It was like changing clothes.
I raised my hands to my eyes, closed and opened my palms. Over time, I was able to control every nerve in my new body more easily.
At that moment, I saw myself lying on the ground out of the corner of my eye.
I reacted immediately, knelt down, and checked the pulse of my real body lying on the ground.
After a few checks, I learned the following. My heart was still beating, I was breathing, but my eyes or any part of my body were not responding to any stimuli.
Afterwards, I asked the system and learned the details of what was happening.
When my body was not inside my soul, the system was programmed to behave as if I were in a coma. This meant that whenever I left my body, I would need a hospital environment to keep my body safe.
This was both a good thing and a bad thing.
This way, if I wanted to kill someone, I would first leave my own body, take over another body, and leave my original body in the hospital. Then I could kill whoever I wanted and come back, and no one would suspect me. After all, during the murder, Eren had fallen into a coma in the hospital for unknown reasons.
Of course, I shouldn't do this more than once, but it's still a good opportunity.
Just as I was about to do some exercises to get used to the power of my new body, Lilith's voice reached my ear, filled with a hint of warning and seduction.
[Lilith: Use your soul to find the memory storage center in the body's brain and access the man's memories. I think someone is approaching.]
"How do you know someone is approaching?"
[Lilith: Because I am Lilith.]
Well, I've learned something new. The template character's perception of the environment is independent of mine.
Anyway, the important thing right now is to do what Lilith says.
"Hey! Futao! Where are you? What's this?"
Before I could react to the heavy footsteps behind me, the woman whose high-pitched voice I heard quickly came up behind me.
Unfortunately, I no longer had enough time for the memory takeover operation.
I had no choice but to start improvising without turning around.
"After setting the trap, when I turned around, I noticed someone climbing the tree where the trap was..." I needed to continue my sentence according to the scenario I had in my head, but the unfamiliarity of the voice coming out of my mouth shattered my concentration along with my script.
"And you decided to kill him?! Are you stupid? Do you even know who he is!"
The owner of the voice seemed annoyed that I was talking without looking at him, and as he yelled, he grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward him.
"Mizukage!"
The name Mizukage slipped out of my mouth in surprise. Fortunately, Mei Terumi misunderstood me and turned around to check if Mizukage was there.
Well, I thought it was a good thing that he misunderstood me. After all, even if I knew he would become the future Mizukage, saying that now would be a clear example of insubordination. But when Mei saw that no one was behind him, he turned back to me, smiling and clenching his fists.
That's not a good sign, is it?
"Oh! Ah! Calm down! You're going to kill me! Ow ow ow, I can feel my arm breaking. Please forgive me, Your Majesty!"
"Forgive you! All you had to do was secretly set a trap and retreat, but what did you do? You went and killed one of Konoha's richest people!"
"So you know him! I'm sorry!" Every second I spent getting beaten up while improvising, I was mastering it. Just a few minutes later, with a dislocated arm, multiple bleeding areas, and some signs of subcutaneous bleeding, I had unlocked my advanced improvisation skills.
"You should have known him, idiot! That man was the one Mizukage-sama wanted us to bring back. Everyone got that order, how could you be so stupid!"
Is there an arrest warrant out for me? Why is Obito after me?
The latest news calmed me down a bit, and I put everything that had happened before aside and looked at Mei.
When she saw me looking calmly at her, she returned to her usual self.
She coughed twice and spoke in a more mature tone of voice instead of the angry way she had before.
"I still can't believe you killed such a handsome man so ruthlessly. Do you know that because of jerks like you, women like me die without ever getting married?"
Yes, this is the Terumi Mei I know. Despite being so young, she fears she will become a spinster in the future.
To other people, Mei's behavior looks like she's preparing for an approaching storm while the ship's sails are still under construction, but they're just a bunch of idiots who have no idea how forward-thinking this woman is.
"Don't worry, I didn't kill him. I just hit him on the neck and he lost consciousness."
When Terumi Mei heard this news, her single uncovered eye widened.
With a quick movement, she crouched over my unconscious body on the floor and began removing my clothes without a moment's hesitation.
I reflexively tried to stop her, but then I remembered that I was currently in someone else's body.
Remembering that all our conversations were like those between two people on equal terms, I could guess that there was no rank difference between us.
While Mei continued to take care of my original body lying on the ground, I gathered my attention and directed my spirit to the point in the brain that stores memories, as Lilith had advised.
Within a second, my head began to fill with unknown memories. I began to lose my balance, as if I were drunk.
...
Even though I had access to memories, it wasn't at all what I had imagined.
It wasn't a flood of information pouring into my head.
It was as if my memory card had been swapped with someone else's.
If I searched for a keyword, I could immediately access memories related to it.
