Naruto: Limit Breaker-Chapter 335: The Underworld

Chapter 335: The Underworld

Saitama was not angry that his life had been affected and stolen.

He was also not angry that Ryosuke not only took away his power, but even made him the enemy of the whole world.

Because deep down, Saitama understood very clearly that if not for that consciousness intervening, he would have died to some monster long ago. Maybe all humans would have already been wiped out by some god level monster.

Even though he had been blamed for many things and his situation was now dangerous, he was not confused. On the contrary, he was clear headed.

"I will stand back up on my own."

Saitama clenched his fists and felt the strength inside him vanish.

He would get it back again, not by relying on anyone’s charity, but by relying on himself to rise again.

However, the consciousness that Ryosuke had forced out of Saitama’s body had no idea what Saitama was thinking.

After Ryosuke said those vague words and his aura changed, the consciousness felt its vision go black and lost control of Saitama’s body.

It was kicked out.

How was that possible?

It could accept losing to Ryosuke. After all, that man was truly an opponent it had never seen before, and he came from another world.

But how could Ryosuke have higher authority than it in this world?

In a daze, the consciousness realized it had lost all control and authority.

Everything before its eyes was dark. The feeling of being all knowing and all powerful was gone.

Where was this place?

It was confused.

It only felt that the surroundings were sticky and narrow, but strangely warm.

It did not know how much time passed, but for it, time was like a single blink.

Yet during this waiting, it inexplicably felt its memories and its omniscience slowly fading away. That fear rose in it, but it had no power to resist.

Fortunately, even as that information vanished from its memory, its mind did not collapse.

But when the consciousness saw light again, it froze.

A pair of huge hands held it in gentle palms. An ordinary, slightly plain face was filled with kindness and tenderness. It was a woman, a woman who had just given birth.

This was a hospital.

So...

"Dad, before we got married you said you would name the child. Have you decided on the name yet?"

"I have. I have been thinking about it for ten months. I just decided on a name outside the ward. Let’s call him Kusuo."

A man wearing glasses, also gentle, stepped in front of it.

"From now on, your name is Saiki Kusuo..."

...

Born holy.

After Ryosuke returned to the ninja world, he hurried home.

After greeting Hinata and the others, he went straight into the study alone.

Although the two children were mischievous, Ryosuke was still their father, and they respected him. Seeing him rush back and lock himself in the study, they knew something important was happening and did not make a sound to disturb him.

But when they finally came near the study, what they saw was not what they expected.

Ryosuke was leaning back in his chair, staring at the candlelight in front of him in a trance.

Long ago, he had guessed that people might go to another world after death.

After all, in the ninja world, the dead could be brought back through many techniques.

But because people like Madara and Hashirama never talked about what they saw after death when they were resurrected, he had assumed that once a person left a world, their memories would be erased or sealed.

Since Ryosuke himself had reincarnated while still carrying memories, he had never been fully sure.

Now, he understood everything.

There really was a world after death, and that world was more perfect than any other.

Across all heavens and worlds, every living creature would go to one place after losing its life, to wait for reincarnation.

That place was the underworld.

That world was unlike any other world. There was no difference between universe and planet there. It was vast and boundless, as if it had no edges at all.

In any world, whether someone was a king who ruled a region, a devil soaked in evil, or a savior who protected the world, they would still enter the underworld after death and reincarnate according to its rules.

And since there was a single underworld that accepted all the dead from every world, there would naturally be disputes there.

Just like Madara and Hashirama, it was possible to meet them again after entering that place. If you met them, a fight to the death was inevitable.

But the living world had its rules, and the underworld had its own.

Fights could happen in the underworld, but they had to stay within the rules. And those rules were far more complex than the rules of all heavens and worlds.

The rules of the living worlds had correction power, but they were still dead, with no true consciousness.

The rules of the underworld were alive and inherently sacred. They were the rules of the underworld itself.

They were born sacred. They were not lives formed by ordinary yin and yang. They were beings nurtured by heaven and earth. They had self awareness, yet because they were raised by nature, they did not understand human nature.

They were born with the power to harness heaven and earth, holding strength beyond imagination.

But at the same time, because they lacked the seven emotions and six desires that living beings should have, most of them acted only according to rules.

Because of that, they were the best law enforcers in the underworld.

No matter how strong someone was, no matter how terrifying their world’s martial power was, no one could resist these law enforcers who controlled the rules.

Those rules could suppress all the pride and strength a person carried.

And in Ryosuke’s first life, Boros was one of them.

After being killed by Saitama, Boros entered the world of the dead.

There, he saw a wider world and met powerful beings from countless heavens and worlds.

For someone like Boros, obsessed with fighting and even forgetting life and death, that was a blessing.

Facing those powerful beings, he naturally challenged them one by one, and from time to time he secretly learned their abilities and techniques.

After fusing the strengths of many worlds, Boros’ power surged by leaps and bounds.

Yet he knew clearly that no matter how much he improved, he still could not beat Saitama.

The gap between him and Saitama was not just body and soul.

Boros was not unfamiliar with rules.

