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Chapter 132 - Arc 9 - Let's Play a Game: Setting the stakes, an alternate perspective
🕑 Added 2025-02-08 00:51:18 +0000 UTCSo to avoid overfocusing on them, the story officially assumes you've either read the side story: "Otherworlders: Fierro was killed by a little girl?" or don't care.
I will still go into some detail but the story isn't about them, it's about Sakura, and the story is written from her perspective so I won't be heavily describing anyone until Sakura is staring at them.
Thank you for your support, may we get back to Sakura feeling awkward on Monday.
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While Konoha is delighting in a technological revolution, games and communications and the internet of all things suddenly plopping into people’s laps one day like they were always there.
In other lands, some people have to put every resource they have into the mere concept of technological advancement. A lord in another world somewhat adjacent to the elemental nations has a group of goblins in charge of researching technological advancement. The dumb go into a grinder, the smarter ones become forever treasured.
Some would argue that having goblins - even smarter ones - in charge of all their science is probably a mistake. Others would say even bothering with science in a magical society is pointless and weird, but it’s undeniable that it has its advantages.
One of those advantages would be the message that’s suddenly appearing on the screen in front of her.
When she’d previously tried to make contact, even using her authority had barely gotten her a ‘meeting time set’ notification sent through the cosmic and magical wavelengths between worlds. She wasn’t sure if there was actually a system - there should be in any world strong enough to take down Fierro - or if there was so little in the way that her request had gotten to this Sakura directly and the machine was simply interpreting her response and giving her a time to show up.
Now she’s sure there is a system. It’s a simple message, sent along with coordinates, but the chance to have a powerful force from another world in her debt makes all the time spent researching and manufacturing the screen the message is displayed on, and the devices needed to receive the message, absolutely worth it.
She’s not mad, she’s not crazy, she’s a woman rewarded for her efforts in nine words.
[Please loosen the boundary between worlds at this Location]
Chances are high it doesn’t even know if she can do it, which makes it all the more precious.
It's scared and needs help and that’s irredeemably cute. She just wants to squeeze it! The image of a whimpering world kneeling at her feet almost makes her snicker, but the real reward is the express permission it’s granting. With this, it is telling her that there will not be consequences for peacefully crossing over as long as she is willing to do it favors, which grants her access to another world’s resources without war. They may even have water! Imagine that, water without having to blow up a human settlement! She doesn’t remember the last time she got to drink water without violence. She’d love to stop watering crops with blood, when the plants are growing teeth and snapping at you, you know you’ve done something horribly wrong… or horribly right, whatever the case she would like the plants to stop doing that.
“Tell the Grand Scientist to loosen the boundary at these coordinates, I’ll provide all the power he needs.” She barely has to get the order out before the entire division is moving to earn her favor, jumping over each-other to be the first to go tell him.
After watching her loosened barrier get torn open with the power of approximately a hundred goblin souls exploding all at once in one of the most wasteful displays she has ever seen, she gets another message. This one is a lot more clinical. Instead of a begging, whimpering world she’s met with a very strict message from her world. It’s simple, the order is clear.
[Bring 200 Soul Gems over and start collecting before they pass, you will be rewarded]
Despite being clear, it is expensive, it’s a huge ask, as Dark Lord she has had many out there requests but she’s never been told to take her kingdom’s resources and apply them to a settlement directly. Still, with a simple order she empties a portion of her land’s treasury, waiting just long enough for them to be deposited in her grasp before she is stepping through with the closest to benevolent intentions a ruler can honestly have. This was her mistake, she gave those souls out and the damage they caused is her fault. Being rewarded for helping out isn’t something she’ll argue against, but she still can’t help but feel uneasy about invading a new land like this after having directly brought about the very issue it wants her to solve.
Maybe if she slides the ‘her fault’ thing under the rug and does her best, diplomacy can open up on favorable terms. She really needs an ally, especially if she’s going to be using this many resources in a way that doesn’t directly aid her people.
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Her sharp feral eyes take in the destroyed landscape with disgust. The smell of burnt flesh in the air, the destruction of nature, the sheer lack of fucks that were given about the world when this plan was put into action. No wonder a system would call out to another for help if the ash her feet walk over is the natural way warfare is fought here. The only way someone would think to use goblin souls this way would be if they already have something to reference the idea on. Never in a million years would she have thought to use the souls of her people as a fucking bomb.
