Chapter 260 - 264: The Majin Buu Template

"You’re awake. Stop pretending otherwise," Natsuki said, walking over to Otsutsuki Kaguya.

Her injuries had been severe, but immortality did its work. They were closing fast, and she had been conscious for some time.

Caught out, Kaguya opened her eyes and, through the pain, forced herself upright.

"What do you intend to do with me?" She steadied herself. "Seal me again? Or feed me to the God Tree?"

"I think you’ve misunderstood something." Natsuki chuckled. "I’m not Otsutsuki. I’m a native of this world."

"I don’t believe you." Her voice climbed. "Why would a native of this world be stronger than me?"

She was the true progenitor of shinobi. She was the one who had brought chakra here in the first place — even if it had been her son who spread it.

"What reason would I have to lie to you?" Natsuki asked.

Kaguya had no answer, because there wasn’t one. He was too strong to need to.

"Which means the Otsutsuki clan are enemies to both of us," Natsuki went on.

"Is that why you came for me?" she asked after a moment.

"Exactly." He nodded. "I want intelligence on your clan."

"If you don’t kill me and don’t seal me, I’ll agree to that," Kaguya said instantly.

"You’re negotiating rather aggressively for someone in your position." Natsuki raised an eyebrow. "You did just lose comprehensively."

"I’ll follow your orders."

"But I don’t trust you." He raised a hand. "I’ll need to place a restriction on you."

Kaguya’s expression shifted and her instincts screamed at her to run — and then a sense of imminent death rooted her where she stood.

Teeth gritted, she could only watch as his hand settled on her forehead.

Black vapor poured out of it.

Demonic aura, from the Imu template.

Abyssal Contract!

The aura flooded into her without stopping.

"No — this isn’t a restriction!" Kaguya felt what was happening to her body and cried out in shock and fury.

Far too late to resist.

The Abyssal Contract — stronger than the blood curse by a wide margin — took hold. From that moment, Kaguya’s will and actions belonged to Natsuki.

He withdrew his hand.

She stood there with resentment plain on her face, and absolutely nothing she could do with it.

[You have awakened the Majin Buu template.]

The line took Natsuki by surprise.

Majin Buu — from Dragon Ball?

If it was, this was an enormous haul, because Buu was a being who destroyed on a universal scale. Drop him into this world and he’d stand at the very top.

Natsuki stroked his chin.

The trigger was obviously defeating Kaguya. The parallel was easy enough to see: both were villains, and both had spent a very long time sealed away.

[Name: Majin Buu][Period: Final][World: Dragon Ball][Rank: S]

[Ability 1: Absorption — UNLOCKED][Effect: Absorb a target’s abilities, intellect, and strength.]

[Ability 2: Buuhan — LOCKED][Effect: Majin Buu’s strongest form, incorporating Gotenks’s techniques, Piccolo’s intellect, and Son Gohan’s power.][Unlock Condition: Defeat Otsutsuki Momoshiki, Otsutsuki Urashiki, and Otsutsuki Kinshiki.]

Natsuki smiled, satisfied.

Two abilities only, and both of them absurd.

Ability 1: Absorption.

In theory it had no ceiling at all. Absorb enough, for long enough, and becoming a so-called Otsutsuki god wasn’t out of the question.

Ability 2: Buuhan.

That one needed no elaboration. Unlocking it meant unlocking Buu, Gotenks, Piccolo, and Gohan all at once.

As for the condition, it wasn’t especially demanding. Momoshiki, Urashiki, and Kinshiki wouldn’t arrive for decades yet, and when they did Natsuki could remove them without difficulty.

Even if they showed up today, he’d still win. It would simply take more effort.

"Come on." Natsuki looked at Kaguya. "I’ll take you back to the shinobi world."

Something in her lifted despite herself.

A thousand years sealed away, and she was finally going back. That was worth celebrating by any measure.

Then she remembered she was returning as Natsuki’s property, and most of the feeling drained out of it.

He opened a black doorway, and the two of them stepped through into the Hokage’s office.

Kaguya looked around, and finally out the window at the Hidden Leaf.

She went still. Nothing out there resembled the world she remembered.

"Did you know Tenji? The Emperor of the Land of Ancestors?" Natsuki asked, the thought surfacing out of nowhere.

"No." She shook her head. "Why?"

"There’s a legend that says you and Tenji produced Hagoromo and Hamura."

"Absurd." Kaguya’s face darkened. "Why would I take an interest in a human? They’re insects."

So his guess had been right, Natsuki thought.

This was the manga version of Kaguya, not the anime one. An ascetic.

Which made sense on reflection. The Otsutsuki were a species from beyond this world, operating on an entirely different plane — not even the same order of being. Tenji had been an ordinary man in the original story, with no strength and no chakra. There was no version of him that would have caught her eye.

"Where are Hagoromo and Hamura?" Reminded of them, Kaguya asked about her two rebellious sons.

"Both dead. Though Hagoromo’s soul — the Sage of Six Paths — is still in the Pure Land."

"They got off lightly," Kaguya said coldly.

She had spent centuries imagining what she would do to the pair of them once she was free.

Life is unpredictable. She had gotten her freedom, and not gotten it at all. And neither of them had lived long enough to receive the lesson.

"From today, you’re an Anbu operative of the Hidden Leaf," Natsuki said. "I’ll send for you when I need you."

"Yes." Reluctance dripped off the word.

"Under normal circumstances, you address me as Lord Hokage."

"...Lord Hokage." She had no other option.

"Konan," Natsuki called toward the door.

It opened at once, and Konan — who had been standing watch — came in.

She stopped short at the sight of Kaguya, who did not look remotely human, horns very much included.

"This is Kaguya." Natsuki gestured. "She’s your subordinate as of now. She’ll assist you in running the Anbu."

