Naruto: Limit Breaker-Chapter 334: Memory

Chapter 334: Memory

In the silent night, this world was anything but peaceful.

Winds howled, clouds churned, and thunder rolled without end. The earth and the sky shook again and again. Dark cracks split open in the void, swallowing anything unlucky enough to be caught in their path.

Volcanoes erupted. Seas of fire buried whole towns. Tsunamis rose like towering walls, sweeping away countless lives in an instant.

Even though Saitama and Ryosuke had stopped fighting for the moment, the impact they had left on the planet beneath their feet never faded.

Or rather, it was not just this planet.

Across the universe, countless celestial bodies trembled in rhythm with Earth’s unrest. Brilliant nebulae were erased as if by an unseen hand, vanishing into the interstellar dark.

There was more than one world with life out there, yet now every living planet was suffering the same disaster.

"Should I stop now?"

"Saitama" stared calmly at the man in front of him. The emotions that had surged earlier settled down in a short span of time.

His body, which had been mangled by Ryosuke, was already restored as if nothing had happened.

Yet he showed no sorrow for the destruction of this world. Sure enough, even with consciousness, he did not hold humanity.

"I won."

Ryosuke did not answer his question. His voice was flat, cold.

"Saitama" watched him in silence for a long time.

"...You win."

After a brief pause, he laughed for no clear reason, then stiffened again. He raised a hand and tugged at his own face, like a machine learning how to smile.

"I think you are not like that alien."

Still pulling at his cheeks, he forced the smile wider. "You’re more like me."

"He looked human, but he was nothing like me. You look human, but you are like me, who is not human."

The smile on his face was awkward and rigid, as if that earlier burst of emotion had slipped away before he could grasp it.

The sky was collapsing, the earth breaking, and the man in front of him felt nothing. Even after the fight ended, this man had to be reminded to stop influencing the world.

When "Saitama" spoke, the other man’s only focus was who won and who lost. It was not something a human would do.

"I’m not like you."

Ryosuke waved a hand. More than twenty time space gates opened again in the air behind him.

"I can still hold emotions for a few people. That’s the only reason I can stay human at all. I’m still selfish enough."

Rules were invisible to ordinary eyes. To others, they could not be touched or grasped.

But Ryosuke could see them.

He could not describe their shape in words, yet their presence was unmistakable to him.

Now, guided by Ryosuke, the rules within those twenty plus gates began to pour into this world. They spread like living code, invading and clashing with the rules that already existed here.

That was why the universe had fallen into chaos.

It was also why Saitama’s invincible strength had vanished.

The rules of heaven and earth, the rules of human existence, the rules of life itself, all of them were complete within this world’s natural framework.

But when similar rules from twenty different worlds flooded in at once, they collided. The system buckled like a program crashing under incompatible code.

Rules could correct and perfect themselves, but that correction process inevitably shook everything around them.

Ryosuke had used that conflict to suspend most of this world’s rules.

He had not fully mastered these rules. He had not defeated Saitama by controlling them directly.

But he was not going to wait in silence for decades either.

Using rules to fight rules was the path Ryosuke chose.

And he succeeded.

Saitama’s rule based power was suppressed. The battle became one fought outside those rules.

Without that support, Saitama was nothing more than an ordinary man. Ryosuke, on the other hand, had been strong from start to finish, in body, soul, and skill.

As the foreign rules Ryosuke had brought in slowly faded away, the violent collapse of heaven and earth finally began to quiet down.

The damage already done could not be undone. The world would have to repair itself through its own corrections.

"Should we talk here? People are coming."

Saitama glanced around the sky. "Let’s move somewhere else."

The world’s rules were stabilizing. Ryosuke and Saitama had stopped acting. Only then could the others finally approach.

In the past, Saitama might have cared about the consciousness in his body. Right now, he wanted nothing to do with anyone here.

"Mr Saitama!"

"Please stop!"

"On behalf of the Hero Association, we hope..."

Figures rushed toward them cautiously, trying to calm both men before even getting close.

But right in front of all those eyes, Saitama and Ryosuke blurred and vanished.

...

They reappeared on a deserted island in the same world.

"You’ve got plenty of questions, don’t you? Since you beat me, ask."

Saitama grabbed a coconut, flopped onto a large rock, and drank the juice as if he were on vacation.

Even so, Ryosuke could feel it. This Saitama was still not the same one he had met before.

That consciousness had not left after the fight.

"Where did he go? Is he still alive?"

Ryosuke sat on another rock beside him, watching the tide rise and fall.

