After entering the wooden house, Haruma set down his bag. He did not touch the scroll that sealed fragments of Kushina and Mito, nor did he open the scroll he had taken from Orochimaru that contained the remains of the previous Hokage.
Edo Tensei required more than a scrap of flesh or cells, it demanded either a complete corpse as a vessel, or a living person as a sacrifice to call the soul back, but, Kushina and Mito's bodies had already been consumed by him, leaving only fragments. To summon them back, Haruma would need to seize two living sacrifices.
As for the Hokage, their souls were bound in the Shinigami's stomach. To call them forth, Haruma would need not only vessels and sacrifices, but also the Shinigami Mask from the Uzumaki shrine in Konoha. That was a step he wasn't prepared to take.
Not yet.
Kushina and Mito were not essential to his transformation, the Hokage, he intended to handle later, when he could steal their bodies and free their souls once again.
What he needed now was different.
A corpse of the Uchiha clan, one whose sharingan had been awakened.
The ultimate Susanoo, that was Haruma's goal and as such it was only natural that he would now pursue the pinnacle of the Uchiha's kekkei genkai.
The mangekyo sharingan.
Haruma had one great advantage though, his divine Sage Body. Once his eyes had evolved, he would not fear blindness. For him, it would be like directly wielding the eternal mangekyo sharingan.
The moment his eyes evolved, his power would skyrocket once again.
With a calm breath, Haruma unfurled one of the scrolls and summoned forth a heavy coffin. Opening it revealed an embalmed Uchiha corpse, the clan's crest still etched upon its black robes.
Haruma did not rush.
Utilising his Wood Release, he shaped a kunai and carved runic seals upon them, seals akin to those used for the Flying Thunder God. Only after his preparations did he weave hand seals and slam his palm against the floor.
"Edo Tensei!"
Chakra poured from his hands, forming an array of seals that snaked toward the corpse. Dust rose, clinging to the body, wrapping it like a mummy before reforming into flesh. The fatal wounds were gone, the body repaired but marked by cracks.
The telltale signs of Edo Tensei.
The soul had returned from it's seemingly endless void known as death, inhabiting its shell once more.
"Rise."
Under Haruma's command, the corpse stood stiffly. With precision, he thrust the wooden kunai into its skull, not piercing it, but phasing through with rippling distortion, binding the soul to his will. The Uchiha's eyes opened, vacant sockets filling with fresh black orbs.
A moment later, three tomoe spun within them.
"Oh? A three tomoe sharingan," Haruma mused, faintly surprised. "The very first one and it's already fully matured, I'm a pretty lucky guy."
He seized the reanimated Uchiha's neck with his devouring hand, pulling it into the hand's space of darkness.
Inside the strange inner world, the Edo Tensei body was dismantled like any other, broken down into chakra and energy.
Haruma's brows knit in slight disappointment.
"So, that's it… Edo Tensei's 'infinite chakra' doesn't mean an ocean without end. It means endless recovery, chakra that restores itself the moment it's spent."
Still, it mattered little. He had gotten what he truly wanted, the soul's chakra and occular prowess.
He could feel it.
His Yin Release was surging, his ocular power sharpening.
Unlike years ago, when his young body struggled to contain the energy of Shisui's sharingan, Haruma's older body now bore the power with ease. What once took him weeks to digest, he could now refine in hours, even the might of a Kage.
With renewed resolve, Haruma began his grim work.
Coffin after coffin opened. One by one, the dead Uchiha were reanimated, their Sharingan forced open under his control, then devoured.
The Hokage's underground chamber had yielded 137 corpses. Some had been claimed by Obito, but more than seventy remained, every one of them an Uchiha who had awakened the Uchiha's special eyes in life.
Twenty bore the fully matured Three Tomoe and the rest carried two tomoe.
None were single-tomoe, Danzo, it seemed, had been as selective as he was ruthless. That pickiness now worked in Haruma's favor.
By the twenty-fifth corpse, a cool sensation stirred within his eyes. By the fiftieth, that coolness burned into sharp pain. By the sixty-seventh, a low hum filled his ears, then, with the force of a breaking dam, his Yin chakra erupted, flooding from his brain into his eyes.
At that instant, the diamond shaped mark on his hands flared with blinding black light.
The light condensed into a beam, piercing from flesh to soul, sinking into Haruma's eyes. Chakra and diamond fused, awakening a power beyond anything he had yet touched.
His tomoe dissolved, replaced by the unfurling petals of a black lotus, spinning within his gaze.
Mangekyo sharingan.
Haruma had ascended.