shrugging off her teammate's worries that bothers her.
If they were real, if they weren't created just for her, then Naruto and Sasuke must think she's batshit. Thinking on it, they don't believe her about the gaming system yet. Even if they weren't real, her teammates think she's batshit.
It's while she's collecting her shuriken and kunai from the ground and distracting herself with counting them and scurrying around, that feet appear behind her. "Found it."
"What?" She looks to the cool looking, not at all disheveled from a random ass goblin attack, Sasuke. "What do you mean you found it? How would you know?"
"It says dungeon." Sasuke clicks his teeth.
"... It what?"
"This is ominous." She says, looking at what amounts to a dark cave with an incredibly large entrance mined into the rocks that surround it. "I figured it'd be a tower or something."
"It looks like a secret entrance to a building we can't see." Sasuke says. "The neon sign saying dungeon is a bit of a nice touch."
"Yeah it's not neon for me." She says, having absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
Gato Tower Dungeon, Level Recommendation: 20
Please ensure you are on level and have equivalent quality gear that is in top condition. There will be no leaving to rest once you have entered. |
"Gato Dungeon. At least we know it's the right place." She says. "Level twenty… What level do you suppose we are?"
"You're the one with the gaming addiction." Sasuke points out. "I wouldn't have the slightest clue what that even means."
"Right, remind me to at least invite you to Mario Party sometime." She sighs at the thought. A whole month with him and she hasn't included him in her hobbies. She's not a very good friend, she regrets that. She'll need to be better for them. "It says we can't leave until we complete the dungeon, so we shouldn't go in to check it out."
"That's too bad." He says. "But how could it possibly stop us from leaving?"
"Rock cave in, magic wall, portals, could even place level ninety nine guards with laser rifles intending to stop us."
"I don't want to know what those words mean." Sasuke admits. "We should probably ask Kakashi about this before we go into a strange place anyway."
"Agreed."
"We found Gato's dungeon." Sasuke has no sense of tact. She thought she was bad, and maybe there was a time when she was worse, but Sasuke manages to surprise her. "Or, its entrance. It's a cave to the north. It doesn't appear to go anywhere."
"How do we know it's the dungeon then?" Kakashi asks.
"It says dungeon." Sasuke blurts. "Sakura sees something different than I do."
"It declared the dungeon as level twenty." Sakura says, leaning against the wall while overlooking her team. Kakashi's almost back to normal, sitting around instead of laying back. Naruto's doing push-ups even indoors, not a care in the world in that one's head. He has a single-minded focus on getting stronger in a way she could never mimic. If she was even half as dedicated as Naruto, she'd be a Chunin by now. That thought makes her stomach waver a bit. Just how much is she disrespecting him with her power? How many others just like him exist, who she's surpassing with half the effort?
Poor Naruto. She decides she'll have to start training a bit more with him again.
"The issue," Sakura continues, "is that my system hasn't included levels yet. Skill levels, in small variations, ability tiers, sure, but even my scan ability only gives me a basic danger rating."
"You can check danger ratings?" Naruto asks, jumping right up from a push-up with one hand, she's pretty sure he'll be doing tongue-ups before long. The thought makes her flush for reasons she's not sure about. Darn internet, ruining her mind. "What's mine say?"
She's thought Naruto's danger rating was weird since the very first moment she's taken a look at it. It says he's a beast among men, a walking force of nature that cannot and should not be contained. It tells her to run, to hide, to scream and never stop her feet if it means just one more step away from the boy that sleeps a room away from her. She figured maybe the technique is malfunctioning, or maybe it's rating him higher because she promised never to hurt him again so maybe he simply cannot be beaten by her.
All doubts are lost when she catches Kakashi's eyes. Yes, eyes. She's never been sent a clearer message in her life. Even without the odd picture that appears behind his head of a very threatening Kakashi head, it's clear what he's trying to convey. The man raises his headband a little bit, to stare into her soul unbeknownst to the others with his Sharingan spinning to life. It's actually the first time she's seen it, and she can't help but find it mesmerizing. Sasuke'll have that? His poor fangirls are going to grow in numbers.
Even with the mask, she can tell exactly what his facial expression looks like. Strained, panicked, urgent and worried. He's contemplating if he can shut her up faster than she can speak, or if he should trust her.
Whatever is wrong with Naruto, Kakashi knows, and he's telling her with no uncertain terms that she will lie right now or face trial for treason. Which is a bit of a problem, because she can't lie.
"You're pretty scary." She laughs a little, "you're really getting a lot stronger, Naruto, I can see all those gains working for you." It's half true, and luckily for her, Naruto's not much better than she is socially. He believes her, or at least by that half-fake, half earnest smile taking up his excited face at her praise, she hopes he does.
Sasuke seems to catch on that something is up, but by the time he looks at Kakashi, the headband is back down and the man is acting like nothing happened. Her heart is still trying to beat out of her chest, but everything is back to normal.
"Have you tried going as a team?" Kakashi asks. "It may be a bit before your time, but a lot of older RPGs had teams of three instead of four or five. Maybe it'll change if you have a full party of three?"
"That's really stupid." Sakura rolls her eyes, even as she uses the moment to appease her own shattered nerves. Her sensei just threatened her, and she's not even sure why. She's happy for the excuse to flee. "Let's go Naruto, we have to check just in case."
"But you said it's stupid." Naruto says.
"My whole ability is stupid, he's probably right."
She could not be happier to walk out the damn door before she vomits all over Tsunami's nice floor.
Kakashi watches them leave with a little regret in his heart. He hadn't intended to do that, he'd panicked and overreacted. Sakura's not dumb, she wouldn't tell Naruto about it right in front of Sasuke even if she did know. She'd understand that village secrets are not to be spilled casually, and yet, when faced with being loyal to his village or her, he'd chosen without thinking. Those that abandon their village are trash, but those that abandon their comrades are worse than trash. Minato would be disappointed.
Not much to do now but be happy he hadn't done anything irreversible. He'll have to talk to her later, apologize, maybe figure out a way to make her understand the severity of the moment and that he wouldn't actually hurt her.
He'd be lying, but unlike her, he can lie. He lies to Naruto every day, just like it looks like Sakura is. Her face when Naruto asked revealed more than a thousand words ever could. Her ability has told her something about him, and that info alone proves her powers more than anything else she could do. "Tsunami!" He calls out. "Do you need any help with dinner?"
He needs to do something to get his mind off of this. He was Anbu for years, of course he'd overreact to village secrets a little, no one could blame him. Except him.
