Thud.
Ao hit the ground hard. His short blue hair, once sticking up stubbornly, was now plastered to his skull by water and blood. He glared at Kiyohara with pure resentment, but the light in that one eye kept dimming until even hatred no longer had the strength to remain.
At the same time, control of his body returned to Kiyohara.
He immediately dropped to one knee, bracing himself with his sword as if it were the only thing keeping him upright. He sucked in harsh breaths, each one burning all the way down his throat. The moment Young Kiyohara had unleashed the S-rank sword technique Konoha Style: Willow, it had driven both Kiyohara's mind and body right up to their absolute limit.
Every muscle in him screamed. His meridians throbbed with pain. The chakra inside him had nearly been wrung dry.
Letting someone else take over too often really could get your account banned.
Young Kiyohara had gotten carried away in the heat of the fight and pulled one hundred percent out of a body that simply wasn't built to sustain it. In other words, if Kiyohara didn't control things carefully, the backlash wasn't all that different from forcing open the Eight Gates.
Even so, he didn't dare rest where he was.
His hand plunged straight into his ninja pouch. He drew out another kunai and hurled it with every ounce of strength he had left.
The blade slammed into Ao's head with a wet, ugly sound.
Finishing off your enemy was a good habit. A very good one.
"It's finally over," Kiyohara muttered, letting out a long breath.
Fortunately, Ao hadn't been too outrageous as opponents went. If Kiyohara had somehow survived all the way to the Fourth Shinobi War only to be kicked to death by Kaguya Otsutsuki, then to fulfill a last wish he'd probably have to figure out how to resurrect Kaguya first. Just imagining it gave him a headache.
Behind him, the translucent spirit of Young Kiyohara appeared once more, like a ghost stepping out from the edge of the dusk.
Having taken his revenge, the younger future self didn't look elated. If anything, there was only a strange emptiness in his eyes, followed by a quiet peace.
After all, the Ao in this world wasn't necessarily the same Ao from his own timeline. At best, Kiyohara had found a substitute target, someone close enough to satisfy the obsession that had remained behind after death.
Young Kiyohara stared at Ao's corpse. Fragments of old memories flickered through his expression, all of them finally settling on that final blow in another life—the strike that had pierced his chest.
Back then, he had been too arrogant. He had believed his swordsmanship alone could cut through anything. He had underestimated his enemy and overestimated himself.
"My past self..." Young Kiyohara's voice echoed inside Kiyohara's mind. "That nonsense about not needing a sword in your hand because you carry one in your heart? Forget it. If you can get a good weapon, then stack the best materials on it. Don't be stingy."
"I know," Kiyohara answered.
He took that lesson to heart immediately. Even now, even with this newly forged blade at his waist, he still felt it wasn't enough. If there was any chance in the future, he'd aim even higher—something on the level of a Kusanagi.
After all, Kusanagi wasn't just the name of one weapon. It was a whole category. Orochimaru's was a double-edged straight sword. Sasuke's was a clean, elegant chokuto. If he ever got one of those, that would be real progress.
Young Kiyohara gave him a final look. Compared to the rogue-nin version, this future self lacked that tired, weathered cynicism—but in exchange, he possessed a naked, uncompromising sharpness.
"All right. Try not to end up boxed up and mailed out the way I was."
Then his body began to dissolve.
It happened quietly. Points of light drifted away from him like snow falling into warm air. Those motes floated toward Kiyohara and sank into him one after another.
At that moment, Kiyohara could only think of one word to describe them.
Origin.
Everything fit perfectly. There was no friction, no resistance, no sense of something foreign intruding into him. It was more like something that had always belonged to him was finally returning home.
A massive rush of information exploded through his consciousness.
There was the training method for Konoha Style: Willow, yes—but far more than that. There were sword principles. Combat instincts. Methods of reading rhythm, distance, pressure, openings. There were countless insights into swordsmanship, adaptations made in battle, and a deeply ingrained understanding of what it meant to draw, hold, and kill with a blade.
At the same time, his mind felt as if it had been washed clean.
His spiritual energy became sharper, denser, more refined. And along with it came something else—a natural affinity for the sword. As though he had been born to pick one up. As though walking the path of a sword-using ninja had been waiting for him all along.
A cool sensation spread through his brain. The exhaustion and mental strain built up from the battle, the possession, the split consciousness—all of it was swept away at once. His thoughts became startlingly clear.
That was the surge of spiritual energy.
And the moment that spiritual energy rose, it immediately became the perfect catalyst for a deeper transformation.
