Inside the hidden chamber, the light was dim and yellow.
Kurō lay flat in the chair, his eyes unfocused, looking as if every bit of strength had been drained from him.
After a long while, he slowly sat up.
Focus gradually returned to those hollow eyes.
He lowered his head and looked at his hands.
They were still trembling slightly.
He forced down the grief that still lingered warmly in his chest, then reached into the ninja pouch strapped to his thigh and took out a kunai.
The polished blade reflected a cold glint beneath the dim light.
He raised the kunai in front of his eyes.
Those eyes were reflected in the sharp metal surface.
The scarlet three-tomoe Sharingan slowly rotated.
The three black tomoe spun faster and faster, until at a certain instant, they suddenly connected.
Black patterns linked the tomoe together, forming an entirely new, eerie design.
The Mangekyō Sharingan.
Kurō looked at the eyes reflected in the kunai and murmured softly, “It really… worked?” His voice was very quiet and careful, as if he were confirming that this was not a dream.
The vast chakra surging through his body, and the overwhelming eye power he had never felt before, both answered the question in his heart beyond any doubt.
The Mangekyō Sharingan.
His Mangekyō Sharingan had awakened!
“Hah… hah…” Kurō’s breathing grew rapid.
His pupils widened slightly, and those strange eyes were filled with excitement he could barely suppress.
He could feel it.
He had become stronger.
Not just a little stronger.
He had been reborn.
It was a feeling difficult to describe.
Like a person who had always walked on flat ground suddenly being lifted into the sky.
His view widened in an instant.
The world suddenly seemed small.
The things he once had to look up at now seemed to lie beneath his feet.
The sharp swelling of his strength caused a thought to rise uncontrollably in his heart.
“I can do anything.” The instant that thought appeared, Kurō felt a chill.
That was not rational judgment.
It was not an evaluation based on his actual strength.
It was blind, almost deranged confidence.
It came so naturally, so reasonably, as if it had always existed inside his heart and had only now broken through the soil.
He suddenly raised his hand and slapped himself across the face.
“Smack!” The crisp sound echoed through the hidden chamber.
A burning pain spread across his cheek.
That pain was like a basin of cold water poured over his head, extinguishing most of the hot, swelling fire in his heart.
A bright red handprint remained on his face, but his eyes had already regained their clarity and calm.
“The power of the Mangekyō… really is terrifying.” Kurō muttered with lingering fear, his voice carrying a trace of relief at having narrowly pulled himself back.
Now he seemed to understand why every Uchiha who awakened the Mangekyō acted like an overconfident idiot, refusing to listen to anyone and doing everything according to their own whims.
Especially a certain Uchiha survivor who would throw out Amaterasu at a stray dog if it crossed his path.
The boost brought by this power was simply too terrifying.
Faced with strength at this level, even someone like Kurō, who had always believed in lying low, growing steadily, and surviving above all else, found it hard not to get carried away.
“Calm down.
Calm down.” He took a deep breath and warned himself again and again.
“There are countless monsters in the ninja world.
Awakening the Mangekyō doesn’t mean I’m safe.
“It only means I’ve temporarily gained a seat at the table.
There’s nothing to be proud of.” “No arrogance.
No impatience…” Kurō slowly exhaled.
His shoulders relaxed, and his heartbeat gradually returned to normal.
The strange light in his Mangekyō Sharingan also became much calmer.
What he needed to do now was figure out the abilities of these eyes.
“Anything is fine, just please don’t be Amaterasu…” Kurō silently prayed in his heart, his tone almost devout, as if he were begging every god he knew.
“That thing is pure filler trash in the ability pool.” “But ideally, give me something space-time related…” Space-time ninjutsu was basically the ultimate all-purpose tool in the ninja world, the kind of thing that still stayed relevant even in the highest-level fights of the Boruto era.
Next door, that lucky bastard Obito had pulled Kamui, and Kurō had been jealous of it for years.
“I want an ability that broken too…” I’m tired of relying on skill, devs.
Give me the wheelchair build!
With a mix of nervousness and expectation, Kurō slowly closed his eyes.
He sank his awareness into the depths of the Mangekyō Sharingan, feeling for the unique abilities carved into his eye power.
Information surged out from deep within the Mangekyō and flowed into his mind, slowly unfolding in his consciousness.
A moment later, he slowly opened his eyes.
His expression became somewhat strange.
The corner of his mouth twitched, and he could not help clicking his tongue.
“Tch… so it’s like Itachi’s eyes?
Two completely separate abilities?” After all, since he had crossed over into the Uchiha Clan, Kurō had spent these years combining the clan’s records with his own knowledge of the Mangekyō Sharingan to classify its abilities in detail.
In Kurō’s view, Mangekyō abilities could be divided into two types.
One type was like Obito’s Kamui.
The left eye was a defensive eye that transferred the user’s body and objects he touched into the Kamui dimension.
The right eye was an offensive eye that warped space around whatever entered his line of sight, destroying it or sending it into the Kamui dimension from a distance.
The two abilities were essentially connected.
They had simply developed in different directions.
Shisui’s Kotoamatsukami belonged to the same type.
Although the abilities of the left and right eyes were different, both served the core concept of rewriting another person’s will.
