I woke up in complete darkness, just like before. However, my spherical vision was almost completely cut off, and the space around me was suspiciously warm and damp.
But the most noticeable thing was that I was currently encased in an absolutely insane amount of powerful energy!
Did some kind of eldritch horror eat me? was the first thought that flashed through my mind, but I quickly dismissed it.
I could clearly see that my body had changed. It had become smaller—shaped like a fetus of about five months… To be honest, I'm no expert in this, but the transformation itself struck me as quite fascinating. Even more interesting was another change: my, let's call it, power had grown significantly.
I could feel the increase almost in percentages: after ending up in that place, my soul became more than 3.5 times more powerful. But it's a strange metric—it somehow takes into account not only the volume of energy but also its density in some incomprehensible way. If I multiply both sensations, it turns out that the energy in my core has increased by about 6.5 times. What a useless metric.
But useless or not, getting back to the matter at hand, I was apparently encased in energy that surpassed my own many times over.
To get a more precise feel, I tried to extend a cord of my energy beyond my body to "see" and "touch" everything. But the moment it touched the external energy, I recoiled from a burning animosity. It was like plunging my hands into a weak acid, only with the distinct feeling that something wanted to annihilate me… albeit not very intensely.
Still, I got a partial picture.
The entity that had enclosed me was saturated with this energy, but tenfold that amount flowed through what seemed like its veins. A circulatory system? I couldn't even touch them properly; my soul energy was almost instantly blown away, leaving no chance. However, touching a "vein" did allow me to grasp the shape of this system, which I no longer considered circulatory—because it wasn't. It also helped me better assess the power level of the being I was currently inside… and if I had three times less energy, then in sheer volume, it would surpass me by four orders of magnitude! Ten thousand times!
That information made my consciousness check out for a few seconds. What kind of monster was I trapped in?… Although, considering my current circumstances, the term "trapped" isn't entirely fitting.
Focusing, I carefully examined my body again, but with much more deliberation.
No, I mean, it looks human, right?
And then my eye caught something, but I'll get back to that. The body, I'm almost certain, is human—just in one of its many stages of formation inside a womb. From this, one can deduce that the being I'm locked inside is now my mother. And it seems I've somehow ended up in a new body. The logical chain of how this happened gets a bit blurry here: I was sucked into some space with energy that I absorbed, and the reason for this was… my experiment with suppressing my "glow"? I can fully admit I might have missed something, and the cause-and-effect relationship could be very flimsy. But with no additional data, I have to work with what I have.
So now I have an idea of how I got here. And before moving on to the question "what's next?", I can return to what caught my eye. When I paid attention to my… mother's energy system, it vaguely registered in the back of my mind that I had something similar within me. To my surprise, by focusing on this thought, as if projecting it into my soul energy, I could see a similar system in my own body with increasing clarity.
Just like before, as I changed my approach—my senses—to interact with this unknown, my mind began to creak. It was difficult to "shift" it in a way I didn't understand myself, to grope for something I also didn't quite understand.
After some time, sensations from the new energy system began to flow into my mind through entirely new senses. A steady, measured current.
This new energy was oversaturated with an entire ocean of sensations I had never known in my soul energy. If my power was like pure water, this was like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of flavors and emotions, consisting of two streams: one warm and vibrant, the other—colder, more spiritual.
Then I tried to touch the new energy with the first, but I simply couldn't. The touch of my soul's tendril passing through the new energy felt like a barely perceptible wisp of fog. It was like something was there, but I wasn't sure if these feelings were real at all, or just a trick of the mind—a phantom.
How strange… After all, my mother's energy had very harshly blocked and torn at my soul energy. I couldn't figure out why, other than speculating, well, this energy belongs to my body, so it doesn't mess with my soul energy. So I just put it off for later. Maybe even for never, heh.
This new energy system has a funny shape, actually. This little flame… Wait, hold on.
I took another, closer look.
Froze.
Burned myself on my mother's system again, examining that one now.
Realized. Freaked the fuck out.
The chakra circulation system from the anime Naruto! No fucking way!
What have I gotten myself into… I somehow became one of those guys isekai'd into an anime I was into in my past life. If I had known, I would have prepared much better. What do I have in my memory? Ah… The anime itself, though I watched it a long time ago and might not remember a lot, and a shitload of fanfiction… What the hell was I even doing with my past life?
Well damn, now I have to remember everything I know about this world. Any information could be valuable… I must be completely insane to be perceiving my transmigration—well, "transmigration," since I haven't technically been "reborn" yet—as something more or less normal.
Sigh… Okay, if this is reality, I need to adapt. What do I remember about Naruto? A lot, actually. Chakra in this world either appeared or became concentrated because of a failed attempt by two aliens to absorb all life from the planet. They had some disagreement, and everything went to shit. Well, that's if you believe the anime sequel to Naruto—Boruto… which I should have paid much closer attention to. I can't remember anything except that there were two aliens—a man and a woman. The latter betrayed the former, taking everything for herself, while the former had to flee and hide somewhere for a millennium.
Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, one of the most powerful beings in the world. The Rabbit Goddess, and probably a bunch of other terrible titles I don't know about. What's important is that she's incredibly strong… And a vague thought is nagging at me, comparing her power to the might I feel from the outside, wondering if she might just be the mother of my physical body.
I reassessed again.
No way… Or rather, I'm not sure. Of course, power nearly four orders of magnitude greater than mine is a hell of a lot. But it's not like I'm putting up mind-blowing numbers myself right now. I mean… for the record, I did manage to learn how to spew rainbows… I'm awesome, but far from omnipotent. If you multiply my power even by those three-thousand-something times, I have some doubts that it would be enough for an Ōtsutsuki… Dammit, if only there were detailed power stats for the characters in the anime, say, in numbers. That would be useful to me… But no, anime usually doesn't bother with "nerdy" precise information. Although, as I recall, I actually liked information in numbers. LitRPG was a decent genre that I enjoyed. Probably… If I live, I'll have to start systematizing what I'm dealing with.
For now, I'm in the womb. I'm almost completely sure of it. I have an infant's body that works in a way I don't quite understand—I can think fully, even though my brain clearly shouldn't allow for that. And also…
I tried to wiggle my fingers but could only manage a clumsy twitch of my whole arm. Yes, I have bodily sensation. And, remembering its appearance, I'll have to spend several more months here, in the darkness and… actually, in a rather pleasant, damp warmth.
So, I guess for the foreseeable future, I'll be running through my memories of this world—Naruto and Boruto—and manipulating soul energy inside my body. It can't get out anyway—I'm practically trapped.
What else is there to do? I'll probably try to move my chakra. It's already flowing on its own, but maybe I can speed up the process?
And that's what I spent the next while doing. As it turned out after a rather short time, the brain in my body does work somehow, although it most likely only takes on a part of the mental load. Because after about twenty minutes of entertaining myself, I felt tired. A different kind of tired, probably physical, which sent me off to sleep.
Sleeping in the womb turned out to be even more pleasant than… there. Not only did nothing hurt and there was a pleasant feeling in my chest, but there was also an incredibly pleasant sensation of being enveloped upon waking. Such a cozy, skin-tingling feeling; the first few times I didn't even want to wake up right away, basking in the languor over and over. However, I couldn't stay in that state forever, so I spiced up my existence with various energy-related activities.
Thus began the new cycles of a very pleasant existence…