Chapter 133 - Arc 9 - Let's Play a Game: Setting the Stage

And with this chapter we kick off an entirely new arc. Technically last chapter started it but this is like, the important intro.
I think it's important to recognize when a tone has shifted, and ensure that shift has value. This is me recognizing that.

For the first time in almost the entire story things aren't really in her hands, Sakura has a feeling of helplessness and needs to learn a new type of situation to try and have any chance of saving her friends. It's complex, and normally her issues are solved by swinging her sword.

Thank you for your continued support.

--------------------------------------------------------

After having her mind blown and world flipped upside down, she’s sent to her new quarters with some pretty simple instructions. She’s to familiarize herself with her new name, Lady Sakura of Bonepeak, which is apparently the name of a village at the edge of Saruka’s lands and not at all the name of an adult movie her parents wouldn’t let her watch. She’s temporarily being considered a noble, and is not under any circumstances to let on that she’s human, from another world, or that these are her friends being played with.

It turns out that despite a strange gap in technology her quarters are still very nice. Bookshelves brim the walls, there’s candles that smell sweet and she’s even been given clothes to wear while she’s here.

They’re gray robes and despite efforts to try and figure out otherwise, she’s pretty sure they’re just robes and not some super mecha suit ready to transform at any moment. “Ugk…” She looks over the baggy cloth covering her arms, it feels awkward to be in something not practically skintight, especially in a hostile area. It turns out the perfect spot to destabilize the place between worlds in the forest of death was not in Saruka’s castle, as convenient as that would be, but a neutral area in the middle of the Darklands. This area allows nobles of both monster and human origin, and because the two forces are in constant war only the king of each side is allowed to carry their weapons and armor. Worse off, it turns out the signal for calling a summit of sorts is to blast off a ton of magic energy in the neutral zone, so the human nobility will be here tomorrow and they have to pretend inviting them was always the intention, which means involving them in the death game Saruka was thinking of.

All that to say she is trapped in this room and bored out of her mind and feeling rather naked, while a bunch of strangers come to judge her friends and participate in discussion over who gets revived. Hunger is grumbling in a chest and she’s less protected than she normally is lounging around her house. Her teammates are dead, her friends are dead too, and she doesn’t read the language all these books are in so she is bored out of her mind and not sure what to do about it. She can’t even have revelations about her life being some kind of sick game from some otherworldly force because she thinks so fast she already processed that hours ago. Kicking her feet on the oddly nice bed she’s been given, she can’t help but pout.

One would think with all the horrible things that are technically her fault that happened recently, it would be impossible to be bored. Unfortunately for her, she’s managing it just fine. Her friends are all dead and she’s so bored she’s staring at a wall of books by candle light with a choice to make and nothing else to do but think. She’s not sure what it says about her that she’s not more distraught by this. Depressed sure but she’s not anxious, or spiraling. She spiraled about seeing Ino’s stats but having actually killed Ino? Almost nothing. Is it because she can get her back and it doesn’t feel real? It’s denial, right?

The choice is, well it’s rather dumb. She can be executed and have her soul put into the game tomorrow, skipping all of this noble crap she’s supposed to put on and just joining the matter directly. This would reduce the amount of people that can be saved by one but would give her the direct ability to influence the outcome with her blade in the air and her strength on display. She’s stronger than most Genin, she’s sure, and she could have a real influence. Issue is, there’s no guarantee she’d be placed with her friends and Saruka said most of these games are small team games, not big battle royales. She could have fun leading her friends in a charge in a battle royale, but it’d be a complete waste of her ability to analyze and think critically if she ended up with people she doesn’t even know.

The other option is what Saruka clearly wants from her. She can stand at the war table that the game is going to be displayed on and influence things from the outside. Surrounded by nobles that think her friends are pieces in a cruel joke, she can stand alone and do her best to make an emotional plea, or lead her people. How? She’s not entirely sure, Saruka barely explained, but then how much can she really demand of someone already doing her a huge favor?

As annoying and out of place everything feels, without all this, they’d just be dead.

She can get mad at her for giving her the goblin souls in the first place, but without them would she have really acted differently, or would she have done her best, died, and had Naruto set off the tags anyway? This is a good thing, this is Orochimaru’s fault and she won’t spit on a gift. Not yet at least.

“Fuuuuuuu-” She huffs, rolling over and out of bed.

