The strange phenomena inside the dim laboratory gradually subsided, and the residual energy fluctuations in the air also tended toward tranquility.
Takuno did not need to rely on any mirror surface; a brand-new perception of power originating from the deepest depths of his soul had already told him clearly and without error.
The Mangekyō Sharingan—he had successfully awakened it!
At this moment, the deeply engraved scenes he had just experienced flashed repeatedly and uncontrollably across his mind.
Every shift of the images caused an inexpressible light to pass through the deep recesses of his pupils.
The fundamental reason why he had fought so desperately, squeezing his potential to seek a breakthrough in a near-suicidal manner—wasn't it precisely to prevent these tragic endings from playing out in reality?
What he had just experienced were not illusory bubbles fabricated out of thin air.
Those scenarios were, in fact, the worst-case possibilities that he had deduced countless times in his mind before every single operation.
This "experience" merely forced the materialization of all the preconceptions regarding failure hidden in the depths of his heart, using power to compel them.
And it forced him to "experience" them firsthand.
Precisely because of this, the impact it brought could not be compared on equal terms with the fake illusionary realms produced by ordinary genjutsu devices.
It was a sense of reality that struck directly at the soul.
More importantly, those previewed scenarios were all based on Takuno's own life trajectory!
They were tragedies that he might cause with his own hands, or losses that he would be unable to retrieve.
The weight of this "reality" based on his own fate's trajectory was far beyond what could be achieved by using a device to experience the tragic life of someone else.
Thinking up to this point, the corner of Takuno's mouth involuntarily hooked upward into an arc.
His concept was ultimately proven feasible.
During the countless days and nights of hard thinking previously, and after his previous deliberations concluded.
He did not give up; returning to his own room, he attempted to deduce various possible paths to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan, yet he was consistently unable to arrive at a definitive conclusion.
Ultimately, he chose to return to the origin—the most traditional method, the one most verified by the history of the Uchiha clan.
However, according to the methods by which those Uchihas awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan in the original work, one needed to cultivate a person whom they deeply "loved," and then terminate them with their own hands, or witness their death amidst ultimate agony.
This method of relying on extreme emotional shock might be feasible for certain Uchiha clansmen, but for Takuno, it was a dead end.
This was something he had already determined beforehand.
His personality dictated that unless his will was forcibly distorted by Kotoamatsukami—the Mangekyō Sharingan known as the "strongest genjutsu"—it was virtually impossible for him to generate that kind of deeply engraved "love" sufficient to drive the awakening of the Mangekyō.
Placing his hopes on Kotoamatsukami? That could only serve as a backup plan of last resort.
Because Kotoamatsukami's lengthy cooldown time dictated that it could not become Takuno's primary option.
At this time, Takuno suddenly had a thought: must the object of "love" absolutely be a human?
This thought did not arise out of thin air, but rather originated from the near-paranoid pursuit of power in the deepest depths of his heart.
For many years, he had already sacrificed everything of himself entirely to that expedition of pursuing power, whether it was his life or his emotions!
If one were to speak of the purity and depth of "love," his attachment to power was absolutely not inferior to anyone's infatuation with a flesh-and-blood body;
This love had perhaps long since transcended mundane fetters and become the cornerstone of his soul.
Thus, a bold concept brewed in his mind.
How could he make himself "lose" power?
He knew deeply that blindly destroying those precious resources that had not yet been used was no different from drinking poison to quench thirst; that was absolutely a foolish act of abandoning the fundamentals for the incidentals.
Ultimately, after he saw that device for assisting eye-awakening, he obtained his solution: materialize the worst preconceptions of acquiring power from the past.
In the abyss of his memory, he replayed the scenarios of losing power time after time.
Every single time, he felt as if he were falling into a deep abyss; the emptiness, despair, and unwillingness when his power dissipated rushed over him like a tide.
However, the endings were always as similar as fate.
Even if he dropped to the very bottom of the valley, he would not sink into oblivion.
That desire to become stronger drove him to stand back up; it was also impossible for him to give up the possibility of becoming stronger just like that. He would still continue to become stronger step by step, all the way until the very end!
But... there is no end to power; precisely because of this, Takuno's footsteps never paused.
As long as there was still a road ahead, he would keep walking forward!
This profound comprehension of "losing" time after time and his unswerving commitment to "pursuing" collided and sublimated within the furnace of his soul.
Ultimately, that long-accumulated ocular power finally achieved sublimation; the Mangekyō Sharingan opened brilliantly within his eyes!
This was the Mangekyō Sharingan belonging to Takuno!
