Naruto: Limit Breaker-Chapter 336: Hard to Accept

Chapter 336: Hard to Accept

After Ryosuke defeated Saitama, obtained the final key, and opened the door in his mind, everything came back to him in full.

Boros’s memories, the memories of the ordinary man who understood rules, and the memories of the underworld all returned at once.

Naturally, the rules he once found unfamiliar and needed time to master now came to him effortlessly.

But for him, that was not a good thing.

Only now did Ryosuke truly understand why Hinata had sometimes mentioned that lonely, distant feeling she carried as a child.

"For those born holy, for law enforcers... everything in this world really is nothing."

He stared at the twenty or so prisms in his hand, lost in thought.

He held the trends and fates of these worlds in his grasp. He could change them whenever he wished.

To law enforcers, concepts like time and destiny were just illusions.

Time was only a yardstick living beings created to measure their days, but for law enforcers, it was not a standard at all.

With a single glance, they could see the path of someone’s life, and they could even twist time itself at will.

Once someone reached that level, it was inevitable to lose empathy toward ordinary creatures.

You could not ask humans to empathize with ants on the ground. Students were sometimes told to observe ants in class, and bored people would casually block their paths for amusement. Some children even tore ants apart or burned them alive.

To a law enforcer who had mastered the rules of a world, humans were like ants, only with richer emotions.

But in Boros’s eyes, even that difference was meaningless.

He was an overlord of the universe, high above all, alone in his grandeur. Even the most capable of his followers were still only followers.

After mastering the rules and being guided into the underworld, Boros slipped perfectly into the role of a law enforcer.

Even with ambition to dominate, he would never spare a second glance for those beneath him.

Boros was cold hearted. He only looked up. He never looked back at the road he had walked, or the people he had passed.

But Ryosuke was not Boros.

With Boros’s help, Ryosuke had grown into his own complete consciousness. He inherited Boros’s memories, but he could read them without being swallowed by them.

Unlike Boros the solitary tyrant, Ryosuke had a wife, children, a warm and whole family.

In that case, how could he become lofty and detached like those law enforcers? How could he blend into that identity as perfectly as Boros had?

Even now, he still hesitated over whether he should go to that underworld.

Like Boros, the moment his memories fully awakened, Ryosuke was also supposed to be guided there.

Fortunately, because his understanding of rules was deeper than before, he could suppress the pull of that guidance.

But suppressing it forever was not a real solution.

As for his family, Ryosuke would never be willing to leave them behind.

Yet at his current level, could he really face them the same way he used to?

He let out a helpless sigh, turned the desk lamp back on, then rose slowly and walked toward the door.

"Knock, knock, knock."

A dull sound hit the wood the moment he reached it.

He opened the door.

"Even with your abilities now, you do not really need to eat." Hinata stood there holding a plate piled with different cuts of meat. "But when you are upset, eating something always helps you feel better."

She had always been like that. When she felt low, she ate and ate until she was full.

She was never afraid of gaining weight.

"Either way, with my abilities, I can train it off. If I keep doing that, it is good for my growth."

"Turning sorrow into appetite?" Ryosuke’s expression had been stiff, but hearing her words and seeing that plate softened him right away.

He took the plate from her and stepped back inside without saying anything about wanting to be alone.

Hinata understood the meaning. She closed the door and followed him in.

One in front, one behind, Ryosuke sat down in his chair and Hinata took the seat across from him.

"Heh..."

The moment he picked up a piece of meat with his chopsticks and brought it to his mouth, Hinata laughed.

"I suddenly remembered something," she said, eyes drifting around the study. "When we were young, you, Father, and I used to sit in here for little meetings."

"You were always smarter than me back then. Most of the time you and Father talked, and I just sat there and memorized everything you said."

"Before I knew it, more than twenty years passed."

The Hyuga residence they lived in now had been built one to one from the clan’s ancestral home in Konoha. That was how the Hyuga had first lived after moving to the Rain Country.

Now the Hyuga were the only force left in the ninja world. All nations bowed to them, and yet nothing about the house had changed.

The furnishings, the layout, the placement of every object were exactly the same as before.

But the people had changed.

Since Hiashi stepped down, he rarely involved himself in clan affairs anymore, so the study naturally fell into Hinata’s hands.

At the beginning of that year, the three of them had still gathered here for small meetings.

Later, Hinata mostly fooled around alone in this room, and sometimes Hanabi came to keep her company.

Later still, the clan stabilized, every world had its management and coordination departments, talent filled every role, and there were fewer and fewer things that required Hinata’s attention as clan leader.

The study became quiet.

"Yes. More than twenty years." Ryosuke’s voice carried its own weight of emotion.

He was only in his twenties by age, but his memories stretched across thousands of years.

If he had not lived these twenty years here, he might not be suffering this way now.

With his talent, even if he had never joined the Hyuga, even without this family, and with the foundation of his past lives, it was impossible for him to end up mediocre. It would only have taken time.

But he had no regrets.

If not for these twenty years, he would not be Hyuga Ryosuke now.

He wanted to be human. He wanted someone to lean on. He did not want to be a solitary shadow like Boros, and he did not want to become one of those law enforcers.

"Hinata..."

Ryosuke set his chopsticks down slowly and looked toward her. She was still glancing around as if she were back in childhood.

"Hmm?" Hinata turned, puzzled.

"You probably know I am getting stronger and stronger now."