Her hand lands on a very large golden leaf paper book, her eyes flowing over the nonsense lettering of the title. She decides she’ll put the few hours she has to prepare to good use learning to read. She only needs five hours of sleep and ten hours until she needs to be up so there’s no reason to spend the five free hours she has laying in bed and wishing things were different.

She’s not grateful, and she doesn’t have to be. But she does have to try and make things right.

Her friends are counting on her, it’s not just Ino or Naruto.

-----------------------------------------------

It’s three hours into peering over and trying to understand foreign texts with literally no guide that it finally pings.

[Darklands Monster Script Level 1

You may now read the main language of the Darklands at a level suitable for children.]

The book she’s looking at doesn’t change, she either can’t understand it or- “oh.”

Her face hits the desk for a moment, she sighs into the void, and with a stiff movement she stands up and puts the big book away.

With a deep breath, she then looks over the wall until one of the covers is legible for her. “I’m supposed to start with a children’s book, duh.” She inwardly thanks Saruka or whoever stocks these rooms for having the decency to put a few children’s books on the shelf. It’s likely for noble children who tagged along with their parents to the summit, but she’ll take it.

-----------------------------------------------

“We expect a peaceful gathering, the Dark Lord of the Darklands has provided sport for us to drink and watch together.” Mandibles clack together to make sounds she’d never be able to understand without the Otherworlder trait which enables her to understand and speak any spoken language. She wishes that worked for written languages, she’d love to have not spent all her freetime last night learning a language up to an uneducated adult’s capabilities.

On the bright side, this world has a lot of legibility, from what a lot of games have implied a lot of worlds probably don’t have a reading standard, and she can be happy that’s apparently fantasy despite big talking beetle monsters being real. There’s a lot of people here, each in their own small seat around a table that shows off a holographic display. A part of her protests over having to read by candle light last night while they have holograms, but it’s probably one of those things that hasn’t changed in a thousand years and it’s her fault for not asking for a desk lamp.

On one side of the table in a huge chair is the woman that brought her here. Dark lord Saruka, a beast with several different monster genetics bred into her intentionally if one of the books she read last night is correct. Monster nobility is an odd concept for her, she wasn’t expecting it to be a thing let alone organized enough for half the table to be filled with spiderwomen, some kind of drow, that might be a vampire over there with the silver hair and the hood and the glowing red eyes. The fact that it apparently has a very firm history of extreme eugenics to create stronger and stronger nobility, soldiers, even workers… well it’s shocking, she’s not sure how to deal with that. She was instructed not to bleed because apparently almost everyone has a little vampire in them somewhere and it’d give her away as human in seconds. She sits with the monster nobility as their ninth today, and they made her put her hood up so that no one can get a good look at her pretty, cute, and perfectly human face.

Luckily, her glowing red eyes sell things a little, simmering behind her hood like the vampire’s.

On the other half of the room are basic humans, but fit and organized. She expected human nobles to be very fat, but each one looks like they could run a marathon. She’s sure there’s a reason for that, but she’s far more interested in the head of their group and the table itself.

With a golden crown, blue eyes, and red hair that falls down her back like no one ever told her what a haircut is, the leader of the human faction sits back with their fingers pressed together. Her first thought is that the leader of the colonies of light might be an Uzumaki, but maybe hoping for interdimensional fuckery on that level is too much. Her second is that it’s ridiculous that both leader’s of the opposing, actually warring factions, are both female and have the time to sit around playing games. Shouldn’t there be betrayal and knives and a lot of bloodshed? Maybe games have ruined her mind, is diplomacy this simple?

The table’s holographic display has two numbers on it.

180

60

Sakura doesn’t like those numbers, they have a lot of implications behind them and that’s before anyone has started talking. “As you are well aware, our world works on exchange.” Saruka starts with a dominance in her voice Sakura hasn’t heard before. The tall woman rises from her seat, and people in robes walk around placing goblets filled with red in front of everyone seated.

Her first thought is that it’s wine, but there’s a coppery scent to half of the table’s goblets and she suddenly has doubts. Did Saruka give them blood to mask her scent as a human, or is that just customary? Then there’s the very real possibility that it is actually alcohol, and she’s not tasting it to figure that out. Neji would know if it’s alcohol, but unfortunately Neji’s currently dead and being displayed numerically on a hologram in front of her.

“The weak die and turn into strength, while the strong devour the weak. If we want something done here in the Darklands, death is needed. Humankind does something very similar, as I am sure you are aware.” Saruka’s voice leads, and someone else picks up for her.