This was once a lush forest, she can tell just by looking at what’s left of the leafless trees and shattered trunks. The ashen dirt and fluttering embers flowing every which way telling her exactly what she needs to know. The dead bodies are almost entirely disintegrated, and despite widely being considered heartless by her own people she imagines they would have a very different opinion if they saw this. She’s never killed anyone quite like this. Burned them sure, blasted them with a laser, absolutely, scorched their home to such an extent that it’s hard to even realize there are victims at all? She shudders at the thought, and raises her first soul gem to capture someone trying to float away into the sky. Getting them all will be a pain, but she’ll do it. She’s already working on a barrier of sorts to keep them still while she works.
The whimpering of a pup catches her attention, and she can see it well before she reaches it. There’s no wildlife to get in the way, no dark overhead, everything is destroyed and her path is clear. She can simply see the torn apart creature wriggling in an attempt to get up without legs. It looks like a wolf hybrid of some sort? But its appearance doesn’t matter, with every step her plate covered boots bring her closer and it becomes clearer with every passing second that the poor creature is a summon. Its original body doesn’t matter, just this one.
She bends over and places a hand on its head. Her eyes register the damage quickly and her medical skills make a clear judgment, this thing’s body is truly fucked. “She’s taken good care of you.” She notes, eyes lingering on its festering wounds and the way they bleed despite being on an undead creature. “She dumbly put so much mana into you that you got your sense of pain back, that girl has a heart but it’s in all the wrong places.” She sighs to herself, and her energies take hold of its soul. “Don’t fight, I’ll make sure you get back to her, let’s just stop the pain for now, okay? I’ll make you another body using this one as a blueprint.” She rips it from its misery, and deposits it in a gem.
This creature struggling in the dirt below her is of the utmost evil. On its own, being evil is fine. Most of her people feel evil. That the creature is wriggling like and shaped like a snake doesn’t change that, there are plenty of snake beasts under her protection. The Lamia council alone makes up a good amount of the nagging she receives anytime things get a little cold.
What damns it so much is that the world is fine with her, grateful to her even, but it wants this creature dead. Not just like normal dead either, it wants this thing removed from existence entirely. It wants it removed from the life cycle completely, and while she won’t do that she will gladly end it in this life.
If it was just about its natural inborn alignment, this world would despise her, but she walks freely while the creature underneath her boot is ostracized and marked as damned. Rarely, a creature’s alignment changes. Is that what she’s looking at? Was this thing born good and corrupted by outside influences, or was it accepted until it crossed some invisible line? Worlds view alignment differently, and she’s sure this is a case of something born with a smile and ended with selfish desires beyond mortal comprehension.
It doesn’t matter to her that much, beyond the clear suggestion that this thing be ended. The destruction starts here and spreads out, this is what Sakura was fighting, and that means if it doesn’t die here it’ll come for her again. Its body is more than half melted, its senses are shattered, it has no idea she’s here or that there is an entire force standing outside the radius of the explosion and watching the two of them with hate in its eyes. It doesn’t even realize some of them are walking towards her, but she does.
She takes them in and waits.
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“You’re what this explosion was for, aren’t you.” She raises a metal gauntlet until her palm is directly over it. That glimmer in its eyes speaks of intelligence beyond her understanding. This isn’t a real snake, this is something else, an amalgam of sorts. A hybrid of a sage and beast maybe? Whatever the case, she’s not going to ask questions. Her people are gathering the souls and corpses around as requested - it did end up being too large an ask for her weakened powers here and she has an army so why not use it for the short time she’s allowed. A sigil appears in the air beneath her hand, spinning in the air and charging with pure magic. This world doesn’t seem to have a lot of ability to understand magic, which implies every magic she’ll find here is an invasion. The sigil glows red, signifying its willingness to invoke her desire and change the world around her.
“A pitiable existence, caught somewhere between life and death and something else. It would be better for you if you’d truly die, but I doubt it, for a world to vehemently hate you like this you must have been evading death for a very long time. There’s no way a little girl is your true end.”
She summons the world’s behest, the natural magics of this world aid her in an attempt to purify this land. Her hand glows brightly, the sigil shakes with anticipation, she -”stop!” She finds herself distracted.
