Hey guys, here is the new chapter hope you will liked and read thru everything.
I'm bringing you this chapter today I don't know what it is about it, but to me, it's the best one I've ever created. I truly feel it's a 10/10. I hope you feel the same way and enjoy it!
I've read many comments and reviews regarding the writing quality. I want to tell you that I'm doing my best; even though I know English, it isn't my first language, and it can't always be perfect. If you notice any mistakes, feel free to post the correct phrasing in the comments of that paragraph so others can read it properly
Also for a extra chapter 100 powerstone
Don't forget to leave your power stones along with your comment if you have any ideas or opinions that could help me, as well as a review to continue showing your support.
Enjoy the chapter!
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The alarm didn't go off. It wasn't necessary. Daigo's body activated out of pure habit, an inertia from twenty-five years of a life that felt as solid as the city's concrete.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of his apartment. It was an old white, with that small lightning-shaped crack near the lamp that he always said he would fix but never did. He sat on the edge of the bed and let his feet touch the laminate floor, cold and smooth.
He felt... strange.
There was a stinging sensation in the center of his chest, an echo of something he couldn't name. He brought his hand to his face and rubbed his eyes. He had two. His fingers traced over smooth skin, without the calluses of battles he never had, without the trace of having lived in a desert.
However, when he closed his eyelids for a second too long, a shadow seemed to cast itself on his right side, a physical absence that churned his stomach and felt very real.
"What's wrong with me?" he whispered. His voice was that of an adult man, deep and monotonous, the voice of someone who works in an office and drinks cheap coffee to survive Mondays and every day after.
He got up and walked to the kitchen. The apartment was silent, interrupted only by the distant hum of big-city traffic.
He brewed coffee. The smell of roasted beans flooded the room, but to Daigo, it tasted like ashes.
He stared at the coffee maker, lost in a thought that slipped through his fingers like water. He felt like he was missing something vital, as if he had forgotten a part of his soul in a place where the sun burned differently.
After finishing the cup of coffee he left the house and went to the gym, as he did every morning.
The environment smelled of rubber and sweat. He put on his headphones and started his routine. Three sets of ten repetitions. Bench press. Squats. The weight of the iron discs felt real, but at the same time, ridiculous.
His muscles tensed, but there was no spark, none of that energy his mind swore should be flowing through his veins.
"This is too light," he thought as he lifted a hundred kilograms. "Why do I feel like I should be able to reduce this metal to dust just by wishing it?"
He shook his head, trying to push away the madness. He looked at himself in the gym mirror.
He saw a young man, in shape, his skin pale from not getting much sun, and dark black hair along with eyes just as dark. If you looked at him too long, you'd think he was an NPC from the video games he played.
But he noticed that behind his reflection, for a millisecond, he thought he saw another person. This one, unlike him, had tanner skin along with long hair and a most strikingly vibrant pink eye. He blinked. It was only the reflection of a fluorescent light flickering on the ceiling.
The rest of the day was a procession of mental exhaustion. At work, the hours stretched like gum. His colleagues talked about budgets, TV shows, office gossip.
Daigo nodded, smiled mechanically, but he felt like a person who had lived their whole life on an island and was suddenly dropped into a city. It was a void he couldn't get rid of, no matter how much he tried to connect with his coworkers.
When night fell, he sat in front of his computer. He opened a new open-world ninja game that had just come out. He saw the character on the screen jumping and performing flashy movements. Even though he had just started playing, a wave of nausea hit him.
He closed the game abruptly. It felt like a mockery, a cheap imitation of something his heart remembered as a truth.
He lay down in his bed, exhausted by a fatigue that wasn't physical, but existential. He closed his eyes. The silence of the apartment became dense.
"Who am I?" he asked himself again. "Why do I feel like I've lived through so many more things than I remember?"
And then, at the threshold of sleep, the membrane broke. It wasn't a thought; it was an impact. Blue. A violent, electric blue that sliced through the air with the sound of a thousand waterfalls.
The smell of mud and blood. A woman with beautiful hair and brown eyes screaming his name with a desperation that tore his chest apart.
Daigo reached for his right eye in the dream. And this time, there was nothing. Only a liquid fire consuming his skull.
Where seconds before he had smelled nothing and everything was silent, suddenly his senses activated.
The first sense to return wasn't sight, but smell. The pungent scent of iron, bitter medicinal ointments, and the stagnant dampness of a tent under the rain. Then, the pain. It wasn't the dull ache of a gym workout; it was a living fire that started in his right socket and spread through his nerves like acid, connecting with a burning slash across his chest.
Daigo opened his left eye the only one he could open.
The world was a blurry smudge, darkened by the lack of light and a massive blind spot dominating his entire right side.
He tried to focus. The ceiling wasn't his apartment; it was a sand-colored tarp, taut from the rain drumming rhythmically above.
"Don't do it... don't force yourself yet," said a broken voice, barely managing to hide the relief and anguish of someone who had spent entire nights waiting for a sign of life.
Daigo turned his head with agonizing slowness. His muscles protested, sending electric shocks down his neck.
When his only eye finally focused, he saw Pakura.
But it wasn't the Pakura he remembered from their missions and training, the woman who always stood like iron despite everything.
She was sitting on a low stool, hunched over, her hair messy. She had dark circles so deep they looked like bruises, and her left arm was wrapped in bandages.
"Pakura..." Daigo's voice came out like a dry croak, a mere whisper that hurt his throat.
She startled, and the elite kunoichi's mask of coldness vanished completely. Her eyes filled with tears she could no longer hold back, and she finally began to cry.
