Raizen let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, then glanced at Sarutobi Sasuke. The guy was almost four years older than him. Raizen was sixteen, pushing seventeen. Which made Sasuke twenty.
Not that you'd guess it.
He was short, wiry, and had the kind of face shopkeepers still called "boy." If you didn't see his name on mission rosters, you'd swear he and Raizen were the same age, maybe even classmates back in the Academy. Assuming Raizen had ever gotten the luxury of an Academy.
"Hiruzen's… what, two years old now?" Raizen asked.
Sasuke straightened a bit, pride flickering across his face like someone polishing a treasured kunai.
"Real age two. Counting the traditional way, he's considered three."
Raizen raised a brow.
"Three already? You got married early, Sasuke."
Sasuke blinked like he'd been struck by a stray shuriken.
"Early? Lord Raizen… getting married at seventeen or eighteen is normal. Some clans encourage children even earlier. Sixteen isn't strange at all."
Raizen felt his eye twitch. And yeah… the logic held. The Warring States didn't care about romance or adulthood. Families needed numbers to survive. A generation lost at the wrong time could wipe out a clan forever.
Kids grew up fast here. Because they had to.
Even in his previous life, some rural classmates had rushed into marriages before he'd even finished university. He remembered the shock when someone's kid had tugged at his sleeve calling him "uncle." Reality check, courtesy of humanity.
Still weird, though.
"Sasuke," Raizen said, rubbing his forehead, "raise that kid well. Hiruzen's going to change Konoha one day. He'll be the backbone of the next generation."
Sasuke blinked, stunned by the sudden prophecy, then broke into a smug grin Raizen immediately regretted causing.
Great. Now the man had fuel.
Raizen shook his head, buried himself back into the mountain of reports, and worked until midnight. Again. This year's end-of-cycle paperwork felt like someone had dumped the entire country of Fire's problems onto his desk. Because they basically had.
When New Year came, the village celebrated in bursts of color, laughter, and shared meals.
For everyone except Raizen.
He had no family here. Holidays were just another square on the calendar, another reminder that he'd lived two lives and didn't quite belong in either.
Once the festival ended, the grind resumed. Raizen threw himself into rebuilding efforts, training regimens, clan coordination, and intel gathering on the eastern territories. War waited for no one, not even the soon-to-be leader of a future powerhouse.
Winter softened.
Spring crept in.
And the Land of Fire cracked open again.
Battles flared everywhere except the central region. The north had been cleaned so thoroughly that only the wind howled there now. The east was in full chaos, clans tearing each other apart for land and pride. The west simmered but hadn't boiled over. The south was worse, swallowed by the shadow war between Senju and Uchiha.
The whole country was a battlefield stitched together by smoke.
"When Konoha moves again, the count will finally begin," Raizen muttered, poking the fire beside him.
He lowered himself onto a futon. Strength thrummed through him, but it wasn't enough. Not yet.
He'd tested himself. Coldly. Honestly.
His power… was somewhere around Nagato's level. The later Nagato.
And nowhere near Warring States Madara.
The gap wasn't simple. Madara was built different: monstrous physique, overwhelming ninjutsu, flawless Sharingan mastery. A lifetime of surviving hell sharpened into something divine.
Raizen had the tools: Dust Release, Ice Release, explosive clay, Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, Byakugan, Eight Inner Gates, a collection of jutsu that would make future generations foam at the mouth.
But tools weren't mastery.
His system dumped skills into his lap, sure, but it didn't give him the life experience to wield them like the legends.
Deidara had molded explosive clay into art. Raizen mostly threw fancy chakra bombs and hoped nobody noticed he wasn't sculpting birds or dragons.
"Yeah, I'm stacked… but rough. Like a DLC character nobody's playtested," he muttered.
Strength wasn't a checklist. It was an ecosystem. And his was still evolving.
According to the story he remembered, Madara and Hashirama would hit their peak in one to two years. If Raizen didn't step up, he'd be eaten alive between their shadows.
"I need to get stronger. Strong enough to face both Senju and Uchiha without praying for plot armor."
He inhaled, long and sharp, then sank into the quiet of his mind.
The system interface flickered into existence.
A single achievement tile pulsed with light… waiting.
And Raizen reached toward it.