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 79: The Mime
The air around the portal felt heavier now, like each second it remained in the world strained the fabric of reality just a little more. I stood before it, my breath shallow, eyes narrowing as a faint shimmer blinked into existence before me.
A Game Panel.
[???-012]
Player Minimum Level: Kage level
Objective: One of the keys to saving the world
**Reward: *$&)()(%]
I stared at the text for several long moments, frowning deeper with each line. The designation was blank, unknown.
The objective was vague, dramatic in the way only the system could be when it wanted to sound prophetic. But the reward? That wasn't even encoded in proper characters—just a garbled mess of symbols, like the panel itself was unsure what it was promising.
As if it was not prepared for this Mission yet.
"What the hell is popping up right now?" I muttered.
I reached out cautiously, raising my right hand and extending it toward the swirling gray oval. The closer I got, the more unnatural the portal felt. Its surface didn't shimmer or resist—it didn't move at all. When my fingers met it, they struck something solid, yet not tactile. Like a wall forged of condensed absence.
There was no chakra here. No temperature. No substance.
Just nothing.
A barrier.
I withdrew my hand slowly, eyes narrowing again as I scanned the portal with the Mind's Eye of the Kagura. The message was clear: my current stats didn't meet the entry requirements. I wasn't Kage-level—yet.
But if this barrier thought stat restrictions were enough to stop me, it would have to learn to be smarter.
I was still in my Fifth Gate state. The Gate of Pain flooded my muscles with raw, pulsing force. My speed, strength, and reaction time were already above normal Elite Jonin limits, perhaps brushing against the peak of Kage-tier physicals.
But that alone wouldn't be enough.
Chakra-wise, I needed a push.
'Matatabi', I called inwardly, my voice calm but focused. 'I need more chakra. As much as you can give me right now.'
She stirred.
Not with words—she rarely wasted effort on speech—but with presence. A tide of searing, feline chakra surged up from the depth of my seal, spiraling through my coils like fire licking up dry parchment.
I had modified Jiraiya's original seal long ago—refined it with my own formulas, adjusted its flow regulators, even added a secondary bypass seal carved into the lower mirror. I couldn't eradicate the Sanin's work entirely—my skill hadn't reached that level—but I didn't need to.
What I had now was a perfectly tuned channeling mechanism.
And Matatabi's power flowed through it like a raging river.
My chakra surged.
From Elite-Jonin to Kage level in an instant.
The portal reacted instantly.
The surface rippled, not like water, but like thought—like it recognized the change in me and adjusted the rules it had been set to obey.
Another Game Panel flickered momentarily:
{ST-
It didn't finish.
Because by then, I was already walking forward.
My body passed through the barrier, not with resistance, but with absence. One moment I was touching it, and the next, I was gone.
Swallowed whole by the unknown.
…
As I stepped through the portal, the world didn't blur or twist—it simply flipped, like a page turning in an ancient book.
One moment I was surrounded by the raw, earthen heat of the mine. The next, I was standing in a land vast and bleak, a place where every color had been drained away.
And in a cliche fashion…the portal was no longer here.
The ground beneath my feet was cracked and rocky, formed of jagged mountain paths that led in every direction, but none of them seemed to go anywhere. Peaks pierced the sky like forgotten tombstones, their edges frayed by centuries of silent erosion. Dust floated slowly through the air, rising and falling without any wind to guide it.
The sky was neither night nor day. Just grey. A heavy, oppressive grey.
I turned slowly on the spot, examining the horizon. There were no birds, no animals, no signs of life. Not even the echo of my own breath in this vacuum of a world.
Everything was grey and dull, not in tone but in essence. Even the light didn't behave correctly—it didn't reflect, it existed, thin and weary, unable to lift shadows.
That's when I looked down.
Even I had changed.
My robes, my skin, even the chakra aura faintly flickering around me—everything had been sapped of color. I looked like a faded ink sketch of myself, preserved on paper soaked in centuries of silence.
Black and white.
The entire world had been reduced to monochrome.
It wasn't just unsettling. It was alien. Like I had fallen into a memory not meant for human eyes.
And then the system message appeared, blinking with abrupt panic right in front of my vision.
{STOP, PLAYER MATHEW!}
A red border outlined the message, flashing in a frequency designed to command attention. But I could tell immediately this wasn't from the usual interface.
This wasn't part of a quest or a generated event. This was a hard override—the kind of direct system-level message only a core administrator or the Main AI could issue.
But it was already too late.
I was here. I had crossed the threshold, and whatever safeguards they had put in place weren't fast enough to stop me.
