The Cursed Gamer, Book 2

264: Playing with Death? (1)

After ten seconds of resisting to no avail, Hanabi launched a gentle fist on Temari's stomach, pushing her back, and glared at her. "I am complaining to Onii-sama. This is child abuse!"

While the other girls were losing themselves, laughing while grabbing their stomachs, even the two foxes giggling softly to themselves, Temari just shrugged. "Eh, go ahead, I don't care. I rather hope he punishes this criminal little me."

Hanabi was about to sigh in defeat before suddenly, a portal opened beside them and Neji walked out of it with Toga in his arms.

"Hm? Who wants punishment?" He asked before his eyes looked at the glowing tree. "Huh. You already ate two Forbidden Fruit? Time to banish you, I guess."

Everyone blinked. For real?

—-—

Despite the fun they were having and the cheerful demeanour everyone shared, it all turned bleak as they fell silent once Neji teleported them to Konoha. They had many questions about all that heaven thing they witnessed, yet, their minds went blank when they stood in the desert, the empty hole in the earth that was once Konoha.

Hanabi's face had grown into a denying expression, she probably thought this was a Genjutsu that started upon eating that apple. Sakura was like that as well, except she was already running around, her eyes red and teary as she tried to locate where her house should have been before. Tenten looked worried, but she was doing better than the other two— she just looked at Neji for an answer.

Toga and Temari reacted the least, with the latter at least showing something while the former wore a blank expression. Nemuri and Kiana reacted somewhat, but it was mostly pity for the first three girls.

"O-onii-sama?!" Hanabi was choking for breath as she turned to him. "Is this really the place? You didn't make a mistake, r-right? Where is father, mother, and Hinata nee-chan?!"

Neji smiled sadly at her and pointed his chin at the shelters ahead. "Come with me."

Neji spawned a clone who grabbed a crying Sakura and then all of them made their way to the shelters. In the open, outside the wooden houses, they found Tsunade sitting on a chair, a blonde Loli on her lap as she talked with a few villagers. Amongst the villagers, Amira Hyuga was present as well, seeing whom Hanabi ran forward immediately, followed by the other girls who soon surrounded Tsunade.

Tsunade looked at Neji who gave her a nod and she then started to explain everything to the newcomers.

—-

Everyone had fallen silent after Tsunade gave them a summary of Pain's assault in Konoha. Sakura learned both her parents had died, and Hanabi learned about her father's death. But Hanabi's mother was there and was hugging Hanabi, so it helped the little girl calm down somewhat. In Tenten's case, she was an orphan and only had her uncle and aunt as her closest relatives, and luckily this pair of uncle and aunt was one of the fortunate ones who survived the assault. That had greatly relieved the weapon-user girl.

Sakura had lost all the light in her eyes and Shizune was hugging her softly. Hanabi was in her mother's embrace, but she had stopped crying. The others were relatively fine.

"About Pain, you don't have to worry about him anymore. Neji took care of him." Tsunade finished as she leaned back on her chair, patting Yue's head on her lap, and sighed. "...That was all."

Sakura and Hanabi didn't move while Tenten hugged and buried her face in his chest.

Neji let everyone stay like that for a while before shaking his head. "They may not be all." He said, making everyone turn to him. "As the eight of you saw, that place I brought you from was heaven. My heaven. The fruit Temari ate and forced Hanabi to eat was the fruit of immortality. Congratulations to you two, you won't die of old age. Anyway, the point is I have a heaven of my own and with the Hokage's permission, I may use a special jutsu to summon all the deceased souls from yesterday to there— where they can live happily ever after. They will have no lack of food or entertainment in that place."