Gojo Satoru In Re:Zero Chapter 130 130 - Up! Up! Up! Popularity Points Explode

The story rolled on.

After the conference, Felt had pulled ahead of the other candidates in public standing, and Gojo's showing was most of the reason. Putting everything else aside, the fact that he and Betty had cowed the entire upper echelon of the kingdom without Reinhard ever drawing his sword was frankly unsettling.

The new episode started.

The Comnt section lit up at once, everyone buzzing over what Felt had gained at the conference.

Compared to the other candidates, Felt had co out ahead on every front. Declaration. Power. Presence. And with the royal bloodline revealed, her rough childhood, flaws and all, only added to the picture. She'd shown enough promise that the potential returns on backing her were obvious.

Anyone with half a brain wouldn't pass that up.

And the episode didn't let them down.

Felt, for her part, had always had a one-track mind when it ca to money. So when the Royal Guard Knights ca knocking to challenge Gojo, looking to salvage so reputation, a perfectly respectable contest got turned into a paid attraction on the spot.

That alone would've been sothing.

But Gojo also, with a straight face, called himself a Spirit Arts User and tossed a thoroughly unwilling Betty out to fight for him.

[Hahaha, these two are unreal.]

[Seriously. Betty got flung out there like so kind of pocket monster.]

[I choose you, Betty!]

[Wait though, is this actually going to work? Betty's a Great Spirit, her mana's limited, right? Even with Gojo there it shouldn't be enough.]

[Forget? Betty learned Jujutsu.]

[I can already picture those knights holding their noses and paying up just to get beaten. I can't stop laughing.]

[Is there anything these two won't do?]

[Reinhard standing next to them looks like a husky dropped in with a wolf pack...]

Gojo scrolled through the comnts and felt he was picking up a few new expressions.

But what ca next flat-out shattered the viewers' worldview.

They knew what a Great Spirit was, in the abstract. A powerful, unusual kind of existence. Everyone understood that much. How powerful, in actual terms, was another question. When Betty and Gojo had clashed at the mansion, both of them had held back. At the conference she'd only lood, hadn't really thrown anything. So the picture of a Great Spirit's real ceiling stayed blurry, the sa way Reinhard's did. Everyone knew he was the strongest. Nobody could tell you what that looked like in practice.

Under those conditions, when Betty started dispatching the knights of the Royal Guard one after another, the way an adult might demolish a kindergartener, the Comnt section collapsed into a wall of exclamation points.

Nobody had pegged the cute little tsundere as actually being that terrifying.

The Royal Guard Knights weren't just anybody. They were the best and most polished the kingdom could field. One-in-ten-thousand didn't begin to cover it.

And Betty was steamrolling them. Rubbing their faces in the dirt, one after the next.

[For real? The little loli is that strong?]

[You couldn't tell from her fight with Gojo at all.]

[Seriously, Gojo's luck is insane. He picked up a Great Spirit this strong.]

[If we're talking lucky, shouldn't it be Felt? First Gojo, then Betty, now Reinhard. Every other candidate's getting left in the dust.]

[Done. It's over. The Royal Guard is not sleeping tonight.]

[Hahaha, Gojo and Felt are already planning another round. These two are naces.]

[I don't even want to imagine how the knights break if they lose a second ti.]

The Royal Guard had nothing for Betty. Zero answer.

Felt, anwhile, pocketed a few hundred Holy Gold Coins with a grin you could've hung a painting on, and started cheerfully sketching out the next event.

Only then.

When everyone, audience included, had settled in for more of the sa steady rhythm.

Did the other shoe drop.

Return by Death kicked in again.

The tiline snapped back to the mont the conference ended.

The Comnt section crashed. No one had seen it coming. No buildup, no warning, no tell at all.

[What?]

[Why'd it just reset? Nothing even happened.]

[Only Subaru can Return by Death, so sothing must've gone wrong on his end.]

[Subaru and Emilia went back to the mansion together. Sothing went sideways on the road!]

[Another loop. Can Subaru please contribute for once instead of dumping it on everyone else.]

While the Comnt section churned, Subaru, under Gojo's questioning, finally laid out what had happened to him.

[Witch Cult?]

[Subaru's the unluckiest guy alive. Every disaster finds him.]

[The issue is he's got nothing besides the rewind. Actual walking liability.]

[Liability is harsh. It's not like he wants this.]

[The rewind alone is enough. With Gojo and the others, there's nothing to worry about.]

[Honestly, I feel bad for him. From how he looked this ti, his death must have been grueso. Kid's going to have trauma.]

There wasn't much more to the segnt content-wise.

But on the ranking panel, the instant Gojo made the call to go get payback for Subaru, the Popularity Points ticked up hard again.

[See, when it counts, my husband delivers.]

[Touch my friend and you'll learn what the bond between us ans!]

[Kill, kill, kill!]

[Those people do not get to walk away from this.]

[Felt: What? Another chance to jack up my reputation?]

[The other candidates are going to cry.]

With Gojo and the others committed to striking the Witch Cult, the episode ended there.

"Huh?"

"Why stop there? There's more, isn't there?"

The panel went black and Gojo stared, nonplussed.

What was this.

He'd been riding high on the rush of watching his Popularity Points shoot up, and right at the peak, the thing just... stopped?

There was clearly more content to go.

Before he could figure out what had happened, the black panel lit back up.

"Oh. So that's what this is. They tacked on extra episodes?"

