I left Ichiraku full and twitchy, paranoia howling like a siren. Home. Bed. Settings. I swapped the stupid factory incantation for something I can say without gagging: "Illusion Barrier, activate." Then I hit the forum to scavenge intel.
Nada. Just drama. One post titled "He-Who-Must-Not-Even-Be-Thought-About Showed Up"—author claims the cosmic freak walked into his world, he bailed via reverse summon, hid out till the storm passed, and came back to a scene so cursed he's prepping a clean seppuku and speedrunning reincarnation. Details? Locked behind a gated group that demands full Player data on registration. Translation: anyone inside can peek at your status. Yeah, hard pass. At least that explains why public info is trash and why I only ever see nicknames instead of actual stats.
Fine. New plan, surveillance-aware:
Shadow Dive at home (bathroom, obviously—the throne room is sacred and private).
Pop out near the sewer entrance.
Instant Barrier. Grind. Profit.
Same route back. Try not to get eaten between steps two and three.
I needed a weapon, though. Apartment arsenal = one (1) kitchen knife. I'm not in Toriko, so I'm not soloing mobs with a paring blade. The training grounds felt promising—surely someone dropped a kunai or twelve.
Spoiler: they didn't. I spent all afternoon crawling bushes like a feral gremlin and found exactly one battered, rusty kunai. Love that for me.
Next day: crafting montage. I sharpened the kunai and tied it to a stick with steel fishing line—a discount sickle. Grabbed the kitchen knife as backup. Ready to commit rat-icide.
I stuffed the gear into inventory and headed to—where else—the bathroom. Most private spot in my life. I hung a rag over the bulb to cast a fat shadow and started sinking.
I surfaced one alley over from target. Weirdly, nothing tried to eat me, even though I'd spent a solid 10–12 minutes in the Shadow Plane. Usually by minute five I've got one or two void calamari barreling toward me to chew on my spine. Maybe they're diurnal? Doubtful, but I'll test later. I usually train in daylight and sleep at night like a chump.
A few sprints later: target acquired. Empty street. Time to work.
"Illusion Barrier, activate."
pa-ram pam pam
System: First-Time Barrier!
As a Player System v.T-3000 user, you get the Upgraded Illusion Barrier.
A shimmering film spread over the manhole. A registration-style window popped up with rules and toggles and a "Do you agree?" at the bottom.
tl;dr: Same core stuff the forum promised—time dilation: no matter how long you grind inside, exactly one second passes outside. My version also has better loot tables. I didn't read all of it (irony incoming); time's tight and I still had a return trip. I hit Agree and jumped.
The sewer was… wrong. Think main tunnel ~7 meters wide, 3 high. Central canal hauling water and random garbage from wall and ceiling pipes. Bridges here and there. Side corridors fanning out like a rat Airbnb.
In this kind of sewer, you don't just get rats. You get alligators with union benefits. Really hoping the spawns stick to rodents.
I drew my DIY reaper-toy and slid into the nearest side tunnel. Ten meters in, first corner—pack of five. Not normal rats: cat-sized, red glow eyes, walking Chernobyl.
I froze for a heartbeat plotting an opener; they clocked me and gave me the "tasty snack" look. I stepped back. That was the starter pistol—all five lunged.
I whiffed my first swing, one rat latched onto my arm, two bit my legs, a fourth went for my face (caught it on my forearm), the last vaulted my back and started turning my shirt into confetti. I rolled, flailed, stabbed—nothing stuck. Ten minutes of this slapstick brutality later, I finally blasted them with Yaki and then kissed one with Shinigami Visage. That one dropped. The rest bolted.
Ninety minutes to regen. Then I checked the corpse.
System: Loot Tip
For more loot, butcher manuallyor touch and say "Extraction."
—
No way was I elbow-deep in sewerpig. I tapped the body and said it: "Extraction." The carcass flaked into dust, leaving a tiny blue gem and a tail.
Small Essence Crystal — Lv.3
Rat Tail
So Observation finally kicked in… sort of. No "Skill Unlocked" popup, and outside the barrier it never lights up like this. Guess the T-3000 likes its toys instanced.
Another half hour, then back to the grind—but smarter. Peeked the corner: same five. Focused on one and spotted: Rat — Lv.3. Self-maim to proc Shinigami Visage again? Hard pass. And Yaki was on cooldown.
Speaking of cooldowns: turns out Shinigami Visage has a 1-hour CD. Missed that because the defaults hide extra info—thank you, factory settings. Note to self: deep-dive Settings properly, not just skim for shiny toggles.
Plan B: cheese.
I leaned out, tagged the closest rat with Irritating Stare, and retreated behind the corner. When it broke line-of-sight, I fed it the sickle-on-a-stick right across the spine. It didn't die clean—it fought—but it died. After six repetitions, the rhythm landed. Also:
System: Stat Gains
STR +1DEX +1SPD +1
Total rats down: 12. Time in: 6.5 hours. XP per trash mob: 5. XP to next level: 1200. That's 228 more rats. With a real weapon? Doable. With my DIY junk (which snapped on rat #9)? Pain.
I made for the exit… and got stonewalled.
System: Exit Locked
Boss not defeated. Exit impossible.
The screaming did nothing. I dragged up the initial terms and actually read to the end. Last line: "On first clear of any new location, exit is unavailable until the boss is dead." Cute. Hide that in the fine print, you sadists.
