The silence in the throne room of the Hidden Light Village was absolute. It was a silence that Arthur Bennett had cultivated meticulously, a barrier against the world outside.
Buried deep beneath the Sun Stream Plaza in the Land of Birds, he sat alone on his throne. His chin rested on his fist as the morning light of the chamber cast a shadow across his face.
To the world, he was a cautionary tale sealed within a glass orb, hidden in the deepest vault of an unknown area. To the few who knew the truth of his current location, he was a lord in exile.
Not many understood the complexities of Arthur's mind. It had evolved completely at some point in time upon arriving in this world. He was always factual, knowledgeable, and wise thanks to his faith. But the day he had become Hoshikaze, it was as if his IQ had boosted beyond normal parameters.
Things had been like that since, and it was that same faith that had kept him standing strong against the world that wanted to stop him at every turn.
As he sat there on his throne, he kept his eyes closed, letting his mind drift through the mental calendar of the timeline.
He knew the when of things. He had memorized the chronology of the ninja world before he ever stepped into it. But the where was becoming problematic.
The original Shippuden timeline was notoriously condensed. The entire series, from Naruto's return to the village to the conclusion of the Fourth Great Ninja War, spanned less than a year. Even the war itself—a cataclysmic event involving tens of thousands of shinobi—took place over the course of barely two days.
'There's still time left before the start,' Arthur's voice echoed in his head.
He began to recount the events, ticking off arcs like items on a grocery list. The Rescue of the Kazekage. The Reunion at the Bridge. The Immortal Duo. The Pain Invasion. The Five Kage Summit. This list hardly regarded the filler arcs.
The timeline was a mess of canon events and anime-original detours.
The Three-Tails arc involving Guren? The Six-Tails arc with Utakata?
In the original story, those happened at vague, contradictory times. But Arthur knew that this world, this 'simulation' that Dr. Kapoor had trapped them in, operated on a hybrid logic. It was an amalgamation of the manga's pacing, the anime's expanded lore, and the rigid mechanics of the video games.
'I should be careful trying to play out every arc,' he deduced.
He was right to think this because of how much has already changed: Hiruzen was still present, and Minato and Kushina were back.
Arthur's pieces were scattered.
At his current stage, possessing the body of his clone Ryugetsu, he was still an S-rank threat. He could level a small village if he exerted himself. But to achieve his ultimate goal—to dismantle the system of chakra and destroy this world so thoroughly that the simulation would be forced to end—he needed more.
He needed his main body back. Or, he needed something greater. But what could rival what he had lost? Perhaps acquiring Hagoromo's power would suffice, as this was the closest thing… But there was something even closer and much easier to obtain.
'The Ten-Tails…'
Gaining that Tailed Beast would undoubtedly put Arthur at the top of the world. And if used correctly, it was the ultimate cheat code.
Yet the route to that was somewhat blocked. While he already had the Six-Tails and an army to hunt the beasts for him, he had no Rinnegan to summon the Gedo Mazo.
The last thing Arthur wanted to do was copy the Akatsuki. Rather than play their game, it was better to use them since he knew their playbook better than they did.
In the lore, the Akatsuki stated they had to seal the beasts in order of their tails—One through Nine—to prevent the Gedo Mazo from becoming unstable. While the anime had played loose with the timing of the Four-Tails and Seven-Tails, Arthur was banking on the game logic holding true.
Meaning, 'They hunt in order… Gaara first then the rest. I don't need to hunt anyone myself; I just need to wait at some of their finish lines…"
This knowledge was his greatest weapon. Pain and Obito would do the heavy lifting, weakening the nations and collecting the batteries. Afterwards, he could swoop in when the work was done.
Until then, he had to rebuild while no enemies were aware of his true existence.
Arthur soon opened his eyes and looked down at his palms. The skin was smooth and unblemished, but it felt foreign. Ryugetsu's body was a chef-d'oeuvre of biological engineering. But it was only a specialist, not a generalist.
He flexed his fingers, retesting the chakra pathways. It was only a fraction, thirty percent at best, of his original body's peak output.
Upon taking that into account, he reevaluated the inventory of his current arsenal. The wide array of humbling abilities he retained were quite impressive, yet many were diminished compared to his former self.
He possessed basic ninjutsu across a few elemental releases—low-ranked and functional, but lacking the overwhelming flair they once had. His true strength lay in fuinjutsu; he retained high-level sealing knowledge, and his naturally high spiritual energy greatly enhanced its effectiveness.
He was also still skilled in medical ninjutsu, capable of advanced healing, though his reduced chakra reserves meant he could no longer regenerate entire limbs instantly as he once could.
Physically, he retained the Chakra-Enhanced Strength technique, enough to punch through stone walls. Though feats on the scale of cracking skyscrapers were no longer possible.
