Uchiha Rokuro became a bolt of lightning as he shot forward, appearing before Uchiha Izumi in an instant. He thrust a hand-knife straight toward her chest.
Crack.
A faint fracture rang out. Izumi's skeletal Susanoo form splintered slightly, though its defense did not break.
A pink, skeletal fist materialized out of thin air and came crashing toward Rokuro's head.
Boom!
With a thunderous roar, Rokuro crossed his arms to guard, yet the blow still hammered him straight into the ground.
Izumi pulled her fist back and saw a crater where Rokuro had been. He had vanished.
A subtle sound echoed from underground. Izumi blinked in surprise—then, a heartbeat later, Rokuro burst out of the earth, drilling straight into Susanoo's interior as he reached toward her chest.
"Where do you think you're grabbing, you pervert?!"
Izumi reacted instantly, springing upward to dodge his shameless hand. Two more Susanoo fists appeared behind her, swatting toward Rokuro like smashing a bug.
Lightning Armor flared to its maximum. Rokuro's hair stood on end like a Super Saiyan. He stepped directly on Susanoo's surface, slipping past the strike.
Frustrated after getting hit repeatedly, Izumi increased her chakra output. Muscular tissue began taking shape over the skeletal Susanoo, pushing it into its second form. A great tachi appeared in Susanoo's hand.
Considering Rokuro's underground sneak attack earlier, she also manifested legs—no more half-bodied form.
This form resembled the Susanoo summoned by Madara's 25 Wood Clones during the Fourth Great Ninja War.
"Second form, huh? Then I'll just raise the level on my end too—Threefold Spearhand!"
Rokuro's right arm intensified, becoming a spear of pure lightning that shot toward Izumi.
Izumi swung Susanoo's tachi at him. The two forces collided midair.
Lightning erupted. Thunder shook the sky. Trees within a hundred meters snapped under the shockwave, and fist-sized stones rolled violently across the ground.
Rokuro's body tumbled through the storm, blown back more than thirty meters before he regained control.
The moment he steadied himself, Susanoo's tachi came cleaving down at his head. Clearly, Susanoo had gained the advantage in that last clash.
"Shinra Tensei."
A terrifying repulsive force exploded from Rokuro's ninja tool, blocking the descending blade and hurling Susanoo backward at the same time.
With a rolling thunder of impact, it was blasted more than a hundred meters away.
"Rokuro! That's cheating! Shinra Tensei isn't even using your chakra—this is fraud!"
"Heh-heh, can't say it like that. Whether it's a ninja tool or the tailed-beast chakra sealed inside it, they're all just resources to me. Same as your Mangekyō. So this isn't cheating—it's called using what I have efficiently."
Susanoo slowly climbed back up. Izumi, seated inside, looked a little shaken, but uninjured.
Rokuro took note. He now had a clearer grasp of Susanoo's defensive power.
"That last strike was enough to seriously injure a boss-summon like Gamabunta. Yet this second-form Susanoo tanked it without a scratch. No wonder summoning beasts became mere support in the late game. Even tailed beasts turned into support—summons didn't stand a chance."
While Rokuro was analyzing Susanoo's durability, Izumi stubbornly raised its power even further.
Armor-like plating covered the Susanoo, swelling its size to nearly twenty meters. A mirror-like shield appeared on its left arm.
"So this is the legendary Yata Mirror? What do they call this stage again—Complete Form? Full-Body? Whatever, might as well test its quality first."
Multicolored light enveloped Rokuro. He vanished instantly—and reappeared behind the towering Susanoo.
Boom!
A fierce whip kick smashed into the back of its head, sending the massive figure stumbling forward several steps, nearly face-planting.
Izumi swayed inside from the shock but quickly regained control, swinging the tachi backward.
Rokuro dodged at extreme speed, landing lightly before lunging again—only for a pink tachi to slice down in front of him, blocking his path. He sidestepped—
but the third blade came cleaving along his evasive line.
"So fast?! I thought Susanoo was slow in the original! Damn it—anime team lied to me!"
Seven-colored Truth-Seeking Orbs gathered in his hands, forming dual blades that crossed above his head to catch Susanoo's descending tachi.
A massive boom hit. Rokuro's feet sank deep into the ground, forming a several-meter-wide crater, but he successfully blocked the blow.
