Sendicard
patreon
Chapter 70 - Arc 4 - Brawling in the Streets: A Pitiful Conclusion
🕑 Added 2024-08-11 22:56:54 +0000 UTCChapter 70 has finally arrived, and with it the conclusion of Arc 4. There's still a little wrapping up to do, including next chapter which is a Lee and Gai Interlude detailing his 'adventure' during this arc. I feel like Lee got hella shafted and he deserves some screentime.
Chapter 49 has been edited, it's worded better, fixed a bunch of typos. I also fixed an editing error which made half the chapter not make any fucking sense. Originally it said their party level was 27 and the dungeon would be scaled to them, which would have been almost nothing and totally worth bringing Lee for. It was supposed to say 40.
Editing errors are constant, which is why I'm happy I now have the time to go over chapters more. The Patreon's technically lowering because the rate of leaving is higher than the join rate but I really can't complain about $190, that gives me a lot of justified time to edit and love this story.
Thank you all for your support.
----------------------------------------------------------------
This isn’t what she expected.
The path inwards into the final chamber has no opposition. No undead knights or magical sigils meant to scare them off. Despite some kind of magical seal designed to stop Neji’s bloodline, the enemy doesn’t show their proficiency in any other way. It’s almost as if they’ve used every bit of power they had up to this point, and are so tapped out they’re just laying down and dying for them.
Their footsteps press onwards, confidence growing as they find absolutely nothing in their way. They soon find a lonely throne room where the stones are more worn and scratched than any self respecting kingdom has any right allowing. The throne itself is made of bones and skulls, but it's mostly stuck together through kinetic pressure, ground paste, and sharpened pieces that stick through others. It can’t be comfortable to sit on, and one look at it has her frowning. This isn’t what she expected. A final battle with some evil boss, sure, but this doesn’t look like the work of a rich crazy person seeking world domination.
This is the scuffed and scraped together height of the desperate. Songs are made about this kind of movement, and they don’t end well. She’s the righteous hand of authority in this instance, and the feeling makes her gut spin a little. The ‘red carpet’ leading to the throne has never been cleaned, and there’s so much dust in the air that there’s no doubt in her mind that not a single functional adult existed in this entire group. It’s a resistance alright, a rebellion of sorts, but did it ever have even the slightest chance?
Are they heroes squashing a force that stood against their village, or just executioners putting down sickly dogs that dare to bite at the heels of their masters?
That question is answered for her, when a wall to the side begins to glow, and lights begin to draw upwards from the floor. Like shiny chalk made purely of sun, she finds the drawing rising up in a line until it curves, reaching a nice midway point along the wall, before curving towards a center point up high. A door made with pure magic appears before her, drawing itself like it’s meant to be there. Sparkles shave off and fall towards the floor, until without much more ceremony, the door creaks open from its center and reveals itself to be a set of double doors with normal door size. It’s the world’s most pathetic magically constructed pathway, go the enemy.
Go her, she’s managed to crush the hopes and spirits of the pitiful.
In her defense, they’re the bad guys. They took over a town, and are actively rebelling.
What comes through the shitty undersized double doors isn’t some herald of dark tidings, or a cursed monarch with whispering nothings surrounding them. There’s no misty miasma, or ancient tattered mantle glowing as brightly as it once held brilliance. It’s a small girl.
She’s older, maybe her mid-twenties, but she’s tiny for her age. Sakura finds herself surprised that she doesn’t have to lift her head to stare into her eyes, they’re identical in stature, Sakura might even be a little bigger when one considers mass. It doesn’t look like this girl has eaten much recently. She has long once elegant purple strands flowing down her back, matted but showing what once was so vibrant. It’s marred by ash and looks like it hasn’t seen a brush in forever. Her ears are striking, pointing and elongating out to the side. Her dark eyes look so hollow and match her boney cheeks which lack in even the slightest bit of life. She’s wearing a robe, but it’s too big for her and drags across the floor, it’s in tatters and hasn’t been washed in weeks. Her shoes are real shoes, but scratched and stubborn, and she’s walking with a thick stick clutched in both hands. It shakes as she bangs it across the floor with every step, holding onto it like her life depends on it. It probably does, if her state is anything to go by.