Takuno paced slowly to the front of the mirror, holding his breath and concentrating his mind.
Although he had already awakened this pair of legendary pupils, right now was his first time directly facing his own Mangekyō Sharingan.
The blood-red pupils shifted in the mirror; his very first reaction was actually a few points of stupefaction—it was too "plain."
How complex, magnificent, and beautiful were ordinary Mangekyō?
Windmills rotating and slicing through empty space, shuriken sharp edges breaking out from the pupils, six-pointed stars nested with eerie secret patterns, and so forth...
Yet within his eyes, only a solitary ring was added upon the base of the standard Sharingan pupil.
The lines were concise and neat, even revealing a sliver of simplicity.
He furrowed his brows, and as his ocular power surged in, that ring actually started to rotate slowly without any rhyme or reason.
Wyrdly, the eyeball, which was supposed to be a flat pattern, now produced a powerful sense of spatial distortion due to the rotation of the ring, as if his vision pierced through the mirror surface and dropped into a deep, three-dimensional dimension.
What made his heart vibrate slightly even more was that as the rotation accelerated, minute scale-like patterns emerged at the junction where the ring's head and tail connected.
How was this a simple ring? It was clearly a snake biting its own tail-tip tightly!
"Ouroboros..." Takuno murmured, the pad of his finger subconsciously brushing past the corner of his eye.
The symbolic meaning of the pattern caused his thoughts to move slightly, but he immediately cast it to the back of his mind.
No matter how strange or bizarre the appearance was, it wasn't the key; what he truly cared about was the power bestowed by this pair of eyes.
He prayed secretly, not extravagantly begging to match that space-tearing "Kamui," but simply pleading that it must absolutely not be "Tsukuyomi."
Genjutsu, although powerful, was ultimately not his forte.
His combat style pursued thunder-like taijutsu and ninjutsu crushing, rather than silent strangulation at the mental level.
Furthermore, placing it within the original work, by the time of the final battles, the genjutsu that were useful were also few and far between.
The only one capable of being brought to the table was the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
He closed his eyes to perceive, his ocular power surging like an undercurrent.
Under initial contact, although he could not clearly know the specific ability of this pair of Mangekyō, he could also perceive that it was absolutely not Tsukuyomi, or otherwise Amaterasu.
A trace of barely discernable relaxation passed across his brow.
He looked at his Mangekyō Sharingan; for the days ahead, the matter was very clear, which was to grope out the power of his Mangekyō Sharingan.
Of course, it wasn't starting right now immediately.
Because, after experiencing those worst preconceptions, although his spiritual energy was still sufficient, he still inevitably felt a sliver of fatigue emerging from the bottom of his heart.
Therefore, he decided to take a long-overdue sleep, no longer continuing to attempt the exploration of regularizing Sage Mode, but resting in the truest sense of the word!
As long as one clearly knew beforehand that every single pair of Mangekyō Sharingan would possess its own unique ability, and worked hard to grope for it afterward, wanting to know their abilities was not difficult.
Even if the specific effects were temporarily unclear, they had already long since existed substantially within the ocular power of the Mangekyō.
Therefore, even if one made no active exploration, during future life-and-death combat, as long as one was forced to utilize the Mangekyō, the ability would also be highly likely to manifest actively at the critical juncture.
For instance, it was precisely during his dead-end situation against the Eight-Tails Jinchūriki Killer B that Sasuke awakened the flame control power of "Enton: Kagutsuchi."
However, Takuno decisively rejected this perilous path of "breaking through in the face of battle."
Because erupting amidst a dead end and comprehending between life and death were privileges belonging only to protagonists who carried "destiny."
As for him, a "minor supporting character" who had gone through twists and turns just to open the Mangekyō, if he emulated this method, a slight lack of caution would lead to an unredeemable ending; he could not afford to bear any accidents.
After several days of focused, safe, and devoted deep groping, Takuno finally unveiled the veil of his Mangekyō's ability.
But when the truth presented itself, he fell into a brief stupefaction, even being unable to resist asking himself in a low voice:
"Am I really that afraid of dying?"
This stupefaction originated from the characteristics of his left eye's ability; it actually possessed an exquisite similarity to the Uchiha forbidden jutsu "Izanagi," yet it wasn't a complete replica of it.
The core of Izanagi lay in the fact that the caster could, within a limited timeframe, rewrite reality that had already occurred and was disadvantageous to themselves into "never having happened," while selectively retaining results advantageous to themselves; the price, however, was the permanent blindness of the casting eye.
What was contained within Takuno's left eye was a reversal ability.