She leaned forward and took Daigo's hand with a strength that almost hurt. Her palms, usually warm and comforting, were cold and trembling this time.
"You've been out for a week, Daigo," she said, her voice failing. "A damn week. The Suna doctors they said Mangetsu's water shot almost burst your brain from the inside. They had to operate on you immediately when we brought you back."
Daigo processed the information. A week. Seven days of a void while she cared for him in silence.
The memory of his "past life" began to dissolve like a mirage under the desert sun, leaving only the raw and bloody reality of his current life.
"Mangetsu..." Daigo muttered, and the name tasted like poison. "He beat me."
"You survived," Pakura corrected him, squeezing his hand as if she feared he would vanish. "No one survives a close-range encounter with the leader of the Seven Swordsmen. But you... you stayed on your feet."
"But almost dead," Daigo said in a low voice.
"That doesn't matter, it's over now. Now you just need to focus on recovering," Pakura replied still holding his hand
Daigo closed his only eye for a moment. The feeling of inadequacy weighed more on him than the physical pain. He had believed himself a genius, a reincarnated person with advantages who could enjoy fights, and reality had given him a lesson in humility that had cost him half his vision.
"And the others?" Daigo asked. "How is Sasori? Where are Yashamaru, Baki, and Shizuka?"
Pakura looked down, avoiding direct eye contact. "Sasori lost his left arm in his battle, though he eliminated one of the swordsmen. He's in the next tent. He's been working without rest, ignoring the pain."
Daigo swallowed hard, feeling the weight of guilt for his comrade. But the silence about the others was what truly terrified him.
"Pakura... what happened to Yashamaru's team? I gave them clear orders to return to camp for reinforcements. They should have arrived long before us."
Pakura sighed, closing her eyes as if trying to erase an image etched into her mind.
"That's what we thought, too. When we managed to get you, me and Sasori out of the combat zone, my only hope was that Yashamaru, Shizuka, and Baki were already here with a medical squad and reinforcements to cover our retreat. But when we reached the camp... there was no one. No one had seen them."
Daigo's heart skipped a beat. "What do you mean they weren't here?"
"They didn't make it, Daigo," Pakura continued with a trembling voice.
"We spent two days on edge while Haru and Todo organized a search team. They retraced our steps and found them a few kilometers from where we separated. They didn't have any trouble because Kirigakure had completely withdrawn from the area."
Pakura stopped, as if the words burned her.
"Haru was the one who spotted them first. It was a slaughter. Yashamaru... he fought until the end. His body was sewn together by the Nuibari; that bastard Kushimaru used him like a toy. Shizuka... she was a few meters away. She had a deep, lethal cut on her back. It seemed like she was trying to reach Baki when they got her."
Daigo felt the air turn solid in his lungs. He couldn't breathe. Shizuka, one of the closest people he had known, whom he loved like a sister, dead from a slash to the back.
Yashamaru, though he hadn't known him for long, he liked him being Karura's brother tortured by the Mist's threads.
"And Baki?" Daigo asked, his voice barely audible.
"He's the only miracle we had," Pakura said, pointing toward the back of the medical tent.
"Todo found him under a pile of debris and mud. He was unconscious, seriously injured by an explosion, probably from Jinpachi's weapon. He's still in a coma. The doctors say his chakra network is stable, but his mind won't wake up. He's the only one who knows what really happened during the time we were fighting."
Daigo stared at the tent ceiling, his only left eye burning in a way that had nothing to do with the wound.
The image of his friends not as heroes who sacrificed themselves voluntarily, but as ninjas who tried to follow an order and were hunted down mercilessly tore him apart inside.
The guilt of attacking as if they were immortal hit his heart over and over; his heartbeat had turned into blades stabbing him.
"Bring me a mirror," Daigo asked. His voice was no longer the one Pakura remembered before this battle and these losses. It was icy, devoid of the lightness it used to have.
"Daigo, I don't think it's a good idea..." Pakura tried to say.
"Bring me the damn mirror, Pakura," he insisted.
With trembling hands, Pakura handed him a small metal mirror. Daigo observed his reflection.
The bandage covered half of his face, and the scar on his chest throbbed under the medical cloth. He saw himself and accepted that the Daigo who sought adrenaline and fun in missions had died with his friends.
"Mangetsu was right about something," Daigo said, setting the mirror aside with a dry metallic clank.
He looked at Pakura with a resolve that made her shudder. "I was an inexperienced leader. I let myself get carried away by the thrill of the fight and forgot that their lives depended on my decisions. Shizuka died trying to save Baki. Yashamaru died fulfilling the order I gave him. And I... I was busy wanting to prove my strength against a monster that had nothing to lose."
"It wasn't your fault, Daigo..." she tried to say, but he raised his hand to silence her.
"From today on, Pakura, the game is over. I won't be the boy training to be strong anymore. I will be the leader Suna needs. If the Mist wants to continue this war, I will give them one they cannot win, not even with all their swordsmen together."
Daigo sat up, ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest. There was no extreme darkness in his gaze, only an unshakeable seriousness that commanded respect in the room. He looked toward the cot where Baki lay in a coma.
"When Baki wakes up, we will hear the truth. And when we do, we will make sure that the names of Yashamaru and Shizuka are the last things those Mist bastards hear before they die."
Pakura hugged him, burying her face in his back, feeling the final change in the man she loved.
He was no longer the boy she knew; he was a warrior marked by loss, someone who finally understood that in the ninja world, the price of error is paid with the lives of those you love most.
Though Pakura, with a steady gaze, would not let this consume him.
End of Chapter