A group of bandits were scattered across the forest clearing—some already unconscious, others trembling in fear. Sukuna stood in the center, a smirk on his face, though it wasn't visible to the others due to his mask, which concealed his identity. His body was barely scratched as he effortlessly took down several of the bandits, walking up to them from the open area as if entering through the front door, making no attempt to hide his presence.
The reason? He wasn't just using raw strength—he was using Kamui. Or rather, the reason many of them were still conscious and the ones on the ground weren't dead but merely unconscious was because he was only using Kamui.
This wasn't just a fight for him. It was training—a field test to master the use of Kamui in real-time combat. No CE-reinforced punches, no cursed energy bursts, no shrine techniques or slashes, not even weapons.
Just taijutsu, instincts, and Kamui. He was going full-on Yuji on them, with Obito's flair layered on top.
One of the bandits charged at him with a sword, yelling to distract him. Sukuna didn't even blink. The blade passed through him like it was slicing air. The bandit stumbled, confused. Sukuna appeared behind him, calculating the exact moment his body was untouched by anything external, then deactivated Kamui and tapped the bandit's shoulder.
"Know any other places I can visit after I'm done with you guys? It's hard finding bandits alone…" he said, before delivering a quick jab that sent the man staggering back.
The other bandits looked on with a mix of fear and frustration. The masked person was clearly a child—from the voice to his height—but none of them had managed to touch him.
He had been toying with them from the start. He hit like a raging bull but still hadn't killed any of them.
Another bandit tried to be clever, throwing kunai from behind. But Sukuna vanished into the ground, letting the weapons pass through harmlessly. He reappeared from a nearby rock, catching another enemy off guard.
He wasn't just using Kamui to phase through attacks; he was using it with precision—slipping through weapons, bodies, even tree trunks. He'd disappear mid-air, reappear beside his target, and land a clean blow. It was like he was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
One tricky part was turning it on and off quickly. That's what he was really here to learn. Activating Kamui fast enough to dodge, then deactivating it in time to punch or kick. There was a small gap—a delay—and he needed to eliminate it entirely.
Two bandits tried to double-team him. One came from the front with a club, the other from behind with a dagger. A perfect setup. Sukuna let the one in front swing, letting the weapon phase through him. At that same moment, he spun, solidified, and elbowed the second attacker in the gut before turning intangible again to let the club pass through his back.
"They were good practice material, but with Mangekyo Sharingan perception and their sluggish speed, it's like I know what they're going to do even before they do. I don't even need Kamui. I can dodge most of those attacks just by shifting my body slightly with the Sharingan," he muttered, frustration creeping into his voice.
At the start, the training was good—he was getting the hang of Kamui. However, the learning curve flattened quickly. He realized just how obvious the bandits' attacks were and felt embarrassed to even use Kamui to evade them.
"I need stronger opponents to fight," he sighed.
A third bandit tried to run. Sukuna used Kamui to step into a nearby tree and emerged directly in front of the fleeing man.
He delivered a kick that knocked him out cold.
By now, most of the bandits were done. Sukuna stood there, breathing lightly, barely sweating. His control wasn't improving anymore fighting this trash.
He looked down at his hand. It's still not there yet.
He had found a way to use Kamui somehow. Some well-placed binding vows and his RCT let him use Kamui almost as if it were his own eye. However, there was still a noticeable delay in both activation and deactivation of the technique.
That delay was what he needed to iron out. Not to mention he needed to test whether his current workaround actually worked—or if it was a failure.
The specific conditions of the binding vow were a chore to figure out, but he had confidence in his solution.
And so far, it worked.
A rustle came from the bushes. One last bandit was hiding, trembling with a kunai in his hand. Sukuna slowly walked toward him. The bandit panicked and threw the kunai. It passed right through Sukuna's chest. The bandit's jaw dropped.
"Seems like I also retain the original five-minute drawback as well. Not a big deal, though one would expect there'd be improvements after acquiring both eyes," Sukuna grumbled and decked the bandit hard in the stomach.
With the clearing finally quiet, Sukuna stretched his arms and looked around at the mess.
"Okay, the binding vows held out, but due to the nature of the vow, it's pretty exhausting using Kamui…" Sukuna sighed.