And now I saw why the AI had tried to warn me.
Ahead of me, between two jagged stone pillars, stood a figure.
It was humanoid, easily twenty feet tall, and impossibly thin. Its limbs were elongated to grotesque proportions—long, spindly arms that nearly dragged along the ground, knees that bent slightly backward, and legs so narrow they looked like charcoal lines drawn on the air.
Its body was wrapped in what could only be described as a mime's attire—tight striped clothing, black and white, stretched over a form that didn't make sense anatomically. The torso was too long. The neck was slightly crooked. Its head was round and pale, with two sunken black eyes and an unmoving mouth painted into a permanent, haunting grin.
A Mime.
Or something like it.
And it was miming.
That's the only word I could think of.
It stood inside an imaginary box, pressing its hands slowly along invisible walls. It touched corners that weren't there, climbed stairs that didn't exist, and leaned against air as if it were solid.
The longer I watched, the more it felt like it was real. As if, by pretending long enough, this creature had bent the rules of space to make its act truth.
Then it stopped.
Its pitch-black eyes turned toward me.
And it waved. Cheerfully. Like a child greeting an old friend.
I stared back, frozen.
Then, slowly, I raised my hand and waved in return.
It grinned wider.
I tried to speak. "W—"
But the sound died in my throat.
The Mime had raised a single finger to its lips and made a soft "Shhh" gesture.
And with that simple motion, I lost the ability to speak entirely…
I simply no longer possessed the concept of speech. It had been erased from me as easily as chalk wiped from a blackboard.
Panic started to rise—but it was slow, crawling, the kind that didn't scream but whispered that something had gone terribly, fundamentally wrong.
I clutched at my throat. Nothing hurt. Nothing changed. My chakra still flowed. My mind was alert.
But I couldn't scream.
I couldn't even think in spoken words anymore.
I had entered a place where rules didn't obey logic—where imagination shaped reality, and madness wore the skin of performance.
I was in some kind of horror show.
And the Mime had just taken center stage.
The Mime, apparently pleased that I had stopped trying to speak, gave a deep, theatrical bow. Its spindly form bent at the waist with exaggerated grace, one arm sweeping behind it, the other across its narrow chest, as if performing for an audience long dead and gone. It straightened with a flourish, its painted-on smile beaming like it had just received a standing ovation.
Then it began to act again.
With slow, fluid movements, it waved its pale hands around its head. The fingers moved deliberately, tracing invisible lines through the air, forming a cube, a perfect box. Then, with a burst of exaggerated effort, it began miming a struggle—hands clawing at the unseen edges, fingers scraping, nails digging at surfaces that weren't there. It tilted its neck to the side, jerking its head in vain, as if attempting to pull it free from this imaginary cage.
I stood perfectly still.
Despite everything, despite the oppressive absence of color, despite the primal fear scratching at the edges of my soul, I remained composed. The Fifth Gate of Pain still pulsed within me, feeding my muscles, sharpening my perception. My chakra roared just beneath the surface, ready to act, to respond. But I didn't move. I didn't know how to move—not against something like this.
The Mime stopped.
Its shoulders slumped. It dropped to its knees with a slow-motion collapse, as though its bones were made of rubber. Its hands went slack. Its head hung low. The entire figure seemed... defeated. Like it had failed to impress. Like I had missed some crucial cue.
"What... is going on?" came Matatabi's voice, tentative, hushed, even though we were speaking through the tethered mirror between our souls.
"I don't know," I replied, my internal voice far more strained than I meant it to be. "None of this makes sense. My chakra senses say it's not real. That it's not... even here."
And that was what terrified me the most. My Mind's Eye of the Kagura—one of the most refined sensory techniques in existence—told me this creature, this thing that stood not five meters from me, did not exist. There was no chakra. No spiritual signature. No life. The void where it stood wasn't silence—it was a null point, an erasure in a world defined by energy.
But the world around it still pulsed with life.
Chakra was still here... Which meant I could still fight. I could still cast, if needed. I began formulating combinations in my head. Quick, overwhelming jutsu strings. Something that could maybe destabilize this nightmare's act.
Before I could act, the Mime sprang to life.
It bounced to its feet in an instant, its joints bending at impossible angles as it snapped into a theatrical pose, one hand perched dramatically under its chin like a philosopher in the throes of revelation.
Then it brightened. Its eyes lit up, and with a flamboyant snap of its fingers, it mimed again. A box around its head. But this time, it tilted its head to the side and pretended to lift it free from the imaginary prison.
It succeeded.
