The moment he pushed open his courtyard gate, the lingering insect chirps across the clan grounds and the lazy footsteps of the distant patrol were sealed off completely behind him.
Yoru pulled the red brick—a top-grade piece of construction material that had rendered outstanding service—out from under his arm and hefted it in his hand.
The weight was just right, the corners crisp and clean, the rough surface fitting perfectly into his palm.
Handy, durable, and free.
Five stars.
He casually set the brick down beside the shoe rack by the door.
He’d need to bring it to school again tomorrow.
It was a top-tier tool for physical self-defense, recyclable on the spot after use; its bang-for-buck crushed every other ninja tool.
Taking the steps two at a time, he strode into his bedroom and fell backward onto the wooden bed.
The springs let out a muffled creak as he sank into the thin quilt.
He let out a long breath and stared blankly at the dim ceiling for a couple of seconds.
A whole day of frantic point-grubbing had finally come to an end.
He couldn’t wait to sink his consciousness inward and pull up the glowing golden system panel.
［Current Balance: 78,550 points］
Over seventy-eight thousand.
Yoru felt his breath catch and his heart pound.
From cornering Rin against the wall in the classroom that morning, to the ultimate double kill in the public restroom after school— and then, at the entrance of the clan grounds, the last few waves of massive income delivered by Obito’s tragic, earth-shattering wail.
All told, in under twelve hours, starting from zero, he’d managed to fleece his way to this number.
Yoru rubbed his chin and started tallying up the contribution ratios of his various “leeks.”
That guy Kakashi—legs skewered by kunai, his classroom posturing crushed—had chipped in at least fifteen thousand.
Obito, that perpetual motion machine, had put out steadily all day, good for over eight thousand guaranteed.
Asuma alone accounted for more than twenty thousand; from being scared into wetting himself on the playground to the wardrobe change in the public restroom, he’d been squeezed until there wasn’t a scrap left.
The rest of the scattered income came from the whole class having their composure broken en masse, plus the thousand-odd points contributed by that single-celled organism, Might Guy.
Seventy-eight thousand.
He was still a little over twenty thousand short of the hundred-thousand mark.
He took a deep breath.
Ten thousand points could trigger the top-tier pity.
Sure, the first three ten-pulls had twice coughed up a pile of trash-tier junk—but the third had genuinely handed him the chakra level of a peak Genin.
So what would happen if he saved up a full hundred thousand and blew it all at once?
Ten ten-pulls?
Or would the system unlock some higher-dimensional hidden prize pool?
A legendary ultimate reward?
Like popping a Sharingan straight out? New chapters come out on g.com first.
Or maybe a Sage Body?
Yoru’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
A gambler’s gut told him this system absolutely had a hidden spending tier.
The drop patterns of the first three ten-pulls were proof enough.
If he slammed in a hundred thousand points at once, whatever the system gave him would make everything he’d gained so far look like child’s play.
Single pulls impoverish three generations, ten-pulls ruin a lifetime, but going all-in is a man’s romance.
But flip it around—what if he threw in a hundred thousand points and got ten gold-plated kunai?
Yoru shut his eyes, forcibly crushed the urge to pull, and closed the system interface.
Hold back for now, and the road ahead stays wide open.
It was only a hundred thousand; Konoha had no shortage of high-quality “leeks.”
At today’s rate, one more day of school and fleecing them would be more than enough to gather a hundred thousand.
A few more kicks at Asuma, a couple more strawberry-flavored soldier pills forced on Might Guy, and he’d have it in a few days.
Even if there was no hidden prize pool, ten ten-pulls guaranteed ten top-tier items.
Probability is conserved; after extreme adversity comes fortune.
For now, Yoru lay with his hands behind his head, staring at the dim ceiling.
The night breeze drifted in through the gaps in the window, carrying a hint of chill.
The excitement in his mind slowly faded, and his expression turned serious.
Because of the cruel reality.
He began pulling up Konoha’s timeline in his head.
It was currently the 43rd year of Konoha.
He was six, freshly enrolled in the Ninja Academy.
By the standard academy curriculum, he’d graduate and be assigned to a squad in three years.
Three years from now.
That would be the year he turned nine.
Yoru’s face sank, inch by inch.
Nine years old—that was exactly when the Third Ninja World War would erupt in full, every nation throwing its main forces into the meat-grinder phase.
Konoha would take beating after beating from Suna, Iwa, Kiri, and Kumo, the whole ninja world dissolving into tragic, bloody chaos.
In his past life on Blue Star, what were nine-year-olds doing?
Still in third grade!
Arguing red in the face every day over the class-monitor armband and cartoons.
Occasionally bawling for half a day just because the teacher scolded them for not finishing their homework.
Their biggest concern after school was what to eat for dinner and whether their allowance stretched to a pack of spicy gluten strips.
But in this world, where a human life was worth less than a kunai, at nine years old he’d be strapping on the Konoha forehead protector.
Gripping a blood-stained kunai, following a Jonin squad leader deep into the battlefield, fighting for his life against ninja from every nation in a sea of corpses and blood.
Sending a nine-year-old brat to the front to brawl hand-to-hand with a pack of cold-blooded, killing-hardened grown men?
Is that something a carbon-based lifeform can actually do?
It was the kind of exploitation that would make a robber baron weep and a sweatshop slave fall silent.
The ninja villages’ twisted child-labor scheme was more insane than the greediest slave-driver in history.
Life and death was no child’s play.
Once you were on the battlefield, who cared that you were fresh out of the academy?
When a kunai punched into flesh, it was still a cold, lethal strike.
Yoru sat up and clenched his fists.
He felt the abundant peak-Genin chakra in his body, the energy surging and coursing through his meridians.
In today’s Ninja Academy, this power would crush his peers without question.
But his eyes were clear, without a trace of pride.
He had plenty of self-awareness.
Take Kakashi—he’d make Jonin while everyone else was still scraping their way to Chunin.
And Uchiha Itachi was even more terrifying; at seven, he already had Anbu-level combat ability.
His own talent for training couldn’t possibly measure up to these monsters.
Never mind Might Guy, that taijutsu fanatic who treated his own body like it was forged from iron.
So starting tomorrow, he had to work both fronts at once!
Chakra control, ninja tool skills, taijutsu—every last one maxed out.
But leaning on nothing but conventional, step-by-step training, the pace was nowhere near fast enough.
Even if he trained until he was coughing up blood, he still wouldn’t make a ripple thrown into the meat grinder of the Third Ninja World War at nine.
The other path was to cling to the system for dear life.
Wring the maximum Emotional Damage Points out of this bunch of ninja every single day!
Trade points for strength, and use that strength to save his own life.
As long as he had enough Emotional Damage Points, he could fleece the system shop bald and crush all that talent and bloodline outright with raw stats.
That was the first hurdle.
But even if he was lucky enough to survive the Third Ninja World War, a bigger blade still hung over his head.
Yoru’s brows knit tight.
The hair-raising moment surfaced in his mind.
The night of the Uchiha clan massacre.
This was the true Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of every Uchiha.
That massacre happened around the 58th year of Konoha.
There was still a buffer of a dozen-odd years from now.
It seemed far off, but in truth, from this point on, the rift between the Uchiha clan and the village’s upper echelons was already deepening.
Every abnormal move the Uchiha made was being magnified and scrutinized by the Hokage Building.
And when that cursed night truly came, whether it was the conspiracy of the village higher-ups or the slaughtering blade of that ultimate devoted son, Uchiha Itachi—neither would stop to reason with you.