"Tch. A hard-to-choose rune showed up…"
Looking at the three shining Keystone Runes before him, Rei Kaguya rubbed his smooth chin and opened his personal panel.
In the equipped Keystone Rune column, two runes he had drawn after completing his previous two Survival Missions were quietly lying there.
[Grasp of the Undying: Grants the holder Yang Release chakra. If the holder already possesses this attribute, strengthens the original chakra attribute.
When you are in combat, every five seconds, your next attack will deal additional damage to the enemy based on your maximum vitality and restore 2% of your maximum vitality.
Each time you deal additional damage to an enemy with chakra, your maximum vitality will increase slightly.]
[First Strike: When you are the first to damage a target with chakra, you deal an additional 10% true damage to that target for five seconds.
After First Strike ends, based on the amount of damage you dealt to the target, you will randomly obtain proficiency in one of the target's abilities. Abilities that require a Kekkei Genkai to use will be converted into double proficiency for another ability. First Strike's proficiency acquisition effect can only activate once on the same target within thirty days.]
To be fair, if Rei Kaguya did not already have the Keystone Rune Grasp of the Undying, then he would have chosen Dark Harvest as his third Keystone Rune without hesitation.
There was no special reason.
He simply valued the rune's unmatched growth potential during an age of war, as well as its effect of granting him Yin Release chakra.
As a transmigrator, Rei Kaguya was very envious of the various secret techniques that could only be activated through Yin Release chakra.
Furthermore, as a member of the Kaguya clan, a clan full of stubborn iron-headed maniacs, even with the bonus of a transmigrator's soul, Rei Kaguya's resistance to genjutsu could only barely be called passable.
Without some special encounter, he probably would not have much chance of obtaining Yin Release chakra in this life.
However, because he already possessed Grasp of the Undying, a Keystone Rune whose effects were all tied to his maximum vitality, and because he had already stacked Grasp of the Undying to an absurd level over the past ten years, Strength of the Ages, a Keystone Rune that could directly increase his maximum vitality by more than double and greatly improve his battlefield endurance, now had value no lower than Dark Harvest.
If he also considered the Dead Bone Pulse's defensive, offensive, and recovery capabilities, then even if he accidentally ended up in a situation like the Third Raikage, surrounded and attacked by ten thousand shinobi at once, as long as no severely overtuned damage dealer like the Third Tsuchikage, Onoki of Both Scales, was present, Rei Kaguya felt he had a decent chance of turning into a vampire and killing them all by himself.
As for Electrocute…
Hm.
He would pretend he had not seen it.
If it were a separate reward, it could be called a very tempting option.
But if it wanted to compete in a three-way choice against Dark Harvest and Strength of the Ages, then the improvement from Electrocute was simply not competitive enough.
After all, Rei Kaguya was in the vast shinobi world, not the limited space of Summoner's Rift or the Howling Abyss.
He could use more than ten years to develop slowly and continuously perfect all his abilities.
For a talent like Electrocute, which had limited growth potential and leaned more toward improving immediate combat strength, his demand was honestly not that high.
"Sigh. Having too many good options in hand is troublesome too…"
After grabbing his hair and thinking in distress for a long while, Rei Kaguya took a deep breath and made his final choice with a pained expression.
[Keystone Rune selected—Dark Harvest.]
Since an old rune like Strength of the Ages, which had been removed long before he transmigrated, had appeared on the system's reward list, then gambling that the Keystone Rune that could let him truly comprehend rune power—
Omnistone—
would appear on the reward list after he completed some mission was not exactly a daydream, right?
Omnistone plus Dark Harvest.
Heh, heh, heh…
When that time came, after he fully comprehended rune power, he would fiercely harvest a wave of Dark Harvest soul stacks from the White Zetsu army.
Then, even if he had to face a boss rush against Six Paths Obito, Six Paths Madara, and Kaguya Otsutsuki alone, he would absolutely win.
Easily.
After making his choice, Rei Kaguya closed his eyes and quietly sensed the process of the system adding Dark Harvest to his body.