"And why did you choose him?"

"Of course he’s alive. I’m just living in this world through his body for now. I’m invisible otherwise."

Saitama answered without hesitation.

"As for why I chose him..." He went quiet for a moment. "I thought he could make me feel what a living creature should feel. But he failed."

He continued calmly.

"He is passionate. He is driven by goals."

"Saitama is the most determined person I have ever seen in this world."

"His goal was to become a hero. He fought for it with ridiculous determination. With no talent, no special power, only an ordinary body, he still threw himself into battle against those monsters again and again."

Ryosuke narrowed his eyes.

"You thought possessing him would give you humanity?"

"Yes. But I failed."

Saitama nodded slowly.

"Not knowing what I am... that feeling is hard to explain."

"I have no family, no companions, no clan. I don’t even have a real body. When I became conscious, all I could feel was the world changing."

"But that isn’t happiness. I don’t even know what happiness is."

"Every day I just sat and watched everything move. No matter what happened, I couldn’t feel anything people would call emotion. I didn’t even know why I existed."

"But I watched creatures who did have emotions. I watched them grow. Over time, I began to want what they had."

"I wanted love, hate, desire. I wanted to be human. So I chose Saitama."

He drew a breath, eyes complicated.

"He had the strongest will and the hottest heart I ever saw. I thought if I lived inside him, I could feel what he felt."

"But instead, I was the one influencing him."

"Because of me, he gained power. But because of me, his emotions slowly weakened."

"The fire that drove him to be a hero was smothered by my presence."

"Later on, he barely acted on justice at all. He stopped chasing that feeling."

Then Saitama paused, frowning slightly.

"No, that’s not quite right."

"He probably sensed me. He probably felt his emotions fading because of me." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"He tried to save himself. He tried to rekindle his heart through fighting."

"But my power was too strong. He couldn’t stimulate himself again."

"Eventually, his thoughts overlapped with mine. We both wanted a defeat. We both hoped someone could beat us."

He scratched his head.

"Oh. I should mention this. The second person I ever met with that kind of will was Mumen Rider. But I met Saitama first, and only met the Mumen Rider through him."

"A pity."

Ryosuke listened in silence, and something inside his mind felt like it was about to crack open.

His strength had not changed, but his memories were stirring. Defeating Saitama, then hearing all this, made what was sealed inside him loosen little by little.

Somehow, he understood.

Standing outside everything, detached, cold, watching a world like a game. No matter what happened in that game, the outsider could not be moved.

But without feelings, the outsider also had no reason to act. No side to stand on. No desire to change anything.

So all they could do was watch.

"Born holy."

The words came out of Ryosuke’s mouth in a calm, almost empty tone.

Saitama flinched.

That same isolation flowed from Ryosuke for a brief moment, like a shadow standing in human shape.

But it only lasted an instant.

Ryosuke exhaled, and that feeling vanished.

"...I remember now."

"Remember what?" Saitama asked, confused.

"Remember where I went after I died."

Ryosuke looked at him with a complicated gaze, then stood slowly.

"Now that this is over, I won’t stay in this world anymore."

"If you want excitement again, you can come find me."

"I don’t think facing you will be as troublesome as before. I can give you the stimulation you deserve. I can make you feel pain and struggle like a human should."

His voice softened, yet carried weight.

"And you, Saitama..."

"I hope you find the life you actually want."

"Stop letting others steal your body, your goals, and the fire in your heart."

Saitama froze.

Then his body began to change in front of Ryosuke’s eyes. His face, once dull and vacant, became sharper, more alive. The stiffness drained away.

The cold isolation that came from being ruled by rules slowly dissolved.

"I..."

Saitama blinked, staring at Ryosuke, then looked around in a daze.

"My power is gone?"

He clenched his fists, feeling the emptiness.

The strange force that had always surged inside him had vanished completely.

"If you want it back, you’ll have to earn it yourself."

Ryosuke’s voice cut through the haze.

When Saitama looked up again, Ryosuke was already gone.

Yet a flood of knowledge had been left behind in his mind.

"That guy caused me so much trouble..."

Saitama stared at the empty place where Ryosuke had stood, expression helpless.

"...And he just leaves like that?"

The confusion slowly sank in.

The fight, the consciousness driving his body, the cold voice that had spoken through him, he remembered it all clearly.

He understood now where his strength came from.

If he thought about it carefully, it really was strange.

His training had been simple. Far simpler than anyone else’s.

Yet he had become unstoppable anyway.

Before today, he had never questioned it.

So I really was being fooled.