Chapter 437: Mera Mera no Mi
Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's actual age was well into four digits — a bracket that, even within the Dimensional Chat Group, firmly qualified her as one of the group's genuine "ancient monsters." Age-wise, she'd easily crack the top five in the whole group.
Not first place, admittedly — Yukari, Wandering Earth, and Thor (the dragon) all had her beat there.
But cracking the top five at all said plenty about just how old Ōtsutsuki Kaguya genuinely was.
Ryū, for his part, wasn't entirely sure whether the world he currently lived in followed the Naruto manga's canon or the anime's.
If it was the anime continuity, Ōtsutsuki Kaguya had once had a husband — meaning she'd technically been married at some point.
If it was the manga continuity, though, she'd been single her entire existence. As for how her son had come to exist in that case — per the manga's official guidebook, he'd come about purely through the "blessings" bestowed on her by humanity at large, nothing resembling marriage or childbirth in any conventional sense. She had, after all, once been worshipped as the Rabbit Goddess.
Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's attention drifted away from her own self-assessment, her calm eyes settling instead on the distant horizon, where the faint glow of fire flickered. "Is that where something's happening?"
Ryū nodded slightly. "Yeah, something's going down over there. Speaking of which — you showing up out in the open like this, won't it startle your son, Hagoromo?"
"Hagoromo..." Ōtsutsuki Kaguya murmured the name once, falling silent for a moment, her pure white eyes carrying a flicker of something complicated.
She tilted her head thoughtfully, gazing up at the sky, toward a direction that seemed to hold nothing at all.
After a moment's pause, she shook her head, expression flat. "He's not worth my attention anymore. And besides, he's already dead — unless I go and erase whatever remnant of his will still lingers somewhere."
Ryū didn't press the matter further. Through his Observation Haki, he could already clearly "see" that Umaru and Eriri had engaged the Reincarnation Space's Obito in combat.
And, as it turned out, Konoha's own shinobi had joined the fight as well — though, on reflection, that made perfect sense.
This Obito from the Reincarnation Space had, after all, abducted the world's own version of Obito, and torn through a good chunk of Konoha in the process.
Under those circumstances, there was no reason for Konoha's shinobi to simply stand by — especially not Minato, as Fourth Hokage.
"Let's go take a look." With that, Ryū raised a finger and drew a light line through the air in front of him.
Faint ripples spread outward from where he'd touched it — or rather, the fabric of space itself rippled, like water disturbed by a stone.
Space tore open into a sizable gash — roughly two meters tall, a little over a meter wide, its inner walls a pure, impenetrable black, as though no light could ever hope to pierce it.
Ōtsutsuki Kaguya blinked, genuinely startled, watching Ryū step straight through without the slightest hesitation. She followed right behind him.
Tearing open a spatial passage through sheer brute force like that... Lord Admin's methods really were something else.
To him, the fabric of this world's space seemed like little more than clay to be casually shaped. Genuinely humbling to witness firsthand.
She still had some real distance to cover before catching up to the group's absolute top tier, it seemed.
Ōtsutsuki Kaguya muttered that thought privately to herself. A moment later, she followed Ryū out of the spatial rift, emerging atop the roof of a building somewhere in Konoha.
A violent explosion rang out immediately after, drawing her attention sharply.
A figure — not especially large-built — came hurtling down like a fired artillery shell, slamming hard into the ground below.
An instant before impact, the figure dissolved into a burst of flame, narrowly avoiding any further damage.
The flames gradually re-formed into a roughly human shape — a face entirely unfamiliar to Ōtsutsuki Kaguya, someone she'd never met.
Though his eyes... hm, now that was interesting. Someone carrying Ōtsutsuki bloodline, was he?
Though judging by the look of it, that bloodline had thinned down to about as faint as it could possibly get.
"His body's unusual — like he's entirely made of flame, and yet there's still something distinctly human-flesh about it. And he carries a thread of Ōtsutsuki blood in him too," Ōtsutsuki Kaguya observed, calm, before turning her attention to Umaru.
She paused, then added, with a note of genuine admiration, "What formidable hand-to-hand technique. That overwhelming flood of battle-ki is practically taking physical form. If I took a full-power punch from her, I suspect I'd be coughing up blood myself."
She wasn't exaggerating in the slightest — Umaru's hand-to-hand skill genuinely was that formidable. Or rather, every veteran member of the Dimensional Chat Group possessed hand-to-hand skill on a level that defied belief.
Most ordinary people would struggle to imagine it — a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl in a JK school uniform, casually throwing a punch capable of flattening a mountain.
If Umaru stopped holding back out of consideration for ordinary civilian casualties and unleashed her full repertoire, the whole of Konoha would probably need rebuilding from scratch.
Ryū's voice followed right after. "That Obito from the Reincarnation Space must have passed through the One Piece world at some point — maybe some derivative version of it. Looks like he picked up the Mera Mera no Mi somewhere along the way."
"Mera Mera no Mi?" Ōtsutsuki Kaguya tilted her head, puzzled. In her time in the Dimensional Chat Group so far, she'd picked up some familiarity with the One Piece world, including the existence of these strange, remarkable things called Devil Fruits.
But the specific types and categories of Devil Fruits were still largely a mystery to her — she'd never gone out of her way to study them in detail.
Ryū explained. "The Mera Mera no Mi is a Logia-type Devil Fruit. Eating it grants immunity to physical attacks, though it's weak to Seastone and seawater infused with Seastone's properties. Armament Haki also works to physically restrain a user's body, regardless."
"I see..."
"..."
Meanwhile, the Reincarnation Space's own Obito wore a genuinely sour expression.
A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, several teeth knocked clean out, his cheek visibly swelling with bruise.
His crimson Sharingan eyes carried a look of open disbelief as he gritted out, through clenched teeth, a single word: "Armament Haki?!"
He took a sharp breath, his wary gaze locked on the unfamiliar girl standing nearby.
And beyond her, a blonde girl, who gave off an equally dangerous presence.
What exactly was going on here? Sure, intel from the Reincarnation Space had told him this was a parallel shinobi world — but a shinobi world where people could use Armament Haki? That felt like a genuinely absurd stretch.
Obito's emotions right now were a genuine tangle. He strongly suspected these two sudden strangers might also be operatives of the Reincarnation Space itself.
After all, the Reincarnation Space's own internal politics were steeped in bloodshed — plenty of its members had turned on each other, blades drawn, fighting over quest rewards.