Chapter 101: Equipped with a Weakness Buff, I've Struck it Rich
The moment the hospital director laid eyes on Stelle's ghastly condition, his elbow jerked, sending his ceramic water cup shattering across the floor.
Panic erupted. Within the blink of an eye, every elite medical-nin from the Senju clan stationed in the building swarmed the corridor. They hastily hoisted Stelle onto a gurney, the squeaking wheels echoing frantically down the hall as they shoved her into the highest-security emergency room. A dizzying array of medical instruments and chakra-monitoring devices were immediately strapped to the Fourth Hokage.
Blinking away the grogginess of a rather pleasant nap, Stelle stared up at the frantic blur of green vests and glowing chakra scalpels. She couldn't help but mentally complain. Ever since electricity got introduced to the ninja world, the very first thing to undergo a technological boom was medical science. She eyed the complex, humming monitors surrounding her operating table. What a completely bizarre world.
The medics buzzed around her like headless flies, running frantic diagnostic jutsu and drawing blood as if she were going to drop dead in the next second. Despite the fact that her eyes were wide open, radiating an aura of absolute, soul-crushing boredom, not a single person paid her complaints any mind.
Whatever.
Stelle lazily clasped her hands over her stomach. "I hope when I wake up, I'm surrounded by a harem of handsome guys," she mumbled to the ceiling, promptly shutting her eyes and drifting right back to sleep.
Sometime later, a harsh fluorescent light pierced her eyelids. Stelle groggily cracked her eyes open, fully expecting a visual feast. Instead of a room full of gorgeous men, her vision was filled with the deeply wrinkled, scowling face of the Senju Clan Leader.
Stelle deadpanned....I should just go back to sleep.
Unfortunately, the universe refused to grant her that mercy. The moment her breathing shifted, the interrogation began.
Hiruzen Sarutobi slammed a thick stack of medical reports onto her lap. "This is the most complete diagnostic of your physical condition," he barked, his voice tight with suppressed panic. "Read it yourself."
Stelle picked up the clipboard, her eyes skimming over the dense medical jargon and chakra charts. The final conclusion at the bottom was highlighted in alarming red ink: her internal organs, muscle tissues, and very cellular structure were undergoing massive, rapid decay due to an unknown catalyst. Her overall cellular vitality was currently registering lower than that of a bedridden nonagenarian.
She blinked, tossing the clipboard aside. "So?"
It's a literal weakness buff from the system, she thought dismissively. It'd be weird if my stats weren't in the gutter.
Hiruzen looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel. He thrust a trembling finger right at her nose. "In other words, you reckless fool, although you are a young woman of twenty-one, your internal biology belongs to someone in their late eighties! You are on the absolute verge of dying from old age! Do you understand the gravity of this?!"
The system interface floating in her peripheral vision clearly displayed a countdown timer of one month left to live. So, dying of old age was perfectly on schedule.
Wait. Old age?
Stelle's hands shot up, frantically patting her cheeks. "Quick, a mirror! Somebody get me a mirror right now!"
Oh god, did my face turn into a wrinkled prune? Do I look like Elder Chiyo in a two-piece swimsuit?! The horrific mental image flashed through her mind. No wonder the medical staff had been looking at her with such unadulterated terror. Please, anything but that.
She scrambled, kicking off the pristine white hospital blankets to leap out of bed, only to freeze when Uchiha Kagami silently stepped forward, holding a silver-backed hand mirror up to her face.
Staring at her reflection, Stelle finally understood why everyone had looked at her as if she were a walking corpse the moment her Reincarnation Jutsu deactivated.
Her face was perfectly fine. Smooth, youthful skin, devoid of a single wrinkle. However, her hair—her beautiful hair—had turned entirely, shockingly white. It wasn't the cool, stylish silver of the Hatake clan. It was the brittle, lifeless white of a withered elder whose body had been drained of all vital nutrients.
She looked like a cursed white-haired witch.
[Host, have you suffered a memory lapse? Your current physical appearance is maintained by the Transformation Card provided by the system. Your face is permanently locked in this disguise. Even if your true body aged into Elder Chiyo in a swimsuit, no one in this world would be able to see it.]
Oh, thank god, Stelle replied internally, letting out a long breath. You actually scared me for a second.
Still, her current aesthetic was incredibly hard to pull off. Faking a terminal illness was one thing, but this brittle white hair made her look bizarrely tragic.
Hiruzen ruthlessly snatched the mirror out of her hands, forcing her attention back to his furious scolding.
"How can you be this reckless?!" he roared, pacing the floor. "Have you completely forgotten your status? You are Konoha's Fourth Hokage! You are the pillar holding this village together! To use such a suicidal forbidden ninjutsu on a whim... Believe it or not, the exact second your heart stops beating, the Second Great Ninja War will erupt! Do you think you're still some ordinary genin who can just throw her life away on the front lines without consequences?!"
Stelle scratched the back of her head, offering a sheepish, utterly unrepentant smile. "Relax, I didn't die, did I? Besides, that was Sakumo out there. He's my Anbu Captain. I couldn't just stand by and watch him kick the bucket."
"You still dare to talk back?!" Danzo practically leaped out of his chair, his visible eye twitching with rage. "I told you I would handle that mission! Yet you sneaked out and followed us! Fine, you followed us—but then you pulled a stunt like this! Do you have any earthly idea how much funding I've had to siphon into the Medical Department in the last twelve hours just to keep you breathing?!"
Always complaining about money. Stelle's eye twitched. She felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to punch Danzo square in his smug jaw.
"Oh, please," Stelle scoffed, crossing her arms. "If I hadn't intervened, you and Sakumo would be rotting in a ditch right now. Shamon was already in an absolute killing frenzy, and then there was Kazushi—heaven only knows what kind of twisted scheme she was trying to pull off."