When he was crafting the plan to get Obito's eyes, he mostly left the entire eye deterioration issue to his RCT, fully confident that it could handle it.
He wasn't wrong—but he had been giving a little too much credit to RCT. While it provided godly regeneration speed for his own body, reverse curse energy barely worked at one-tenth of its efficiency when used on others.
Meaning I might never need a medic in the future, but I'm not winning any best medical-nin awards either.
His RCT for healing others was only slightly better than the Mystical Palm Jutsu.
Obito's eyes were a foreign object, which meant he couldn't get the kind of healing he had envisioned from RCT.
In a nutshell—yes, healing worked, but the eye deterioration outpaced the regeneration when using Kamui.
This was where his binding vow came into play.
"I simply reduced both Mangekyo's powers by 50%, and in return, the eyes would suffer around 50% less backlash…" Sukuna explained to himself. "This allowed the healing to catch up with the damage."
Not to mention, 50% less power also meant 50% more efficiency. Since he couldn't deactivate them—despite trying many different binding vows and failing—this was a good compromise. At least his CE wastage would be reduced, though Sukuna didn't care much about that last point. He had blue to waste.
But still—it helped.
However, this was only the said restriction—even the 50% less damage and 50% less power usage were side effects of the vow.
The benefit, or rather the result, of this major restriction was that his mind could now automatically generate both Cursed Energy and Reverse Cursed Energy whenever he used Mangekyo-related abilities—basically Kamui—to both activate the power and simultaneously heal the damage.
While he still felt the fatigue of his mind working overtime, at least he didn't have to manually do it. That would've been way too laggy in a fight.
This was a good example of a Binding Vow. He was getting maximum output from it—not just in the return reward of the vow, but even the restrictions themselves granted benefits.
So now he could use Kamui without worrying about his eyes going blind.
As long as he could use Kamui, that is. It turned out that his eyes, at only 50% power, couldn't use the technique very well—ranging from instability to the technique outright not working. It was a mess.
A mess Sukuna knew he would face. If there were upsides to reducing the power of those eyes, then there were bound to be heavy downsides too. How else would one get so many benefits otherwise?
However, this was where his earlier confidence in using vows as coding came into play.
He added another Binding Vow. It was a simple enough vow. Since both eyes were Kamui and just governed different aspects of the same technique, it was completely possible for both eyes to perform each other's abilities—perhaps with a little difficulty or reduced efficiency.
So, he bound the eyes in a way that he needed both eyes to use Kamui, period—or he couldn't use the ability at all. A heavy restriction again.
However, in return, when he used both of his eyes, both could perform the Kamui ability he wanted—together.
Their powers combined—the earlier 50% power was added to by another 50% from the second eye, making the entire thing whole again.
No instability. It worked just the way he wanted, with only a slight delay in activation, which he could iron out after some training. Hence, the reason he was here.
He technically cheated with this vow, at least compared to his earlier vow. There were still some limitations to this technique too—like he couldn't use both long-distance and short-distance Kamui simultaneously since both eyes would be working on one ability at any given time.
If he lost even one of his eyes, the other would be useless as well—at least until he broke the vow completely and used them again like a normal Mangekyo, with all the issues that came with those eyes. He had already thought of ways to minimize the backlash if he ever had to break the vow in the future—just in case. He made all his vows with this reassurance in mind, after all.
Even with all these drawbacks, he still felt like that hacker who found a loophole in the national banking site.
Like he had escaped the matrix.
"And..." A big grin spread across his face as he looked into his own reflection. He was back in his room after another bandit raid. This might as well be the last one, since he wasn't seeing any visible improvement from hunting them anymore.
He saw red eyes staring back at him. However, they were just that—red eyes. No tomoe or Mangekyo pattern.
'Another genius use of the right wording in the vows,' a smug look appeared on his face as he recalled it.
Actually, his idea of limiting his Mangekyo power to 50% also halted the entire transformation of the Sharingan from its normal three-tomoe state to Mangekyo midway.
To be exact, the transformation stopped exactly in the middle—where all three tomoe had merged with the black pupil in the center, just shy of forming the famous shuriken pattern of Obito's Mangekyo.
Indicating that it was a half-transformed state at half the power.
