Power Stone Goals from now on: I always post a minimum of 5 chapters. Henceforth the following are the goals:
Every 150 powerstones, I upload an extra chapter.
If we hit top 30 in the 30-90 days power stone rankings, thats 1 more chapter
If we hit top 10 in the 30-90 days power stone rankings, thats 1 more chapter
If we are top 5...well lets get to that first. Happy readings!
Chapter 78: Gate
As I remained embedded in the stone wall of the lower mine, little more than a ripple in the mountain's pulse, I listened with care to the voices that filtered through layers of dust and stone. Conversation came in patches—snippets of dialogue half-muffled by clanging tools and grinding drills, yet clear enough for me to piece together a pattern.
Two Elite-Jonin and a group of regular Jonin were speaking in low tones, their words tucked behind the rhythm of administrative urgency.
"The Shogun's worried," one said, clearly irritated but trying to sound neutral.
"Worried about the Raikage?" came the response. "That man's always loud, reckless, starts half a war just because someone looked at him the wrong way. What's changed?"
There was a pause—measured, like a man setting down a burden slowly.
"Exactly. He's being calm. He's being precise."
"Normally, we get all sorts of rants from the Kumo envoys. Threats, posturing, 'I'll burn down the village with my elbow' kind of madness. But this time, no explosions. Just... silence. And a call."
"The Shadow Summit."
"Yeah. That."
My brows furrowed as I parsed the tension in their voices.
"Everyone knows Konoha crossed some kind of line," one of the Jonin murmured, his voice muffled as if he were looking down or speaking into a scroll. "But nobody knows what it was. We don't even know if the Hokage sanctioned it."
"Doesn't matter. The Raikage hasn't thrown a punch. That alone means he's planning something worse."
They shifted, murmuring about supply lines and diplomatic agents. Then one of them added, almost as an afterthought, "The capital's packed. Tourists. Too many. Like... thousands of extras just showed up in the last week."
Of course. The tourists. I already knew the influx had started last week—thousands arriving overnight with no proper records, no identifiable affiliations. It wasn't a mystery to me. It was confirmation.
Obviously, every single suspicious individual had a tail on them, usually Chunin.
Something about that didn't sit right.
But even as I filed that information away, my attention was pulled elsewhere—somewhere stranger.
At the edge of my Mind's Eye, in a place where stone gave way to deeper caverns and artificial hallways, there was an anomaly. A blind spot.
Every living thing gave off chakra. Even the stone around me pulsed faintly with residual energy. Air carried it. Metal conducted it. Earth stored it.
But there—right there—was the absence of anything at all. A tear in the weave. An erasure.
I was tense.
I'd felt suppressed signatures before. Jutsu that is muffled, cloaked, disguised. But even in those cases, something remained. A hiccup in the field. A faint shimmer around the edges. This was different. This wasn't cloaked.
This was null.
Was there something in this world that had no chakra signature at all?
The implications were dangerous.
Because if there was, and if it was here—beneath this mine, surrounded by some of the strongest guards in the Land of Iron.
It was something they didn't want anyone to see.
And I had to find out what it was.
It began with a single, shrill note—an unnatural sound that cut through the low hum of the mine like a blade slicing through taut silk.
It wasn't the echo of pickaxes or the resonance of chakra drills; it was sharper, more deliberate, and terrifying in its clarity.
The alarm.
A high-pitched warble that pulsed through the air in strict intervals, like a mechanical scream announcing something no one had words for yet.
Inside the heart of the mine, where Elite-Jonin and reinforced patrols guarded the deepest layers of chakra-rich ore, the sound didn't just echo—it resonated, vibrating off the reinforced stone walls like an earthquake made of noise.
Every conversation ceased mid-sentence. Tools were set down, scrolls abandoned, hand seals frozen in formation.
Heads turned upward as one, eyes scanning the air as if the sound could be seen.
"The alarm?" someone asked, low and uncertain.
A second Elite-Jonin, one standing with a tablet in hand near the ore containment rack, narrowed his eyes. "That's not one of ours."
"It's not for drills," another said quickly, stepping closer. "That alarm is only supposed to be triggered for Code 9 situations. Emergencies. Surface-level threats. Or... if command leadership is being called topside."
There was a beat of silence, a pause heavy with unspoken meanings. Then the voices started to layer.
"Why would they call us up?"
"They wouldn't. Not unless they were desperate."
"Is it a distraction? Could someone be tampering with the extraction levels?"
