Ninja

How to develop a dream world? Very generally, there are two ways: one is the rich's way, and the other is the poor's way.

The rich's way involves spending resources to develop a dream world quickly. The poor's way is what Jack has been doing for a few hundred billion years now. His incarnations, like the one here, have been busy developing and growing dream worlds from the ground up.

His incarnation here is as powerful as rank 11, and he is personally taking care of it.

For dream worlds to grow, they need more people in them and more people who believe it is real. Usually, when a dream world grows too much, the outside universe shifts its charge and realizes it. This is what happened with Star World that Alex III was in.

Rachel doesn't want to realize the dream worlds now, so she tweaked the universal laws. Now, the universe would no longer shift the dream world's charge. Therefore, the dream worlds would grow larger and larger without restriction.

As a result of Rachel's intervention, a considerable part of this universe is now occupied by various massive dream worlds.

Normally, such a situation would be like cancer; at some point, the dream worlds would grow so large that the universe could no longer realize them. That could spell the end for a universe.

There is a reason the main charges of reality aren't close to each other; once too close, they will collide and merge, or one will swallow the other. Dreamworlds and illusions are alternative realities that are too close to the dominant charge and are an existential threat to it.

But Rachel, who has gray energy, is not really worried about these; she can easily fix any problem at this scale with a little gray energy.

...

"Don't worry! With me here, nothing will happen!" said Jack, assuring the village chief.

"Jack Dono, the world needs you! Please, time is tight! They may break in at any moment!" he said while on his knee.

This dream world's backstory has been designed by Jack himself. He designed himself as a poor scholar who was rebelling against the Kampaku, who had taken the emperor hostage.

The Kampaku is bloodthirsty, killing the innocent and crushing justice; on the other hand, Jack, formerly a scholar, decides to stand against him not just with a pen but also with a sword.

Originally not knowing anything about the way of the sword, he came into contact with a group calling themselves Ken Mochi and learned the way of the sword from them. Nobody expected him to be so talented; he reached the top in less than a month.

Things that others learned in decades he learned in days; it wasn't easy; he took dangerous detours that could have taken his life every step of the way. Of course, those are just backstories; in fact, there was nothing all along that could remotely threaten a rank 11 incarnation; he could reduce this dream world to powder with one snap.

After mastering the way of the sword, he saw a scene of Kampaku's minions attacking helpless women and children.

Honestly, classifying women and children in a sentence as the same is truly offensive, as it just assumes that adult women are as helpless as children, presumably waiting for men to save them. But he wrote the backstory that way because that's how most people write tragic stories. Furthermore, as an immortal who has lived for over a trillion years, he simply doesn't care about these things anymore.

Seeing injustice, he took out his sword and killed most of Kampaku's minions while leaving some alive to take a message to Kampaku: his message was a bit too graphic to be displayed here. Kempaku, very thin-skinned, was outraged and ordered his execution.

The news spread like wildfire, making him famous. He walked the land, punishing evil whenever he saw it and saving the weak.

Then, he heard of a magical cave that could help one breakthrough and looked for it. He found it in this village, and the villagers excitedly helped him find the cave.

However, some villagers, enticed by the gold bounty on his head, leaked the news to Kempaku, who was eagerly looking for him.

...

"How can I look at myself in the mirror if I leave you? I prefer to die a million times but never run away!" Jack said heroically. Then, without warning, he took out his sword and ran toward the gate.

The village chief shouted, "Wait, Jack Dono! Let me go get my sword to help you!"

Jack shouted back with a heroic smile." I will never let an old man such as you be bothered by my troubles! Go any rest; I will never lose to a bunch of villains!" saying this, he disappeared.

...

The enemy commander attacking the gate, named Kuro, was dressed in black from head to toe.

He was from a ninja family.

Kuro was not a fan of Kampaku, but as someone with a village behind him, he couldn't resist at all. Kampaku was famous for his cruelty; there were many cases where he slaughtered the entire village for the wrongdoing of just one person.

Looking at the gate guards, all of whom were either dead on the ground or captured, he ordered: "Kill them all!"

The ninja trainees around killed all, even those who surrendered with ruthless slashes.

Usually, enemy armies would not kill those who surrender; that is for good strategic reasons; one always must leave a way out for the enemy; otherwise, they fight to the death.

A good commander would treat anyone who surrenders like a guest, providing them with good food and women and spreading the news to enemy soldiers to entice them to also surrender.

In the past, women were used as commodities in family marriages and even wars; that is an ugly fact.

It wasn't better for men either; they were treated as mere pawns, fighting wars for the rich and powerful. It's really a tough competition to decide whether a young boy who was conscripted and died had it worse or a poor woman who was captured.

In truth, all of the poor people shared the same fate of being objectified by the rich, regardless of age and gender. It's not that the rich are inherently evil either; one can bet that if many of those poor people also had money, they would probably act exactly like those rich people.

That is just how humans are designed by Alive; most are selfish and can only see things from their perspective, not caring about others. Of course, there are other human cultures designed by Alive that consist of all good people, but those are rare and not the norm.