What remained was a completely clear red iris with a faint darkish ring around the pupil on which the tomoe rested and rotated.
This surprisingly looked like Kurenai's eyes, honestly. Though for Sukuna, it felt like he was looking at a figure from his memories. The similarities with Ryomen Sukuna at this point were almost uncanny.
'I just need to pull my hair back and add two more eyes with tattoos... and Yujikuna right there...'
Sukuna couldn't help but muse.
This was the best he could do in terms of hiding the fact that he had a Sharingan. He was currently concealing his eyes so that a few years down the line, no one would even remember what color his eyes were.
As for his family—just use Genjutsu on them.
Yeah, Sharingan gave him the ability to use Genjutsu.
*Grummm...
Suddenly, a sound came, making Sukuna sigh.
His stomach was rumbling louder than Naruto during a ramen shortage.
"I swear, if there's no food, I'll teleport to Ichiraku," he muttered, rubbing his stomach as he walked toward the kitchen.
But what Sukuna didn't know... was that danger lurked ahead.
Not dangerous enemies. No rogue shinobi. No angry teachers. No—this was something much worse: Sakura's revenge.
"Hehehe... today I'm gonna get him..." Sakura had a big smile on her face, almost reaching the size of her forehead.
She was sick of her brother's constant teasing, the missing shampoo, the random frogs in her bed, the "mystery" exploding tomato incident, and the heart scare he gave her when he cut open his own hand only to demand she heal him... Oh no. Sakura had finally had enough. So she did what any logical little sister would do.
"REVENGE…"
She set a trap. Had everything ready—from a camera to take pictures, to immediate-use ninja wire meant to bind him. Though normally not capable of holding that monster down, she was ready.
The hallway leading to the kitchen was covered in ultra-thin, nearly invisible ninja wires—the kind that could trip up a Jonin if placed right. She had really worked hard this time, going the extra mile to make sure there were no mishaps. If Sukuna stepped through, he'd get wrapped up—tangled like a caterpillar in a web. And then? Sakura's reign of payback would begin!
"Today we're gonna get that bastard... Cha!" Sakura and her inner self shouted.
She hid around the corner, trying not to giggle. "Come on, walk into the trap… come on…"
Step. Step. Step.
Sukuna casually strolled in. Right into the trap.
Sakura held her breath.
And then…
Nothing happened.
Sukuna just walked through. No tripping. No wires snapping. No flailing. He just... passed through like the wires didn't even exist.
"What?"
She was frozen on the spot like Sasuke had kissed Ino in front of her.
She peeked around the corner and stared at the hallway. The wires were still there, perfectly placed. Not broken. Not moved.
Sukuna, now in the kitchen, opened the fridge. "Hey, did you eat all the dango?"
Sakura stared at him, mouth open, looking at the wires, then at Sukuna, then back at the wires.
"He… phased… through my trap?" she said, nearly dropping her jaw. She had no idea what had just happened.
Confused and hella infuriated at her spoiled plan, she stomped up to the wires to check them. If that vendor gave her faulty wires, she was going to send a complaint about him to the Hokage himself.
But it turned out they were fine...
"What's going on?" she was now really confused.
"This..." Sukuna suddenly seemed to materialize behind her, making her freeze up—and then she felt a loud clap right at her backside, where most of her nutritious intake ended up excluding her forehead.
"Gaaa…" She yelped and covered her butt with both hands. The sting of that slap reverberated through the room.
Her eyes instantly turned murderous and locked onto the culprit.
"You..." She all but launched at him. This humiliation had to be repaid in blood.
"Jahahaha..." Sukuna cackled like a maniac and ran around the kitchen, Sakura right behind him.
"Stop right there! I'll kill you today!" she roared, her butt still stinging.
Sukuna grinned wider and darted out the door. Sakura followed—only to trip on her own trap and get completely bound by the said wires.
'Tsk... Tsk... Tsk... A certain Sannin would've paid good money to see this scene—a kunoichi bound in wires.'
"You're too early to get one over me, brat..." He grinned and let his hand roam over her butt, making her stiffen.
"W-What are you doing?"
"This..."
Clap
"SUKUNA!!!"
"Jahahahaha…"
Sibling war status: ongoing.
xxx
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