When he stimulated this portion of ocular power, he possessed an opportunity to choose anew; he could precisely reverse his own state back to any single time node he had experienced in the past.
This power of reversal acted upon himself, and its effect was extremely significant.
The state of his body, regardless of whether it was new or old injuries, would instantly recover to its original condition, as if time had never elapsed at that point;
At the same time, his physical location would also instantly transfer, precisely appearing at the location where he was situated at that selected time node.
This was virtually equivalent to a personal, localized backward flow of time directed at himself.
This power also possessed prices and limitations.
First of all, the effect of the reversal was strictly limited to Takuno himself and could not extend to act upon any other person.
Secondly, among the "states" restored by the reversal, it did not include the ocular power he himself consumed, which meant he could not rely on the reversal to replenish the ocular power lost from activating this ability.
In addition, the more distant the target time node was from his current moment, the more massive the ocular power required to be paid to activate this ability became.
And this was where it differed from Izanagi; Izanagi had already fixed the time of reversal, whereas here, he could freely adjust his ocular power to accomplish the adjustment of the reversal node.
Furthermore, the utilization of Izanagi was often accompanied by the permanent discarding of a Sharingan, whereas his ability only required the consumption of ocular power; although this consumption was not low, it was far better compared to the discarding of a Sharingan.
Takuno savored the ability of his own left eye meticulously, increasingly discerning a vital distinction between it and the forbidden jutsu "Izanagi."
The activation mechanism and the freedom of utilization.
The execution of Izanagi was extremely rigid and had to be pre-set beforehand through a specific hand-seal ritual.
Once started, it was just like an arrow shot from a bow, with no path of turning back to take.
Even if the caster realized during the process that the situation was fundamentally not a dead end and there was absolutely no need to utilize this technique, they also could not revoke the price already paid; that single Sharingan would still irrevocably lose its light due to the "already used" state of the technique formula.
In contrast, the ability of his left eye appeared incomparably dexterous and highly efficient.
It could either be used actively or possess a type of passive effect.
At the very moment he died, even if he did not actively utilize his left eye's ability, it would also directly trigger its ability.
This meant that Takuno did not need to distract his mind within the rapidly changing life-and-death slaughter to make predictions, to agonize, or to pinch that "absolutely fatal" moment precisely.
He only needed to ensure that his left eye's power was affluent, and this ability would act just like an ultimate insurance policy.
The moment death truly descended, it would automatically activate, pulling his lifeline back from the hands of the Shinigami once.
This passive protection akin to a "death reversal" was far beyond the preset and heavily priced Izanagi in terms of convenience and safety.
This was undoubtedly a life-saving trump card with "survival" as its absolute priority; no wonder Takuno would emit a sigh regarding his own "fear of death" because of its characteristics.
Having weighed the abilities of this pair of Mangekyō Sharingan carefully, the balance scale inside Takuno's heart naturally inclined toward the ability of his right eye.
In his view, the practicality of his right eye's ability clearly threw the left eye a massive distance away.
It wasn't to say that the left eye's ability could not find a use, it was just that... he truly could not think of what kind of scenario would frequently trigger that passive effect.
"People capable of taking me down?" The corner of Takuno's mouth hooked into a sliver of an arc as he calculated internally, "At the current time point, counting them on my fingers, I'm afraid not even a few can be found in this world."
The one in a spiritual body state, situated in the Pure Land—that Sage of Six Paths—might count as one.
Although that person hadn't made a move, Takuno would not doubt the opponent's ability to make a move, and this person was extremely scheming; the amount of chakra he himself had accumulated over so many years was actually not too far off from Kaguya Ōtsutsuki.
Therefore, this kind of existence must never be looked down upon, and even more so, one must not assume that the opponent could not make a move just because they hadn't made a move in the original work!
Aside from that?
If one pulled the timeline backward to that era of "Boruto," maybe a few monster-like fellows could still pop out.
But the problem lay in the fact that that group of fellows hadn't even shown their faces during the Fourth Shinobi World War, which was sufficient to alter the structural pattern of the world; every single one of them hid deeper than anyone else.
Takuno truly did not believe that this group of existences, whose heads were seen but tails remained invisible, would suddenly point their spearheads inexplicably toward a minor supporting character like him.
Summing it up like this, Takuno increasingly felt that the passive life-saving ability of his left eye could in all probability only serve as a bottom-of-the-chest life-saving trump card.
A trump card that he sincerely hoped would never need to be utilized.
Its value of existence lay perhaps precisely within that faint, microscopic possibility of a "just in case," and nothing more.
It must absolutely be possessed, but it did not absolutely have to be used!