"Break!"
A sharp glint flashed in his eyes. The power of his multicolored blades exploded, shattering Susanoo's colossal tachi into a storm of pink chakra fragments.
Izumi's breath caught—then Rokuro appeared before her, fist flying toward her chest.
Sensing danger, she instinctively crossed the remaining two swords in front of herself, letting Susanoo take the hit.
Rokuro's punch expanded into a giant force-blow several meters wide, smashing into the crossed blades.
Another deafening thunderclap erupted. Both swords shattered. Even the twenty-meter Susanoo was hurled backward, a massive crater forming in its chest. It nearly collapsed entirely.
"Azu—I mean, Izumi, is this your limit? Can't you get any bigger?"
Rokuro didn't follow up. Instead, he stood atop a small ridge, wearing a smug, taunting expression.
"Of course I can! I'll show you the true power of a Full-Body Susanoo!"
A thunderous roar sounded.
Izumi's pink Susanoo ballooned rapidly, growing to nearly a hundred meters. Full armor locked into place. Most striking was the face—a massive tengu mask from Japanese mythology, complete with an absurdly long nose.
"So huge… already taller than the Two-Tails or Eight-Tails. In the Nine Tailed Beasts lineup, probably only a full Nine-Tails could match this size."
"Still want to keep fighting?"
Izumi's voice echoed from far above. Rokuro dissolved the Truth-Seeking Orbs and shook his head. With a few leaps, he reached Susanoo's shoulder.
"Izumi, how are your eyes? Any bleeding or pain?"
She closed her eyes slightly, rubbing them.
"Not really. Just a bit dry. Not painful, and no bleeding. I think the reason Mangekyō used to cause bleeding… was a lack of chakra."
"Oh? Go on."
Rokuro took out a small notebook, ready to record.
"These past two weeks, my chakra has been increasing nonstop. Compared to when I first awakened Eternal Mangekyō, it's at least tripled or quadrupled. As my chakra increased, the side effects of using ocular powers got lighter. At the start, there was still some bleeding—but now it's completely gone."
Rokuro wrote as he listened, then snapped the notebook shut.
"So that's it—chakra reserves. Makes sense. Chakra is the combination of physical and spiritual energy. The more you use, the more those energies deplete—especially physical energy. Overusing chakra leads to weakness… even death."
"Mangekyō techniques and Susanoo are all high-consumption abilities. If your chakra isn't sufficient, forcing them will damage your body. But if your reserves increase, the side effects naturally lessen."
He recalled: Sasuke shed blood tears even after gaining Eternal Mangekyō, while Madara never did.
Two possibilities:
Madara simply had more chakra.
or after gaining the Rinnegan, all side effects vanished. Eternal Mangekyō reduces strain—but cannot remove it entirely.
"Speaking of the Rinnegan… is it a matter of time? Or are you missing Indra's chakra?"
Izumi now held not only pure Uchiha power but also Yamato's—essentially a weakened version of Senju Hashirama's. In terms of genetics, she possessed both Uchiha and Senju. She should meet the conditions.
But her eyes showed no sign of evolving.
Which meant: awakening the Rinnegan required not just bloodline—but the fusion of Indra's and Asura's chakra.
"If it really needs ghost possession, then Izumi now has nothing more than a pair of Mangekyō that will never go blind. In terms of rank, still weaker than Madara or War Arc Sasuke."
"By the way, Rokuro… won't people notice all this destruction?"
As she dispelled Susanoo, both of them descended to the ground. Izumi looked at the devastation—with genuine worry.
"Relax. When I built the underground lab, I set a barrier around the whole area. From the outside, this place looks like a bare rocky mountain. No one knows there's a world hidden inside."
They returned to the lab. Rokuro performed another full examination, confirming Izumi's condition was perfectly fine before heading back to Konoha.
For the next half month, Rokuro accompanied Izumi daily—training, then inspecting.
During this time, Izumi quickly mastered shape and nature transformation of all five chakra elements. Even without her Mangekyō, she was becoming a Copy Ninja on Kakashi's level.
Now, she was studying Yin–Yang Release, hoping to master the same multicolored Truth-Seeking Orbs as Rokuro.
