It was a strange device about the size of his palm.
Its casing was dark blue, made of something that looked part metal, part crystal, with streamlined silver trim around the edges.
A small square screen on the front gave off a faint blue glow that brightened and dimmed like breathing.
There were a few simple buttons on the side and an antenna-like nub at the top. Overall, it looked like a Digivice.
"What is this thing?" Boruto picked up the device in confusion. It felt heavy and cold in his hand.
He vaguely remembered Sasori mentioning something like a virtual-reality gaming device.
The moment his finger touched the screen—
Bzzz!
Blue light blazed from the screen! A beam shot out and formed a slightly distorted, flickering hologram in the air before Boruto: a human figure about thirty centimeters tall.
Red hair, a youthful face, red eyes, and a white lab coat—it was Sasori of the Red Sands!
But Sasori's projection was terribly unstable. Tiny fragments of data kept breaking away from its edges and vanishing. His face looked blurrier and stiffer than usual, like a video call with a terrible connection.
"Sasori?!" Boruto nearly dropped the device. "What's going on?! How are you... Where is this? How did we get here?"
The hologram seemed able to see and hear Boruto. Sasori spoke quickly, with a rare urgency in his voice:
"Boruto, listen carefully. There isn't much time. Urashiki of the Jashinist Cult attacked my base..."
"He used that Uchiha girl's Mangekyo ability, combined with some unknown technology, to drag the consciousness of every living being in Sunagakure into this superimposed illusory world, built from the real world and a data simulation..."
Boruto's head spun. Urashiki, Mangekyo, superimposed, illusory world... He sort of understood each word, but together they might