I left the sewer five days later. To be precise: 4 days, 8 hours, 42 minutes (barrier time). I looked like a budget zombie: ripped, blood crust everywhere, thousand-yard stare, and a smell that could commit war crimes. If I'd stuck my arms out and groaned "BRAINS," it would've completed the vibe. Didn't have the energy.
After the lockout message, I stopped arguing with the EULA, wished the author fond love with Hapsael, and got to work.
Rats did their best to sabotage my local genocide. My DIY sickle died early; I replaced it with a pipe I spent three hours ripping out of the wall. That upgraded my DPS, but after two hours I was cooked. I napped a couple hours—woke up to hunger and thirst trying to stage a coup.
Water was easy: I broke enough pipes to find clean flow and chugged. Food… not so much. Humans can last weeks without eating; I am not technically human, and my body filed a formal refusal.
By the end of day two I was loving roasted rat. The cravings started the end of day one, but actually making fire—striking sparks off pipe and stone, catching on rat fur, then babying that bastard flame into a fire—took forever and a gallon of nerves. The kitchen knife paid rent: skinning, gutting, slicing.
System: Skill Unlocked!
Skinners' Work — Lv.1
Manual butchery yields more ingredients.
Extreme Cooking — Lv.1
Your meals grant buffs based on source and recipe.
Example: Rat Roast → DEX +2 for 1 hour
Those buffs absolutely carried; without them I'd have spent two extra days clearing respawns that trickled back while I slept or played Sewer Chef.
Boss room was a surprise. The boss was a Rat Queen — Lv.7: fat, slow, soft. The real threat was her escort:
Rat King — Lv.6 (the actual brain)
3 Veteran Rats — Lv.5
My cheesy single-pull strat flopped—they aggro'd as a unit but wouldn't stray more than 30 meters from Mama. So I got ugly: carved my HP down to danger with the kitchen knife, Shinigami Visage'd the King, Yaki to rattle the veterans, then kited into a side corridor. With the leader gone, cleanup was just cardio. The Queen? Easier than a regular rat. Big target, bad day.
Payout:
518 EXP (trash + King + Queen)
+100 EXP first-clear bonus
Loot: 91 Small Essence Crystals, 26 Rat Tails, 31 Rat Hides, 8 Rat Meat
The real prize was in the Queen's nest: the chewed-to-bones corpse of a Konoha shinobi carrying a short sword, a pouch with 6 kunai, and 12 shuriken. All of that went straight to inventory. Finally, a loadout that doesn't look like I mugged a scarecrow.
Outside, exactly one second had passed. Bless time dilation. I started home thinking only of food, soap, sleep. Two blocks in, my last brain cell pinged "OPSEC." I Shadow Dived from the nearest shade to my apartment, slithered into the bath, inhaled instant noodles, and passed out like a corpse.
Game Forum
Group: Naruto Worlds
Bloody Jester (Sasuke Uchiha): Like I said in my short post, HE came. I bailed via reverse summon and hid until HE left. What I saw afterward… I'm done with this shard. Seppuku → rebirth. I've got the quest cleared.
Hell Warden (Kiba Inuzuka): Save the poetry. Details. I've gotta brief other groups.
Life's Lady (Sakura Haruno): How do you get a rebirth quest anyway?
Pompous Pwner (Naruto Uzumaki): "Special" section. A dozen quests grant that reward.
Bloody Jester (Sasuke Uchiha): Details for sale. Pics cost extra.
Pompous Pwner (Naruto Uzumaki): You didn't photograph HIM, right?
Bloody Jester (Sasuke Uchiha): Do I look suicidal?
Life's Lady (Sakura Haruno): Why's that a problem?
Ghost Avenger (Sasuke Uchiha): Because any image can act as an anchor. You share it, you risk summoning HIM. The community will erase you for that.
Hell Warden (Kiba Inuzuka): Focus. What happened and who caused it? HE doesn't show up without a beacon.
Bloody Jester (Sasuke Uchiha): Locals said HE was hunting the caller.
Ghost Avenger (Sasuke Uchiha): Find the imbecile and delete him.
Pompous Pwner (Naruto Uzumaki): A hundred times. Minimum.
Hell Warden (Kiba Inuzuka): Timeline?
Bloody Jester (Sasuke Uchiha): Between the 2nd and 3rd Chunin Exam stages. I skipped Kakashi's "training" (already mastered Chidori in the academy), stayed in the village. When HE appeared I was on the mountain overlook, saw it coming, ran. Came back to fallout.
Civilians: shell-shocked but whatever. Shinobi were a horror show.
Mitarashi Anko, on a bender with Orochimaru… in the body of a black-haired young woman. Kurenai was under the table.
Neji tried to hang himself; Tenten tried to stop him.
Jiraiya was peeping—in the men's bath. Don't ask.
Found Naruto staggering around—well, not "Naruto" anymore. After HE arrived, first target was Jiraiya. Naruto assumed HE was into boys and used his Sexy Technique. It didn't save him. He got stuck in a female form. I checked with Sharingan—not Henge, not Genjutsu. (We are not posting details; keep it clean.)
And the cherry? If you think Guy and Lee are bad in their usual green, imagine them in HIS getup, preaching LOVE & PEACE in the name of Youth. That's when my Mangekyo flared. I almost Amaterasu'd the sight. They dodged.
I get why Neji grabbed a rope. I might join him. The branches on that tree look sturdy.
Pompous Pwner (Naruto Uzumaki): PSA: everyone avoid summoning techniques for now.
Ghost Avenger (Sasuke Uchiha): Seconded. Spread the word.
Hell Warden (Kiba Inuzuka): On it.