[Pain [Nagato Uzumaki]. Signed and Sealed Capture. 60.
Konan. God's Angel. Signed and Sealed Capture. 30.
Yahiko. Signed and Sealed Capture. 12.
Jiraiya. The Toad Sage. Signed and Sealed Capture. 45.
Itsuki Uchiha. Signed and Sealed Capture. 30.
225 Credits Remaining.]
Alex Mercer's Hive Mind was a surprisingly efficient thing to behold, being as it took on many aspects of the Social Club. Less a collection of minds, than it was a collection of memories, experiences, and emotions. I hadn't taken into account that One For All greatly amplifies and expands the powers of each Quirk as it was passed on, and that included Blacklight, which it sort of saw as a Quirk due to it's unique nature.
Blacklight was more akin to the Agents from the Matrix now, a subtle but powerful pseudo-mind that could dictate orders, follow missives, and could create copies of itself even out of nothing but chakra so long as a person in my retinue was within the area thanks to having both Kurama and Isobu into the Hive Mind. While each copy of Blacklight was still directed by me, as I am Blacklight, the virus was truly something more akin to a reality warping entity.
I could now appear in any of my retinue members, switching their consciousness and their body with my own, at any time. Simply by willing it so, I could create a copy of myself next to them simply by their bodies emitting viral particles into the air as I could take those tiny pieces and use chakra to create a new body for the other me. A new form of Shadow Clone, a True Clone, a living flesh and blood copy that didn't weaken itself by splitting myself in two like Mu did in the Fourth Shinobi War.
That had been just one of the changes I had inadvertently made during that process. The synergies between Accelerator and Gojo had always been there, but both were limited by the neurological process of a single human brain. No matter how intelligent, no matter how powerful that processing speed, all of it was dictated by a single brain, a single mind. A weakness that could be exploited.
A weakness no longer. Though the abilities of Accelerator and Gojo had been locked away from the other retinue members for their own, and others, safety, I was still able to piggyback off of the processing power of my entire retinue whose minds had been altered and expanded to equal my own. A brain that had the processing speed of Accelerator.
42 Minds of Accelerator all working in one Network. The Accelerator Network.
I was no longer a Tier 7. I wasn't even a Tier 8.
I was a Tier 9. A Tier 9 is, at base, Planet-level. This is generally the point where the capital-G Gods are at. This was without obtaining the Rinnegan, nor bringing Kaguya into my retinue. With both, I could place myself easily on Tier 10, being that Tier 10's are fully capable of manipulating, influencing, and altering things on a planet scale with ease, and with abilities generally considered impossible to do.
That didn't mean I was infallible. I was sure to remind myself that there are beings out there that make Tier 10's look like Tier 1's. The idea of being this powerful is a nice form of insurance in a world like Naruto, but this would be of little help in a world like WH-40K where I was certain the Chaos Gods were easily Tier Y's. I am not invulnerable, I am not unkillable.
The thing that kills Contractors is arrogance and overconfidence. Do not fall into that trap.
Still, I couldn't help but smile. I was thankful my idea paid off. I did not trust the Company when it came to Heritages. If the deals seem too good to be true, it probably is.
Dragon Heritage makes you powerful, but you will spend a lot of time guarding your harem, I mean, your hoard, as you struggle to raise them to your Tier.
Transhumanism is great for expanding one's skillset or power on a biological, cybernetic, or spiritual level, and can ease the elevating of your retinue, but there's the rub. You can only choose one unless you want to start spending IMG Tickets. It also leaves you vulnerable in the beginning, as well as toward the end if an enemy can figure out your Transhumanism specialty and counter it.
Outsider is another way to make you something outside of reality and still fully capable of interacting with the world, but your very nature draws suspicion and concern, and good luck dealing with being a very small fish in a big ocean if you end up in a place where the spiritual takes an Eldritch twist, because the Chaos Gods would happily chew on the Outsider as a snack.
Every Heritage has drawbacks, every Heritage limits you in some way, because the price paid for an easy ladder for power is that you are stuck if the ladder is burned under you, and you have no way to get off.