Some of her zombies look better than her, Fierro isn’t a boss fight, she’s a morality choice.
This game sucks.
“You won’t get them, I sent them away,” Her voice rings with discarded authority, she’s looking at a queen who hasn’t just given up her throne, she’s welcomed its absence, “it’s just us, you’ve killed everyone you can kill, you’ll find your bloodlust won’t be sated here.”
“I have questions.” Sakura says, clutching her sword, wondering if she even needs it. A look down tells her the sword seems to think the same. Should she disrespect it with this woman’s head?
“I have no reason to answer you,” the sickly girl in front of her says, her dark void filled eyes wavering, her stance unbalanced even with the stick to hold her up, “we could have been friends if you’d come to me in a different timeline. I see magic inside of you, it’s swirling around unnaturally. It’s gifted by something dark, something evil that encases you in foregone tragedy. Your path is that of a butcher, and you’re not just not trying to escape it, you’re welcoming it.”
The woman takes another step towards her, her eyes glowing with a dim light that's lost its brilliance somewhere along the way. “It’s trying to find any excuse to escape and change the world. You’ve chosen to give that magic to a village, you’ve given up your loyalty without a thought, just like those kids did with me.”
“I’m twelve.” Sakura finds herself falling back to a defense that feels right, even if she instantly regrets using it the moment it leaves her lips. She won’t be feeling strong and big today, she’s just going to kick a small girl into the dirt and leave with her spoils. It makes her feel a little sick, and yet, she’s sure it’s going to happen, and she’s not going to hesitate.
“I lied to them,” the woman says, “I told them I wanted to topple the villages, that I wanted to free them from their shackles, I promised them a new world, when all I wanted was what every one of them secretly wanted, I wanted to go home.” The woman takes another shaky step towards her, and Sakura hears a crack. She watches as the woman’s support snaps in half, and purple hair graces the floor with a smack of stone against flesh. Fallen and without firmness to her, the woman pushes herself up onto her knees in front of Sakura, looking up at her without an ounce of soul left in her. She doesn’t care about the blood flowing down her cheek and dripping onto the floor, from her newly made wound.
All of Sakura’s sins weigh on this woman as if they’re her own, and the truth is they are.
They’re both complicit in all this death, and unlike this pathetic figure of so much more experience, Sakura’s handling it so much better. “Why are you telling me this?” Sakura sighs, “you said you weren’t going to answer.”
“Your questions are irrelevant, but your fate is everything. You’re so much stronger, you have so much potential. You need to understand that all leaders look like me, past their power. We’re all just manipulating the small so that we can get what we want.” The woman’s hand lands on Sakura’s leggings, and pulls at them, looking up at her with a gaze filled with as much earnestness as it is hate. This tragedy, lost and alone surrounded by a field of previous friends she got killed, hates her.
Sakura feels nothing. She looks into those eyes and has nothing to give her, nothing to make her feel better. She lifts her sword. “You’re just an idiot who started something she couldn’t follow through with,” Sakura grumbles, “I think I’ll take my career advice from people who aren’t on their knees, thank-you.”
“You need to understand, it’s not just me, it’s everyone, it’s all one big lie meant to collect people like you and use them to change the world. It’s not even just this world, there’s so much out there and you’re walking through blind-” Sakura brings her sword down, and doesn’t flinch when the voice stops as wetly as the woman’s followers did.
[1/1 Fierro Killed]
“We’re done here,” Sakura says, looking over her shoulder at her teammates, who look a lot more ill than they probably should, “our mission is complete.”
“Yeah,” Neji looks worse for wear, but Tenten’s expression says so much. If only her charm was high enough to understand it. Even the mood chart is shifting too quickly for her to get a real grip of it, conflicting emotions is the best way for her to describe it.