“We slay monsters to gather our strength, yes, I am unsure what you are getting at by mentioning something so elementary…” A deep but oddly sultry voice sounds from her right, and turning she’s surprised to find that the speaker is the girl with the crown.

“That’s a guy?” She whispers to herself as her brain puts the tones together and finds a lot of masculinity in it. That’s a very pretty guy, he’s definitely prettier than her and now she’s upset no one told her. They said king but she thought leadership roles were gender neutral or something since the Dark Lord is female… The Darklands leader is in fact female, right? There’s nothing weird going on there? She finds her side gently elbowed by the freaking drow at her side, their smile doesn’t tell her a lot, but they’re probably trying to get her to shut up before she says something dumber and not in fact trying to attack her in the middle of a neutral meeting ground. She chooses to smile back at them, and brings her eyes back to the two talking.

“Our difference in method creates a river between us without a bridge, but the end result is very similar.” Saruka continues, “you kill to get stronger, and we eat.”

“Yes, again, what is your point?” There’s a sneer in the effeminate man’s voice, “this has something to do with this game?”

“Yes.” With a wave of her hands, the armored woman kicks up the display. It shows mountains and sandy planes on each side of them, like a mirrored battle ground. She’s never played a game quite like this, but she can get the gist without knowing much more.

Some of the people from her world play games, others don’t. Has she done enough to prepare her people for something like that being sprung on them at random? Ino surely, Naruto maybe, Sasuke? Errr… When she gets out of this, gaming together is becoming mandatory team practice.

“You’ll notice there are eighteen of us here.” Saruka explains, “and a hundred eighty souls stuck in the simulation. This is not a coincidence.”

“So we are each to choose ten champions, and what?” A random human to the side says, her hair is a golden blonde and is curled into ringlets, her small frame almost leads Sakura to believe it’s a child, but a good look at her face just reveals that maybe she’s just very short? Some people are like that, she’s not judging. Her physique is quite sturdy for someone shorter than her, Sakura finds herself a little jealous. All she had to do was kill stuff to get stronger? Really?

Is this world using an EXP system? Why doesn’t she have an exp system!? Well, one like that, she’d love to get physically fit by stabbing things. “We have a vested interest in postponing bloodshed for a few months,” Saruka explains, “we all know that lands will be taken, lands will be lost, and more will be spent on rebuilding than anyone will gain. In previous years we have attempted similar events using this neutral land, some have gone well, others…”

“Others have resulted in bloodshed the moment everyone left, yes.” The king says with a snide tone to his lips, like poison is dripping from his tongue. “You wish to attempt the former with this?”

“Correct. What we have here are a hundred eighty souls from another world.” Saruka begins-

And people quickly talk over her, murmurs spread all around unintelligibly, but her trait tries to translate them in her head and creates an awkward mix of understanding them and being overwhelmed. Sakura finds herself covering her ears for a moment to catch her breath after realizing she’s stopped breathing and her lungs hurt.

“I am glad to see everyone is interested, but please quiet down.” Saruka speaks up, and quickly silences all but a few humans, who are quickly shut up by a glare from their own lord. “They have all died, and the power they hold inside of them, while mostly untapped, is vast. We could get a lot out of devouring these souls.” Sakura finds her heart stops at that, but surely that’s not the plan or they would have just done it. Sure enough, the dark lord continues, “instead we have gotten the world to agree to enforce contracts on them should we resurrect them. Unfortunately, we only have enough crystals to do so for about sixty.”

“So you would like us to help.” The king surmises, tapping the table in thought, “gifting magic crystals of our own, a substitute for war, is it? Why would we do that when we’re set to win this year’s battles?”

“Besides doing a good deed?” Sakura asks out loud, and despite thinking it’s a pretty good question, the entire table erupts into laughter. She has to do her best to hide the flush that takes over her, she’s not sure what’s so funny but she regrets speaking up. Didn’t she say they could revive about half of them? Sixty is only about a third of one eighty!

“Are you saying you don’t want the opportunity to contract heroes from another world?” Saruka asks, tilting her sharp eyes and allowing her ferociously hungry gaze to land on his. “We each stand to gain quite a bit here, even ignoring the war itself. If we each field the power we were planning to support our troops with, and agree to allow the results of this to stand, are we not both better off than simply throwing rocks and fireballs at each-other this next season?”

A lot of it flies over her head, but Sakura watches in relief as the king nods his head. “Say we meet you in the middle, enough magic crystals to resurrect and contract a hundred and twenty of them between us. How do we decide who gets which? Surely they are not all of equal quality.”