Walking towards her with a pair of wooden instruments keeping her up despite massive damage to her legs, and the support of a significantly older man who she can feel resonates with power very similar to hers, is a young woman. His power isn’t magic it’s just, insanely powerful and brimming with rage. She’s a nice girl, but her magic wishes to devour, and he’s probably a very nice man but his power wishes to rip and tear and assert dominance to all around. A leader, or an elder, she pauses in her attempts to charge a purifying beam if only because negotiations are in fact important and shooting off a laser inside their new tragedy while they ask her not to is probably the worst way she can imagine starting diplomacy.
“Are you sure I shouldn’t?” She asks, her tongue struggling with the language of this new land. The system provides but she sucks at this. She will need to study when she gets home, which sucks.
“You should.” The old man says, his wrinkled frown drawing her eyes in the same way her grandfather’s once did. There’s purpose behind his expressions, but she’d rather not look too deep when suspicion is the enemy of cooperation. “But if you would allow me to take and punish our own problem, Miss Mitarashi here would likely be very grateful.”
But not him. She can see grief in his eyes, he’d rather she deal with this. He would rather this problem be stripped away from him forever, and yet the fact that a leader even mentions an alternative means he knows it’s not the correct call. She would never mention an alternative to what she wants if she didn’t think it was a terrible mistake. She reaches down and lifts the writhing white snake, and with a spark from her clawed fingers it stops moving. “This paralysis magic will last for twenty four hours, do kill it before that.”
The gratitude in the woman’s eyes tells her that the old man speaks the truth, and in the process of making her grateful she’s shown a willingness to cooperate. She can also see sadistic bloodlust behind her eyes, this thing likely dies within the hour.
Hopefully this is a good thing and will bite absolutely no one ever.
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“They’re heavy!” A deep rumbling voice catches her ear, and the woman rolls her eyes at it.
“I don’t want to hear that kind of back sass from a Minotaur!” The dark lord shouts, cupping her hands over her lips while glaring at the half bull beast dragging wheelbarrows of water filled jars behind him. The other side had been grateful enough, or possibly distracted enough, that they didn’t even object as she had her minions drain what they could from a mostly tainted river. The ash inside some of the bottles annoys her, but purifying it shouldn’t be that hard. “Tell your brothers to hurry up, we only have another three hours before this becomes so much more expensive and we have to swap them to higher quality soul gems so I want everything done and sorted as soon as possible. That includes the loot.”
“What are you even planning to do with them?” A terrible existence asks from her left. Her gaze lands on the source and she has to hold back an annoyed growl. Of course Akari would be here, she’d never resist a chance to make her life worse, especially if souls are involved. Unfortunately for the Dark Knight, these souls aren’t for sale.
“I’m going to extract their essence from these soul gems and put them into a more stable containment system for long term storage,” She explains, lifting a metal covered claw and scratching her cheek without a care, “then once they’re in advanced storage I’ll have time to set up some sort of game.”
“A game?” The small force of evil at her side asks.
“I dunno, that’s for the system to decide.” She groans, “but if you haven’t noticed this is the neutral zone so I need to come up with some sort of excuse for why my forces are here to do this in the first place.” The woman groans at that thought, that’s going to be a nightmare. “Oh fuck, that’s Sakura.” The tall lord groans.
“Who?” Akari asks while playfully bouncing in place. It’s impossible for the shapeshifter to stay still, so she chooses not to judge her. Technically she’s probably here to be helpful so, she answers.
“Fierro’s killer.” She points towards three mangled corpses being dragged in with a wheelbarrow. Their bodies aren’t particularly intact, but something stone appears to have blocked most of the fire part of whatever happened there. So while most of these people were so blown to bits no sort of body could be recovered, Sakura seems oddly fine if not missing most of her limbs and organs.
“She’s dead, issue solved. No need to further reward her.” The smaller girl with the hot streak of impatience and excitable childlike energy dismisses Sakura, throwing a hand to the side and looking onto more important prospects. Mainly if any of the dead souls around can be devoured without pissing her lord off.
“Drink some water and shut up.” The leader of monsterkind’s hand lands at her side, and out comes a jar filled with clear fluids that make Akari’s currently bright reds shimmer with stars.