He was Ryosuke’s previous life, and his talent was no lower than Ryosuke’s. Their paths were similar too, only Boros conquered planets, while Ryosuke walked through worlds.

The moment Saitama killed him, Boros felt the power of rules. He spent a long time in the world of the dead, trying to grasp the power inside Saitama through the abilities of all heavens and worlds.

But that was not easy.

Even after a very long time, he only understood the basics.

Until he met the Law Enforcers, those beings born divine.

The underworld was the resting place of the dead. Most people in any world feared it and did not want to go there.

But for Boros, it was a paradise, a place to learn every kind of technique, to fight strong people from every world, and to seek the power of Saitama.

So he did not want to reincarnate. He did not want to leave. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

In a duel, Boros could challenge the strong within the allowed boundaries, provoking disputes inside the rules.

But refusing reincarnation meant stepping outside the rules.

Reincarnation was not something you could avoid just because you did not want it.

There was almost no suspense.

For the first time, the confident Boros clashed with the Law Enforcers, those natural divinities.

In that conflict, he finally realized what kind of power he had been chasing.

He felt it again, more clearly than ever.

"Thinking back, I should thank him."

Ryosuke stared at the candlelight, lost in thought. The memories awakening in his mind left his thoughts tangled.

But no matter how messy his mind was, he did not forget to repay that consciousness.

For example, by fulfilling its wish and letting it be reborn as a human.

The world where Saitama lived was different from other worlds. It was extremely special.

Because Saitama existed there, or more precisely, the consciousness that had inhabited him existed there.

Saitama was a key.

That consciousness was the key to the last door in Ryosuke’s mind.

Since his birth, every question and obsession in his heart had pointed to Saitama, and now he finally knew why.

"Only by defeating Saitama can you prove you have the ability to contend with, or even master, the rules."

Ryosuke reached out and blew out the candle. The study fell into darkness.

Not every world had a being like that consciousness.

A born divine being can only appear one per world. It is born from the rules, and after death it follows the rules into the underworld.

But in Saitama’s world, that consciousness was never guided away. It continued to exist there in confusion, and even grew a desire for humanity.

That was Boros’ opportunity.

Because of it, Boros could sense rules outside the dead world. Because of it, he could touch rules before he ever fought the Law Enforcers.

Even though Boros lost that battle, he gained insight and managed to keep fragments of memory.

And now, the memories of three lives had fully awakened.

Boros was his first life. Because of Saitama, he met the existence of rules and could keep some memories through reincarnation.

His second life was as an ordinary person, reborn in a world with neither magic nor technology.

At that time, he was no longer Boros, only a normal man carrying the goal and memory of mastering rules.

Yet he still inherited Boros’ talent. With those memories, he naturally devoted himself to studying the rules, mastered the rules of that world, and awakened everything from the first life.

After mastering them, he was led into the underworld as a natural god and became a law enforcer.

But he was not truly born divine. He was still human. Even with rules in hand, he still carried selfish desires and emotions.

For Boros, what was worth fighting for? Strength, of course.

In his first life, he was an interstellar overlord who conquered worlds.

After entering the underworld, he naturally wanted to seize territory and become king. He even wanted to control reincarnation itself.

Those law enforcers became thorns in his eyes, his enemies.

And he still kept Saitama in his heart. If he wanted to save face, he had to become the master of the underworld and find a way back to Saitama’s world.

Different law enforcers controlled different worlds.

Boros wrested worlds from them one by one, taking them into his own hands, but in the end his selfishness and arrogance made him a target.

Two fists could not beat four hands, let alone the rules of countless worlds and the crushing strength of countless enforcers.

So even though Boros was strong and seized many worlds by force, he was eventually balanced out by those law enforcers.

Just like how Ryosuke balanced Saitama, Boros lost most of his authority over world rules.

Fortunately, he escaped through reincarnation.

But losing that authority meant his memory and consciousness would be erased during reincarnation.

So Boros used special methods to leave behind the possibility of a comeback in the next life.

That was why Ryosuke existed.

First, Boros created a virtual memory, the life where Ryosuke once believed he was only an ordinary person, having watched countless films and shows.

That virtual life would let Ryosuke know the fate of every world he touched in advance.

Then Boros left loopholes in every world he had visited, opening channels between worlds, setting rules for traveling across them, and giving his future self the chance to grow stronger.

Yet after living as Boros and then as an ordinary man, Boros understood clearly that memory and consciousness were not the same thing.

Even if all his memories remained, the person reborn would not be Boros.

So he chose to completely abandon being Boros, and instead paved the road for his next life.

In a way, it was a spiritual inheritance to the future.

"No wonder I lack emotion."

In the darkness, Ryosuke’s eyes were ice cold.

In his hands, glowing prisms like crystals appeared.

Inside them were images of different worlds, the Teigu world, the Ultraman world, the world where Saitama lived, and the world of the Vongola family.

With a thought, the timelines of those worlds began to reverse, or even speed up.

The people he had met and the places he had been constantly changed with his will and the flow of time.

As long as Ryosuke wished it, a world could be destroyed and restarted, or even rolled back to the moment before the Hyuga’s marched in, letting him correct the original world line.