Chapter 434: I'll Save Myself
Konoha's storage vault housed a vast collection of genuinely precious items — countless forbidden techniques among the village's shinobi arts, an assortment of rare ninja tools, and, notably, Obito's own removed eyes, kept sealed away right there.
Better than a dozen Konoha shinobi stood guard over the place, five of them sensory-type specialists.
Under those conditions, anyone attempting to sneak in should have been spotted instantly by the guards.
But this unknown "intruder's" actual approach caught Kakashi genuinely off guard. The person hadn't even bothered trying to slip past a dozen-plus watchful shinobi at all.
Instead, they'd simply unleashed a technique with an enormous area of effect — and a devastating Fire Style jutsu, at that.
A technique on that scale had to sit at S-rank, easily. Using an S-rank jutsu in the heart of Konoha, in broad daylight — that was practically a statement of open contempt for the village's strongest shinobi, for the Fourth Hokage himself.
Konoha's storage vault sat barely a kilometer or so from the Hokage Building — a trivial distance for a man like Minato, renowned master of the Flying Thunder God technique, to close in an instant.
Which meant whoever had unleashed an S-rank jutsu this close to the Hokage's own seat of power was either a reckless fool with no idea how formidable Konoha's forces truly were —
Or someone who genuinely didn't fear Konoha at all. Someone entirely unafraid of its Hokage.
If it was the former, fine — the intruder simply didn't understand what they were up against.
If it was the latter, though, that was a genuine problem. Someone who fully understood Konoha's strength and still dared to invade this openly could only mean their own power far exceeded anything Kakashi could currently imagine.
"Doesn't look like there's much point rushing to report this to the Fourth Hokage anymore... he's probably already on his way over here himself."
Kakashi's pace slowed, and he finally came to a stop atop a rooftop, his masked expression impossible to read.
But beneath that mask, his dull, flat eyes carried a genuine weight of grim wariness. He took a deep breath and murmured to himself, "No idea who this is, but I'll just have to grit my teeth and go in anyway."
He shifted direction, racing straight toward the source of the towering flames.
The fire's glow, though not especially blinding, lit up the whole village clearly enough for everyone to see.
Countless shinobi and civilians alike stared, dumbstruck, at that sky full of flame, swallowing hard, beads of sweat breaking out across their foreheads.
The ordinary civilians reacted purely out of fear. Konoha's shinobi, though, understood exactly what a technique on that scale actually meant.
"Y-you've got to be kidding me... someone's actually invading Konoha? That's... that takes a serious amount of nerve!"
"Could it be one of the Tailed Beasts again? An entire street's already gone — the neighboring ones are probably catching the spillover too!"
"Can't be a Tailed Beast, can it? Weren't they already sealed away?"
"Hiss, no ordinary Jōnin technique should be able to do this much damage."
"Could it be another village's Kage, invading Konoha directly? Sunagakure? Iwagakure? Kirigakure?"
"Are they trying to kick off a whole new shinobi world war? The last one barely even ended..."
"..."
Somewhere along one of Konoha's long streets, Ryū stared at the distant blaze with genuine surprise. He'd only just gotten back from the Demon Slayer world, and now this was happening in Konoha of all places?
This genuinely caught him off guard — as far as he remembered, nothing like this had ever happened in canon Naruto, not around this point in the timeline.
Ryū knew perfectly well that, in the original story, these next few years were supposed to be some of Konoha's most stable, peaceful ones — sure, the various nations weren't in absolute harmony, but nothing like a full-scale shinobi world war was supposed to be brewing.
Of course, he'd been living in Konoha for a good while now by this point, and his own presence was hardly some tiny butterfly flapping its wings somewhere far off.
If Ryū flapped his own wings, the resulting "butterfly effect" was never going to be anything as gentle as the term implied — so Naruto's canon trajectory going off the rails at this point honestly wasn't all that surprising.
Observation Haki blanketed the entirety of Konoha in an instant, and the scene unfolding at the heart of that blaze came through with total clarity in Ryū's "vision."
The moment he took in what was actually happening over there, his expression twisted into something genuinely strange, and he muttered to himself, "Where'd this reckless idiot come from — the Sacred Ground? Another transmigrator? Pulling something like this right under my own nose, as Admin of this whole chat group?"
At that same moment, a notification popped up in the Dimensional Chat Group — a Tier 5 group quest.
A Tier 5 quest meant, normally, only Tier 5 members could take part. But since this particular incident was unfolding in Ryū's own world, he — sitting comfortably at Tier 1 — could join in too, and mooch a little Points off it while he was at it.
The group's members and its quests both ran on the same six-tier scale, Tier 1 the strongest, Tier 6 the weakest.
Tier 5 sat second from the bottom. As far as Ryū knew, the group's only Tier 5 members were the four little "loli" girls — Sakura, Umaru, Eriri, and Hinata — plus Maidang, a fairly recent addition.
Of that group, Eriri was just half a step away from climbing to Tier 4.
Umaru, for her part, had actually been Tier 4 before — but the gap between her and the rest of that tier had widened so much over time that she'd eventually slipped back down to Tier 5.
Maidang, having joined more recently, simply hadn't had the time to catch up. Hinata's own strength was likewise still fairly modest.
As for Sakura — the youngest of the group's "loli" members, practically still a little girl —
Sure, she had Yukari personally looking after her, but she rarely took part in group quests, so her own growth had lagged behind considerably.
Ryū opened the Tier 5 quest notification, and lines of text unfolded in his mind.
[Group Quest: "Uchiha Obito," from a certain derivative-work world, has become a member of the Reincarnation Space.
He has received an assignment from the Reincarnation Space: travel to the primary Naruto world and recruit that world's own "Uchiha Obito" and "Uzumaki Nagato," bringing both of them in as new members of the Reincarnation Space!]
[Quest 1: Eliminate the derivative-world "Uchiha Obito," preventing him from successfully recruiting the newcomers!
Participants: 2
Time limit: 2 days
Reward: 20,000 Points]
"Huh? One Uchiha Obito... trying to recruit another Uchiha Obito?"
Ryū's expression grew even stranger. This whole situation had a genuinely bizarre shape to it — why did he keep running into these oddball scenarios?
And, come to think of it — what exactly was this "Reincarnation Space" supposed to be?
How was it any different from the Sacred Ground he already knew about?
Ryū sank into thought, mulling it over.