"Doesn't matter. If that alarm is real, we're supposed to respond. That's protocol."
But none of them moved—not yet. These were high-ranking shinobi, not panicked foot soldiers. They waited, processing, calculating.
For every rule, there was a counter-rule.
For every order, a set of conditions to interpret first.
Their hesitation was not born of fear, but caution honed through experience.
And then the second sound came.
Not a warning.
Not a signal.
An explosion.
The entire mine shuddered, as if struck by an underground tremor. A low roar surged through the cavern floor, followed by a concussive shockwave that rattled support beams and dislodged dust from overhead struts.
Lights flickered.
A reinforced steel bulkhead near the primary tunnel cracked open down the middle with a groan of protesting metal.
The shinobi in the chamber reacted instantly. Hands blurred into motion as chakra surged through the space. Earth walls hardened. Barrier jutsu formed mid-air. Protective seals lit up with a pale blue glow along the floor. They didn't scream or panic—they fortified.
"Report!" barked the commanding officer, his voice cutting through the noise.
A younger Jonin sprinted to a console embedded into the wall, fingers dancing across its interface. "Explosion detected near surface entrance—Sector One! Chakra surge was massive—elemental, but unaligned. No ID signatures matched...It's...A KAGE RANKED SHINOBI!"
"A KAGE?!?" the officer echoed.
More alarms began to activate, a cascade of sirens spiraling deeper into the mine as the emergency response grid kicked into gear.
Somewhere far above, faint shouting echoed down the tunnels, overlapping with the rumble of feet and the clash of steel.
"The surface is compromised," someone said.
No one replied.
Because even though none of them said it aloud, they all understood the unspoken truth clawing at the edge of their minds:
If someone had bypassed the barrier—if someone had reached the surface chamber and detonated something strong enough to send tremors this deep—then they weren't dealing with a mistake, or an accident.
They were dealing with someone who knew exactly where to hit.
And that meant they had a much bigger problem on their hands.
…
The stone around me quivered with each blast from above, dust bleeding through cracks as the tremors rippled deeper into the mine's skeleton.
Whatever was happening on the surface, it was escalating rapidly—far beyond the boundaries of a controlled skirmish or even sabotage. But down here, the world remained still, except for that strange, silent anomaly buried in the mountain's root.
I shifted within the stone, the coarse earth reluctantly giving way as I emerged from concealment. My body reformed from the wall like a ghost shedding its cocoon, and with a quick flick of my fingers, I deactivated Earth Style: Tunneling Technique.
My eyes adjusted to the dim, chakra-illuminated corridor—the veins of ore still pulsing faintly around me—but my focus was fixed further down, deeper still, to the unnatural absence that had kept calling to me. The void.
That spot where nothing resonated.
I moved.
The earth trembled again underfoot, and the muffled screams of another explosion far above rolled through the tunnels like thunder underwater.
I didn't know what was going on, not exactly, but that was secondary now. The mine was already unraveling, and if something hidden within this mountain had drawn me here, now was the moment to find it.
I approached the site of absence with care. The space ahead was still veiled by massive ore veins—dark, metallic structures resistant to chakra and sound alike.
They curved inward toward a convergence point, like ribs enclosing something forbidden. At their core, nestled in the center of the natural shell, was the exact point I had sensed.
I stopped just short of it, a breath before the null.
'Matatabi', I called inwardly. 'I need some of your chakra.'
She didn't respond in words—she rarely did—but I felt it. A pulse. A smooth current flowing through the mirror that linked our spirits.
Her chakra flowed into me, threading into my limbs and coiling in my fists like coals taking their first breath of air.
I channeled the energy down both arms, focused it into a tight spiral of burning force, and raised my right fist.
The punch struck true.
The ore vibrated, but nothing cracked. Nothing gave way. It didn't even smoke.
I stood there, breathing evenly, heat radiating from my fingertips, and let out a slow exhale.
'So that's how it is', I thought.
Not even Matatabi's strength could dislodge this gate.
I closed my eyes and reached outward with the Mind's Eye, letting my chakra perception expand across the mine once more.
Silence.
The upper levels had been evacuated entirely. The guards, the miners, even the patrolling Elite-Jonin—gone. Whether they'd fled the explosions or been summoned to deal with whatever threat was battering the surface, I didn't know. But I was alone.
With no one left to sense me, I tore the last of the suppression tags from my arms and back.
My chakra surged.
