Uchiha Gen was genuinely curious about the other young man the elder had mentioned.
"Yes. That young man is eight years older than you. He also realized that sooner or later, the clan would come into conflict with the village, and that such a conflict had to be contained before it could grow. But his background is better than yours, so I was not surprised he could see that much."
"Then he is...?"
"Fugaku. The clan head's son. He is already a captain in the Military Police Force. Within the clan, his standing is second only to the clan head himself and a handful of elders."
That killed most of Gen's interest on the spot.
Fugaku might indeed have decent judgment, but whether he had the ability to match it was another question entirely. Judging from what Gen knew of the original timeline, Fugaku had been neither a truly competent clan head nor a qualified father. In the end, he had watched his powerful clan slide toward ruin and raised a son whose fate would drown the whole family in blood.
Still, Gen kept those thoughts buried. There was no point in speaking them aloud.
"Fugaku believed that although the clan is powerful, it is still far weaker than the village as a whole," the elder continued as he walked. "If conflict breaks out between the two sides, or if that conflict escalates into open war, the clan could very well decline—and perhaps even collapse entirely."
He let out a long breath, heavy with age and memory.
"And you also believe it could end in disaster. Which means that, in the end, all of us are pessimistic about the clan's future."
Gen listened in silence.
He did not know every detail of what the future would bring, but he knew what Konoha's upper ranks wanted. They wanted an Uchiha clan that could be used like a blade without ever turning against the hand that wielded it—an obedient hunting hound, dangerous only to others and harmless to its masters.
The problem was that the people now standing at the top of Konoha were not Hashirama Senju. They did not possess the First Hokage's overwhelming strength, nor his breadth of heart. Neither were they Tobirama. They lacked the Second Hokage's cold authority and precise ability to control what he feared.
So they would inevitably choose a cruder method. They would weaken the Uchiha, hem them in, and suppress them bit by bit until the clan became no different from families like the Inuzuka or the Aburame—still useful, still respected on the surface, but never truly central, never allowed to threaten the balance of power again.
But the Uchiha were not the sort of people who would quietly accept suppression without resisting. Nor would they tolerate seeing the glory of their clan fade away in their own hands.
As one of Konoha's founding clans—and the strongest ninja clan still standing inside the village—they would inevitably seek a status and authority that matched their strength. And that was precisely what the current leadership of Konoha could never accept.
The elder's voice grew quieter, but the weight in it only deepened.
"And yet... the clan's power is not enough. At least, I do not believe the clan as it stands now has the ability to seize those things."
He sighed again.
He belonged to the generation that had survived the Warring States era. He had been born only a little later than Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha, and was roughly the same age as Tobirama Senju, who had already died on the battlefield. That kind of life experience gave a person a frightening ability to see through the surface of things.
He had seen too many great names rise. He had seen too many great clans fall. Precisely because of that, he understood better than most that the Uchiha clan's future was far from optimistic.
Especially after Madara left, the clan had retained its prestige without retaining the one thing that could truly anchor that prestige in a world ruled by force: an absolute top-tier powerhouse.
Without the Mangekyo Sharingan. Without a Kage-level existence standing at the front. The fate of the Uchiha was already beginning to tilt.
And even if such a figure were to appear again, would one person really be enough to contend with the entire Konoha leadership, a system backed by multiple top-level powerhouses and an entire village's resources?
The elder clearly did not think so.
That was why he wanted to nurture as many strong people as possible within the clan. Not just warriors, but individuals with enough strength, enough vision, and enough wisdom to change something before the future hardened into a dead end.
Even if he himself only had a few years left to live.
Even if he was doomed never to see the answer with his own eyes.
Gen followed quietly at his side, his footsteps matching the elder's unhurried pace.
Would the Uchiha really be reduced to a clan on the level of the Inuzuka or the Aburame? Maybe some people in Konoha's upper echelons truly did think that way. But they were overestimating themselves—and underestimating just how rotten certain monsters could be.
"We're here."
The elder stopped in front of a pavilion that looked simple and ancient, its timbers darkened by time. It did not appear especially grand, but it carried the kind of weight that only truly old things possessed.
A middle-aged Uchiha with one arm missing sat on a stone bench in front of the pavilion, reading a book. Hearing footsteps, he looked up at once, then rose quickly when he saw who had arrived. He slipped the bookmark between the pages, tucked the book away, and produced a key.
"Elder, have you brought another genius from the clan to select ninjutsu?" he asked with a smile. "You look quite pleased."
The First Elder gave a low chuckle.
"This child is called Gen. I believe he may bring a future to the clan—just as that boy Fugaku once did."
The one-armed man's expression sharpened slightly as he studied Gen again.
"To earn praise like that from you, the boy must truly be exceptional."
He unlocked the pavilion door and stepped aside.
Gen followed the elder inside. Mikoto remained outside, chatting with the middle-aged man. Judging from the easy rhythm of their conversation, he was likely one of her cousins.
The inside of the pavilion was larger than it looked from the outside. Shelves lined the walls, and the air was thick with the faint smell of old paper, dust, oil, and wood. It was the scent of inheritance—of a thousand years of things carefully preserved.