For some reason, at this moment he was not thinking about how to deal with his family. Instead, his mind was caught on something Hinata had once said.

She did not want to hold him back.

In truth, she had always lived up to the name Hyuga, steady and unwavering.

She was a bit of a bully sometimes, sure, but she built everything herself. Ryosuke only chased what interested him.

Still, she had always fought to stand at his side.

"You have always been strong," she said softly, smiling. "Now you are stronger than ever. I know you have no rivals."

"You are the pillar of the Hyuga. This whole empire rests on the foundation you laid."

As she spoke, her smile faded.

"What happened?"

Ever since Ryosuke came back, she had sensed something wrong. That was why she brought food here first, so he would not bottle it up alone.

"As my strength grows, I become tangled in more and more things."

Ryosuke lifted his hand. Everything on the desk, as if it had never existed, vanished in the blink of an eye. Only the desk lamp remained.

Hinata was not surprised.

These were small tricks. She could do them too, just not as cleanly as he did.

But mentioning strength like this... did it mean they had met an opponent too hard to contend with?

That thought made her uneasy.

Ryosuke’s power had been a mystery for a long time. No one had truly seen his limits.

The Hyuga only knew that no matter what kind of enemy appeared, Ryosuke crushed them in a single round.

But before Hinata could chase that thought, her gaze was pulled to the prismatic objects that appeared in front of her. They looked like crystals.

Her Tenseigan lit up. Inside those crystals, she could clearly see images forming.

"This is... all the worlds we Hyuga control now?" Hinata raised her head in shock. "Is this some new treasure you discovered?"

"No," Ryosuke said. "This is just a way of displaying the rules."

"It can be a crystal, or it can be a sphere."

As he spoke, the crystal blurred and reshaped, becoming a smooth sphere.

"Then these images..." Hinata murmured, watching scenes flicker in and out. Familiar silhouettes appeared again and again.

Familiar, yet not personally known.

Like the figures wearing GUTS uniforms. She did not know them, but she knew this sphere represented the world where Daigo lived.

Those people over there with rings and a cold air around them looked like mafia. That was the Vongola world.

Seeing all those worlds laid out in front of her like this felt novel.

In the past, she had needed to open time and space gates to visit them one by one. It was exhausting.

With this, everything was right in front of her.

"My strength is very strong now."

This was the third time Ryosuke said that sentence to her.

The moment he finished, one sphere drifted forward. The image on it shifted in front of Hinata’s eyes.

It was Ultraman world.

After a long period of peace, space invaders appeared on Earth again.

By now, with Hinata’s help, the GUTS had reformed into the Super GUTS, the strongest force on Earth without question.

At the same time, the light called Ultraman Dyna appeared.

But because Ultraman Tiga already existed, Dyna’s human identity was quickly uncovered. He was a man named Asuka Shin.

Unlike Daigo, Asuka was not a member of the Super GUTS.

Still, once it was confirmed he could transform into a giant of light, he was invited to join them...

Scene after scene flashed by.

Then the two giants of light faced their shared enemy, Gransfia.

Gran-Spehere was not a simple life form. He was an existence like Kaguya Otsutsuki. He could borrow the power of a planet, living and dying alongside it.

More than that, Gran-Spehere was even purer than Kaguya. He had completely merged with the star body and become a planet with self awareness.

Hinata stared at the images until their speed slowed. Only then did she look up at Ryosuke again.

"This is..."

"What Ultraman’s world looks like now," Ryosuke said simply.

He waved his hand, and a time and space gate opened to his side.

"Go and take a look."

Hinata’s expression twisted with unease, but she stepped through without hesitation.

She returned quickly.

What she saw there matched the sphere exactly.

The two giants of light were fighting back the eyes prying down from the universe.

"Now..." Ryosuke went on. "I will adjust this timeline backward, even to a much earlier point."

He did not close the gate. Instead, under Hinata’s complicated stare, he moved the sphere again.

Everything began reversing.

Dyna’s appearance vanished, then Tiga’s shining form battling Gatanothor, then Tiga’s first emergence, then Hinata’s contact with the GUTS, then further back still, even to thirty million years ago...

"I am correcting loopholes in this world’s rules," Ryosuke said calmly as he worked, "so other worlds can no longer connect with it."

With each motion, he explained the thought behind it.

The sphere shifted again.

Tiga appeared and defeated monsters time after time.

When he met Gatanothor again, he was crushed once, resurrected by chance, and then defeated Gatanothor in his shining form.

The angel stick vanished. Daigo chose retirement and went to Mars with Lina.

After that, when new invaders arrived from space, Dyna stepped forward to defend the world in Tiga’s place.

But what sent a chill down Hinata’s spine was this.

Her own figure never appeared in any of these images.

The scene where the two giants fought together never happened.

She had been the one who made their cooperation possible, yet there was no trace of her at all.

The rapid shifting finally stopped.

Hinata turned from the sphere to Ryosuke as if waking from a dream, then snapped her gaze to the time and space gate beside her.

She did not need Ryosuke to tell her.

She stepped through.

This time, she took far longer to return.

When she finally came back, disbelief was carved into her face.

"Where are our people... stationed over there?"

Her voice was small, like she was speaking to herself.

She understood what this meant, and yet it was still hard to accept.

There was no trace of her. No trace of the Hyuga.

All her effort in that world had never existed in this rewritten timeline.

Even Daigo looked at her and asked in confusion, "Who are you?"