From a whisper to a storm in a heartbeat. The pulse of energy roared through my coils, overflowing from my tenketsu and flooding the chamber in a burst of presence. From Early Genin to Elite Jonin in less than a breath.
The moment it happened, a siren blared—new, piercing, and unmistakably linked to me. It wasn't part of the earlier system triggered by surface activity. No, this one was different. This was a biometric response—a chakra flare detection alarm.
It screamed through the empty halls, reverberating off stone and metal, a clarion call to whoever might still be listening.
But I didn't flinch.
Let them come, if they were still here.
Because if I couldn't crack this mystery from outside...
I was ready to force it open from within.
I focused inward, letting my chakra coil tighter and tighter around the point of ignition just above my heart. The fifth gate—Gate of Pain—sat dormant for only a breath longer before I released it. The moment it opened, my aura surged outward in a violent bloom of green-tinged chakra, rippling across my skin like fire chasing wind.
My muscles tightened. My senses sharpened. Every fiber of my body screamed with raw, amplified force.
I stepped forward and slammed my fist into the ore wall blocking the chakra-null void.
The impact wasn't just powerful—it was catastrophic.
The wall cracked like thin glass under a hammer, splintering outward in a bloom of shattering stone. The resonance traveled through the mountain's skeleton in shockwaves, and all at once, the tunnels began to shake. Support beams groaned. Ore veins rattled. Snow fell from the upper cracks. But the target before me didn't resist.
With a single punch empowered by the Gate of Pain, I broke the world open.
The ground gave way with a great roar, stone collapsing inward to reveal a wide, dark crater beneath the mine's base layer. A spiral of dust and debris swirled upward as I crouched, peering into the abyss below.
I didn't hesitate.
I jumped in.
The air inside the chamber was unnaturally still. It wasn't just quiet—it was oppressive, like sound itself refused to exist within these walls. The cave was roughly circular, naturally formed but overgrown with veins of that same dark, chakra-resistant ore, embedded in jagged streaks like scars. The glow of my own chakra lit the space faintly, illuminating the rough textures.
But none of that held my attention for long.
In the center of the cavern, untouched by falling dust or debris, stood a portal.
It wasn't like any technique I had ever seen. It wasn't made of chakra. It didn't shimmer or pulse. It simply existed.
A dull, grey oval of swirling mist, barely transparent, but thick like rotted glass. It hummed in a way that wasn't sound—a pressure against the senses, an ache against the soul. The air around it bent slightly, not in heat waves or chakra distortion, but like reality itself didn't want to be near it.
It felt like an intrusion. Like something wrong had taken root in the world.
Like this portal wasn't part of this universe, and had never been meant to be.
Far away, in the clinical white corridors of RangerTech headquarters, a red flash lit up the largest screen across the back wall of the control room. Alarms didn't sound—yet. It wasn't programmed to trigger sirens. Only one thing appeared.
[ERROR CODE DETECTED: OUTER-012]
"Sir," one of the technicians called out from his seat, his voice tight with unease. "Check this."
The senior administrator—broad, balding, and chewing aggressively on a protein stick—pivoted his chair and squinted at the screen.
"What is it?" he grumbled.
The tech pointed.
The older man's eyes widened as he read the error string. "What the—APOLLO!" he bellowed.
With a digital blink and a playful shimmer of light, the blond-haired AI appeared on the adjacent monitor, his expression casual and annoyingly cheerful. "What is it now, fit fat man?" he asked.
"One of your flagged codes just triggered. The one you told us to alert you on immediately, remember?"
"Oh?" Apollo blinked, tilting his head with sudden curiosity. "Which one?"
"Code: Outer—" the tech began.
But before he could finish the word, every light in the control room blinked out.
Monitors turned black.
Holograms froze in place.
Fans and core processors halted for a full, impossible second.
And then Apollo was gone.
No glitch. No farewell. Just an absence where his presence had been.
The systems roared back to life a heartbeat later, lighting up the room in a frenzy of diagnostic flashes and error messages.
The administrator stood, staring at the empty monitor.
"What the hell just happened?" he muttered.
The technician beside him echoed the fear sinking in the room like a cold front:
"What could make Apollo react like that?"
(Authors note: For the haters, after the next chapter, keep it to yourself. I had this planned from the start. The next chapter reveals a not of things to people who can connect the dots.)
...
Authors note:
You can read some chapters ahead if you want to on my p#treon.com/Fat_Cultivator