Next Bonus, 100PS!!
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On the other side of the forest, Uchiha Kitsune was tearing through the trees like a wounded animal.
Branches slapped his face, but he ignored them. Chakra surged around him, tearing through bark and leaves, destroying everything in his way. He ran aimlessly, with no goal—just trying to escape.
The pain in his chest kept spreading, but now something colder was starting to grow beneath it.
Uzuki's words kept looping through his head. Each repetition stripped away another layer of softness, leaving only the harsh truth.
You're an orphan. No ties. No obligations.
Personal desires are secondary. The clan comes first.
His fists clenched until the knuckles cracked.
A clear, sharp thought formed in his mind, like a newly made blade.
Kill.
Kill everyone standing between him and what he wanted. Kill the Senju who'd decided Uzuki's life for her. Kill the Uzumaki who thought they could just buy her with a political marriage. Burn the whole rotten System to the ground.
He ran straight back to the Uchiha compound.
Walked directly to the elder's quarters and pushed through the door.
The white-haired elder looked up from his desk, brow creasing. "Uchiha Kitsune! You abandoned your post! Explain yourself—NOW!"
Kitsune said nothing for a beat. Then he raised his head.
The elder's reprimand died in his throat.
Three-tomoe Sharingan. Both eyes. Spinning with lazy, predatory confidence.
"I encountered a Senju bridal convoy on my way back. A force escorting one of their main-family daughters to the Uzumaki for a political marriage."
Kitsune spoke in a flat voice, giving only the facts and nothing more.
"I engaged the Senju escort. The three-tomoe awakened during combat."
The elder's irritation vanished instantly, and his eyes brightened.
A new three-tomoe wielder, just like that? For a clan always needing more Sharingan users, this was a huge gain.
Kitsune may have left out some details about how he awakened the Sharingan, but the elders only cared about the outcome. How it happened didn't matter to them.
Then the elder thought about the rest of the report, and his excitement faded into a more serious mood.
Senju and Uzumaki. A marriage alliance. Two of the Uchiha's most dangerous rivals formalized a bond that could shift the entire regional power balance.
That was a problem.
But looking at the freshly awakened Sharingan burning in the orphan's skull, the elder nodded with visible satisfaction.
"Well done. You've earned a promotion. Effective immediately, you're a squad leader. Take charge of a combat unit."
........
None of this escaped Mount Myōboku's notice.
Shima's intelligence toads had been following Kitsune and Uzuki for months. They gathered every detail: the ambush on the bridal convoy, the Sharingan awakening, Uzuki's choice to go through with the marriage, and the end of their relationship. All of this was sent to the mountain within hours.
Manji sat on the stone platform at Longevity Peak, listening to the full report, and allowed his eyebrows to climb slightly.
"Indra and Asura's reincarnations this time around... a boy and a girl? And they fell for each other? Sounds like a daytime soap opera."
He tapped his chin thoughtfully.
For centuries, since Indra and Asura made their Thousand-Year Pact, every pair of reincarnations had followed the same pattern: two men, bitter rivals, fighting to the death. It was always the same, and it had become predictable.
This cycle had thrown a curveball nobody saw coming.
He shook his head with a chuckle.
"Well. Can't say I predicted this one. Let's see where it goes."
Mist swirled around him on Longevity Peak. He let his thoughts wander and focused inward.
........
His training had been gnawing at him for a while now.
Five Sage Art traditions—Myōboku, Ryūchi Cave, Shikkotsu Forest, Monkey King Clan, Yatagarasu—all fully mastered, all harmonized into a single unified system. His chakra flowed without obstruction. His techniques hit harder than anything the shinobi world had ever produced.
And yet.
He felt like he was hitting an invisible wall. No matter how much power he gained or how well he improved his techniques, he couldn't move up to the next level. It was like pushing against a glass ceiling that only he could sense.
Even Yin-Yang Release was still out of reach. He understood the theory and could picture how to use it, but whenever he tried, nothing happened. It felt like something important was missing, as if an invisible hand had taken out a key part.
The System's ceiling was the most frustrating limit in his life.
"What even counts as a 'top-tier opportunity' at this point?"
He stared at the sky.
"I have the Rinnegan. The Tenseigan. Five fused Sage Art traditions. If none of that qualifies as a breakthrough catalyst, then what the hell does?"
The question had no answer. It never did.
His mind wandered to the Chakra Fruit, reopening an old wound.
"If Kaguya hadn't stabbed me in the back, I would've broken through a thousand years ago."
His brow twitched. Nearly a millennium, and the sting of that betrayal still hadn't fully faded.
"Then again... if I had eaten the whole fruit and it STILL didn't work... that would've been embarrassing."
He caught himself mid-spiral and laughed quietly.
The System had never explicitly confirmed that the Chakra Fruit would trigger a breakthrough. He'd assumed it would. But assumptions weren't guarantees.
"You know what? No regrets."
Manji leaned back, arms behind his head.
If Kaguya hadn't betrayed him, he'd never have trained Hagoromo. Never founded Mount Myōboku's golden age. Never raised the Tailed Beasts. Never met White-Brow, or the White Monkey King, or Indra, or any of the people who'd made these centuries worth living.
The road not taken was always the prettier one. But the road under his feet was the only one that was real.
Kaguya's betrayal gave him a thousand years of meaning instead of just a brief moment of power.
Fair trade.
Kaguya, somewhere in her seal: "...Did he just THANK me for trying to kill him?"
"Alright. Enough wallowing."
He straightened up. Eyes sharpening.
"Next steps. Figure out the Tenseigan's applications. After that, investigate the Dragon Veins. Maybe that energy source holds the key to cracking this barrier."
He opened his hand, and the Tenseigan floated up from his sleeve, glowing with a soft silver-white light. It was beautiful, dangerous, and full of untapped potential.
The problem was logistics.
Both his eye sockets were already occupied by the Rinnegan. There was no room for a third eye unless—
"...Unless I put it in my forehead." Manji stared at the glowing orb and felt the absurdity of the idea settle over him like a warm blanket. "If I actually do that, I'll look exactly like Ōtsutsuki Shibai."
He paused.
"Speaking of Shibai—nobody knows where that guy's body ended up. In canon, his remains somehow ended up being harvested by Amado, who grafted the abilities onto Eida and Daemon. But how Amado got the body was never explained."
His eyes narrowed. "Isshiki's doing, most likely. Which means the body is probably stashed in one of Isshiki's personal dimensions."
He rubbed his chin, thinking hard.
"I should develop spatial traversal techniques. Find a way to access Isshiki's pocket dimensions. If Shibai's remains are there—or the juvenile Ten-Tails—that's worth investigating."
The Tenseigan kept spinning slowly above his palm. Manji watched it for a long time, already planning what he would do in the coming years.
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