“If you’re unhappy with how I dealt with that, you should have taken charge instead of leaving it all to me.” Sakura says, coldly looking down at the body. It’s melting like a monster in a game. She takes a step away, as the elf’s body slowly turns into a black ichor that spreads across the floor, filling in the space between stones and slowly but surely coming around until it fills a full circle.
A circle that begins to glow.
[Congratulations, for executing wanted Criminal [Fierro], you have a bounty to collect at the bounty service in Konoha. You also have a bonus reward to collect from the Fire Daimyo. Please do so at your nearest leisure.
Please step into the teleportation circle to leave the dungeon.]
“The circle is a teleport,” Sakura informs them, before kneeling down to look through the elf’s belongings. What did she mean by wanting to go home? Was she a part of a village that kicked her out? Is there some secret land of elves hidden somewhere she’s never heard of? Is she really some villain from another world, discarded from even her old life? She finds rings under the now empty robe, they glimmer and glint in her grasp.
[Ring of Souls
Rare
Allows the wearer to collect souls for use in Necromancy]
[Ring of Mana
Rare
Allows the wearer to store up to 200 points of Mana for later use]
[Ring of Mana Generation
Rare
Allows the wearer to generate Mana if they have Mana capabilities but cannot naturally generate it]
They’re all cool, but seem very specific, and all something to mess around with later. The least she needs right now is to put them on and go into a coma or something because she’s messing with forces she doesn’t understand.
Stowing away the lost woman’s robe in her bag, she finds a scroll tucked away in it.
[Scroll of Beginner’s Necromancy
Epic
Allows the reader to understand Necromancy, Requires Mana, Requires 110 Mental]
She does not have that, her Mental is 101 and it hasn’t gone up in some time.
It seems she’ll need to figure out how to raise it if she wants to get any use out of this reward.
With a sigh, she stands, and finds Neji and Tenten both standing on the circle, clearly as ready to leave as anyone has ever been ready to do anything.
“Did you have fun?” Neji asks her, his arms crossed and his gaze as cool as he can manage when he looked sickly just a few moments ago.
“You have to loot the boss, Neji.” Sakura rolls her eyes at him, skipping over what would be a cooling corpse if it wasn’t melted into black goopy nonsense.
“That’s true.” Tenten agrees with her, giving Neji a stern look that she assumes means ‘cut the blonde dummy some slack.’ Being blonde is still weird but she’s starting to identify with it, she needs to at least keep it long enough to screw with Sasuke.
“Hold hands when we step through, I don’t want to find out this magic warps us to different places.” Neji says, grabbing both of their palms and intertwining their fingers in a way that’d make Sakura blush if they weren’t covered in blood and dripping Fierro remains.
“Let’s go, we won.” With one step forward they step in, and are immersed in a powerful light that makes her feel lighter than air.
Comments
Christopher Cummins
"You have a problem? That's your problem, you could have taken over. You let me, so deal with my decisions." Neji's team leader here, if he wanted to take charge, he should have taken charge. Buuuut, he's canonically really reliant on the Byakugan, and I wrote him as afraid to engage unless necessary.
Kim Carragher
Honestly good job with the autism flavour - I'm autistic and I found myself nodding and saying "she has a point!" when she grumbled about how others could've stepped in and handled Fiero instead being a bystander to her choices and then condemning her for it. as someone who has made pragmatic (seemingly cold) decisions, or taken the reigns of something when no one else would, i have dealt with an annoying amount of judgement from people who were doing nothing to help.
Christopher Cummins
I originally had Sakura cut her off even earlier and actually say "Don't care." as she beheads her, but I decided to let her go a little longer because it'll give Sakura more to reflect on later, and makes Sakura seem less like a bitch. I've really tried to get across that Sakura is effective, and maybe a little autistic, not that she's evil.
Dopplerdee
I love it whe people monolog at 10-14 year old kids. Their yltyring to bring up big concept shit and the kid just wants to go home because their entire day has sucked.