Kuro didn't bother keeping the captured because he wanted to kill everyone anyway.

Blood covered the earth; it delighted Kuro. He didn't like fighting for Kampaku because he thought he wasn't being paid enough for his services, not that he was a good person.

In fact, Kuro was much worse than even Kampaku. As the chief ninja of Hoshikusa village, he was one of the worst people one could imagine finding.

A ninja village is not what one may expect of a village; sure, it's called a village, but it's far from it. They steal children to populate themselves; most boys would be sterilized to only focus on important things, like training to become better killers, instead of worrying about family formation.

They have ceremonies, like survival of the fittest, where they let a group kill each other until only one survives.

Still, even the most evil people can have good traits. Despite all of his atrocities, Kuro truly cares about his village; he is even willing to work for free, endangering his life to keep his village safe.

Kuro is not like those immortals who only care about themselves; he still cares deeply about his friends in the village.

"Keep young children alive!" he ordered; he is, of course, going to kill all adults and steal the children for their next recruitment round. The village takes in both boys and girls; after sterilizing most boys, they can put them all along with girls together in the same dormitory and don't need to worry about accidents.

In fact, women ninjas have more uses. In the current society, nobody expects women to be warriors; female ninjas can use this misconception and kill even stronger enemies. Even more, women ninjas are great for intelligence-gathering missions; in this era, most commanders are men, who are easily corruptible by trained female ninjas.

In short, even though the army and swordsmen never accept women, the best ninjas in the village are women.

The village's higher-ups, though, are still mostly men; they are usually chosen from the boys who haven't been sterilized.

The ninja village usually keeps boys from famous families, strong physiques, or those talented in useful arts intact.

"Go!" Kuro ordered.

But before the ninja trainees could move, laughter rang out.

"HAHAHAH," then, a big man with green hair appeared.

"Green hair? You are Jack!" Kuro smiled cruelly. Of course, he had heard of Jack's deeds, but he was not afraid. As a ninja, he trusted himself.

In wars, where thousands fight, ninjas are weak, but in 1v1 battles, ninjas can use all kinds of tricks, including poison and sneak attacks from the shadows. Even more, Jack came by himself; in Kuro's view, he was as good as dead.

"You … Kuro, right?" Jack smiled. He wrote this whole script, so of course, he knew Kuro. He is just a low-grade villain he designed for himself to step on.

Kuro's heart skipped a beat, but he didn't show it on his face; as a professional ninja, his face was already covered, but his eyes were still visible, so he was careful not to show his shock.

There are many tricks like this when one randomly calls a name and looks for a reaction; just now, if it was anyone else, they could have been shocked and asked, "How do you know?" But Kuro would never do that. He would prefer to leave his opponent in doubt. Even if the other party has some ideas, Kuro would not turn an idea into certainty.

"Kill him!" he shouted, while sighing; maybe he was overthinking it; after all, Jack won't leave here alive. But even so, Kuro wouldn't risk it; he is not one of those idiot villains who expose all his plans for an opponent he thinks will die. In general, one must talk less; the number of people who ruined their own plans or ruined their own lives by talking too much is astonishing.

The ninja trainees attacked.

Jack took out his weapon and, with a scream, attacked. He can, of course, kill them all with a thought, but he can't use his power on these ants now. In fact, they are not even ants; maybe they can be considered an electron in front of a galaxy.

Ants, in general, are very loyal to their colony; so are these ninja trainees. Even though one after another, they were easily cut down by Jack's sword, none ran away.

"Ha!" a ninja trainee attacked from an awkward angle. Jack wanted to dodge but was restricted by two other trainees on his left and right.

"Dang it!" he cursed; with only using normal strength, there was no way he could fight this many ninja trainees off. He dodged two of the attacks and then… Slash… A head dropped to the ground; it was Jack's head.

Kuro smiled. "Preserve the head carefully; we need to have evidence for Kempaku."

"Master?" one of the ninja trainees called him, startled.

"What is this?" Kuro asked, confused.

He looked at his hands and screamed; he was turning into a fog!

He, his troops, and everything else were becoming hazy, disappearing into fog.

"What is going…" before finishing, he stopped forever.

...

"I lost?" Jack laughed bitterly.

He got a bit carried away.

These dreamworlds work on a specific technique; their speed of advancement is fast, but Jack cannot use any supernatural power in front of mortals in these worlds; otherwise, the world would be destroyed; also, If he dies, everything would turn into a dream fog, which can be consumed by Rachel.

But, rank 9 dream fog is almost useless to her, so he usually is careful until rank 11 before considering dream fog transformation.

After gathering the liquid dream fog, Jack snapped his fingers, and another dream world, exactly like the one that had just turned into fog, appeared.

...

Jack looked at Kuro.

"Kill him!" ordered Kuro.

Seeing this, Jack ran away without hesitation; no more hero play; it's time for that old man village chief to take out his sword to help!