Ren sat on his bed in the dark barracks, staring at the pale white fireball floating in front of him. The little flame flickered weakly in midair, blinking on and off like an old lamp with a loose wire. This was supposed to be the newly awakened "Flash Phoenix Sage Fire Technique," but at first glance, it looked less like a powerful technique and more like something that might fail at any moment.
The more Ren observed it, the stranger his expression became. The fireball was not as bright as he had imagined. It did not shine with the blinding, proud radiance of Pakura's Scorch Release. Instead, it trembled unsteadily, and when he leaned closer, he could see tiny thread-like filaments drifting inside the flame, faint and fragile, like mayflies trapped in white fire. For a second, he thought it was merely an unstable transformation, but then his instincts sharpened.
Wait.
Something was wrong.
Before Ren could react further, the system text suddenly jumped into his mind with a tone that sounded far too panicked for comfort. [Phoenix Sage Fire Technique: Oops! I don't think I can control it anymore! Little Ren, close your eyes quickly! It's going to explode!]
Ren froze for the briefest instant.
Then his body moved faster than his thoughts.
He snapped his eyes shut.
In the next heartbeat, the floating fireball erupted.
BOOM—!
An indescribable burst of white light tore through the barracks. It was not an ordinary flash. It was as if a tiny sun had exploded indoors, flooding every corner with a scorching glare that pierced through closed eyelids and painted the darkness red. The entire room was swallowed by brightness for one breath, and even Ren, who had reacted in time, felt his eyes sting from the afterimage.
"Ah! What was that?!" Obito shouted from a nearby bed, his voice cracking between panic and confusion. "So bright! Are we under attack?"
"Is it dawn already?" another groggy voice muttered, followed by the sound of someone fumbling for clothes and weapons while clearly unable to see anything.
Kakashi was quieter, but his reaction was no slower. The moment the light faded, he had already sat up with a kunai in hand, his silver hair messy from sleep and his visible eye narrowed sharply. Obito, on the other hand, nearly fell off the bed while trying to grab his gear, still blinking helplessly as tears gathered in his dazzled eyes.
Ren heard their movements, but he did not answer immediately. He remained seated cross-legged on the bed, eyes still closed, his breathing slow and controlled. The flash had been dangerous, unexpected, and extremely annoying, but in that blinding instant, something inside his mind had shifted. The inspiration he had failed to grasp during the day's Scorch Release research had suddenly returned.
It had appeared like lightning in the dark.
The release process of the unstable fireball, the violent burst of light, the high-temperature transformation inside the flame, and the chakra pathway he had sensed inside Pakura's body during the experiment all overlapped in Ren's mind. The broken pieces were still incomplete, but for the first time, they were close enough to touch. If he missed this chance, that feeling might vanish again.
So Ren ignored everything else.
He focused.
He chased that spark before it could disappear.
From an outsider's perspective, Ren looked as if he had suddenly entered meditation. His body was still, his back straight, and his breathing so faint that he seemed almost detached from the room around him. The chaos caused by the flash slowly settled, but Ren remained unmoving, as if the explosion had not been a mistake at all, but the opening of a door.
Obito finally rubbed enough tears from his eyes to see the room clearly. After confirming there were no enemies, no broken walls, and no attack alarms outside, he let out a long breath. Then he noticed Ren sitting silently on the bed and immediately became confused. "Hey, Ren? What are you doing over there? Did you just blind us and then start pretending to be a monk?"
He was about to walk over and shake Ren awake when Kakashi raised one arm and stopped him. With his other hand, Kakashi made a quiet gesture, his expression serious despite the sleepiness still clinging to his face.
Obito blinked. "Kakashi?"
"He's cultivating," Kakashi said quietly. "Don't disturb him."
"Cultivating?" Obito stared at Ren as if he had just witnessed a betrayal. "At this hour? No wonder he keeps getting stronger so fast! While we sleep, he's secretly training in the middle of the night!"
The accusation was heartfelt, but completely unfair. Ren's routine was usually quite normal. He slept whenever possible and tried not to carry exhaustion into the next day's missions. This was the first time something like this had happened, but because Obito had witnessed it at exactly the wrong moment, a very firm misunderstanding took root in his mind.
Obito clenched his fists under the blanket, his pride as an Uchiha burning fiercely. "Fine. Then I won't sleep either. I'm going to the training ground to practice. Kakashi, are you coming?"