“No way, where’d you get this!?” She doesn’t hesitate to grab the jar out of her lord’s hand and hold it to her chest, squeezing it the way one might a small pet.
“Her world isn’t warring over natural resources like ours, no one even tried to stop me.” She laughs a little, “we let her die and her world probably kicks me out. I’m just going to do what it says.”
“That’s a good deal, yeppers.” The excitable monster with paler skin than even someone raised in a cave pulls the lid off the jar and gets drinking something precious.
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“Sooo…” Sakura trails, looking over the monstrous woman that offered her the goblin souls that caused that explosion. “You’re doing this because… water?” It’s odd to think of her motivations being so simple. With inhuman features, a sharp gaze, dark plate mail armor that is heavier and more unreasonably intimidating than any normal ninja would ever dare to wear, she stands out as above such small concerns.
“I could go into the politics of my world, or I could get on with the explanation of the game…” Sharp teeth grind together a little bit at the interruption, “I feel like reviving you at great cost to myself but almost no real reward should allow me the time to talk uninterrupted.”
“I just, I don’t think I’ve ever thought water was special before?” Sakura explains a little sheepishly. Sitting at a table a little to the side of where she was initially resurrected, she can’t help but take in just how dark everything is here. Do these monsters have low light vision or is it something weirder? Also, with no real gain? She just explained how she only keeps access to small amounts of water by helping her, unless she means direct rewards at which point Sakura’s not sure how to respond to that.
“Well, not everyone can just have everything. Sometimes you’re a persecuted people shoved into a small uninhabitable area no one wants.” The deadpan and deadtone combined make Sakura feel like she’s being judged for something. “I’d also love a proper lumber deal, maybe something to make the soil a little more fertile, a-” Her recent savior continues while Sakura’s gaze lands on her clean and pale hands. She killed them. She killed herself, she killed Gaara, she killed Sasuke, and somehow even worse, she made Naruto do something he’d never do without her. And yet, here she sits with clean hands and not a drop of blood to be seen anywhere.
What happened is obvious, now that she knows there’s so many dead that they need to play a freaking game. Her explosion was much bigger than she expected, Naruto took it as a signal, and now everyone is dead. She hopes the Jonin weren’t caught in that, or Jiraiya, the Chunin? She didn’t just kill a ton of Chunin proctors did she?
Was this treason? This feels a lot like treason. The Hokage’s gonna be pissed.
“So we can’t bring everyone back. No matter what, some of the people there will stay dead.” Sakura realizes, “the diplomatic incident I have caused is going to be insane.”
“That’s really not my problem.” The woman helpfully replies, stopping her rant about logistics and reward to look right into Sakura’s eyes. Her metal covered fingertip reaches over and pokes Sakura’s cheek, their mutual reds looking deep into each other for the moment. “You should worry about yourself, it’s not often a world puts this much attention on one person. Genocides are happening every day if you’re willing to look outside of your own lands, but one battle and an entire world is calling for help? Mnnn, something’s fucky and it’s not me.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that impression.” Sakura’s known since she first got the ability - after a few days to doubt it’s real - that something weird was going on. As far as she knows, this sort of thing has never happened before, and even if it has it’s rare enough she’s never heard of it. Some force out there thought she was special. Kakashi thought it was a dark goddess, Naruto thought it was like the Kyuubi, she just wanted to sit down, shut up, and not think about it.
Now she has to think about it, she’d be stupid to stop thinking about it.
Even if that woman and clock tower was a badly put together dream, the last vestige of her flickering life meant to see her off, this is proof enough that things are out of her control and her thoughts that they were in her control were pure hubris. “So how many of the people can you bring back?” She finally asks, lifting her knees to her chest and hugging them close. She holds back a whimper of her own, she did this.
She’s killed by accident before, she’s never accidentally killed her loved ones.
It’d be easy to blame Orochimaru, but he was just going to kill her and Sasuke, wasn’t he?
This is technically the better outcome, probably, but it doesn’t feel like it! Well, he did mention torturing Naruto but that was probably just to get a rise out of her.
