Chapter 3: The Ninjutsu Monopoly
But the good days didn't last. For reasons unknown—perhaps stubbornness, perhaps madness—Hanzō of the Land of Rain provoked a war, attempting to single-handedly fight the three giants of the shinobi world.
The Third Tsuchikage, Ōnoki, was a cunning old fox. He made loud political slogans but committed few troops, content to watch from the border. The impoverished Sand Village, however, had been itching for a war. They seized the opportunity, sending troops into the Land of Rain, burning and pillaging as they went.
Konoha, as the hegemon of the ninja world, couldn't stand by and watch. To "maintain peace" and, of course, to defend their own interests, they also sent troops. As a result, the Land of Rain became a magical three-way meat grinder.
After gorging itself on the Land of Rain and being checked by Hanzō and Konoha, the Sand changed its strategy. They had long coveted the fertile lands of the Fire Country. Now, with an excuse to mobilize, they marched into the Land of Rivers, intending to invade from the east.
It was then that Sasuke's predecessor followed the Konoha army to the front lines. After barely surviving on the battlefield for half a year, he was gravely wounded by a Sand Village puppet master. It was this near-death experience that allowed the new soul to transmigrate.
Fortunately, he'd had over a week to recover in a Konoha hospital. Otherwise, as a rookie who had never even killed a chicken, being thrown directly onto the battlefield would have been a death sentence. Before transmigrating, he was just an ordinary corporate drone, born under the red flag, working a grueling 996 schedule. It was fitting that even his transmigration was so mundane. He'd simply been too tired from overtime, and when he woke up, he was Umino Sasuke.
He wasn't an orphan; he had parents and siblings. But he was the only ninja in the family. He had inherited his predecessor's memories and emotions, which allowed him to quickly master the body's ninja skills during his recovery. Still, he was born a commoner, with an ordinary bloodline and average qualifications. Chūnin was already his limit. If he had transmigrated a few years earlier, before his body's potential was squandered on military ration pills, he might have had a chance to become a jōnin. Now, it was almost impossible, unless he mastered Orochimaru's core technology or underwent a mutation.
Even though he'd only seen up to Shippuden, he knew the general plot. "Naruto" was a story of bloodline fatalism disguised as a passionate shōnen anime. At first glance, it was about hard work, but in reality, it was dark and cruel. And in the real Naruto world, he felt that cruelty even more keenly. Bloodline wasn't just for the Ōtsutsuki; it defined the gap between the ninja clans and the common people.
He thought of his own family's history, intertwined with the Sarutobi clan, and the long, arduous journey it took for a family of fishmongers to produce a single chūnin. His predecessor had graduated at the end of the First War, entered the ninja world during a rare decade of peace, and through countless life-and-death missions, had finally become a chūnin. That status had changed everything for his family, lifting them from the lowest rungs of society.
But now, he was stuck. He was a high-ranking chūnin, a backbone of Konoha, but his potential was exhausted. Meanwhile, Iruka, who came from a true ninja family, was part of the Sarutobi Corps' Fire Battalion, safe and with a limitless future. After this war, Iruka would almost certainly become a jōnin and be placed in a powerful department.
Sasuke, on the other hand, was just a civilian ninja who had to consider himself lucky just to survive this war. The channels to obtain powerful ninjutsu—the very definition of power in this cruel world—were almost completely blocked to him. The monopoly on ninjutsu was near-absolute, transmitted primarily through blood or from master to disciple within the clans.
As a transmigrator, he knew how to perform the Rasengan. But it was an A-rank jutsu. He wasn't a chakra monster; his reserves were only slightly above that of a standard chūnin. Attempting to practice a jutsu like the Rasengan would likely just lead to kidney failure from chakra exhaustion.
It was a well-known fact that even for a jōnin, a B-rank ninjutsu was difficult to learn. Most Kage-level fighters used B-rank jutsus as their bread and butter, with A-rank techniques as trump cards and S-rank forbidden jutsus as life-or-death gambles.
To become a jōnin was the true goal for most. It meant having a vote for the Hokage, a level of status and power that could elevate an entire family, to found a clan. For most civilians in the Land of Fire, their dreams were simple: a full belly and basic safety. To dream of becoming a ninja, let alone a jōnin, was an almost unattainable fantasy.