Kakashi stared at him for a moment. Then, with great calm, he put down his kunai, removed the outer garment he had hastily pulled on, and lay back down. "If you aren't afraid of failing to wake up tomorrow morning or falling asleep during a mission, go ahead."
Obito opened his mouth, closed it, and looked toward the door. After several seconds of internal struggle, his fighting spirit lost to the warm blanket. He coughed awkwardly, lay back down, and muttered, "I'll let him have tonight. Tomorrow, I'll definitely train harder."
Soon, silence returned to the barracks. Kakashi's breathing steadied first, calm and controlled. Obito followed shortly afterward, though he turned over several times as if still unwilling to accept defeat. Ren remained seated in the darkness, completely unaware of the small drama that had unfolded around him.
Inside his body, chakra began to circulate slowly.
It did not move the way ordinary Fire Release chakra moved. It compressed, gathered, and churned with a deep, restrained violence, like a volcano building pressure beneath the earth. Heat rose under Ren's skin. His body gradually reddened, and sweat seeped from his forehead, sliding down his cheeks and dripping quietly onto the bedding. The night air around him grew warmer, but he did not stop.
The key was not simply raising temperature.
Pakura's Scorch Release did not win because it burned hotter than ordinary fire. Its terror came from its transformation. It condensed heat into a destructive state that attacked moisture and vitality directly. The Phoenix Sage Fire Technique's flash had revealed another path: extreme light, extreme heat, and a burst process that could force the flame to release power in an instant.
Ren's brows tightened.
No, not enough.
The Phoenix Sage Fire Technique was not true Scorch Release. Ren lacked Wind Release as a foundation, and without that nature transformation, he could not perfectly reproduce Pakura's bloodline limit. But did he need a perfect reproduction? Perhaps not. He did not need to become Pakura. He only needed to steal the part that his own technique could bear.
A flame that carried light.
A flame that burst.
A flame that scorched like the edge of Scorch Release, even if it could not become the real thing.
Time slipped by in silence.
Nearly an hour later, Ren finally opened his eyes.
A sharp glimmer flashed through the darkness.
For a split second, it looked as though lightning had sparked inside the empty barracks. The light vanished immediately, but Ren's gaze had changed. The confusion from earlier was gone. In its place was excitement, focus, and the dangerous calm of someone who had finally found the answer after standing at the edge of it for too long.
"So that's how it works," Ren whispered.
He carefully formed hand seals, slower this time, controlling every movement of chakra in his body. He opened his mouth and breathed out. The air in front of him distorted. Heat gathered into a single point, thin and pure, and then a small wisp of incandescent white flame appeared as if it had been born alive.
The flame was tiny at first, no larger than a fingernail, but its temperature was terrifying. The air around it gave off a faint burning sound, and the space above Ren's palm shimmered like desert heat. Under his control, the wisp expanded slowly, becoming a white fireball about the size of a billiard ball. It looked similar to the unstable flashbang from before, but this one was different. Its glow was steady. Its shape was clean. Its inner filaments no longer drifted chaotically but flowed in controlled patterns, like veins of light inside the flame.
Ren's smile widened.
This was no longer the original explosive bullet of the Phoenix Sage Fire Technique. It had crossed into something new. Not true Scorch Release, because it still lacked the Wind Release component and could not fully reproduce Pakura's moisture-stealing bloodline power. But the essence of pure high temperature, the flash of violent light, and the faint sense of steaming destruction were already extremely close.
If he had to name it, then it could only be—
Pseudo-Scorch Release: Light Flame Bomb.
Ren had succeeded.
The system immediately erupted with excitement. [Phoenix Sage Fire Technique: Wow! As expected of Little Ren! So amazing! I was thinking the same thing, I just didn't succeed when I tried earlier—hey!]
Before the Phoenix Sage Fire Technique could continue boasting, a new system prompt appeared in Ren's vision.
[Ding! Special event "Something Shiny and Bright" completed!]
[Favorability with Phoenix Sage Fire Technique +8! Current Favorability: 100/100 — Kindred Spirits.]
[Stage reward obtained four times: Physique +4. New Feature: Blazing Scorch Stream.]
[Feature: Blazing Scorch Stream — You have achieved a high level of resonance with the Phoenix Sage Fire Technique. When releasing this technique, each fireball will possess a life of its own and coordinate with your thoughts in battle. There is a high probability of triggering an additional burst effect upon impact and causing splash damage to nearby enemies. In addition, you may consume extra chakra to create a Light Flame Bomb, producing a powerful blinding effect upon explosion.]
