[Translator’s notes] Hi, and welcome to my second fanfiction!
This story is more lighthearted, fun, and carefree than my first one, which has a darker and heavier tone.
I hope you enjoy this story too!
And don’t forget to check out my other fanfiction.
🙂 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The setting sun painted the clouds crimson.
Atop the Hokage Rock, a small figure leaned against the railing.
Bathed in the golden glow of dusk, Akira looked down over the entire village.
In his previous life, he had been a seasoned corporate drone who spent years drifting through life doing the bare minimum.
He liked to think of himself as a capybara, someone who figured that living was fine, dying was fine too.
His emotions were so stable they were practically nonexistent.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [The More You Know] In Chinese internet culture, the capybara is often portrayed as the ultimate symbol of emotional stability.
Its slow movements, blank expression, and apparent indifference to danger have inspired jokes such as, “Living is fine; dying is fine too.” The humor comes from imagining the animal as so calm and detached that almost nothing can disturb it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ He had once believed that, after being bombarded by every kind of information modern society could throw at him, he’d become someone who had seen it all.
Life, death, partings, reunions…
nothing could really shake him anymore.
Yet the sights before him still sent waves crashing through his heart.
Children chased each other through the village, casually leaping seven or eight meters into the air, springing straight from the ground onto second-story rooftops.
In a remote training ground, several people sparred while casually spitting fire and water techniques at one another.
It was utterly absurd.
Although Akira had prepared himself mentally, witnessing it with his own eyes still felt unbelievable.
He had transmigrated.
From an ordinary office worker in twenty-first-century Earth to the world of the anime Eye Legends: The Five Great Villages Beat Each Other Up.
Now he was nothing more than an ordinary five-year-old child of Konohagakure.
No sister, a house to his name, and both parents dead.
The standard orphan protagonist package.
Ordinary civilians didn’t have family names, only given names.
Fortunately, he was still called Akira in this life.
His parents had both been ordinary Konoha shinobi.
Not long ago, they had died during a border patrol in the Land of Fire after clashing with shinobi from another village.
Aside from a two-story house with its own courtyard, they had left him nothing.
A few years earlier, Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara had broken up.
The two had turned their love into hatred, fought one another to the death, reshaped the landscape itself, and created the Valley of the End.
After Hashirama tearfully killed Madara, he eventually passed away in grief.
From that moment on, the entire Ninja World began to stir with restless ambition.
As the saying goes: A Susanoo wrapped around the Thousand-Armed Buddha, those two alone could wipe out four nations.
In a world filled with supernatural power, why had peace ever existed?
Because the strongest man’s will defined the world.
As long as the God of Shinobi, Senju Hashirama, wanted peace, the world remained peaceful.
The will of the strongest person decided everything.
So once Konoha’s two overwhelmingly powerful figures were both gone, relying solely on the so-called fastest shinobi in the world, Senju Tobirama was no longer enough to keep everyone in line.
Thus the First Great Ninja War erupted.
It had already been raging for several years.
The fighting was so fierce people joked they had beaten human brains into dog brains.
Aside from the Land of Wind, which had shut itself off and quietly developed behind closed doors, every other nation was drowning in bloodshed.
The number of shinobi throughout the world had plummeted, and all sides were gradually running out of steam.
The war was clearly approaching its final stage.
Unfortunately, Akira’s parents had fallen in the darkness before dawn.
They hadn’t survived long enough to see the end of the First Great Ninja War.
If he remembered correctly, there was roughly a decade or more of peace between the First and Second Great Ninja Wars, a relatively long period of stability.
As long as he survived this war, he could enjoy more than ten peaceful years.
Ever since the Hidden Villages were established, however, the Ninja World had practically held a giant five-village free-for-all every decade or so, burning through generation after generation of young people.
If history followed its original course, the Second Great Ninja War would break out a little over a decade from now.
By then, Akira himself would be thrown into that meat grinder.
Whether he’d survive…
was anyone’s guess.
Being transmigrated into the Ninja World was about as safe as an ordinary person getting tricked into one of those scam compounds overseas.
Living a peaceful life was practically impossible.
Konoha constantly preached lofty ideals like the Will of Fire, but that couldn’t change the fact that it was, at its core, a heavily armed military organization.
What kind of normal people send children barely in their teens onto the battlefield?
Wasn’t that basically terrorism?
Take Kakashi, for example.
He graduated from the Academy at six years old and started killing people immediately afterward.
How could that possibly be considered a healthy organization?
Then again, the world was one gigantic amateur production.
As flawed as Konoha was, the other hidden villages were even worse.
Sometimes an organization only looked competent because its competition was even more incompetent.
This was truly an era of comparing who sucked less.
Still, despite all its problems, Konoha at least upheld the Will of Fire.
The village took decent care of the families of shinobi who died in service.
Every month, Akira received a small survivor’s stipend, and the village also covered all expenses for attending the Ninja Academy.
At least he didn’t have to worry about making ends meet.
Right now, his top priority was simple.
Study hard.
Improve every day.
One day he’d punch the Uchiha, kick the Jinchuriki, marry Tsunade-hime, become the Fourth Hokage, and stand at the very peak of the Ninja World.
As for why he could say something so confidently…
Naturally, it was because every transmigrator came with a cheat.
With a thought, Akira silently called out to the system.
A pale blue screen appeared before his eyes.
━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━ Character: Akira (5 years and 6 months) Reputation: 13 (Unknown) Bloodline: Divine Tree Descendant (Legendary Plant Person) Skills: ✧ Chakra Extraction Technique ✧ Kunai Throwing Items: ✧ None Attributes (The average adult has 5): Strength: 3 (One goose’s worth of power) Constitution: 3 (A fragile little potato—one hit and you’re done) Agility: 4 (Couldn’t outrun a feather duster) Intelligence: 6 (Brainpower slightly above average) Spirit: 8 (Two lifetimes of experience grant exceptional perception) Charm: 6 (A surprisingly cute kid) Luck: 5 (Changes unpredictably every day) Current Wish Banner: Tomb Raider (Insufficient Reputation.
Wishes unavailable.) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ It was a gacha-based Wish System.
By accumulating Reputation, he earned Wish attempts.
Through those Wishes, he could obtain powers from beyond this world—powers capable of overturning the very laws of reality.
Simply put, he needed to constantly make a name for himself.
The more Reputation he gained, the more Wishes he received.
The more Wishes he made, the stronger he became.
A perfect positive feedback loop.
Who possessed the greatest Reputation in this world?
Aside from legendary figures whose names had been immortalized in history, the Five Kage of the Great Hidden Villages stood at the very top.
Below them were heroic figures such as the Sannin, the White Fang, or title-bearing shinobi like Shunshin no Shisui, whose reputations shook the entire Ninja World.
Then there were famous authors.
Someone like Jiraiya, for example.
After years of endless warfare, the people of the Ninja World were desperately lacking in spiritual entertainment.
That seemed like a promising avenue to explore.
Or he could become infamous instead.
The various Jinchuriki, who were feared and despised everywhere they went.
Or wealthy tyrants like Gato from the Land of Waves.
In short, whether one’s reputation was righteous or evil didn’t matter.
As long as people knew your name…
As long as they talked about you…
You gained Reputation.
With that in mind, his next objective became perfectly clear.
First, set a small goal.
Become the number one student in the Ninja Academy.
Graduate as the class valedictorian.
Let his name spread into the homes of every classmate through his academic achievements until everyone was talking about him.
After all…
Fame was best earned while young.
There was nothing easier to spread than the reputation of a child prodigy.