Unlike the warmth that had flowed through his limbs and bones when he obtained Yang Release chakra, which symbolized vitality, the granting of Yin Release chakra only brought Rei Kaguya's brain an indescribable calm and clarity.
That feeling was like taking an old pair of glasses that had not been cleaned for a long time and upgrading them in every possible way.
Everything in his vision suddenly became clearer.
Even the farthest distance his sight could reach seemed to nearly double.
Probably.
Shaking his head and dragging himself out of that mesmerizingly lively experience, Rei Kaguya took a deep breath and shifted his attention to the Growth Mission System that had just officially activated.
[Mission: Capture Rin Nohara.]
[Mission Description: Cooperate with Kirigakure shinobi to ambush Kakashi Hatake's squad. Capture Rin Nohara alive, turn her into a controlled Three-Tails Jinchuriki, and before Obito Uchiha arrives, repel all Konoha shinobi who come to rescue her, ensuring that Rin Nohara is not taken away.]
[Mission Reward: One secondary rune draw chance.]
[Optional Mission 1: Kill Kakashi Hatake. Reward: Two secondary rune draw chances.]
[Optional Mission 2: Kill the enraged Obito Uchiha. Reward: One Keystone Rune draw chance.]
[Optional Mission 3: Kill the arriving Yellow Flash, Minato Namikaze. Reward: Two Keystone Rune draw chances.]
[Optional Mission 4: Escort the Three-Tails Jinchuriki Rin Nohara in a direct assault on Konohagakure. Destroy more than 50% of Konoha's buildings, kill more than 40% of Konoha's shinobi, and kill any two among the Third Hokage, the Hokage advisors, and Danzo Shimura. Reward: Three Keystone Rune draw chances.]
[Optional Mission 5: Find and kill the aged Madara Uchiha. Seize control of the Rinnegan and the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path. Reward: Three self-selected Keystone Rune chances.]
[Please note: Completing additional missions may lead to unpredictable consequences.]
"Tch. That's about enough. You really wish I would speedrun the main plot in one mission and launch Konoha into the sky while I'm at it, huh?"
Looking at the description on the mission interface, Rei Kaguya could not help rolling his eyes.
To be honest, the main mission itself and the first optional mission could both be completed relatively easily for Rei Kaguya, who had a large group of elite Kirigakure shinobi as teammates.
But starting from the second optional mission, the difficulty spiked violently.
Moreover, almost all the optional missions were tied together. As long as he completed one optional mission, the targets in the following optional missions would definitely chase him to the ends of the earth.
Considering that his current strength was probably that of an especially tough elite jonin, at most roughly on par with Kimimaro more than ten years later, when that nephew of his became one of Orochimaru's brainless fans, Rei Kaguya decisively gave up on completing those optional missions.
He prepared himself to complete only the basic mission while drawing as little hatred as possible, then dump responsibility for the mission's failure onto someone else.
After that, he focused on the mission description of the basic mission and began earnestly analyzing the difficult points within it.
"Infiltration and ambush won't be hard. After all, our side's lineup will definitely include reconnaissance and sensory-type shinobi. And given that Konoha currently has to account for both the Earth and Lightning battlefronts, their manpower shortage is predictable. There clearly won't be many shinobi left on the Land of Fire border to guard against Kirigakure…"
"Capturing Rin Nohara alive won't be hard either. Everyone is still counting on turning her into the Three-Tails Jinchuriki and using her to attack Konoha's main village. Unless absolutely necessary, they definitely won't kill her. So during the ambush, we only need to temporarily force back Kakashi and the other members of his squad."
"That leaves only two problems. The Konoha reinforcements that might appear, and how to quietly slip away before that terrifyingly gloomy enraged kid enters the field, while also clearing myself of responsibility for the mission's failure."
"Sigh. What a headache…"
The moonlight was cold.
There was no one around.
The black-haired boy lay stretched out on the roof, speaking to himself beneath the night sky and bright moon, planning his official debut in this world's historical process.