Chapter 8 — The Sharingan Awakens
It should be nearby…
Kunai in hand, Tetsuya examined the large tree ahead of him.
About a meter above the ground, the bark had been stripped away, clearly the result of repeated, forceful rubbing by some large beast.
Two days ago, villagers living near the Forest of Death training grounds discovered that a massive black bear had somehow escaped. One nearby villager had even been attacked. Though he managed to escape by sheer luck, he suffered serious injuries. As a result, the Hokage Tower issued a mission, temporarily assembling a ninja squad to hunt down the bear. A chūnin was assigned as the team leader, and Tetsuya was one of the genin who accepted the task.
Judging from the various traces, although the bear was enormous, it was not a ninja beast with chakra. As long as they avoided confronting it head-on, even a genin could bring it down.
Tetsuya crouched low and sped forward along the footprints on the ground, drawing closer to Konoha's towering outer wall.
Rustle…
From the tall grass not far away came a faint sound of movement. Tetsuya immediately grew alert. Rather than approaching rashly, he chose a nearby tree and swiftly climbed up it.
Roar!
Almost the instant Tetsuya leapt onto the tree, a massive black bear—easily weighing seven or eight hundred jin—burst out of the grass and lunged toward him.
Seeing Tetsuya up in the tree, the bear braced its hind legs and reared up on its hind limbs. With both massive paws, it slammed forward, digging into the trunk amid flying wood splinters. In a clumsy but relentless manner, it began climbing upward, clearly treating Tetsuya as prey.
Chakra gathered at the soles of his feet, anchoring him firmly to the branch despite the violent shaking of the tree. As the bear advanced step by step, Tetsuya suddenly flipped over its head with an agility that seemed to defy physics, dropping down from above—close enough to clearly smell the rancid stench from the beast's mouth.
Roar!
Another earth-shaking roar rang out—this time laced with pain. At some point, the kunai in Tetsuya's hand had vanished, transforming into a streak of cold light that shot forward and pierced straight into the bear's right eye socket.
Landing steadily on the ground, Tetsuya did not turn back to check the result. Instead, he immediately widened the distance.
The searing pain caused the bear to lose its grip. Its massive body fell heavily from nearly three meters up, sending tremors through the earth.
"Fire Release: Flame Meteor."
Just as the bear struggled to rise again, five fist-sized fireballs shot out in rapid succession, slamming into its back. The scent of scorched flesh quickly spread through the air.
Such a commotion naturally alerted the other ninja who had come along. A short-haired boy with acne on his face, wearing a genin forehead protector, burst from the grass on the opposite side. His Fire Release technique had struck true.
However, after sustaining consecutive heavy injuries, the bear reared up again. Its one remaining good eye had turned blood-red, as though it had entered a berserk state. With reckless fury, it charged straight at the short-haired boy, each step shaking the ground like a runaway carriage.
Seeing the situation turn dire, Tetsuya flicked three shuriken from between his fingers. They embedded deeply into the bear's back, fresh blood spraying outward. But against the bear's immense body and vitality, the wounds were negligible—if anything, they only fueled its savagery.
As the bear barreled toward him like an out-of-control cart, the short-haired boy froze in place, paralyzed by the terror of imminent death.
I need to master offensive ninjutsu as soon as possible. Even with chakra enhancement, I'm still too restricted against beasts like this.
Gritting his teeth, Tetsuya continued throwing shuriken at the bear's legs, acutely aware of how limited his means were.
If I had awakened the Sharingan, I could attempt the Uchiha clan's shuriken techniques—altering their trajectory mid-flight through collisions and directly blinding the bear's other eye to save him.
The moment that thought surfaced—
A faint numbness tingled around Tetsuya's eye sockets. The chakra within his body began flowing uncontrollably toward the meridians around his eyes, surging like a raging tide.
Boom!
A roar seemed to explode within his mind. Instinctively, Tetsuya squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, his once-black pupils had turned a vivid crimson. A single tomoe traced an enigmatic arc along the dark line around his pupil before settling firmly on the right side.
In that instant, every living thing before him seemed to move in extreme slow motion. His vision sharpened to an astonishing degree, as though the entire world had been reborn.
The sky was still blue. The trees were still green. The waist-high wild grass still swayed in the wind. Nothing appeared different—and yet, in Tetsuya's eyes, everything had fundamentally changed. He could see deeper, clearer, capturing details he had never perceived before.
Leaves that once seemed identical now revealed astonishing differences. With a single glance, he could distinguish each leaf and clearly observe the intricate veins upon them.
The swaying grass moved unbearably slowly, its trajectory plainly visible. In his mind, Tetsuya could calculate with precision—if he wanted to strike any one blade of grass, from what angle he should throw a shuriken, and he could instantly simulate its flight path.
To see mountains not as mountains, waters not as waters…
Did I just awaken the Sharingan?
Wasn't it said that only through experiencing profound love and hatred could one awaken the power of the Uchiha bloodline?
Or did the Miracle invoker draw Uchiha Sarada's bloodline instead—the kind where you just fall in love and unlock the Mangekyō?
Someone's coming!
From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a middle-aged man in a chūnin vest rushing toward them. What had been incredible speed now appeared "slow" in Tetsuya's perception. He could even see the rapid hand seals forming before the man's chest.
The Sharingan can't be discovered!
Tetsuya quickly lowered his head and severed the chakra flow to the meridians around his eyes.
When he raised his head again, the "slow" movements had returned to normal. The Sharingan had been successfully deactivated.
Hmm? My chakra reserves seem to have increased again.
After awakening the Sharingan with Uchiha blood, not only was the consumption minimal, but it even stimulated his body to refine more chakra?
No wonder Uchiha Itachi could keep his three-tomoe Sharingan active around the clock without worrying about depletion. And once Sasuke awakened the Mangekyō and advanced to Kage level, he kept both the Sharingan and Rinnegan active all day long.
If Kakashi knew, wouldn't he be utterly envious? Without the Sharingan as a chakra-draining burden, he wouldn't have become the unit of measurement for chakra. Maybe when casting Earth-Style: Mud Wall, he'd even carve a few more dog heads into it.
"Earth Release: Descending Clay!"
The chūnin who had rushed over focused entirely on the bear about to maim the genin. After forming hand seals, he shouted. The ground below the bear suddenly split open, and a large amount of reddish-brown clay poured out over it.
Just as the raised paw came within less than two inches of the short-haired boy's pale face, it froze in place. The massive bear was now firmly bound by the clay. The flowing material rapidly dried, hardening into solid rock that immobilized the beast completely.
The chūnin drew the short sword at his waist and slashed. The bear's head fell to the ground.
The mission was successfully completed.
But Tetsuya's mind was no longer here. All he wanted was to return home as quickly as possible and fully experience the mysteries of the Sharingan.