Thankfully, he still had access to smoke style, which made him well-suited for evasion and infiltration. The Flying raijin technique also existed. Yet the network he had built from his main body was gone; the marks he had placed were tied to his original chakra signature, forcing him to begin again from scratch and re-mark the world anew.
His sensory abilities remained formidable thanks to his Tamashii. And in close combat, he could still rely on the Seven Heavenly Breaths up to the Fourth or Fifth Activations. Using anything higher in this weaker body was far too risky.
Next was his Raigō: Thousand Hand Strike. Ryugetsu's main purpose was to be a monk with incredible spiritual energy. That technique may have been the only one to surpass his main body.
What about for summoning? Interestingly, Arthur still had access to summoning jutsu, maintaining the contract with Koko. Above that, he could still enter his Simian Sage Mode. Yet there was something odd when he entered it in this body. It was as if the natural energy had a mind of its own, knowing that this body was not an ordinary one.
Lastly was Ryugetsu's specialty: forming barriers.
The aforementioned were all his gains. The losses, however, were quite troubling to think about.
He was no longer capable of the Body Modification; he lost his adamantine durability, and his perfection of water style and lightning style had vanished entirely.
Several bloodline abilities were also absent. The ice style from Haku's cells was not present in this clone, nor were the Adamantine Sealing Chains from Karin's cells. Finally, while he could still perform the hand signs for the Reanimation technique, the jutsu was effectively unusable; without the abundance of chakra stored in his original body, he could no longer summon the dead on a mass scale.
At least not without aid.
All these losses made sense because he had designed each clone for special purposes. When he first created them, it took an unprecedented level of resources. So much so that he had failed a few times, forced to kill some of them before restarting.
But once he had perfected the cloning process, he had tweaked their genetics. Each held something the other did not. One was for brute force, one was for advanced barriers, one was for elemental perfection, and one was for housing Kekkei Genkai.
Now, Arthur was content to have possessed Ryugetsu's body; it was a fair vessel for spiritual energy. Physically the weakest, but possessing the highest affinity for ninshū and mental processing. He would have to relearn that, but at least it would be much faster than if he were in another clone's body.
His thoughts soon turned to his physical assets.
The war had been costly in terms of gear. Of those gears, the Blade of Chaos was the biggest loss. The sword had been sealed alongside his main body. And because that was a soul-bound weapon, his spirit alone could not harness the connection the orb prevented.
As if that wasn't enough, he had lost even more weapons. Hiramekarei became dust after John suicided, the Boltswords were smashed by Jasper upon Kaito's defeat, and the Executioner's Blade was now in Jada's possession.
Arthur questioned why Hoshikaze gave her such a valuable, modified weapon. But then that would just leave him asking himself why he gave her the weapon.
'I must be out of my mind…'
Arthur was down to the dregs of the Seven Swordsmen collection. But he wasn't defenseless. Still in his possession was the Thunder Sword—a nice piece he'd saved since acquiring it in the Land of Tea.
More important were the Treasured Tools of the Sage of Six Paths. The Banana Palm Fan, the Crimson Gourd, and the Golden Rope had always been in Ryugetsu's possession—a wise choice by Arthur.
Yet there was a problem: these tools consumed massive amounts of chakra, which his current body only had so much of to use effectively.
Not everything seemed as bad as he was thinking. Sure, there are more losses than gains, but he did not forget the thing that was right underneath his feet.
The Hidden Light Village, still standing strong, was his best fortress. And dwelling within its walls was his secret laboratory.
Inside the lab's cryostasis chambers lay the genetic future of the world. He had samples of Haku for ice style, Kimimaro for bone manipulation, Jugo for Sage Transformation, Orochimaru for Soft Body Modification, and even Naruto and Sasuke (Asura's and Indra's chakra).
Add the crown jewel, Jiraiya's body, and Arthur had more than enough assets to restrengthen himself.
That particular Sannin was currently suspended in a preservation tank, breathing but still in a comatose state.
Now the only question he had in mind was which of those cells he would implant in himself.
'No…' he firmly deduced. 'Not yet…'
While extremely tempting to begin surgery immediately, he considered the risks. Ryugetsu's body was a delicate balance of spiritual energy and cloned tissue. Integrating foreign cells—especially potent ones like Jugo's—had a high probability of causing cellular rejection.
The last time he had made that mistake, he was coughing up sand for weeks. And in a world where death was permanent, he wasn't going to risk dying on an operating table because of impatience.
Arthur was nerfed, which was an unfair advantage he had not completely expected but at least remained prepared for. The thought by no means troubled him. Rather, it left him pleased.
He had gotten so strong that the world lost the option to kill him. The only thing they could do was pull out the most convoluted method out there: Use a modified version of the world's strongest genjutsu to seal him temporarily.
Arthur soon opened his eyes. Not a single smile graced his lips, yet his heart understood this one thing: he was still the author of this world's misery, and he had a lot of editing left to do.