Land of Rain.
A steady drizzle fell beneath the country’s perpetually overcast sky.
Standing before Konan was a handsome young man with short, tousled black hair and a fitted training outfit.
A faint smile curved his lips as he greeted her.
“Konan, long time no see.”
“Uchiha Riku…”
A complicated look flickered through Konan’s amber eyes, though her voice remained cool and even.
“It’s been six years.
Why come back now?”
“To finally make it official, of course,” Riku answered, his expression completely serious.
‘He really hasn’t changed.
Still as stubborn as ever.’
Konan sighed inwardly.
“I read the manga you gave Nagato.”
“You mean Naruto?” Riku immediately straightened, looking utterly confident.
“Don’t worry, Konan.
As long as I’m here, there’s no way I’ll let that bastard Obito get what he wants!”
“No.
I meant this one.”
Konan reached into her sleeve and pulled out a manga with a plain white cover.
Written across the front was the title:
Heartbreaking Romance: The Uchiha Bride of the Hashirama Household.
“Pfft—hahahahaha!”
A woman’s bright, bell-like laughter suddenly rang out from inside Riku’s body.
Riku’s expression stiffened.
“I can explain.”
“You are an Uchiha, correct?”
“Of course!
Pure-blooded, born and raised.
My great-grandfather was even Madara Uchiha’s cousin!”
“And you still made something like this?” Konan asked quietly.
“Ahem!
Artistic expression demands sacrifice.” Riku cleared his throat twice, then put on a solemn expression.
“Besides, you could say I’m restoring my esteemed distant uncle’s reputation.
If Madara knew about this in the afterlife, I’m sure he’d be deeply touched.”
Whether Madara would be touched was impossible to say.
He would definitely want to beat Riku to death, though.
Konan was already struggling to keep her expression under control.
She took a slow breath and decided not to pursue the subject any further.
“Fine.
From now on, your codename will be Dawn.”
As soon as she finished speaking, her body broke apart into countless sheets of paper that scattered into the rain.
“Ah.
She left.”
A young woman with long red hair and a vivid crimson dress emerged from Riku’s shadow.
She blinked after Konan’s disappearing figure before turning toward him.
“Do you think she was angry?”
“And whose fault do you think that is?!” Riku’s mouth twitched as he ground out the words.
“I distinctly remember that manga not being anywhere on the reading list I gave them!”
“Oh?
Really?” The red-haired woman tilted her head, blinking innocently.
“Big Sis, you’ve gotten way too mischievous lately.” Riku sighed helplessly.
“Well, that’s your punishment for lusting after someone else’s wife!” She slipped her pale arms around his neck from behind, then dissolved into wisps of crimson mist that flowed back into his body.
“Tch.”
Riku clicked his tongue and turned his attention toward the translucent screen floating before him.
[Riku-sama] [Group Owner]: Good news: I’m officially in.
Bad news: my codename is Dawn!
[Doujin Artist]: Why Dawn?!
What happened to Azure Dragon?!
[Riku-sama] [Group Owner]: How the hell should I know?!
Wait…
don’t tell me your terrible luck rubbed off on me.
[Doujin Artist]: What?!
How is this somehow my fault too?!
[Riku-sama] [Group Owner]: Supernatural stuff works like that sometimes.
When two people are excessively close, their luck can start affecting each other.
[Doujin Artist]: Y-You bastard!
Who’s excessively close to you?!
Stop flattering yourself!
[Riku-sama] [Group Owner]: Fine.
From this day forward, our bond is severed.
I am no longer your father.
[Deathwish Count]: …
[Doujin Artist]: You motherf—!
The interface floating before Riku looked almost exactly like a QQ group chat, and it was also the cheat ability he had received after transmigrating.
Its full name was the Idiots’ Chat Group.
That was right.
Riku was a transmigrator.
In his previous life, he had gotten far too excited while messing around at home, suffered a brain hemorrhage, and opened his eyes again as a newborn baby of Konoha’s Uchiha clan.
