“No!” With a roar, Kaguya Shiro’s right hand shot up.
The skin on his index finger burst open, and a segment of bone shot out like a bullet.
Pfft!
A bloody hole appeared in the center of the scrawny rogue ninja’s forehead.
His sneer froze, his body swayed, and he collapsed backward.
Kaguya Shiro sat slumped on the ground, his chest heaving violently.
The physical revulsion of killing for the first time churned in his stomach, but before he could vomit, another rogue ninja had noticed him and charged with a kunai.
[First kill confirmed.
Cursed Technique System unlocked.] A cold, emotionless mechanical voice sounded deep in his mind.
[Newbie reward distributed: Six Eyes] In that instant, the entire world underwent a dramatic transformation.
Shiro’s vision suddenly became incredibly clear and incredibly broad.
He could even see the flow of energy in the air, like rainbow streams winding through space.
He could also see the chakra pathways inside the charging rogue ninja, every contraction of his muscles, and every movement of his bones.
Even the passage of time itself seemed to slow to a crawl.
The rogue ninja’s charge seemed to unfold in slow motion.
The trajectory of the kunai was clearly visible under the Six Eyes’ perception.
Not only that, Shiro also saw the three possible follow-up attacks after the thrust, and the telltale sign that the man’s left foot was about to shift to the right.
This was the Six Eyes?
There was no time to think.
His body moved on instinct.
His foot slid back and to the left, narrowly evading the kunai.
At the same time, the skin on his left forearm tore open, and a thirty-centimeter bone blade sprang out from the outer side of his forearm.
This was a form he had never managed to manifest during his earlier tests.
Before, he could only fire finger bones or harden the bone beneath his skin for defense.
The bone blade gleamed with a cold, razor-sharp edge.
His attack missed.
Startled, the rogue ninja immediately switched to a horizontal slash.
But under the Six Eyes’ perception, it was meaningless.
Shiro ducked early, the kunai passing a hairsbreadth above his head.
Then, the bone blade slashed upward diagonally, cleanly across the wrist holding the kunai.
“Ah!” The rogue ninja screamed and retreated, his wrist nearly severed.
He didn’t pursue.
Instead, he quickly scanned the entire battlefield.
The enhanced vision granted by the Six Eyes instantly gave him a complete picture of the battlefield: Tsubaki had some skill, but she was being suppressed by the one-eyed brute, and her left shoulder was wounded.
The remaining three caravan guards were barely holding on, while two more rogue ninja wove between the carts, trying to flank.
In that moment, the flow of chakra, muscle tension, weapon trajectories…
all of it flooded his brain like a stream of data, yet it brought no burden.
The Six Eyes wasn’t just seeing.
It was also automatically processing the information, calculating the best course of action for the current situation.
“Haaa…
Hoo…” Shiro took a deep breath, then pushed off with his feet and charged forward.
His target wasn’t the enemy in front of him, but a rogue ninja circling behind Tsubaki.
That man was completely focused on Tsubaki’s back, unaware that a six-year-old was attacking from his blind spot.
By the time he heard the wind and turned, Shiro’s bone blade was already thrusting at the back of his neck.
“What…?” The bone blade pierced flesh and struck the cervical vertebrae.
He felt resistance, then pushed down.
Crack!
The rogue ninja’s eyes went dead, and he crumpled to the ground.
“Brat?” The one-eyed brute was both shocked and enraged.
He abandoned Tsubaki, spun around, and slashed down at Shiro.
The blade carried a trace of Wind-natured chakra.
Before it arrived, the razor-sharp wind pressure had already ripped through the air.
Under the Six Eyes’ vision, Shiro could even see the chakra spinning at high speed along the blade, forming invisible serrations.
He couldn’t block it head-on!
Shiro rolled to the side.
The blade scraped past his body before slamming into the ground, carving a deep trench.
The one-eyed brute followed with a horizontal slash, but Shiro was even faster.
He had already predicted the direction of the man’s movement.
As he ducked, the skin over his right shin split open, and three bone spikes burst outward.
Skrrrt!
The bone spikes sliced across the brute’s calf, drawing several beads of blood.
It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was enough to make him hesitate for a split second.
Now.
“Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets!” Shiro pressed the heels of his palms together, spreading all ten fingers like a blooming flower.
The skin on every fingertip burst open simultaneously, and ten stark-white finger bones shot out like a shotgun blast, covering the brute’s entire upper body.
“Damned brat, what is this…?” The brute roared as he frantically swung his ninja blade, knocking seven of them away.
But the remaining three struck his shoulder, abdomen, and thigh.
“Ugh!” The brute cried out as he staggered backward.
Tsubaki didn’t let the opportunity slip away.
Her kunai plunged precisely into the center of his back, over his heart.
The battle was completely over within minutes.
Of the five-rogue ninja, three were dead, while the remaining two were severely wounded and captured.
On the caravan’s side, two guards had been killed, three were injured, and Tsubaki had suffered a serious wound to her left shoulder.
Shiro knelt on the ground, gasping heavily.
His eyes were tightly shut.
That all-seeing sensation had vanished, replaced by excruciating pain throughout his body and the overwhelming exhaustion caused by excessive chakra depletion.
His hands were covered in blood, the result of his skin tearing apart whenever he used the Dead Bone Pulse.
His chakra reserves were insufficient.
Although his bones had already begun regenerating, the flesh would need more time to heal.
“Shiro…
you…” Tsubaki walked over while clutching her shoulder, looking at him with a complicated expression.
“The Kaguya Clan.” Shiro spoke softly.
There was no reason to hide it anymore.
“I’m a surviving orphan of the Kaguya Clan who escaped from the Hidden Mist.” Tsubaki remained silent for a long time before finally letting out a sigh.
“Get things packed up.
We need to leave as soon as possible.
The smell of blood will attract more trouble.” He nodded and struggled to his feet.
He looked at his bloodied hands, at the corpses of the rogue ninja lying on the ground, then toward the desolate wilderness of the Land of Rice Fields in the distance.
That cold mechanical voice still seemed to be echoing in his mind.
Cursed Technique System?
Six Eyes?
He understood now.
In this world, where human lives were as worthless as weeds, strength was the only thing that allowed someone to live freely.
He needed strength.
And the power unleashed during those brief minutes by combining the Six Eyes with the Dead Bone Pulse had shown him a faster path toward becoming stronger.
The caravan hastily buried the dead before continuing onward with the wounded.
Shiro sat atop one of the carts, allowing Tsubaki to bandage his wounds.
The setting sun painted the wilderness of the Land of Rice Fields blood-red.
He closed his eyes and tried to call upon the system in his mind.
But unfortunately, there was no response.
Yet when he focused inward and carefully sensed himself, he could feel that, deep within his consciousness, something was taking root and beginning to grow.
The cart rumbled onward, carrying the survivors toward an unknown marketplace, deeper into the heart of this chaotic land.
Shiro clenched his bandaged hands.
In his previous life, he had scraped by as a food delivery driver, working from dawn until dusk every single day of the year without a break, until he was struck and killed by a truck by the roadside, abandoned like an old stray dog.
But in this life, he would live stronger.
Freer.
And more unrestrained.