Meanwhile, after the Uchiha began covertly eroding Konoha's authority, Sarutobi Hiruzen followed Danzō's plan—forcing the Hyūga Clan into the Konoha Police Force, trying to manufacture conflict between the two clans.
And to be fair… it was working.
Although the Uchiha and Hyūga had formed a considerable bond during the recent Lightning–Fire War, not all Uchiha had gone to the battlefield.
Especially the members of the Konoha Police Force—barely any of them had actually fought. They remained as arrogant and dismissive as ever, and in just a few days, they clashed with the Hyūga assigned to the Police Force. The conflict escalated so quickly that both clans' leaders had to show up personally to calm things down.
Rokuro also heard about it, but he simply couldn't be bothered. A month had passed—his turn for genetic integration had arrived. It was time for him to awaken the Mangekyō.
With Uchiha Izumi's prior experience as reference, this second experiment went even more smoothly. To put it simply: three days later, Rokuro's Sharingan evolved directly from a double-tomoe into the Mangekyō.
Staring at the mirror, at his own seven-pointed-star Mangekyō Sharingan, Rokuro was extremely satisfied.
Uchiha Ashikaga and Uchiha Izumi studied his eyes from the side.
"Why that shape? It looks so weird! Rokuro, what's your Mangekyō's special eye technique?" Izumi asked as she activated her own Mangekyō, pointing at her vortex-patterned eyes.
"Mine's genjutsu-type, so the Mangekyō pattern looks like an illusionary spiral. What about your seven-pointed star? Any meaning behind it?"
"The seven points represent the seven elemental chakra natures—almost like omniscience and omnipotence. As for my exclusive ocular technique… its name is Dōhan Ōkami, or maybe Dōhan Daijin."
This knowledge came directly to him upon awakening—it was like being granted insight by the will of the world.
In Japanese mythology, the Dōhan Daijin is the divine stone that blocks the path of Yomi, or a deity transformed from that stone.
In other words, Rokuro's eye technique was space-type—and specifically designed to counter Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's Passage."
"I haven't learned how to use it yet, but once I do, I'll beat you until you cry like a little gremlin."
"You're the gremlin! Hmph, I don't believe your Dōhan Daijin can beat my Infinite Tsukuyomi!"
Watching the two bicker, Uchiha Ashikaga smiled softly, then asked, "Rokuro, should we dismantle this laboratory?"
"Well… even if we leave it here, no one should find it. But just in case, better pack everything away. We don't need this many instruments just for body check-ups."
After some discussion, the three sealed all the equipment into scrolls, then used Earth-Style to flatten the underground lab.
Rokuro even destroyed the barrier around the perimeter.
Standing atop a small mound, the breeze blowing through his hair, Rokuro shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling very much like belting out "Invincibility is so lonely~~"
He ultimately decided that was way too chuunibyo, and gave up.
When the family of three returned to Konoha and were about to have dinner, a few Uchiha came by to visit.
This had become common ever since Rokuro returned from the battlefield. After all, Rokuro wasn't just a Konoha jōnin—he had proven himself.
One versus two, overwhelming Cloud's two Jinchūriki—capturing one alive and forcing the other to flee. That was a real achievement, something no ordinary shinobi could do.
Many in Konoha now considered Rokuro a warrior on the same level as the Sannin or even Sarutobi Hiruzen.
Most importantly—Rokuro was only ten years old.
Compared to the aging Sannin and Hiruzen, whose potential was almost fully spent, Rokuro's future was limitless.
To nearly everyone in Konoha—and even many across the ninja world—Uchiha Rokuro was destined to become Konoha's future strongest ninja.
A person of such rising prestige naturally earned the Uchiha clan's respect, and so they visited often.
Tonight was no different. After dinner with the visitors, the group brought up the conflict between the Hyūga and the Police Force.
Rokuro's family remained quiet during the meal, choosing only to discuss it after their guests left.
"I didn't expect the Hokage to use this tactic to fracture the Hyūga–Uchiha alliance. Truly vicious," Uchiha Ashikaga said coldly. She instantly recognized it as a ploy to destroy the budding alliance.
Izumi scratched her head.
"How did it end up like this? Didn't both clans bond during the war? Shouldn't the cooperation be smoother now?"