“As this is our idea, we will allow you to pick the first ten.” Saruka proposes, “then I pick my ten, then one of your nobles picks ten, one of ours, and so on.” Her metal covered hands land on the table, resting there while she looks around at all the gazes on her. “The last hundred twenty alive get to be revived, and their contracts will be valid for three months. How you decide to divy up the contracts after the fact is up to you, but for my side, I’ll be handing the contracts over to whoever picks them, assuming everyone is willing to pay their part…” The monster side gives her a shared nod of affirmation, it’s so synchronized Sakura can’t help but feel it’s probably practiced.

“While this is amusing, I don’t see how some dead souls will be that useful to us.” Someone from the human side speaks up, a dull gaze and broad stature, he looks a bit more portly than most others, and fits in line with what she expected of a human noble. He’s big enough she expects an axe often rests on his person, and strength clearly shines in his massive arms, that part is less in line with what she expected. “I spend most of my day hunting invaders from your lands.”

“Then perhaps your king will accept the contracts you pull as an excellent gift or substitute for taxes.” Saruka says while schooling her features nobly, “how your side figures things out isn’t really my concern. If you would like to step away, perhaps another noble from your land will see more value in the matter? I do not mind postponing the game a little while you swap out.”

“No, sorry, I misspoke.” The burly man says, just as a glare focuses on him from his king. It promises death, which shocks Sakura a little. Isn’t he supposed to be on their side? There was hatred there, real blood lust and hatred.

“Right, you’re forgiven.” Saruka’s gaze trails over him, and some hidden message is sent between her and several other people. Unfortunately for Sakura, she has no idea what those messages are. It only lasts a moment before Saruka continues, “we’ve mostly finalized a system to allow you to aid your picks, guide them, give them buffs and even items. It should be finished this time tomorrow, so you have until then to decide on your picks. Possibly the next day if picking takes too long, I don’t think anyone would mind a day to contemplate their options. If one of your picks survives they’ll surely be grateful for your help, maybe they’ll even stick around to help you past the contract…”

Scrutiny can be heard in their murmurs, but for Sakura, it’s just swirling confusion and doubt that flows through her. This is a very complicated way to say that her friends are kind of screwed. How much of the rules just changed in front of her to appease the other side? If the human faction wasn’t willing to pay, would Saruka have put up more than sixty people worth? If she’s willing, why not just put up thirty more anyway and turn it from one twenty to one fifty?

She chooses to keep her mouth shut for now, she can ask later when they’re alone.

One thought permeates through her mind like no other thought ever has.

This sucks.

-----------------------------------------------

Anko’s jittery, there’s just no better way to describe it. Orochimaru’s twitchy form lies dead beneath her hands and the Hokage let her be the one to do it. Staying loyal to Konoha was always a difficult choice, she’s been mistreated, she’s been called a traitor in whispers, a few drunk morons have even called her a monster’s whore directly to her face.

The Hokage’s always been understanding, in part because he was also close to Orochimaru. Giving her the honor of killing him herself? She couldn’t have imagined that in her wildest dreams. Today sucked, today was one of the worst moments in Konoha history. Almost two hundred people died in the Forest of Death and quite a few elderly within the village also died from being knocked over from the explosion itself. A landmark that’s been around for generations was removed from the map and it appears to have been the work of her bastard ex-master and a freaking Genin. Her legs are broken from not quite getting out of the blast radius and being sent flying through several trees and an iron fence, and she has friends in the hospital in critical condition.

But Orochimaru is dead, and Sakura will forever be her best friend for putting him in the state to allow the execution. It’s too bad she’s dead… like really dead. Like throughout her career she’s seen quite a few people die, she’s lost several friends, but none of them have ever been as dead as Sakura is. If the Hokage is to be believed, and she’s of the opinion he is, she’s so dead that she ripped open a hole in reality and called scavengers from another world to come pick at her corpse. That’s who that was, that strong looking woman with the shining eyes so reminiscent of Sakura’s, and so very hungry. That gaze she gave Orochimaru and then them before handing him over, it was terrifying, she wanted to attack despite having broken legs.

That’s the kind of forces that come through boundaries like that… She’s not sure how to handle that, in fact, “Thank you for allowing me to perform the execution, Lord Hokage, but um, about that woman earlier…” She can’t just let it go, and the only person that seems to know about it is willing to talk to her, so.

