Chapter 378: Stark, the King of Empty Boasts
Whatever plan Konoha's leadership decided on for the sudden pile of Void Beast corpses in the Land of Fire, Ryū wasn't especially interested in finding out.
It wasn't his job to run the village, after all — that particular headache belonged to Konoha's leadership.
His part was done. He'd stay home, be his usual salted-fish self, and leave the mess for someone else to clean up. Helping stave off a world-ending crisis once already counted, in his own estimation, as more than enough goodwill for one lifetime.
Come to think of it — had he somehow ended up the shinobi world's unofficial savior?
The next morning brought no fresh snow, though the temperature stayed miserably low. Konoha in January wasn't kind to anyone.
For ordinary people, at least. For a hand-to-hand specialist like Ryū, a little cold barely registered — stick him in a freezer for ten straight days and nights and he'd walk out perfectly fine.
Despite having spent the entire previous night chatting away in the group without a single minute of sleep, Ryū woke up feeling as sharp as ever, no trace of fatigue whatsoever.
After brushing his teeth and washing up, he grabbed a leftover piece of bread from the night before and let his consciousness drift back into the Dimensional Chat Group.
Wandering Little Planet: Lately, on top of working toward a spirit body, I've been adjusting my own internal temperature — making myself more hospitable to life in general.
Wandering Little Planet: With that sorted, life could theoretically survive on my surface even without a sun.
Wandering Little Planet: The one hitch is photosynthesis — plants still need actual sunlight, and that's giving me a headache.
WolfKingOfQingQingGrasslands: Are you trying to protect the life living on your surface?
Wandering Little Planet: Hmm... "protect" isn't quite the word. More like "domesticate." Domesticate the life on my surface, then have it pay dividends down the line.
Wandering Little Planet: It's a long-term investment. I've already drafted five separate century-long plans! Still just rough drafts at this stage, but I'll flesh them out properly over time.
WolfKingOfQingQingGrasslands: Ah, I see... Leave the photosynthesis problem to this king! I'll knock together an artificial sun for you, seeing as I've got nothing better to tinker with lately.
Eternally Seventeen: An artificial sun? You two are really going for it, huh. Are you actually sure that's even feasible?
Eternally Seventeen: A star's not exactly the biggest thing in the universe, sure, but it's still several times the size of an entire Earth!
WolfKingOfQingQingGrasslands: My plan's for at least twenty artificial suns, enough to keep sunlight reaching every corner of the planet at once.
WolfKingOfQingQingGrasslands: Sync them up with the local time zones — one lights up over here as another gradually dims out over there...
My True Form Is Cola: That's a genuinely massive undertaking. You'd need a moon too, right, to handle the tides?
Wandering Little Planet: Hm... I can actually manage tides myself, no problem there!
My True Form Is Cola: Pfft, right, forgot you can control every part of your own body — water, soil, sand, all of it.
Crazy Diamond: You people play on a whole different scale, don't you. Us bottom-tier members are shaking.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Little Sphere, are you secretly trying to trigger some kind of full-blown spiritual-energy awakening on yourself?
Wandering Little Planet: A spiritual-energy awakening? Ooh, I like that. Writing that idea down right now!
Street-Corner Illustrator: ...I was just saying it offhand, but if Little Sphere actually pulls that off for real, that's genuinely terrifying to think about.
RawrSoFierce: I feel like these plans are getting a little unrealistic.
RawrSoFierce: Then again, with Wolffy involved, I'm guessing even the most unrealistic plan somehow ends up actually happening.
Edward Newgate: Gurararara, well, Wolffy is the group's #1 inventor, after all.
I'm Rolling In It: Uncle Tony would like to note that he's every bit Wolffy's equal in that department.
Kaguya-sama: Oh? Mr. Stark, can you invent a causality-defying artifact, then?
I'm Rolling In It: ...Ahem. Stuff that breaks the actual laws of science doesn't count — that's basically just cheating.
Kaguya-sama: So, bottom line, you're still not as impressive as Wolffy after all.
I'm Rolling In It: Ouch, that stings. Fine, you're all going to see this. Uncle Tony's going to whip up something genuinely huge before this month is out — and when I do, don't come crying to me that it scared you.
"..."
The moment his boast went out into the chat, Tony Stark felt regret creeping up from somewhere deep inside him.
By the Marvel timeline's own calendar, today was November 17th — just thirteen days left before the month was out.
No matter how much of a genius he liked to think he was, thirteen days wasn't much time to whip up some kind of jaw-dropping "big treasure."
So there it was — that faint, unmistakable tinge of regret. He really should have kept his mouth shut instead of running it.
Talking a big game felt great in the moment. The problem always came after, when you had to actually turn all that talk into something real — a genuinely historic-scale headache.
He could, of course, just quietly lurk for the rest of the month — go dark for fifteen or twenty days, and odds were nobody would even remember this little exchange by the time he resurfaced.
But was Tony Stark really that kind of man? Deep down, sure, some part of him desperately wanted to just disappear into the group's silent corners for a couple weeks. But Tony refused to give that impulse the satisfaction of a "yes."
Meanwhile, in the Marvel world, inside a sprawling estate somewhere in the United States —
A property that easily ran into nine figures, and just one of many under Tony Stark's name.
Sunk into a plush sofa, Tony rubbed at his own stiff face, muttering to himself. "Coming up with something in the next month that'll actually leave the whole Dimensional Chat Group speechless — that's borderline impossible, isn't it?"
The chat group had no shortage of genuine powerhouses, and even fewer shortages of members with genuinely staggering breadth of knowledge and experience.
Building something that could impress every single one of them felt, to Tony, about as achievable as personally researching the Infinity Stones from scratch.
"But I already went and dug this hole for myself with all that big talk — if I don't come up with something, I'm never going to hear the end of it. Hmm... maybe I could go talk to the Ancient One, see if there's some way to blend magic and technology into a single creation?"
"No, no, that's too generic. Wolffy just said he's building an artificial sun for Little Sphere. So what, does that mean Uncle Tony here should go build an artificial moon? Except... a moon feels kind of lame compared to a sun, honestly..."
"..."
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