Ashikaga sighed.
"The Police Force is the storm's eye of Konoha—there's trouble on the streets every single day. The Uchiha and Hyūga have very different methods for handling these cases. Normally, a slow adjustment would work, but Hiruzen and Danzō won't give them that time."
"And another issue—our clan head is that idiot Fugaku!"
Ever since learning that Uchiha Fugaku had used her child in his schemes, Ashikaga considered him an enemy—she wouldn't even call him clan head anymore.
"That idiot is timid and politically clueless. He has no idea that the Uchiha are under full-scale suppression and desperately need allies. And the best ally right now is the Hyūga."
"But no—he's still clinging to the 'authority' of the Police Force like it's treasure. So of course he dislikes the Hyūga sharing any of that power."
Izumi's eyes widened as Ashikaga's sharp analysis opened her perspective.
Rokuro added softly, "Besides what my mom said, Captain Hyuga Hizashi also has concerns."
"Hizashi? No way! You two are war comrades!"
Izumi looked distressed, unwilling to believe Hizashi would betray their bond over power.
"Personal relationships don't determine political positions. Hizashi isn't just my friend—he's also the clan head. He has to consider the Hyūga's overall interests. Even if he agrees with the alliance, he must choose priority and hierarchy."
"For example—do you know who leads the Ino–Shika–Chō alliance?"
"The Nara clan," Izumi answered. "The other two follow. Oh… you mean Hizashi wants to be the Nara Shikaku of this alliance?"
Rokuro didn't answer—but his silence made it obvious.
Ashikaga sighed again.
"In terms of strength, the Uchiha are superior. But we're also the ones under political pressure. If we want an alliance, we have to make concessions. And if either Fugaku or Hizashi mishandles this… forget alliance—they might ruin the relationship entirely."
"Mom, Hiruzen hopes for exactly that. Only if the Uchiha and Hyūga clash can he maintain his balance-of-power trick and keep his rule stable. Otherwise, why should the two strongest clans be ruled by a Sarutobi?"
Ashikaga and Izumi finally saw the darker picture—and both felt the weight of the problem.
"Rokuro, you always have ideas. You must have a solution, right?"
Izumi asked hopefully—and to her surprise, Rokuro nodded.
"Some problems can't be solved through normal means. For an unsolvable situation, the answer is to use an abnormal method. Give me one month—I'll resolve it. For now, just continue living normally."
While Rokuro spent his days mastering his Mangekyō, Konoha's "F4" were meeting in the Hokage's office to discuss strategy.
"Danzō, how's the situation at the Police Force?" Hiruzen asked.
Danzō sneered inside—why ask when Hiruzen could simply use his Telescope Technique?
"Don't worry. Plenty of troublemakers will appear on the streets these days. Conflict between the Uchiha and Hyūga will only worsen. And with that idiot Fugaku, there's no chance the clans will truly unite."
"Hmph. Such shallow insight. Rokuro worked so hard to create a new political landscape, and Fugaku ruined it instantly. A shame he isn't from the Shimura clan. Otherwise…"
Danzō had already seen through Rokuro's intentions to unite clans and break Konoha's suppression.
If Rokuro weren't an Uchiha, Danzō would've recruited him into Root instantly—his political talent was exactly what Root needed.
"Enough. Rokuro is already too strong—don't provoke him," Hiruzen warned. "Now, what about Iwagakure?"
"No reply yet. Ōnoki won't act until we make the first move and gain advantage."
With Hiruzen's reputation damaged by the unequal treaty and the exposure of swapping commanders mid-war, the Hokage needed a military victory to restore authority.
He planned to invade the Land of Lightning—if not to capture territory, at least to regain the land taken from the Land of Hot Water.
But he couldn't rely on Uchiha or Hyūga forces.
That meant forming a two-on-one coalition—Konoha plus Iwa.
"Keep working on persuading Ōnoki. I'll handle the strategy against the Six Paths Tools. Once the time is right, I will personally reclaim our honor!"
Hiruzen's plan sounded impressive—but it lasted only a month.
Then everything was shattered by the appearance of a giant.
With a thunderous roar, a thirty-meter-tall, pitch-black giant manifested in one of the Uchiha training grounds…
END OF CHAPTER
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