“You know how Naruto’s burden is an S rank secret?” The Hokage gives her a pointed look, and at her nod- “consider every detail about that woman and the rift just as big a deal as that.” He says something so absurd with such a grim expression, it causes her to take a step back and feel her throat dry. “We will treat it with the same level of respect and subterfuge.”

“You mean none at all?” Anko asks, making a joke she almost instantly regrets. It’s not her fault, stuff just comes out of her mouth sometimes, she relates to Sakura there way harder than she’d like. “I just mean, even civilians know?”

“Okay, that is fair, not something I appreciate but fair.” The old man grimaces, “then consider treating this much more significant stress.”

“Then is it really okay for me to know?” Anko asks, reaching up to nervously scratch her cheek, “We can probably strip my memory right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I trust you more than you can probably appreciate. Besides, you’ll likely naturally forget about it the moment the portal is closed. It requires Jonin Chakra reserves to resist the world’s natural attempt to put our fingers in our ears and make us say ‘lalala, I’m not listening.’ You know, like children.”

“I don’t think they do that?” Anko winces slightly-

“Regardless, for some reason when all rifts to another world are closed, almost everyone below Jonin rank suddenly loses any memory of it existing in the first place. Minato theorized it is because at a certain degree of chakra it becomes indistinguishable from magic, and magic is what makes interdimensional worlds spin. Because everyone will forget it, but not their panic, we can’t just inform the public because they’ll take drastic action, the effects of which will stick around far longer than the problem itself.”

“So it’s a secret because, self harm.” Anko surmises.

“Close enough… So to understand that lady, you must understand that our history has parts that are completely wrong.” He says with his hands knitting together, and a stern expression on his face.

“Errr, you want to clarify that or-” She asks through her half smile half grimace. It’s an odd expression but she can’t not be happy about Orochimaru, even if this is very depressing.

“We have to write out the part where aliens attack.” He says with the closest thing to a deadpan Anko’s ever seen out of him. “This has happened multiple times. That woman was one of them, some force from beyond our reality with their eyes set on our resources. We will likely have to kill her at some point, but for now… she handed over Orochimaru, and only took some dirty water from an ash-filled stream. I will consider her a non-threatening entity.”

“Should we be taking bigger action then?” Anko asks, “preparing for war, maybe setting up a fort around the portal?”

“I have already sent Jiraiya to reinforce a barrier around the portal, but I would like to avoid fighting if I can help it.” He grimaces himself, his eyes showing that despite keeping up with the conversation he is deep in thought. “Fifteen years ago we took a very aggressive approach to invaders, and even with the fourth on our side we lost a lot of good people. One of our own got trapped behind their lines for almost ten years.”

“Uhh-” She rapidly does the math, and finds that the math aint mathing, at least not conventionally. Luckily he sees her confusion and has mercy on her poor soul.

“Time often operates differently between worlds. In that particular case it was only a few months for us, but to this day she still carries the stench of their power,” He clarifies, “she learned magic there and became a pretty famous warlord, from what I read in the reports she commanded a mercenary group that eventually led her to back to our invasion campaign. Minato had to subdue her himself to bring her back. I’ve never seen a more traumatized girl in my life. She’d forgotten everything from our world and had to be forcefully broken before we could bring her back into herself. To this day she still has Yamanaka handlers just out of sight watching over her family and her just in case she snaps.”

“Did she retire or have I been working with her?” Anko can’t help but ask the first pressing question that jumps into her head. She doesn’t regret it this time, at least she didn’t say something impulsive and insulting again.

“After some significant efforts we got her back to her old self, at which point she wanted to keep serving the village but wanted to avoid too much violence, so I allowed her to return to Genin status permanently,” He explains with a pain in his eyes, “eventually she felt ready to return to proper duty but by then she’d had a child and wanted to avoid more dangerous missions for an entirely different reason.”

“I hope she’s not too scared by this happening, do you think she knows?” Anko asks, looking out the window of the Hokage tower at the ashes still flying through the air. “She’s probably terrified for her child with invaders right outside Konoha’s gates.”

“Oh, terrified is the wrong word.” The Hokage coughs into his fist, “I think she sensed the portal opening and I expect her to arrive in my office almost directly after you leave. I’ve already set her up with an appointment with the Yamanaka covering her case.” It doesn’t look like he thinks that’s going to go well, and she does not envy the man. “In fact, I should attend to that. I will answer any questions you have tomorrow, you should head back to the hospital for your legs.”

She knows a ‘gtfo’ order when she hears one.