“That depends on what you mean by ‘can I bring back.’ If the cost analysis holds up… well most of the people caught in that explosion are of similar power, so a mass resurrection on half of them should be very doable if I can convince the nobles on both sides of the war to pitch in. Possibly more if I really raise the stakes, maybe give them a reason to buy into the resurrection rituals…” The woman becomes lost in thought with a ramble as she removes her finger from Sakura’s cheek to palm her own jangly leggings.
She coughs and clears her throat, causing Sakura to stare with rapt attention. “If by ‘can I’ you mean without time constraints, everyone. The souls not being revived in the next couple of weeks will be moved to a special storage facility that should hold until I am dead and the next lord decides to devour them. Should I be compensated fairly or given the means to do so, we should eventually be able to bring back every last soul. It’s just, that could take decades and requires me to continue to have a reason to pay for the upkeep.”
“So a game to decide on which half is necessary, and then we move into trying to figure out how to pay for the remainder…” Sakura grumbles to herself, this is a lot, she didn’t sign up for this. Maybe Konoha will pitch in? Konoha will pitch in, right?
She just wanted to become a Chunin, in fact scratch that, she just wanted to teach some kids for a few years while she trains for Jonin. “Who are you, by the way? You never answered me back in the halfway place with all the salt.” The mere memory brings the smell to her senses. It was ridiculous, and she still sometimes gets hit with the memory when cooking with Haku.
“You may call me lady or Dark Lord.” The Dark Lord’s hand sifts through her magenta hair, fingers parting it only for it to fall right back around her head and frame her sharp angular face after she throws it back. “My given name is Saruka, born ruler of monster kind, but if you actually call me that in public you’ll likely get thrown into a brig until I can be arsed to come get you out.”
“That’s just Sakura but slightly misspelled.” Sakura’s gaze falls to a half glare, “you made that up on the spot.”
“Is it?” The woman’s finger lands on her own chin in what Sakura can only imagine is false pondering. “Regardless, as the current best case for an ambassador between worlds you’re going to sign some magic documents giving me at least a few basic provisions and a temporary peace treaty allowing me and my retinue to cross over for necessary, non-destructive, non-invasive resource gathering. In return, I will do my best to approach you and your needs with benevolence, care, and maybe even a little bit of motherly love.”
Sakura’s stare at that ridiculous statement manages to get a prompt out of her system.
[Otherworldly influence is interfering in the amount of data Scan Skilled can Gather, accuracy may be slightly modified.]
[Name: Saruka of ???
Title: Dark Lord
Danger Rating: Run Away
Bio: Born into the position of Darklord to a dying nation of monsters, Saruka is caught between a rock, a bigger rock, and falling rocks from trebuchets seem to have an opinion too.
Good natured, friendly, views you with pragmatic kindness.]
“That’s…” What’s she supposed to say? Can she even speak for Konoha? Even if she’s the best option she’s not going to be looked on favorably if she makes a bunch of promises in Konoha’s name, especially if a ton of Konoha ninja don’t make it back.
This is above her head, but a thought occurs to her.
She checks on Sakura Country and is delighted that the interface still works here. “Actually, that’s stupid, you said you want water? I have water. I have lots of water.”
“And lumber.” Saruka reminds her.
“Got that too.” Sakura checks her income and goods stock, and finds she has a lot of wood at the moment, though not too much. She’s careful not to overcut. She doesn’t need to check on the water supply, they have water. “How about we work out a trade deal between us? It’ll start small but assuming you’re willing to aid me with a few small things, maybe provide some labor, I can at least make your life a little better. Is that okay?”
“... Let’s just say it is for now, and talk about the details while watching the game.” Saruka, born ruler of monster kind, says while eyeing the city building box in the air as if she can see it, “I was thinking we would do a death game. Simple, quick, fair, the last half to die again gets resurrected and sent back to your world by carriage. The system has several variations of that which it will likely decide between.”
“I’m okay with that under a few conditions.” Sakura takes a deep breath, and starts listing.
How to create a list of conditions that ensures Ino, Sasuke, and as many Konoha ninja make it back as possible? She finds her voice comes up short.
This is complicated, this is annoying, but at least it’s not permanent.
Death is normally permanent, she should be happy. She’s not, but she should be.
Comments
Christopher Cummins
At the very least, Sakura has been given enough evidence to think so.
Dopplerdee
Man, I guess the multiversity runs on Sakura
