"Achoo~"
As he walked along the road, Uchiha Kaien suddenly sneezed. Fortunately, his reflexes as a shinobi allowed him to swiftly pull a tissue from inside his clothes, narrowly avoiding an embarrassing moment.
"Did you catch a cold? Is it because you slept outside earlier?" A asked, sounding half-concerned.
It was a fair assumption. After all, Kaien had curled up and slept under A's nose for quite a while, and he'd been exposed to the wind too.
Not that A did anything about it. He didn't think to offer Kaien a coat or even a blanket. In fact, his tone carried a faint hint of schadenfreude.
"Come on. I'm a shinobi. My body isn't that fragile," Kaien replied coolly. "Maybe someone's just thinking about me."
"Aren't you on your own?"
"Who says being alone means you don't have bonds?"
In truth, he'd been building up quite a few connections—mostly for the sake of increasing his affection ratings. And the results had been impressive.
At only ten years old, he'd already reached Kage-level strength. His Sharingan had evolved into the Mangekyō Sharingan.
For the first time in a while, Kaien opened his system panel to check his current stats.
[Host: Uchiha Kaien
Current Status: Kekkei Genkai (Mangekyō Sharingan) – Still Evolving
Ninjutsu: Multiple nature transformations, genjutsu, Summoning: Lightning Flash Blade Creation, Summoning: Snake, Susanoo
Chakra: 8000
Spirit: 330
Body: 80
Strength: 90
Agility: 105
Chakra Affinities: Fire, Lightning, Wind, Water, Yin]
A total of 8000 chakra points—about the same as a Tailed Beast.
Kaien had come to that conclusion after using a phantom beast to absorb three of Gyūki's tentacles. While he still couldn't match Gyūki or Kurama's chakra reserves, he definitely surpassed Shukaku's.
It was common knowledge that the One-Tail had the least chakra of all the Tailed Beasts.
As for his core stats, he'd already hit the Kage-level threshold in two areas.
Reaching Kage-level didn't mean hitting 100 in every stat. Even Kage rarely achieved that kind of balance. Most had their strengths and weaknesses—except for Hiruzen Sarutobi, the ultimate jack-of-all-trades.
Kaien, on the other hand, was clearly focused on spirit and agility.
His spirit stat was far ahead of the others, which was exactly why he could use the Mangekyō Sharingan without much concern. He didn't have to worry about the typical side effects like vision loss.
The boosts from the Mangekyō gave him enough firepower to hold his own among the Kage-level elite. Though he wasn't quite on par with the very top, he wasn't far behind.
Of course, battles between shinobi weren't just about raw stats. The deceptive nature of ninjutsu and the advantage of information could easily tilt the scales.
Take the Mangekyō Sharingan—before anyone figured out its specific abilities, most opponents would approach with extreme caution.
Even if your stats were lower, you could still win.
Because shinobi are human. And humans can die. Even Kage can fall to poison or a well-laid trap. Nothing is absolute.
That's also why the Five Kage—those who stand at the top of the shinobi world—rarely had glaring weaknesses.
Their identities and techniques were out in the open for analysis. To avoid being countered by enemy strategies, they had to continually improve, minimizing their flaws.
Take the Third Raikage, for example. His Lightning Armor was second to none in both speed and power. Normal ninjutsu couldn't even scratch it.
If your attacks couldn't break through his defense, then what kind of strategy could you even use?
Then there were those whose power couldn't be countered even if you knew everything about them.
Sunagakure's Kage gained a significant boost when fighting on home turf. But even in other environments, they could change the battlefield to suit them.
As long as the environment could be altered to their advantage, the battle was theirs to control.
With enough chakra, a Kage like the Kazekage could absolutely pull that off.
That's the kind of overwhelming force that made the Five Kage the undisputed rulers of the shinobi world.
As for the Mizukage… Kaien had no comment.
If he wanted to, he could be the Mizukage.
He'd already defeated the Mizukage and completely taken over Kirigakure. If he decided to call himself Mizukage, no one could say otherwise.
Point being—yeah, the Five Kage really were monsters.
...
Click—
The door creaked open, snapping Kaien out of his thoughts.
For dinner, he decided to cook up the beef A had brought back earlier that day.
It was a bit of a shame he couldn't use Fire Release to grill it, but even with just kitchen tools, Kaien managed to cook it to perfection.
The juicy, flavorful beef melted in his mouth—utterly satisfying.
After eating, he gently removed the phantom beast perched on A's head and returned to his room for the night.
Even if gathering data from A didn't yield chakra—just an external shell—it might still prove useful someday. Besides, Kaien's collector's instinct wouldn't let him pass up the opportunity.
Back in his room, Kaien had the phantom beast maintain sensory awareness while he used his Sharingan to create a basic genjutsu space for training.
Specifically—for studying the Flying Thunder God Technique.
That's right. Flying Thunder God.
When Kaien had handed the Four Symbols Seal to Minato Namikaze, he'd secretly copied the Flying Thunder God scroll as well.
The Sharingan's ability to copy techniques was incredibly convenient, and with the addition of a personal genjutsu training ground, Kaien had crafted the perfect environment for focused study.
Sure, he could always ask Minato for the full version later, but that would just be embarrassing. Kaien preferred to master it himself.
Thanks to his [Seed of Perception] trait, he wasn't worried about lacking talent for space-time ninjutsu.
And the hardest part of the Flying Thunder God wasn't the technique itself—it was whether you had the natural aptitude for manipulating space-time.
Once that hurdle was cleared, learning the jutsu was just a matter of persistence.
The next and most difficult step? Forming the Flying Thunder God Mark.
This mark was the core of the technique, the key to teleportation. As long as the user placed a mark on a target, they could instantly move to its location. That was the fundamental mechanic of the jutsu.
As for the delay after teleportation or the neural reaction speed required—those were secondary concerns. If you couldn't even get past the first step, the rest didn't matter.
After rereading the chakra flow chart and important notes on the Flying Thunder God, Kaien couldn't wait to try it out for the first time...
----------------
Pls Drop some Power Stones
Fanfic is finished on Patreon (156 chapters in total.)
Patreon(.)com/Jixo (for only $4.50, read this entire fanfic)