The chakra that had nearly been drained dry began recovering on its own, faster and more forcefully than before, as though some hidden floodgate had opened inside him. The soreness that had sunk deep into his muscles gradually eased. The weakness in his limbs retreated, replaced by a growing sense of fullness, of replenishment.
"My chakra reserves have increased again..." Kiyohara flexed his fingers slowly, testing the strength returning to them.
If Kakashi was used as the standard for an ordinary jonin's reserves, then Kiyohara judged that he now possessed a little more than Kakashi did—perhaps around 1.3 to 1.5 times as much. Not wildly exaggerated. Not some absurd leap into the heavens. But real. Solid. Usable.
That was what mattered.
Even if each future self only passed on part of what they once possessed, once those parts were layered together the total gain was still terrifying.
Just over a month ago, Kiyohara had been a genin who could only barely scrape the threshold of chunin-level combat by relying on two lifetimes' worth of caution, some battlefield experience, and a little bit of improvisation. Now? Now the gap between then and now felt so absurd that even he struggled to believe it.
A strange sense of unreality rose inside him.
This growth rate was insane.
If anyone in the original story had undergone something comparable, the closest example would probably be Obito—ordinary eyes to two tomoe, then from two tomoe to Mangekyo in one brutal rush. Ordinary people weren't supposed to get stronger like this. Sasuke, a reincarnation carrying Indra's chakra, had still needed Itachi to shove a full high-definition replay of his clan's massacre into his face before he awakened a single tomoe.
After resting for a while longer, Kiyohara slowly rolled his shoulders and moved his limbs. Outwardly, he was still a mess—torn clothes, bloodstains, dirt, and the look of someone who had just crawled out of a slaughterhouse. But under that surface, something fundamental had already changed.
He forced himself to calm down.
Yes, his strength had risen sharply. His swordsmanship in particular had undergone a complete transformation. But power came with problems, and one of them appeared immediately.
Konoha Style Swordsmanship: Willow was impossible to explain.
Maruboshi Kosuke had created it. The Second Hokage had personally taught that man Water Release. Hiruzen and the other higher-ups all knew perfectly well that Kosuke was no ordinary eternal genin. Which meant that if Kiyohara suddenly began using a signature sword style he had no legitimate path to learning, it would invite exactly the kind of attention he did not want.
Could he claim he and Maruboshi Kosuke had simply arrived at the same invention independently? Maybe. But that sounded far too convenient, and Kiyohara wasn't interested in gambling his future on the good will of people in power.
"So this technique can only be a hidden trump card," he concluded silently. "I'll only use it when it's life or death—or when I'm certain no one who matters is watching."
That meant he needed swordsmanship he could use openly. Legally. Publicly. Something he could justify.
"Then I need more battle merits," Kiyohara thought, his eyes narrowing. "Enough to exchange for advanced sword techniques through official channels. Konoha's ninjutsu library should have plenty of worthwhile material."
That was one of Konoha's few virtues. Because of powerful commoner-born ninjas like Maruboshi Kosuke, the village's libraries didn't just contain clan techniques and secrets. There were public-access methods too—strong ninjutsu, swordsmanship, genjutsu, taijutsu—techniques that could be learned by those with enough merit and enough contribution to deserve them.
The village, in turn, would reward such people with money, recognition, and all the warm rhetoric of the Will of Fire, meeting both material and spiritual needs in one go.
As long as you had merits, there was a path upward.
That thought steadied him.
Then another surfaced.
"I wonder how Kakashi's doing," Kiyohara thought.
Before drawing Ao away, Kakashi had gone after the person messing with the Byakugan. If Kiyohara's guess was right, then that target either had the Red Eyes or some other rare method of disrupting the Hyuga's vision. Whatever the truth, Kakashi was now operating on his own in enemy territory.
Kiyohara had no intention of rushing over half-dead and becoming dead weight.
He pulled in a breath, then crouched down beside Ao's corpse and began searching it with quick, practiced motions.
Touch the loot first. Then move.
That was the order of operations.
Because looting the body wouldn't just bring him spoils—it would also buy him a little time to recover, steady his breathing, and scrape together whatever advantage he could before the next fight.
Otherwise, if he charged straight back into battle with his chakra half-recovered and his arms still trembling from overuse, he wouldn't be helping anyone at all.
By the time Kiyohara rose again, his sword was already sheathed at his waist, his eyes were calm, and his next steps had been decided.
Ao was dead.
Young Kiyohara's revenge had been fulfilled.
And Kiyohara's strength had just surged again.
Now it was time to cash that power in.