With another dramatic bow, it began to spin slowly, arms stretched wide, basking in the praise of an audience only it could see. It bowed to the left. To the right. A curtsy for someone at the back. Then it turned toward me, expectant.
I did not clap.
The smile wavered.
A frown took its place.
Its arms lowered.
It gestured again—the same box.
A repeat performance. It pulled its head from the imagined space.
And that's when everything changed.
Air.
Gone.
I staggered back half a step. My chest tightened. No air flowed into my lungs. My body didn't gasp—it simply stopped.
Panic spiked.
'What is this? Genjutsu?'
No—it bypassed that. This wasn't an illusion. This was effect.
I reached for my throat, feeling no pressure, no constriction. My lungs were still functioning. My chakra was fine. I was alive.
But there was no oxygen.
As though the Mime had simply decided that I couldn't breathe anymore.
My vision began to narrow.
The Mime stood silently, watching.
And its grin began to widen once again.
I didn't panic...well more than I already had.
The air had vanished, stripped from the world like ink drained from a scroll. My lungs screamed in silence, reaching for breath that no longer existed, but my mind didn't falter anymore.
Panic was the death knell of the unprepared—and I had trained too long, survived too much, to die because some cursed clown deciding oxygen was optional.
A normal human needs oxygen to survive. The lungs pull in air, the bloodstream absorbs it, and the heart pumps that oxygen-rich blood to every organ. Without it, cells die. Brain function degrades. Muscles seize. In four minutes, unconsciousness. In ten, irreversible damage. Death.
But shinobi weren't normal humans.
We were trained to fight with shattered bones, to survive poison, to channel chakra even when our bodies failed. Chakra was more than energy—it was life itself, a fusion of physical stamina and spiritual force. If I could force that life to keep moving, even without air, I might last long enough to strike back.
Still, my own chakra reserves were strained. The Fifth Gate burned through my stamina like a storm. I needed more.
So I called on her.
"Matatabi... I need you. All of you."
Her presence surged in answer. No words. No questions. Just fire.
Her chakra exploded into me like a second sun. It roared through the pathways of my body, flooding the circuits of my tenketsu with overwhelming intensity. My muscles tightened, skin shimmered with blue flame, and I felt the seventh gate—the Gate of Wonder—open.
It was not the first time I had used the 7th gate...but it seemed under Matatabi's chakra, the 8 Inner gates got amplified even further.
The world slowed around me as my perception expanded. Soundless. Breathless. But alive.
Blue vapor burst from my pores. The air shimmered with condensed force, and my limbs trembled under the raw, divine current tearing through them.
But it wasn't just brute strength I needed.
I needed circulation.
In the anime, Karin never used the Mind's Eye of the Kagura to look into herself—she never needed to. But I did. I didn't have a choice. So I closed my eyes, concentrated... and looked into myself.
I focused, letting the Mind's Eye reverse. The world fell away. There was no mountain. No mime. No death. Only me.
Inside, I saw it all.
My chakra network glowed like starlight stretched over a fragile map. Threads and rivers flowed through organs, muscles, joints, and bones. I could see the coils of my lungs slowing, struggling. The blood in my arteries thickening, pausing. I felt the cracks in the system—gaps where breath was supposed to be.
And I reached out.
I touched the network, not with hands but with intent. I pushed chakra—not mine, but Matatabi's—into the weak points, wrapping each vessel in blue fire. I forced my heart to beat faster. I moved oxygen that wasn't there. I didn't breathe, but I pulsed.
Blood moved.
Cells responded.
I tricked my body into thinking it was alive in the old way.
But now it ran on something else. On chakra. On flame.
I opened my eyes.
The Mime was still standing there, smiling like it had won something.
But I wasn't dead.
Not yet.
The seventh gate was open, and through it poured every ounce of pain, pressure, and potential I had ever hoarded. My bones felt like they might shatter from the weight of power alone. My skin burned with raw energy. But I was alive.
I took a step forward.
The ground cracked.
The Mime's head tilted, confused. Maybe even intrigued. It hadn't expected this.
It had taken my voice.
It had taken my air.
But it hadn't taken my will.
My chakra flared once more, the flood of Matatabi's chakra coursing through me like a living storm, igniting every nerve with fire and focus. The fire didn't need oxygen. It consumed whatever the Mime hadn't erased.
I brought my hands up.
A stance.
Prepared.
Silent.
And very, very angry.
Let the Mime see what happened when it played games with a Shinobi of fire.
Because if imagination shaped this world—then I would be the nightmare it couldn't contain.
...
Authors note:
You can read some chapters ahead if you want to on my p#treon.com/Fat_Cultivator