These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies ... done!
Dependency resolution took 0.99 s (backtrack: 0/20).

[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/protobuf-21.12:0/3.21.12.0::gentoo  USE="zlib -emacs -examples -test" 5021 KiB

Total: 1 package (1 new), Size of downloads: 5021 KiB