Chapter 158: Omnidirectional Mobility Gear

"Here it comes, here it comes!" Miki looked at Fuka's red hair, where a muddy torso with human outlines had indeed formed, though there was still some time before a full resurrection.

He had to save Maki first!

"Grandma Tobi, would you like to stay and do commentary with me?" Karin stroked Tobi's head. She had never imagined that time travel would be so suffocating—she wasn't allowed to do this, she wasn't allowed to say that, and her hands were itching terribly.

"Com... mentary?" Tobi had never heard the word before, much like it had never experienced the sensation of taking a dump.

"Yeah, in the future, you and Grandpa Tofuku were always the gold-medal commentators and most popular talk show hosts at Loulan TV, except Dad wouldn't let me go on stage. He said it was an idle old-granny game." Karin spread her hands helplessly.

"Who is Tofuku?" Miki was also puzzled.

"Also a White Zetsu, the one with a lot of spikes on its back!" Karin mimicked.

"The spiky White Zetsu? I actually named him that? Tofuku... sounds like a guy who loves to spout nonsense." The moment Miki imagined two White Zetsu singing a double act on television, the mental image was thrilling.

"I want to stay and do commentary!" Tobi actually abandoned its own flesh and blood, running over to hang on Karin's shoulder.

"What am I supposed to do if you take Tobi away...?" Miki pointed at himself. Without the stats provided by Tobi, wouldn't it be even harder to fight Sasori?

"Don't worry, I can resurrect you if you die. The Sands of Time here are still enough to revive you three or five times over." Karin giggled and shook the Z-space time drive.

"You really are a piece of work, Daddy loves you to death!" Miki angrily ruffled Karin's dog-like head.

"Alright, I still have some toys from my childhood here, take them and try them out." Karin conjured up two more scrolls.

Poof! Poof!

One scroll contained the left arm of a Hextech steam-powered gauntlet.

The other scroll was a belt in the same Hextech mechanical style.

"These are..." Miki's eyes lit up like a ten-year-single man seeing a double-lidded pedigree sow in agitation.

"A Hex-steam three-dimensional mobility belt, my seventh birthday present. It's a pity that after I fell from a height of five hundred meters, you confiscated it. I didn't get to play with it again until I was eight. Honestly, other people were already destroying the world at five, while I was stuck at home playing Tekken," Karin said helplessly.

"What else good do you have, bring it all out!" Miki wished he could stuff his entire head into Karin's ninja tool pouch.

"There's nothing left! That's all I brought!" Karin hurriedly covered her pockets and pushed Miki away, as nervous as a teenager whose parents were searching their drawers.

Since Miki possessed Joker-level hand speed, with a flick of his pinky finger, he pulled a scroll out of the ninja tool pouch. It had the word "Book" written on it. Unrolling it, he found it densely packed with titles of romance manga.

"Good grief, just how many raunchy books have you been reading!" Miki looked at the ambiguous text, a breath of spring hitting him right in the face.

"Tch, can you count how many steamed buns you've eaten in your life?" Karin snatched the scroll back from Miki and pushed up her glasses.

"You're done for. Space and time have already been twisted." Miki reached out and slipped the other steam gauntlet onto his arm, then equipped the steam three-dimensional mobility belt. "I am definitely going to confiscate all your books."

"Then you better set a good example, make sure you hide all your spicy magazines well so I never find them." Karin didn't care in the least.

The situation over at Maki's was at a critical juncture, and there was no time to chat any further.

"Do I press this button to spray steam?" Miki felt two joystick buttons pop out of the gauntlet after equipping the three-dimensional mobility belt, and he pressed them all the way down.

Hiss... Bang!!!

A scorching and violent burst of steam immediately jetted from the exhaust ports at the back of the belt, shooting him forward like an arrow released from a bowstring, leaving a human-shaped trail of smoke in the air.

"Wow, so fast, as fast as a fierce dog with chili oil smeared on its butt," Tobi exclaimed in admiration.

"Ahem, are we starting already? Fine." Karin straightened her collar and perked up. "Hello everyone, it's talk show time now. I'm Karin, so glad to see you all."

"Hello everyone, I'm Tobi, Karin looks very energetic today!"

"Yes, I feel as energetic as someone putting on brand-new red underwear on the morning of the New Year!" Karin nodded. "Tobi should be very happy today too."

"Tobi is as happy as a patient with sixteen years of constipation who suddenly lets it all out in one torrential flow!" Tobi grinned.

"All joking aside, look, Dad has successfully approached Sasori!" Karin pointed at Miki, who was flailing wildly in mid-air.

"Our protagonist seems a bit unaccustomed to his new equipment. Oh, my goddess... He's flying around like a green bean blowfly whose head got smashed by a falling turd from the sky..." Tobi covered its mouth and shrieked.

"Ahhhhhhh..." Miki felt like he had been thrown into a front-loading washing machine. Using the three-dimensional mobility belt for the first time, he had no way to properly control his direction in the air, flying around completely out of control like a headless fly.

"No, no, no, Dad told me he's a genius. Skills that other people spend a lifetime practicing, he can master just by looking at them once. I believe he must be charging up an ultimate move!" Karin said firmly.

Miki gritted his teeth. How could he break a lifetime's worth of bragging like this? He slightly released the buttons, gently nudged the joysticks, and struggled to stabilize his posture.

Sasori looked at Miki flying haphazardly across the sky, a nameless sense of crisis welling up in his heart. It felt as though genuine evasive maneuvers should look precisely like this—completely devoid of any pattern, and therefore naturally impossible to anticipate.

He raised one hand to shoot toward the air while his other hand continued to melt the stone pillar where Maki was hiding. Only by killing this mother-insulting bastard could the emotions in his heart be calmed; puppets required no emotions.

"Wow, this pillar of fire is burning so fiercely. If he gets hit, he's definitely going to turn into a well-done shish kebab!" Karin's filial piety had soured.

"Absolute perfection! As absolute as pissing against the wind and wetting your shoes!" Tobi chimed in.

Miki gritted his teeth and pressed the power button all the way down. The steam power surged explosively, and he flicked the directional buttons in a completely rhythm-less chaotic frenzy, dodging the flame formation impact with the philosophy of a brawler defeating a master through sheer randomness. Since his technique wasn't up to par, he would leave everything to unknown destiny!

"Wow, what a coquettish and seductive arc of movement! Doing this is even harder than trying to chase away a fly with urine!" Tobi cheered.

"Can you... lure this pillar of fire away as well?" Maki's entire body was scorched bright red by the superheated air, and he tried once more to break out of the rock pillar area using a decoy, but just like before, the moment the shadow clone was thrown out, it was instantly burned to ashes.

"Oh~ Maki has fallen into crisis and couldn't help but send out a distress signal. He's suffering and stressing out right now just like a neighbor's husband hiding inside a wardrobe, not daring to make a sound when he hears the husband come home." Karin danced with excitement as she learned Tobi's bizarre metaphors.

"Really... if two pillars of fire intersect to form a curtain of fire, the danger level will increase linearly!" Miki's internal thoughts were actually the most professional commentary, but he still intended to take the risk. If he died, he would just respawn and try again; the fault tolerance rate was just that high.

"Sasori, guess a riddle?" Miki shouted, his voice drifting ethereally from left to right.

"Oh, it's time for Dad's cold mockery segment. Is he going to tell some dirty joke?" Karin said excitedly.

"What animal has six legs in the morning, four legs at noon, and two legs in the evening?"