Hiruzen slammed his palm flat against the bedside table, the wood cracking under his grip. His face was flushed a dangerous shade of crimson.
"Fourth Hokage, get this through your thick skull!" he demanded, his voice dropping to a deadly serious register. "Konoha can survive without Danzo. It can survive without Sakumo. It can survive without any of us! But it absolutely cannot survive without you. It is your overwhelming strength alone that maintains the current peace between the nations!"
Stelle observed their panicked expressions. Ah. They had probably witnessed Senju Hashirama's hair turn white right before his death, and the trauma was resurfacing. She couldn't really blame them; history dictated that once the First Hokage's hair lost its color, he had packed his bags for the Pure Land mere days later.
For the next hour, Hiruzen and Danzo tag-teamed her, pacing back and forth and jabbing their fingers toward her forehead. They looked like they desperately wanted to crack her skull open and physically carve a sense of self-preservation into her brain.
Stelle endured the verbal assault until her vision started to spin. Finally, she waved them off with a dismissive, perfunctory sigh. "Alright, alright, I get it. I promise I'll try to live a little bit longer. I won't give the other villages the illusion that Konoha's Hokage are cursed with short lifespans, okay?"
She hadn't absorbed a single word they said.
Realizing they were talking to a brick wall, Hiruzen and Danzo exchanged dark, exhausted looks. They turned on their heels and marched out of the hospital room one after the other.
Bang!
The heavy oak door slammed shut behind them, rattling the hinges.
Stelle stared at the closed door, sorely tempted to shout after them: Hey, I'm the Hokage here! Show some respect!
Turning her head, she noticed Kagami was still standing quietly in the corner. His dark eyes were fixed on her, unblinking and heavy with sorrow.
Stelle let out a dramatic wail, clasping her hands together in a mock plea for mercy. "My head is already spinning from those two old men nagging me. Please tell me you aren't going to start too? Cut me some slack, Kagami."
Kagami slowly approached the edge of her bed. He leaned down, his usually calm voice thick with a bitter, suffocating grief.
"I know it's completely useless to try and persuade you, Stelle," he murmured, his gaze dropping to her snow-white hair. "Because that is simply the kind of person you are. You always push yourself to the absolute limit, desperately burning away your own life to protect everyone around you."
His jaw tightened as he fought to restrain the raw emotion threatening to spill over.
"I cannot force you to change," Kagami continued, his voice cracking slightly. "But I beg of you... if the day ever comes where I am the one bleeding out on the battlefield, do not use that jutsu on me. Promise me."
Stelle blinked, genuinely taken aback by the sheer intensity of his angst. Recovering quickly, she reached out and gave his tense shoulder a comforting, rhythmic pat.
"Don't worry, don't worry, I'm perfectly fine," she reassured him brightly. "I promise you, give it a month at most, and I'll be completely back to normal."
Because in exactly one month, my lifespan timer will exit the red zone, she thought smugly. This massive wave of guilt and despair she was currently farming from the village elites would easily refund the massive chunk of mood values she had spent to pull Sakumo back from the brink of death.
She was a businesswoman at heart. No matter the circumstances, she resolutely refused to walk away from a losing deal.
The Fourth Hokage being hospitalized in critical condition was a village-shaking event. The entire top floor of the Konoha hospital had been locked down, heavily guarded by elite Anbu operatives hiding in every shadow. Absolutely no one was permitted entry without explicit clearance.
However, Sakumo sprinting through the village gates with a half-dead Hokage in his arms was impossible to keep quiet.
Within forty-eight hours, Konoha was absolutely swarming with foreign spies trying to confirm the rumors. The Uchiha Police Force was working overtime, and even the Anbu had to deploy backup squads just to sweep the perimeter for infiltrators.
Heaven only knew what exaggerated, apocalyptic intelligence those spies were transmitting back to their hidden villages. Stelle didn't care about the politics, but she was absolutely delighted when her system log began pinging with massive mood value deposits from the Kage of several rival nations.
Inside the hospital, security remained ironclad. Hiruzen resolutely refused to allow anyone else to visit her, terrified that an assassin might slip through the cracks.
Stelle, however, fiercely disagreed with this quarantine.
Having a terminal weakness buff active was a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity! It was the absolute perfect setup to harvest premium angst. How could she possibly be satisfied with just milking Hiruzen, Danzo, and Kagami? She needed to cast a wider net. She needed to farm everyone.
She immediately demanded to see all the promising young brats—specifically, the ones with actual names and plot relevance in the original timeline. She insisted on holding an audience with them, even going so far as to throw a shameless, bed-kicking tantrum until her demands were met.
Finally, unable to withstand her relentless whining, Kagami caved. He escorted a small, nervous group of academy students and young genin into the sterile hospital room.
Stelle played the part of the tragic, dying mentor flawlessly. She greeted them one by one, offering weak smiles and deep, breathy words of encouragement about the 'Will of Fire.' Once she heard the continuous chimes of the system confirming she had successfully harvested their sorrow and inspiration, she leaned back against her pillows, deeply satisfied.
Among the children, a young Orochimaru stood silently near the foot of the bed. His pale, snake-like eyes stared intently at the withered, white-haired figure of the Fourth Hokage. A deep, unsettling sorrow flickered in his gaze.
Humans truly are fragile creatures, the boy thought, his small hands clenching into fists.
Even legends as unfathomably powerful as the First and Second Hokage had ultimately perished. And now, the invincible Fourth Hokage was reduced to a dying husk, all because she dared to use a forbidden technique to save a subordinate.
Flesh decays. Life is fleeting, Orochimaru realized, a dark seed taking root in his brilliant mind. If only... if only there was a way to become immortal.
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