So I chose something different. To form my own Heritage, without relying on a Heritage. Blacklight is quite similar to Transhumanism and the Primal Shroud. Signed and Sealed can allow one to bind even one's soul to the binder with the right worded Contract, and HypnosSocial Club allows a fiat-backed private realm that transcends even the astral plane, and allows a connection from me to them regardless of if they live or die. With All For One and One For All, passing along one's biological abilities without killing and consuming the individual becomes not only feasible, but preferable, as One For All amplifies the 'Quirks' of those it has carried over time, while All For One can give an instinctive understanding on how those Quirks work, as well as regulates them to ensure they don't kill the hosts of One For All.
With the bijuu, I can even connect this beyond a biological level, as Blacklight is no longer merely a physical virus, but a mental and spiritual one as well.
[Template Stacking I: [Dragon [Worm] for Shikamaru Nara. -160.
65 Credits Remaining.]
And now a cybernetic virus as well.
The processing speeds of Dragon was a joke in comparison to Accelerator and Gojo, but her aptitude as a Tinker was nothing to scoff at. At a Tier 4, the power is untrained, and barely viable for use, but already it was being put to use as by technically speaking the Blacklight virus would be considered an invention by a Tinker, considering Alex Mercer had created the Blacklight out of Redlight.
Another session of utilizing Tsukuyomi alongside the Social Club and everything else would go a long way to not only mastering the Dragon Template, but also adding in the Rinnegan as well as the Paper based Jutsu Konan was capable of using. In conjunction with the Ink Style utilized by Sai, it would be a nightmare to face in battle. Paper created Paths, alongside the ability of creating neural duplicates of oneself using the Dragon Template and a Shadow Clone as a base.
My smile widened.
Truly, one must be frightened when a Nara is motivated.
The Third Hokage puffed his pipe, a large grin on his face.
By law, the Hokage could not interfere with civilian business affairs unless it had to do with one of his shinobi, in order to encourage the masses to move to Konoha back when it was founded.
You fucked up, Ms. Otogawa, and Mr. Kobayashi. Messing with Naruko's apartment while she was a civilian is one thing, but as a shinobi? Now you've made it my business.
Mr. Kobayashi had nothing to do with Naruko's apartment, per say, but he did have control over Naruko's bank account that she had been lawfully given as a shinobi of Konoha. Internal red flags popped up when the Hokage sent Teuchi to investigate the books on the backend, and Naruko's bank account was smaller than it should have been.
Despite the missions and a lot of the backpay that the Third Hokage graciously transferred from the civilians years ago that had failed to turn up to Konoha's courts to answer for the crimes against Naruko Uzumaki, it was a third of the size it should have been. And several orphans and Jonin accounts showed similar errors.
Someone was skimming money from my shinobi.
Naturally, his ever so dutiful shinobi had already taken things to task. Again, legally, the Hokage could do nothing other than hand a notice to the Daimyo in the capital of the Land of Fire if he had to deal with civilians, but, as always, his shinobi were far more, shall we say, practical on these matters.
Mr. Kobayashi had tragically fallen ill several days ago and left a last will and testament to transfer all of his assets and funds to Naruko Uzumaki. How generous of him.
So, Naruko got all of her money back, and now technically owns a bank. Of course, this would technically be illegal, as shinobi had to have all income not related to their jobs as shinobi documented separately to ensure the Hokage couldn't just reach in and take it, but Naruko Uzumaki wasn't the owner of the bank, as the bank was now under the Nara Trust, who would hold onto it until Naruko reached her majority. Privately, the Third Hokage suspected Naruko would happily marry Shikamaru and let the Nara keep the bank, but that wasn't his decision to make.
And, if, for some reason, the Nara Clan started using the bank to invest into a lot of the civilian sectors of the economy, well, the Third Hokage couldn't do anything about it. Clans had their own separate laws and regulations entirely, so it wasn't like the Third could do anything if the Hyuga complained, not unless they wanted to open up a generational case on familial slavery.
The Third Hokage smiled.
I should really give Shikamaru a bonus on his last mission. Turns out he might have killed a little known S-rank missing ninja in that minor village after all.