"All right." Konan nodded.

"Take her to the Anbu dormitory and have a uniform and mask made up for her." Natsuki pinched her cheek.

"Kaguya. With me." Konan glanced at her and headed for the door.

"Remember," Natsuki added, "without my order, you do not harm a single Leaf shinobi."

"Yes, Lord Hokage." Kaguya accepted her circumstances.

Once they’d gone, Natsuki headed up to the roof of the Hokage’s building.

He’d barely arrived when a man in white robes with the Rinnegan appeared in front of him.

"Sage of Six Paths." Natsuki greeted him first, smiling.

"Would you care to explain what is happening here?" the Sage asked, after a long silence.

Kaguya’s seal had been his and Hamura’s work jointly. He’d felt it the moment she left the sealed dimension, and had tracked her here to the Hidden Leaf.

"It’s simple." Natsuki was breezy about it. "I defeated her. She submitted to superior strength and joined the Hidden Leaf voluntarily."

"...?"

The Sage opened his mouth and found he had no idea which part to object to first.

Kaguya being in the Hidden Leaf was a fact, though. And the genuinely alarming part was that by every observable sign, she really was obeying him.

The Sage could not begin to work out how that had been accomplished.

"Don’t concern yourself." Natsuki glanced at him. "I won’t let anyone harm this world."

The Sage nodded slightly.

He could move freely between the Pure Land and here, and he watched this world’s changes as they happened.

It was at peace. It was, without exaggeration, the first time in the thousand-plus years since Kaguya’s descent that the world had known genuine peace.

Which was exactly why he had stayed out of sight until now. It had taken Kaguya turning up in Konoha to bring him out.

"Be wary of the clan," the Sage said.

"I know."

"If you need anything, you can find me in the Pure Land." He considered a moment longer — and then vanished before Natsuki could reply.

He’d clearly made the same decision he had made before. So long as the world wasn’t being destroyed, he wouldn’t interfere.

Natsuki went back down to his office.

Thinking about the Sage left him feeling faintly strange, given that the man’s mother now worked for him.

Still. The Sage was a pragmatist. Credit where it was due.

Natsuki settled in to think.

There were no major events left ahead. All that remained was unlocking templates and pushing his strength higher.

With that in mind, he opened a black portal and stepped out at Mount Myoboku.

"Are you... Natsuki?"

A small green toad with a white beard and eyebrows spotted him — Fukasaku, one of Myoboku’s elders and one of the toads Jiraiya knew best. When Jiraiya used Sage Mode, it was Fukasaku and Shima he summoned to support him.

"Fukasaku." Natsuki looked down at him. "I’m here to see the Great Toad Sage."

"One moment, please."

Fukasaku disappeared into the temple and returned almost immediately.

"His Greatness will see you," he said, with considerable politeness.

He was well aware that Natsuki was now, in the fullest sense of the phrase, the foremost person in the shinobi world.

Natsuki nodded and went in.

At the center of the temple, the Great Toad Sage sat on an enormous seat — Gamamaru, entirely orange, wearing a string of prayer beads with the character for "oil" on the largest.

"Is Jiraiya not here?" Natsuki asked.

"He is," Gamamaru said. "I can call him if you’d like to see him."

"No need." Natsuki shook his head. "I came to sign the Mount Myoboku contract and receive its senjutsu."

"Of course." Gamamaru agreed without hesitation. "The honor is ours."

"Why the change in attitude?" Natsuki asked, curious. "Have you had a new prophecy?"

"No." Gamamaru explained: "I cannot see any prophecy concerning you."

Natsuki paused.

Couldn’t see one.

His strength had passed some threshold, then. Prophecy might be limitless in principle, but Gamamaru himself wasn’t strong enough to read him.

"And the Child of Prophecy?"

"Also nothing." Gamamaru hesitated a few seconds. "It may be that there will no longer be a Child of Prophecy."

Jiraiya had been camped at Mount Myoboku precisely to wait for a new prophecy about one. None had come.

Looking at the state of the world, Gamamaru could only conclude that it no longer needed one.

"Then so be it." Natsuki accepted that. "Mount Myoboku continues as it is. If the Hidden Leaf needs anything, we’ll be in touch."

For the Hidden Leaf’s sake, he had no interest in moving against Mount Myoboku.

Provided, of course, that Mount Myoboku knew its place.

"Understood." Gamamaru let out a breath of relief.

He produced the contract scroll and handed it over, and Natsuki signed his name.

[Congratulations! Host has unlocked Megumi Fushiguro’s Template Ability 3: Ten Shadows Technique.]

The Megumi Fushiguro template was only B-Rank, but Ability 3 had been stuck for a long time — because unlocking it required ten summoned beasts.

Becoming a Myoboku contractor had finally given him ten.

Fukasaku returned shortly with the scroll containing Mount Myoboku’s senjutsu and handed it over.

Natsuki took it and left.

He came out at the training ground near the Hokage’s building, opened the scroll, and found what he was looking for: Sage Art: Goemon.

One read-through and he had it.

[Congratulations! Host has unlocked Yoshikage Kira’s Template Ability 2: Sheer Heart Attack.]

With that, the Yoshikage Kira template was fully unlocked.

Natsuki nodded.

Four templates left. Four abilities, really.

Besides the new Majin Buu template, there were the Yhwach, Emiya Shirou, and Mikoto Misaka templates.

Mikoto Misaka’s Ability 5 — the hacking ability — required bringing an internet into existence.

Emiya Shirou’s Ability 2, Rule Breaker, required killing a traitor.

Yhwach’s Ability 3, The Almighty, required giving the shinobi world the means to resist the Otsutsuki clan.

And the Majin Buu template needed no explanation at all. It required beating three Otsutsuki who wouldn’t arrive for decades.