Sasuke’s Kagutsuchi and Amaterasu were similar as well.
One produced black flames, while the other controlled them.
At their core, they were linked.
The other type was extremely special, and the main representative was Uchiha Itachi.
Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi.
The strongest physical attack eye and the strongest offensive genjutsu eye.
The two abilities were independent of each other.
On the surface, they had no obvious connection, yet there seemed to be some hidden common thread between them.
The two abilities Kurō had awakened were similar to Itachi’s.
They were independent of one another, yet connected in some deeper sense.
Only unlike Itachi’s extreme damage-focused setup, Kurō’s Mangekyō seemed to be one offensive eye and one support eye.
Kurō unconsciously raised his hand and placed his fingertips near his eye socket, feeling the immense eye power within the Mangekyō.
“Magatsuhi” and “Inari.” These two names corresponded to the abilities of his left and right eyes.
Fortunately, the left eye’s “Magatsuhi” truly was the space-time ninjutsu Kurō had been yearning for.
Unfortunately, it was not the kind of mobility-focused, highly practical ability he had hoped for, like Flying Raijin, Obito’s Kamui, or Sasuke’s Amenotejikara.
His “Magatsuhi” was a space-time dōjutsu focused on offense, somewhat similar to Kakashi’s left eye.
Its effect was quite simple.
And also terrifying.
It was… Spatial collapse.
It locked onto everything within his line of sight and instantly collapsed the space it occupied.
Its advantages were minimal startup, no need to charge, and extremely high destructive power.
It essentially ignored most defenses, making it one of the highest-tier offensive dōjutsu.
Its weakness was that it consumed a huge amount of eye power, and the consumption rose proportionally with the size of the space being collapsed.
The larger the area he wanted to collapse, the greater the cost.
But overall, it was still an incredibly powerful offensive dōjutsu.
A true hero kills with his eyes!
A trace of excitement flashed in Kurō’s eyes.
For him, this eye’s ability perfectly made up for his lack of finishing power when facing top-level opponents.
In the past, if he ran into someone he could not beat, he could only run.
Now… At the very least, he could fire one shot first and see what happened.
As for the eye power consumption, he was not actually that worried.
After all, with the knowledge in his head, mere eye power consumption was not an impossible problem to solve.
Hashirama cells, other recovery methods, whatever it took.
If he looked for a solution, he would eventually find one.
Besides, the ability of his right eye, “Inari,” could make up for the left eye’s eye power consumption in the short term.
Thinking of his right eye’s ability, Kurō’s expression grew serious.
For him, the right eye, as a support eye, might even be far more important than the left eye’s “Magatsuhi.” Kurō’s right-eye ability, “Inari,” was absorption at its core.
It could indiscriminately absorb ninjutsu, chakra, and even eye power, converting them into power he could use.
At first glance, this ability seemed similar to the Preta Path, but there were differences.
First, unlike the Preta Path, which required physical contact with the target, Kurō’s “Inari” had far fewer restrictions.
It only needed the target to be within his right eye’s line of sight.
As long as he could see it, he could absorb it.
And it was not limited to ninjutsu and chakra.
Even eye power could be absorbed.
That meant if an opponent used genjutsu, he could directly absorb the other party’s eye power and cause the genjutsu to collapse on its own.
But what truly surpassed the Preta Path, and what Kurō valued most, was another aspect of this dōjutsu.
Kurō suppressed the excitement in his heart and bit his finger with trembling teeth.
Blood seeped from his fingertip.
He quickly formed several hand signs.
“Summoning Jutsu!” A burst of smoke exploded outward.
Within the smoke, a black crow landed steadily on his arm.
Its feathers were glossy black.
Its sharp beak opened slightly, letting out a low caw.
Kurō looked at the crow close in front of him.
More accurately, he looked at the eye set in its socket.
It was a Byakugan.
It had once belonged to a member of the Hyūga main family.
Somehow, it had ended up in the hands of Ao from Kirigakure, and in the end, Kurō had reclaimed it.
A flash of excitement passed through his eyes.
The most important part of Inari was that the power it absorbed did not simply turn into chakra.
It could also be converted into eye power, or directly used to strengthen his body.
This meant that, in battle, he could absorb an opponent’s ninjutsu and convert it into his own strength.
Not simply “neutralize” it.
Plunder it.
And according to Kurō’s analysis, if the absorbed eye power was used to feed back into his Mangekyō Sharingan itself, it might even be possible to obtain certain traits from other dōjutsu.
For example… The Byakugan.
One of the Three Great Dōjutsu of the ninja world, standing alongside the Sharingan.
If he absorbed the eye power contained in this eye and converted it into his own, nourishing his Mangekyō, what kind of result would appear?
Kurō looked at the Byakugan in the crow’s eye socket, his joy and excitement nearly impossible to describe.
His hand trembled slightly.
Because that possibility was too tempting.
So tempting that he almost did not dare believe it.
He took a deep breath and forced the overflowing excitement back into his heart.
It was not time to celebrate yet.
These were still only theories.
They needed verification.
They needed a great many experiments.
But at the very least, he had already seen the path.
The path to becoming stronger.
Safer.
The path that would let him survive to the very end in this rotten ninja world.