"This is only one part of the clan vault," the elder said as they walked deeper inside. "The first floor stores relatively simple techniques. The second floor contains ninjutsu that do not involve nature transformation. The third and fourth floors hold ocular techniques and training methods related to the Sharingan. From the fifth floor onward, there are truly powerful techniques—things at the level of the three-tomoe Sharingan and jonin."
He spoke calmly, but there was unmistakable pride in his voice.
"Our clan has endured for a thousand years. And with the Sharingan's ability to copy ninjutsu, we possess nearly every mainstream ninjutsu of every common chakra nature in the ninja world. On top of that, we have countless techniques developed and refined by our predecessors specifically for the Uchiha. There is no shortage of things for you to learn."
Gen's eyes swept across the shelves, but his mind remained steady.
He was excited, of course. Any child from the Uchiha clan would be excited standing in a place like this. But excitement alone was dangerous. A ninja who let himself be dazzled by options would only end up with a scattered, unfinished combat style.
The elder seemed to read that much from his expression and nodded faintly.
"I can decide that all ninjutsu on the first and second floors are open to you," he said. "And once you awaken your Sharingan, the same will apply to the third and fourth floors."
Then his tone sharpened just a little.
"But remember this well: do not greedily try to learn too many difficult techniques at once. At your age, what you need most is not quantity. What you need is the beginnings of your own combat system."
That advice struck right at the heart of the matter.
Gen immediately asked, "Elder, can you recommend a few techniques for me?"
That was the smartest move he could make. The old man was aged, yes, but he was still an Uchiha jonin who had awakened the three-tomoe Sharingan. His experience, his judgment, and his understanding of the clan's arsenal were far beyond Gen's current level. Rather than picking blindly, it was far better to hear the opinion of someone who had survived countless battles.
"Good," the elder said simply.
Several hours later, Gen returned home with a small bundle in his arms.
His house stood in the Uchiha district, a five-story wooden structure of roughly a hundred square meters. According to clan lore, it had been built by Hashirama Senju himself in Konoha's earliest days with nothing more than a simple clap of his hands, and later assigned to Gen's grandfather.
Most of the houses in the area had similar origins.
Of course, over the years the interiors had been changed according to each family's preferences. Walls had been shifted, rooms remade, furniture replaced. But none of that altered the core truth: the frame of the house had once been formed by the First Hokage's Wood Release. That alone made it feel strangely historical, as though everyday life here rested on top of a legend.
Once home, Gen first ate the bowl of ramen he had packed on the way back. Then he took a quick shower, washing away the dust and fatigue that had clung to him since morning. Only after that did he carry a cardboard box to the table and sit down.
Inside the box were several ninjutsu scrolls and a stack of training notes. Beside them lay the techniques he had selected from the clan vault that afternoon.
He exhaled slowly and began sorting through them one by one.
"For me right now, ninjutsu isn't a weakness," he murmured to himself. "Not compared to the rest of my toolkit. There's still a lot of room to improve, but just like the elder said, what I need now is the foundation of a combat system—something that can handle the problems I'll face in real battle."
He tapped one of the scrolls lightly with his finger as he thought.
"In terms of burst power, I'm already strong enough for my age. My proficiency with the Great Fireball Technique has improved again, and that has deepened my understanding of Fire Release as a whole. I've also mastered C-rank Fire Release techniques like Phoenix Flower Jutsu and Dragon Fire Jutsu. Their raw destructive force isn't on the same level as Great Fireball, but at least they give me more tactical options."
That was the key point.
The Great Fireball Technique was powerful, iconic, and intimidating, but it was not a universal solution. Phoenix Flower could split into multiple smaller flames and combine with hidden weapons, making it excellent for pressure and misdirection. Dragon Fire was more precise and better suited for killing lines, especially when paired with steel wire or terrain traps.
In short, his offensive options in Fire Release were no longer shallow.
So when it came to ninjutsu, what he truly needed next was not more of the same. He needed breadth. He needed something that would stop his future enemies from reading him too easily and countering him with a single prepared response.
"Wind Release," Gen said softly.
The idea had already begun to take shape in his head back in the vault, but now it became clearer the longer he thought about it.
Learning Wind Release would do several things for him at once. First, it would give him a means of attack that differed from Fire Release and made him harder to counter. Second, it would naturally extend his offensive reach, because Wind Release often excelled at ranged pressure and cutting power. Third—and perhaps most importantly—it could be combined with Fire Release to amplify the power and spread of his flames.
That kind of synergy was exactly what a real combat system needed.
He lowered his gaze to the scrolls again, his expression gradually turning intent.
A ninja could not walk forward by collecting techniques like toys. Every jutsu had to fit into a framework. Every skill had to support the body, the mind, and the kill pattern that defined a fighter in real battle.
Otherwise, everything would collapse the moment blood started spilling for real.
Outside, evening light was beginning to sink across the Uchiha district.
In the quiet of the house, Gen reached for the selected scrolls one after another, already beginning to plan how he would train them, how he would integrate them, and how far he still had to go.
The clan vault had given him resources. The system had given him opportunities. But whether those things would truly become strength in his own hands depended on what he did next.
And Gen had no intention of wasting any of it.