First, I thought about what my name was.
Finding the answer was harder than I expected because I didn't get an immediate response to my question. Probably because people instinctively rely more on their memory than their intuition to remember their own name.
Realizing that this wasn't working, I wanted to access a memory where I had written my name.
Hundreds of images appeared in my mind at once.
I could tell that each image was connected to a different memory.
I immediately chose one of the most solid memories, and the memory fragment flooded into my mind.
Futao Hozuki. That's my name.
When I enrolled in the ninja academy, I made a mistake on the paper where I wrote my name, and because I was so young at the time, it became a frightening and unforgettable memory for me.
Then, before I had a chance to search for more information, Mei must have gotten tired of touching my real body, so she stood up and told me to pick up the corpse on the ground.
Before obeying her order, I quickly surfed through my memory and checked which of us had the higher rank.
As a member of the Hozuki clan and the direct descendant of the 2nd Mizukage, even as a Chunin, I should have been higher in rank than him, but apparently, the owner of this body secretly liked Mei Terumi.
That's why he accepted every order from her as a regular Chunin would accept an order from a regular Jonin.
When Terumi Mei waved her hands suspiciously in front of my eyes, I quickly sprang into action and hoisted my original body onto my shoulders.
Thanks to the intense power flowing through my body, this task was easier than usual for me. I felt as if I were lifting a scarecrow made of straw, not a human being.
Fortunately, Terumi Mei didn't want to chat any longer and leaped onto a tree ahead with a jump.
I immediately understood the situation and began to absorb everything about jumping from tree to tree from Futao's memories without delay.
I didn't want to mess up here. Even though my new technique seemed invincible, I barely managed to defeat the spirit of a chunin like Futao, who was focused on his muscles.
If I tried to take over the body of Terumi Mei, who was probably a genius of the highest order, I would fail without exception.
"Hey, Futao, are you hurt?"
Terumi Mei showed her kind side and guessed that my abnormality was due to an injury.
Her voice pulled me out of my memories, and in one leap, I landed beside the tree where she stood.
Or rather, I thought so, but it turns out that jumping from tree to tree is a game that the Nijjas have been playing since childhood, and I have no experience in this matter.
Looking back on a few memories, I realized I hadn't learned it as well as I had imagined.
Even though I managed to grab the tree in one go, based on the method Futao learned from his grandfather, I couldn't disperse the kinetic energy that built up after landing on the branch, and after swinging back and forth, I fell back to the ground.
Even managing to regain my balance in the air and land on my feet was a good achievement for me.
Of course, Terumi Mei didn't know what I'd been through, so she raised one eyebrow and looked at me like I was an idiot. It was as if she'd never seen a monkey fail to jump from branch to branch before in her life.
"Ahem. Sorry. I hit my head on the tree while dealing with this guy and lost my balance a little."
"Oh, really?"
Terumi Mei replied in a tone that said she wasn't buying my nonsense, while continuing to stare at me.
She probably started to suspect me, but what could she do? Nothing.
On my second attempt, I managed to stand on the branch.
After setting off again, I failed a few times jumping from branch to branch because I used too much force, but I quickly adapted. After all, even if the person is gone, years of muscle memory are still there.
After a day of traveling by land and a day of traveling by water, Terumi Mei and I finally arrived at the gate of the secret mist village.
It hadn't been long since my last visit here, and now I'm back again. Once more, I'm standing in front of the big gate with Terumi Mei.
Maybe it's fate, who knows. ...
During the first few hours of the journey, Terumi Mei kept looking at me strangely, so I couldn't dig into my memories, but when we ate together at our first rest stop, Terumi Mei finally started looking at me more normally, and I took this opportunity to dig into my memories.
The main things I learned: Almost all of my family members were recently killed by assassins. A few survivors managed to escape the village. The reason was sudden discrimination against those with kekkei genkai in the Hidden Mist Village. The assassins were probably other ninjas from the village.
The main reason I survived these assassinations is that I am known as a kind person and that I have not awakened my family's kekkei genkai, known as the "Liquefy jutsu."
I live alone, I'm 32 years old, I like Terumi Mei, but I can't confess because of our age difference (Terumi Mei is 22-23 years old but looks younger because she hasn't gotten the milf buff yet), and I'm extremely stupid.
I'm really stupid.
I've never passed a written exam, I know very few jutsu, I have no friends... The only things this body has are muscle strength and chakra quantity. Of course, since I took over the body, the chakra channels are wide, but the chakra consumed takes much longer to recover.
"Hey, Futao! Stop staring like an idiot and come sign!"
When I came to my senses at the voice of the ninja responsible for guarding the door, I realized a terrifying possibility.
Could this man's stupidity have rubbed off on me? I didn't used to get so carried away.