Pitch-black, ice-cold evil spirit arms dragged Ryosuke down toward even deeper darkness.
Smack!
Ryosuke slapped a black hand that was reaching toward his crotch.
A rosy glow flashed, and the evil spirit's palm was actually slapped away out of thin air.
After being knocked aside, the black hand hovered in midair, as if doubting itself. But immediately after, countless black hands surged up like ferocious beasts sensing danger and provocation.
They stretched out from even deeper darkness, lunging toward Ryosuke, trying to tear him to pieces.
At that moment, boundless light burst forth from the depths of Ryosuke's soul, forceful and domineering, ripping open the endless darkness.
Ryosuke's falling momentum stopped. He gently stepped onto a patch of nothingness beneath his feet, solid beyond belief, as if an entire world were supporting him.
Ryosuke looked at the flowing radiance around him.
The Saint's Corpse?
Very similar, but not the same. Ryosuke was extremely familiar with the power of the Saint's Corpse.
He reached out and lightly touched it.
From the flowing light, Ryosuke felt concern and expectation coming from afar.
Every beam of light here symbolized a strand of longing, longing from the Naruto world, from everyone thinking of him.
"Thank you..."
Ryosuke said softly. He tightly grasped this radiance and looked around.
In just a short while, the void beneath his feet, illuminated by the light, gradually condensed into solid ground. A grayish-white sky appeared overhead.
A Hamon crystal appeared in Ryosuke's palm. Through Hamon's resonance with the world, he keenly grasped the difference between sky and earth, "The sky I came from represents the human world of 'life.'"
"The ground beneath my feet represents the 'death' of hell."
"So…"
Ryosuke scanned his surroundings.
This was a small town similar to Morioh, but covered with a gloomy, underworld filter. Everywhere felt sinister. The buildings and street facilities were extremely old, and there wasn't a single person on the roads.
Occasionally, wisps of drifting figures could be seen. From afar they looked human, but up close they resembled long strips of mist. They came with the wind and scattered with it, sometimes letting out faint whispering sounds.
Ryosuke saw their pitch-black hands and understood, these were the evil spirits of the Don't Look Back Alley, specifically responsible for grabbing people.
"This place is the crack between life and death, a transfer station for souls."
When Giorno threatened Ryosuke with elderly Joseph, Ryosuke had already planned to save him.
Saving someone depended on the method. The rules of the Don't Look Back Alley were simple enough, just don't trigger them.
But at that moment, Ryosuke saw Uchiha Madara.
Madara used a ninja's customary tactical hand signs to convey a clear message to Ryosuke, "Throw over a piece of the Saint's Corpse and the old man, and then… turn around."
"Turn around, and victory is assured."
Ryosuke didn't understand the reason.
But he chose to trust Uchiha Madara's judgment.
Madara might make mistakes at the strategic level, but at the tactical level, he had almost never been wrong.
Looking over his life, his failures seemed to stem from trusting the wrong people.
Not to mention Amenominaka.
Given how Ryosuke and Giorno were fighting at the time, who would win was truly hard to say. If the battle dragged on, it was entirely possible that one of them would really die there that day.
Even if Ryosuke ultimately won, killing a comrade who had been controlled by the enemy… that outcome could never be called a victory.
So Ryosuke didn't hesitate at all and chose to turn around and charge.
———
"Still, where exactly is this so-called 'victory'? Could it be these evil spirits?"
Ryosuke tried to make contact with the drifting evil spirits.
As soon as he approached, the spirits screamed as if they had seen something filthy and fled in all directions.
Rejected, Ryosuke could only start walking through the empty ghost town, searching for possible clues.
After walking for an unknown amount of time, a man's scream, miserable to the extreme, caught Ryosuke's attention.
Ryosuke followed the sound.
It was a tall man with long pink hair, black leopard-like spots mixed into his hair. His upper body was lightly clothed, almost bare, and his lower body wore only a pair of pants.
At this moment, the man was entangled by an evil spirit, with large amounts of blood flowing out of his abdomen.
The instant Ryosuke saw him, the man's head tilted.
Dead.
The next second, the man revived not far away.
That distinctive appearance.
That half-dead, half-alive predicament.
There was no need for much introduction, this was the dark emperor who, at the climax of Golden Wind, had been beaten to death punch by punch by Gold Experience Requiem, condemned to never reach the truth of death, and tortured for all eternity, Diavolo.
"But why is he here?"
Ryosuke pondered for a moment, during which Diavolo died miserably three more times, and gradually figured out why Diavolo was here.
Gold Experience Requiem was a causality-type Stand, and Diavolo's state was tightly linked to it by causality.
Just as the dead from the North–South War followed Ryosuke through different worlds, Diavolo also followed Giorno, experiencing different kinds of death across different worlds.
And at the moment Ryosuke understood the reason, a tactic appeared in his mind.
He looked at Diavolo, endlessly trapped in a cycle of death, his eyes gradually lighting up.
"So victory really is right here."
Ryosuke walked toward Diavolo.
At that moment, Diavolo had just died once more and was in a brief respite. Seeing Ryosuke walking straight toward him, Diavolo's face turned deathly pale. He collapsed onto the ground, pointing at Ryosuke and screaming in terror, "Don't come any closer!!!!"
Ryosuke ignored him. He waved his hand, summoning a beam of light that fell onto Diavolo. The evil spirits lingering nearby were driven away.
Diavolo closed his eyes and waited for several seconds. When he realized that death truly didn't come, he stared blankly at Ryosuke.
"You, you…"
After stammering "you" for a long time without finishing a sentence, Diavolo finally asked, "My death curse… has it been lifted?"
Ryosuke neither confirmed nor denied it outright.
"You could say that."
The rule Giorno set on Diavolo was "forever unable to reach the truth of death."
To achieve this, there was a prerequisite, "Diavolo's spirit heads toward annihilation due to the death of his physical body."
It was as if Diavolo boarded a train heading toward death, only to be reset back to the starting point every time he was about to reach the terminal.
Ryosuke used the power of the Saint's Corpse to stabilize Diavolo's soul. His soul would not collapse.
If the train of soul-death never departed, then there was no premise for reset.
Naturally, Diavolo would no longer suffer endless death punishment.
After exchanging a few words and confirming that Ryosuke wasn't an angel or a demon, Diavolo plopped down on the ground, propping himself up with his hands behind him.
"Never thought there'd be a 'multiplayer' mode."
He looked at Ryosuke.
"How did you die? Were you trying to seize Italy's underworld and ended up getting killed by Giorno?"
"As for me…"
Ryosuke also sat cross-legged opposite Diavolo.
"I suppose you could say it was to 'save the world.' And it wasn't Giorno who killed me, I came in here on my own."
"…To find you."
"To find me?"
Diavolo asked. "Why are you looking for me?"
Ryosuke chuckled softly.
"Of course, to save the world together."
Diavolo's mouth hung half open.
Had he died too many times and started hallucinating?
How had he… become a positive character?