Inside the hidden chamber, Kurō slowly opened his eyes.
His gaze fell on the crow perched on his arm.
More accurately, it fell on the pale-white Byakugan set into the crow’s eye socket.
After a moment of silence, he raised his hand and formed a sign.
“Release.” Smoke burst outward, and the crow vanished into the air.
The white eye disappeared, and the hidden chamber returned to its usual dimness.
Kurō stood up and stretched his slightly stiff body.
His gaze seemed to pass through the walls of the chamber, as if he could see the village far away, hidden beneath the mist.
“Looks like I won’t be getting much rest tonight…” He murmured softly, his voice carrying a trace of helplessness and exhaustion.
He left the chamber, his footsteps light, as quiet as a cat moving through the night.
Kurō arrived at the door of Karin’s bedroom.
The door was not fully closed, leaving a narrow gap.
He stood before that gap and, by the faint light from the corridor, saw the small figure on the bed.
Karin was curled up beneath the blanket, her red hair scattered across the pillow.
Her breathing was steady and soft.
The corners of her mouth were slightly raised, as if she were having a good dream.
Kurō watched for a moment.
After confirming that she really was fast asleep, he finally turned and left in peace.
Outside the limestone cave, the night was deep.
The mist was thicker than during the day, wrapping the entire forest in a hazy chaos.
The moon was hidden behind clouds.
Only a few strands of silver light occasionally slipped through the gaps, falling across the damp ground like scattered coins.
Kurō stood at the cave entrance, turned around, and quickly formed signs with both hands.
The sealing jutsu symbols on the rock wall lit up with a dim blue glow, sealing the entrance once again.
He then placed a genjutsu over the seal’s outer layer, ensuring that anyone who came close would be misled into thinking this was nothing more than an ordinary rock face.
After finishing all of that, he raised his head and looked into the deep night.
“Is it almost time…” “This place is about fifty kilometers from Kirigakure.
Looks like I’ll need to pick up the pace a little.” The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
A faint blue arc flashed through his black eyes.
“Well… I suppose I’ll take this a little seriously.” He gathered chakra into his feet.
A faint trace of lightning could be seen flickering around his calves, letting out tiny crackling sounds.
The lightning was not dazzling, but it carried a power that made the heart tighten, like a beast crouching in the dark.
“Lightning Style: Thunderclap.” The instant the words fell, Kurō vanished from where he stood.
There was no afterimage, no sound of wind.
Only an extremely faint hiss, like an electric current slicing through the air.
That sound vanished in the night almost immediately, so quickly it was as if nothing had happened at all.
Only a shallow mark on the ground, scorched by lightning, proved that someone had been standing there moments ago.
Lightning Style: Thunderclap.
This was one of the few jutsu Kurō had developed entirely by himself, without relying on the minds of true geniuses like Kakashi, Minato, or Shisui.
He sped toward Kirigakure, a trace of nostalgia flashing through his eyes.
Back during the Third Great Ninja War, he had once watched from a distance with his Sharingan active as the Third Raikage tore through thousands upon thousands of Iwagakure ninja.
The man, wrapped in lightning, had been like an unbeatable war god.
He charged through the crowd, and wherever he passed, flesh and blood were sent flying.
But what had filled Kurō’s mind back then was not any heroic thought like “a real man should be like that.” It was deep fear.
What his two-tomoe Sharingan saw most clearly was not the towering body of the Third Raikage, but the faces of the Iwagakure ninja being crushed, along with the organs and blood flying through the air.
Some of those faces were young.
Some were old.
Some were twisted with rage.
Some were warped by terror.
They shattered in the lightning, deformed under overwhelming force, and showed all kinds of expressions in the instant death descended.
That tragic scene was like hell brought into the world.
For the first time, Kurō felt resistance toward the Sharingan’s detailed perception.
Those eyes were too good.
So good that they let him see every single detail with perfect clarity.
Back then, he had stared blankly at that scene, not even hearing the teammate beside him asking how the battle was going.
He simply looked at the Iwagakure ninja dying horribly in the distance.
And every time he thought that each one of them had once been a living person, with their own life, their own family, and their own dreams, his scalp would go numb.
It was not sympathy.
After all, they were ninja.
None of their hands were clean.
To some extent, all of them were stained with the blood of innocent people.
Even among those crushed by the Third Raikage, there had been children not yet ten years old.
That did not change anything.
After living in this ninja world for more than ten years, Kurō had already fully adapted to its rules.
He knew very well that this was not a world where he could afford careless sympathy.
It was just… He still could not help placing himself in the position of those easily slaughtered “small people.” Every time a twisted head was ripped apart by lightning or crushed by that dark, massive hand, his mind would instinctively replace those faces with his own.
And then fear would crawl through him.
That fear did not come from reason.
It came from instinct.
From the instinct of an ordinary man struggling to survive at the bottom of the food chain.
Kurō understood his own nature very clearly.
Even if he constantly comforted himself with thoughts like, “I’m a transmigrator, so I should be the protagonist of this world,” or “A cheat ability will come sooner or later.
Even without one, I can still rise easily with the advantage of future knowledge,” deep in his subconscious, he still saw himself from the perspective of an ordinary person.
Sensitive, insecure, good at hiding himself, prone to overthinking, afraid to act when facing real difficulty.
Those parts of him, born from the orphan he had been in his previous life, had never changed.
Kurō knew that, at his core, he did not have anything like the so-called mindset of a strong person.
He was just an ordinary man who wanted to survive, whose greatest dream was to live comfortably.
That was why, when he saw the miserable state of that battlefield, he had felt such overwhelming fear.
‘Will I die too?
Just like those Iwagakure ninja, forced by some order from above to face an enemy I could never defeat, then casually kicked to death?’ The Kurō who had been quietly proud of making a small name for himself on the battlefield was dragged back to reality in that instant.
At that time, only one thought remained in his mind.
Run.
Run as far away as possible.