His parents both died on a mission not long after he was weaned.
The one who raised him afterward was the kind married woman who lived next door—Uchiha Mikoto.
When Riku turned ten, the chat-group system finally activated.
As the group owner, he received several absurd privileges.
He could possess other group members, travel freely between their worlds, absorb their powers, and more.
On paper, those abilities sounded completely broken.
In practice, they had been almost useless.
For years, the only member besides Riku who had managed to remain in the group was a girl using the username [Doujin Artist]—Eriri Spencer Sawamura.
Her world, however, was no longer quite the same as the original setting of Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend.
Cataclysms, goddesses, evil gods, magical girls, and all manner of supernatural chaos had begun appearing one after another.
Unfortunately for Eriri, those extraordinary powers had absolutely nothing to do with her.
Riku never let her forget it either.
He had repeatedly mocked her for being personally cursed by the god of bad luck.
The reason was simple enough.
Several of the major girls from the original Saekano story had either become magical girls or awakened supernatural abilities of their own.
Eriri alone was still completely ordinary.
At that point, calling her unlucky was almost an understatement.
One of the group owner’s privileges was Power Absorption, which did exactly what the name implied.
Over time, the abilities, skills, talents, and even bloodlines possessed by other group members would gradually be copied onto Riku.
The system could perfectly integrate completely different power systems into his body while also allowing him to switch between them whenever he wanted.
It should have been an outrageously powerful ability.
Unfortunately, the only permanent group member he had was Eriri, the most spectacularly normal person imaginable.
What kind of cosmic joke was that?
Still, it would not be fair to say she was completely useless.
At the very least, she kept him company every day, traded insults with him, and occasionally contributed a fresh batch of wonderfully terrible ideas.
As for why Eriri was the only member who had “managed to remain” in the group until now…
That was a story Riku still had trouble thinking about with a straight face.
Two other people had joined over the past few years.
Their usernames were [Rather Die Than Become 2.5] and [Central Divinity of Quanzhen].
The first was Satoru Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen.
By sheer coincidence, he joined the group on the exact day he was preparing to fight Sukuna.
Riku had not even gotten the chance to warn him about what was coming before Gojo cheerfully posted a message.
[Rather Die Than Become 2.5]: I’m off to fight the thousand-year-old King of Curses.
We can have a nice long chat once I’m back.
Don’t worry—I’ll win.
Half an hour later, the system displayed another notification.
[This group member has died.]
Riku and Eriri stared at the message for a very long time without typing a single word.
Even now, remembering it still left Riku feeling deeply cheated by life.
The second member, [Central Divinity], was Wang from The Legend of the Condor Heroes.
Unfortunately, he had already been on his last breath when he joined the group.
What the hell was Riku supposed to do about that?
He had never learned medical ninjutsu, and there simply had not been enough time to save him.
In the end, all Riku could do was watch the old grandmaster pass away.
At least Wang had left them something behind a training manual.
Riku and Eriri had spent quite a while discussing the martial arts recorded within it, comparing notes on its methods and techniques.
Their progress was not exactly earth-shattering, but it had still been enough to make a real difference.
Eriri, at least, could now handle ordinary thugs and delinquents without much trouble.
Even most low-level ability users were no longer a match for her.
Whenever she did not know what else to do, she could simply beat them up.
Subtle?
Not remotely.
Effective?
Absolutely.
After going through two spectacularly unreliable group members in a row, Riku had more or less stopped expecting the chat group to ever give him anything truly useful.
Then, one year ago, an absolute monster of a group member practically fell into his lap.
That member was [Deathwish Count].
The protagonist of Hellsing.
The legendary vampire Alucard.
It took Riku nearly half a month to fully absorb the power of that monstrous vampire.
At long last, he finally gained enough strength to bare his fangs in the shinobi world!
And the very first victim his newly awakened vampiric self dragged into the River of Death was none other than the red-haired woman who had emerged from his body only moments ago.
The wife of the Fourth Hokage.
Uzumaki Kushina.