Pain!
The first thing Ren saw when he opened his eyes was a fist.
Behind it stood a white-haired boy wearing a mask.
‘Why am I lying in the middle of some unfamiliar training ground?’ More importantly, what was the Hokage Rock doing in the distance?
And why did the building nearby have Konoha Ninja Academy written across it in enormous letters?
Then there was the masked white-haired boy standing in front of him, who looked suspiciously like a young Kakashi from the Naruto manga.
Ren felt something tickling his forehead.
When he reached up to touch it, his fingers came away wet with blood.
A thin stream had already run down into his eyebrow.
‘Did I seriously transmigrate into Naruto?’ And why had Kakashi gone so far during a simple sparring lesson?
Then again, mental stability was practically a rare bloodline trait in Konoha.
It was not entirely surprising that a young Kakashi had no idea how to hold back.
“Hatake Kakashi!
Why the hell did you crack my head open?” The moment he shouted, several classmates around them immediately began condemning him instead.
“Uchiha Ren!
How could you say something like that?” ‘My name is Uchiha Ren?’ Memories belonging to the body’s original owner flooded into his mind, bringing countless details with them.
“How could you call the White Fang trash just because he abandoned a mission?” “And how could you say the son of a failure is even worse than his father?” Ren nearly winced.
‘Good grief.
The original owner’s mouth might as well have been dipped in poison.’ He was Uchiha Ren, an utterly insignificant background character who had never even been named in the original story.
He was six years old and currently in his second year at the Ninja Academy.
Worse still, this was shortly before the Third Shinobi World War.
Even if he somehow survived the war, there was still a good chance he would die during the Uchiha Clan Downfall, courtesy of Uchiha Obito and Uchiha Itachi.
This world was far too dangerous!
Not long ago, Konoha’s White Fang had abandoned a mission to take an injured teammate to a medical-nin.
The mission’s failure had caused Konoha to suffer devastating losses, with 119 shinobi killed.
That meant 119 grieving families.
Rumors had spread throughout the village, and nearly all of them condemned the White Fang.
With the Third Shinobi World War looming, everyone in Konoha was under enormous pressure.
In that kind of environment, when people were forced to choose between completing a mission and saving their comrades, the mission naturally came first in the eyes of the village.
Ren and Kakashi were classmates.
During their practical combat lesson, the original Ren had relentlessly mocked him.
Kakashi had finally snapped and beaten him senseless, and sometime during the resulting dizziness and pain, Ren had transmigrated into the boy’s body.
Looking at Kakashi now, Ren could see that the boy was barely holding himself together.
His shoulders were tense, and the emotions behind his exposed eye looked dangerously close to spilling over.
Ren decided to comfort him.
“Kakashi, your father may already be despised as worthless trash, and yes, that’s an undeniable fact—but you can’t give up on yourself!
You need to stay strong.
The Hatake name can’t produce two generations of pathetic garbage in a row—” Before he could finish, Kakashi spun around and drove a vicious back kick straight into his chest.
Ren went flying.
‘Damn it!’ He had genuinely been trying to comfort Kakashi.
He had sincerely wanted to encourage him!
Unfortunately, the moment he opened his mouth, his Uchiha bloodline awakened and Madara’s legendary talent for trash talking took control.
[A nearby shinobi has suffered severe emotional damage.
The Emotional Damage System is now activating…] As Ren sailed backward through the air, he heard the voice of a system inside his head.
It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
How was anyone supposed to survive in this shinobi world, where death could come at any moment, without a system?
Still flying through the air, Ren stared up at the sky and felt as though it had suddenly become brighter.
Even the air entering his lungs seemed sweeter.
[Hatake Kakashi has suffered emotional damage.
Extracting abilities associated with Kakashi.
The host may select one of the following three rewards.] [Option One: Lightning Release chakra nature.] [Option Two: Chakra reserves equal to 0.5 Kakashi.] [Option Three: Sakumo Hatake’s secret taijutsu techniques.] The first option was a Lightning Release chakra nature, which was not particularly useful to Ren at the moment.
Having all five chakra natures sounded impressive, but most shinobi only needed two or three reliable ninjutsu to carry them through their entire careers.
Adult Kakashi, the Copy Ninja of Konoha, supposedly knew more than a thousand techniques.
Yet whenever his life was actually on the line, he usually relied on the Earth-Style Wall for defense and the Raikiri for offense.