His eyes brightened.

[This ani has received strong praise and been awarded a featured slot. Additional episodes unlocked automatically.]

[Keep up the good work and aim higher.]

Featured slots were familiar territory. Sa as on a website or in a magazine. Big boost to exposure, pulls in a fresh wave of viewers.

Automatic extra episodes was new to him. He wasn't sure what the trigger was. Maybe the earlier numbers had been strong enough that the system had held back episodes instead of airing them imdiately? That was about the only explanation that fit.

No wonder the gap before this batch had been so long. They'd been saving up the extras.

In that case, everything tracked.

"Going by pattern, a normal run is two episodes at a ti."

"So a bonus run is probably four in one go."

"Question is how much the boost plus the feature slot will net ."

He hadn't paid much attention to any of this before. That was changing. With a monster like Reinhard looming, every external advantage counted.

He glanced at the ranking.

Popularity Points had cleared one hundred thousand and were sitting at a hundred and ten. Two more episodes to go. Conservative projection put him well past two hundred thousand by the end. Still a way to go before hitting the five hundred thousand mark for Ten Shadows Technique, but not nearly as far as before.

Once he had Ten Shadows, he could start stockpiling for Adaptation.

"A million four hundred thousand short. Long road."

He exhaled, then settled back in.

The third episode opened, and the Comnt section was clearly caught off guard. A wall of question marks and expletives rolled past.

Nobody had known today would include extras.

The sa viewers who'd been begging for more a minute ago were now losing it.

[Bonus episodes?! (voice crack)!!!]

[Incredible, incredible, incredible!]

[More of my beloved husband looking cool!]

[I am so in love.]

[Did the sun rise in the west? We get bonus episodes now?]

[First ani I've ever seen actually add episodes.]

[Just let enjoy it, I don't need to know why!]

The episode picked up where the last had left off. After Subaru laid out what had happened with the Witch Cult, Gojo gathered the group and moved out the mont the conference wrapped.

Tight window, heavy workload.

Gojo opted to teleport everyone in, one at a ti. It wasn't long before most of the group was staged near Arlam Village.

"It's coming."

He rembered clearly. The White Whale was due.

And sure enough, as he returned to the great tree to collect Betty and Subaru, thick fog began to swallow the air.

One of the Three Great Mabeasts. The White Whale had arrived.

[What the hell is that?!]

[White Whale? Seriously, this world has mabeasts that big?]

[This thing's nearly as big as the Divine Dragon, isn't it?]

[A mabeast at that tier showing up here out of nowhere? Sothing's off.]

[With Gojo and Betty, it shouldn't be a real threat even at this size.]

[Size doesn't equal strength, I know, I know. But co on, this thing is ridiculous.]

[Your priorities are weird. Shouldn't the thing we're actually questioning be how a whale is flying around up there?]

The White Whale's entrance dominated the chat.

That silhouette, that bulk, it demanded attention. For about a minute. Then sothing else took the stage.

Gojo's figure materialized in front of the thing.

On screen, the sheer mass and nace of the White Whale failed to make him look anything other than relaxed. At ease. Sa lazy composure as always.

He threw out a probe, light and curious. And just that much was enough to put the Comnt section on edge.

[My husband's hits look kind of weak.]

[Gojo's not going to actually lose, right?]

[Judging by his face, no. Betty's just watching from below, hasn't moved.]

[If he loses, though, that would be hilarious.]

[Not possible.]

[Yeah, the protagonist doesn't eat it in his own fight.]

The debate didn't get much runway.

Because after the probe, Gojo dropped the pretense. No more playing around.

He unveiled the new move.

Hollow Technique: Purple.

The instant it landed, the whole image shook. Blinding radiance, aftershock tearing across the screen, the kind of scene that looked less like a technique and more like the end of the world compressed into a single fra.

Viewers watched with their mouths hanging open.

The White Whale, drifting above, didn't get the luxury of a slower reaction.

One Hollow Technique: Purple. Head and most of the body were erased into red mist. All that hung in the air afterward was a thin sliver of belly, like salmon sliced clean, only the underside remaining. Everything else was gone.

[Hss.]

[Cool cool cool cool cool!!!]

[Husband!!!]

[The effects on this are insane!]

[ 1!]

[Budget's on fire. The VFX in this show is absurd.]

[Watching a well-funded production is such a high. Do this again soon, please.]

[The Three Great Mabeasts, this is it? One shot and it's done? They spent centuries building this thing up as the scourge of nations, said it killed the previous Sword Saint, and here we are.]

[Or, hear out, maybe the White Whale isn't weak. Gojo's just that strong.]

The fight had launched the Comnt section into a new peak.

Popularity Points poured in like there was no bottom on the well, numbers dancing upward in a way that was genuinely gratifying.

And as far as Gojo was concerned, this was only the opening.

Because the Sin Archbishop of Sloth arc was still ahead.

The White Whale was down. The audience was still deep in the discussion. On his end, Gojo had already pulled the group back together and was sorting out the logistics of dealing with the body.

Straightforward enough, except Felt hogged most of the screen ti.

Couldn't really be helped. The girl's relationship with money was what it was. One look at the White Whale carcass and her feet wouldn't move.

White Whale handled, they didn't lose sight of the actual job. The Witch Cult.

After a brief regroup, they set off for Arlam Village again.

Along the way, the audience picked up quite a bit more about Reinhard.

...

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