Chapter 416: Incoming
Saitama's excitement showed plainly on his face — Ryū didn't even need Observation Haki's mind-reading to know exactly what was running through his head.
Having watched One Punch Man, and even read One-sensei's original manga back in his old life, Ryū understood Saitama's personality well enough by now.
Sure, Saitama had gained genuinely absurd power, and lost a fair amount of his own emotional range along with it — but a handful of traits had never once left him.
Chief among them: his hunger for a real fight. Saitama craved a genuinely strong opponent so badly that, ever since joining the Dimensional Chat Group, he'd spent virtually all his time in the Arena, grinding away against whatever wild monsters it threw at him.
Which meant every single Point he earned from his daily sign-in went straight back into the Arena, without fail.
Probably only Saitama would be reckless enough to dump every last Point into the Arena like that. Any other newcomer — Chika, say — would be splitting a single Point in half just to stretch it further.
Watching Saitama practically vibrate with anticipation, Ryū found himself considering something: once the alien army actually touched down, maybe he should let Saitama take point on the strongest boss — the rule-breaking reincarnator himself.
Hm... not a bad idea, honestly. Ryū had no real objection to letting Saitama farm the boss fight — group quests didn't scale rewards based on individual performance anyway; everyone got the exact same payout regardless of who did the heavy lifting.
Standing at the edge of Stark Tower's rooftop, Tatsumaki gazed out over half of New York City with cool, detached eyes and said quietly, "This city's population density is brutal. A single stray explosion could easily kill hundreds... if we actually want to keep casualties down, we're going to need to pull every enemy into the mirror-space."
The Ancient One nodded slightly. As a genuine resident of the Marvel world, she knew exactly how densely packed a city like New York really was.
Fortunately, her mirror-space magic had climbed to a whole new level by now — pulling the entire invading force inside it shouldn't pose much of a problem.
Just then, a flat, mechanical voice rang out in everyone's ears. "Mr. Stark, you have an incoming call."
The voice belonged to none other than JARVIS, Tony Stark's beloved AI butler — one of his proudest creations, and arguably a more constant presence in his life than his own late parents had ever managed to be.
Tony's brow furrowed slightly, and he said, "Please tell me that's not the braised egg head from S.H.I.E.L.D. again."
JARVIS answered dutifully, "It is not, sir. The call is from your friend, Dr. Banner."
Tony blinked, then quickly snapped his fingers, patting his own forehead with a headache-adjacent grimace. "Almost forgot — I'm the leader of the Avengers now, and I already gave everyone a heads-up about the group quest a bit ago."
"Leader of the Avengers?" Ryū asked, genuinely surprised. "You've already assembled the Avengers, before canon even kicks things off? And you actually recruited Dr. Banner, the Hulk himself?"
Tony nodded. "Yeah. Figured getting a head start on some things beats waiting around — better safe than sorry, right? Current roster's just me, Dr. Banner, Thor-with-the-hammer, and Captain America. Four members so far."
"..."
Genuinely didn't expect Tony Stark to have assembled the Avengers ahead of schedule.
No telling exactly how far ahead he'd gotten started, but clearly he'd made a decent enough leader out of it — otherwise the rest of the team wouldn't have signed on under some self-absorbed playboy in the first place.
Say what you like, Tony Stark — armed with Ryū's own knowledge of the Marvel movie-verse's plot — had genuinely made the most of his position within it.
No telling exactly how much groundwork he'd quietly laid, leveraging that foreknowledge to his own advantage across the whole Marvel world.
Probably not just Tony, either — the Ancient One likely did the same, using her own knowledge of the plot to carve out whatever advantages she could for herself.
Probably only a salted fish like Ryū couldn't be bothered planting that many contingencies throughout the Naruto world.
Just then, Tony said, "JARVIS, go ahead and put him through."
"Very well, sir. Connecting the call now..."
"..."
Once the connection went through, a holographic projection materialized directly in front of Tony — none other than the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Dr. Bruce Banner.
"Tony, are you sure your intel's... uh, you've got company?!"
Banner's sentence trailed off as his gaze landed on Ryū, Saitama, Tatsumaki, and the Ancient One, and for a moment he seemed genuinely at a loss for words.
Tony jumped in to explain. "These four are reinforcements I called in. Genuinely serious firepower — they can handle a much higher tier of threat than the rest of us. Told you already, right? We're up against something genuinely dangerous this time — dangerous enough we need to be prepared for the worst."
Banner went quiet for a few seconds, then asked, "How dangerous, exactly?"
Tony blinked, surprised. "Didn't I say already? ...Oh, right, forgot to mention — roughly star-busting level, give or take."
Banner: "...Are you sure you're not just sending us off to die?"
Star-busting level. Banner understood perfectly well what that meant. Even the Hulk himself would probably get beaten into paste against something that strong.
Going into a fight like that would be functionally suicidal!
His gaze drifted toward the "reinforcements" Tony had mentioned. If Stark was calling in outside help, that presumably meant these people were formidable enough to actually handle whatever crisis was coming.
Banner had no idea what the actual crisis even was, but going off Tony's tone and expression from earlier, this clearly wasn't a joke.
Just as Banner was about to say something further, the holographic feed abruptly began to blur, quickly dissolving into a wash of static.
Tony blinked, startled, and asked immediately, "JARVIS, what's going on?"
JARVIS answered promptly, "Sir, an unidentified magnetic field is interfering with the communication signal. The fluctuations are extremely intense — there's a real possibility the entire U.S. communications network could go down."
Hearing that, Tony's expression darkened. He took a deep breath and turned to Ryū and the others. "Looks like it's happening. And... it's going to be right here in New York, apparently."
Ryū nodded. "I can feel it too. Something's rippling in the space roughly three thousand meters overhead — that's got to be the spatial jump gateway the quest mentioned, about to open."
"..."
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you