He rarely bothered with anything unnecessarily flashy.
The second option would grant him chakra reserves equal to 0.5 Kakashi.
As an adult, Kakashi had a stamina score of six, but because his Sharingan could not be deactivated, it constantly drained his chakra.
Even so, his total reserves were still roughly comparable to those of an ordinary jōnin.
Kakashi was only five now, yet he already possessed 0.5 adult Kakashi’s worth of chakra.
That was absurdly impressive!
By comparison, Ren currently had only around 0.2 Kakashi.
The third option offered Sakumo Hatake’s secret taijutsu techniques.
One of the reasons Kakashi was famous for matching almost anyone he fought was that his close-combat ability was remarkably strong.
Whether his opponent was an ordinary genin or one of the Six Paths of Pain, it usually took at least several exchanges before they could overwhelm him.
Part of that skill came from years of relentless training, but the foundation had been laid during childhood under Sakumo’s personal instruction.
Sakumo had excelled in kenjutsu and the Body Flicker Technique, and his taijutsu had stood among the finest in the shinobi world.
‘So which one should I choose—the chakra reserves or Sakumo’s techniques?’ Ren crashed onto the ground.
When he looked up, he saw Uchiha Obito and Might Guy rushing toward him one after the other, both eager to defend Kakashi and teach Ren a lesson.
Just because Kakashi and Guy were good guys did not mean they would politely spare the villain!
Ren had no desire to get beaten black and blue.
He might be the sharp-tongued antagonist here, but he refused to become the class clown!
‘Forget it.
I can probably farm chakra reserves from almost anyone, but Sakumo’s secret techniques are a once-in-a-lifetime reward.’ He selected the third option.
A flood of knowledge and combat insight instantly poured into Ren’s mind.
These were Sakumo’s personal secrets regarding taijutsu.
A shinobi’s body contained a network of chakra pathways and tenketsu.
Sakumo had discovered that by gathering chakra inside certain tenketsu and then releasing it explosively into the chakra pathway, he could sharply increase the speed of a single movement.
In close combat, this allowed one particular strike or defensive motion to become astonishingly fast.
The same principle could also produce an explosive burst of speed when using the Body Flicker Technique before engaging an opponent.
Ren gathered chakra inside a tenketsu in his arm, then released it through the limb’s chakra pathway all at once.
Smack!
Under the astonished gazes of his classmates, Ren raised a hand and caught Obito’s incoming fist.
‘So fast!’ The style felt strangely similar to Kakashi’s fighting habits!
Whenever Kakashi fought in close quarters, he often seized his opponent’s wrist or caught their fist before they could complete an attack.
During Pain’s Assault on Konoha in the original story, Iruka had fallen to the ground and waited helplessly for death, only for Kakashi to appear with the Body Flicker Technique and grab the Deva Path’s black receiver at the last possible moment.
Sakumo and Kakashi had clearly kept this explosive style of taijutsu within the family instead of teaching it to outsiders.
Ren decided to name it White Fang–Style Taijutsu.
While Obito was still staring at him in shock, Ren pulled him sharply to the side.
Guy had been charging too quickly to stop, and he slammed straight into Obito’s back.
With the immediate threat gone, Ren was free to start getting under everyone else’s skin.
‘My dream isn’t something boring like becoming Hokage.
I’m going to become Konoha’s greatest professional menace—a man with a blade for a tongue and absolutely no mercy in his heart!
I’ll be the Uchiha King of Trash Talk!’ “You two actually think sucking up to Kakashi will get you anywhere?
If Kakashi belongs in the trash, neither of you is even worthy of climbing into the garbage can with him!” The moment those words left his mouth, every student in the class turned to glare at him.
Ren had no intention of letting the entire class gang up on him, so he hurriedly looked toward Yamano, the instructor overseeing their sparring lesson.
After all, the original Ren had only spent the entire lesson relentlessly targeting Kakashi because Yamano had encouraged him to do it.
Someone was secretly fueling the rumors and doing everything possible to crush the White Fang.
Even Sakumo’s son was being subjected to organized harassment at the Ninja Academy.
Instructor Yamano glanced at Kakashi.
The boy’s shoulders had slumped, and his entire body seemed weighed down by pain and despair.
“That’s enough!” Yamano shouted.
“All of you, stop fighting and form the Seal of Reconciliation!”