[Note: The flash duration of the Light Flame Bomb is directly related to the amount of chakra injected. A single orb usually lasts between 0.5 and 5 seconds.]
Ren stared at the notification for several breaths.
Then he could not help muttering, "Good grief."
This was basically the ninja world's version of Solar Flare.
His first reaction was amazement. His second reaction was caution. A blinding technique sounded simple, and against ordinary civilians, it might even seem cruelly unfair. But against ninja, especially experienced battlefield veterans, its direct lethality was limited. A trained ninja could often fight through pain, use chakra to recover from temporary visual disruption, or rely on hearing, smell, killing intent, and perception techniques to respond.
But battle was not decided only by lethality.
Sometimes a single blink was enough.
If an enemy's vision went white during a high-speed exchange, their guard would loosen. If a puppet master lost sight of their puppet threads for half a second, their rhythm would break. If a swordsman missed the flash of a kunai, their throat might open before they understood what had happened. If Ren combined this with speed, clones, explosive fireballs, or close-range assassination, the Light Flame Bomb could become a terrifying support weapon.
It was not a finishing move.
It was a move that created openings for finishing moves.
That made it even more valuable.
Ren looked at the small white fireball hovering over his palm. With a thought, it drifted slightly to the left, then circled around his fingers like a living bird. The new Blazing Scorch Stream feature made the fireball feel more responsive than before, almost as if the technique itself were listening. It was not true intelligence, but it was close enough in combat to matter.
[Phoenix Sage Fire Technique: Hehe! See? I told you I could become shiny! Now I'm not just explosive, I'm bright too!]
Ren's mouth twitched. "You nearly blinded the whole barracks."
[Phoenix Sage Fire Technique: That was part of the learning process. Great techniques always require sacrifice.]
"Sacrificing Kakashi and Obito's sleep doesn't count as greatness."
[Phoenix Sage Fire Technique: But it worked!]
Ren had no good argument against that. He quietly dispersed the fireball before it could accidentally explode again. The room fell back into darkness, though his eyes still carried the afterglow of excitement.
Counting this breakthrough, Phoenix Sage Fire Technique had become another technique on his list to reach maximum favorability. That meant more than a simple upgrade. Every technique that reached this level seemed to become less like a tool and more like a partner. They grew with him, responded to him, and sometimes even surprised him.
Tonight was proof.
Pakura's Scorch Release had not been copied, but it had inspired something new. The research had already produced results before the official analysis had even begun. If Jace and Rin knew, they would probably stare at him like he had cheated the entire scientific process.
Ren lay back down slowly, but his mind was no longer sleepy. His thoughts moved through future possibilities one after another. A flash bomb hidden among ordinary Phoenix Sage Fireballs. A clone throwing multiple Light Flame Bombs from different angles. A burst of white light before a Flying Thunder God strike. A battlefield full of enemies blinded for even one second while fireballs with their own combat instincts closed in.
The more he thought, the more dangerous the technique became.
And then his thoughts drifted to Pakura.
If this was only the result of one day's observation, what would happen after he fully organized the Scorch Release data? What if the Phoenix Sage Fire Technique continued to learn? What if the so-called Pseudo-Scorch Release could be refined further, strengthened, or even combined with other techniques?
Ren's smile slowly faded into a more thoughtful expression.
The ninja world valued bloodline limits because they were inherited, rare, and difficult to imitate. But his system had just proved something terrifying: even if he could not copy a bloodline perfectly, he could still turn its principles into something usable.
That meant Scorch Release was only the beginning.
A cold excitement rose in his chest. Lava Release, Ice Release, Magnet Release, Storm Release, Wood Release—countless possibilities stretched ahead like unopened scrolls. Some were beyond him now, but tonight had shown him a path. He did not need to be born with every bloodline. He only needed to understand enough, steal enough, and let his techniques evolve in their own strange ways.
In the darkness, Ren closed his eyes again.
This time, sleep came slowly, but his breathing finally settled. Outside the barracks, the night at Wildfire Outpost remained quiet. No one knew that beneath that silence, a small white flame had just changed the direction of Ren's future.
And far away in her sealed cell, Pakura suddenly opened her eyes.
She did not know why.
For a brief instant, she had felt something.
A faint, impossible echo of Scorch Release.
Not from herself.
From somewhere else in the outpost.
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