Unlimited Blade Works, Hokage Version

Before dawn, the sky was dim and gloomy. It was the time when people were at their most exhausted.

In a quiet forest, a boy of just eight was training diligently.

He held his thumbs straight up and overlapped them, his left thumb on top. The boy had formed the Ram seal.

"Transformation Technique!"

"Poof!"

A puff of white smoke burst from the boy's body, and then... that was it!

The most basic Ninjutsu, used to change one's appearance, had failed.

"Still no good, huh..." The boy shook his head with a bitter smile. In the three years since he had enrolled, he had failed to learn a single Ninjutsu. Now, it was time to give up.

"Phew... Oh well, then." He leaned back and sprawled on the grass, his limbs spread wide. Though disappointment showed on his face, he didn't cry like an ordinary child. Having made every effort, he had no regrets—a broad-mindedness found only in adults.

The boy's name was Shunren, and he had been born in Konoha Ninja Village. Because his ancestors had Uchiha blood, the Uchiha Clan had taken him in after his parents died in the war, leaving him an orphan.

However, the Uchiha Clan, Konoha's foremost great clan, had always prized martial prowess, and almost everyone in the clan was a ninja. Naturally, they looked down on Shunren, who was hopeless at Ninjutsu.

Deep in Shunren's heart was an enormous secret that no one knew: he was not originally from this world. He had come from Blue Star in the three-dimensional world and, for some reason, transmigrated into this world of ninja. Having been a hardcore anime fan in his previous life, Shunren naturally knew that he was in a world where human life was cheap, where there were no laws to restrain people and anyone with a big enough fist could kill at will.

Thus, the first thing he had to deal with after coming here was the most basic problem of survival. Ever since entering the Ninja Academy, Shunren had trained harder than anyone else. Unfortunately, in those three years, he hadn't learned a single Ninjutsu, making him a Ninjutsu idiot in every sense of the word.

Shunren had lived two lives and seen too much harsh reality, so he didn't curse heaven or blame others. If Ninjutsu wouldn't work, then he would train in Taijutsu!

In the original story, wasn't Might Guy hopeless at Ninjutsu too? Through tireless effort, he had developed powerful Taijutsu. With the Eight Gates Released Formation, he had even faced Madara head-on, reaching a realm many geniuses could not touch. His defeat could be called an honor.

Over those three years, while Shunren had tried hard to master Ninjutsu, he hadn't stubbornly insisted on hanging himself from that one tree. He had also made time to train in Taijutsu.

The result after three years was that Shunren had zero talent for Ninjutsu, and his Taijutsu was mediocre as well.

That left only one path: Genjutsu.

However, the threshold for learning Genjutsu was higher than for either Taijutsu or Ninjutsu, and it couldn't be learned at the Ninja Academy. The Uchiha did have resources in that area, but how could Shunren, an outsider, possibly receive their training?

He had no resources for learning actual Genjutsu, but as for basic knowledge of spiritual energy...

Shunren pulled out a thin scroll-Basic Theory of Yin Release.

Yin Release was the nature that created form from "nothing" and governed spiritual energy. The vast majority of Genjutsu circulating in the Shinobi World came from the Yin Release system, as did some techniques used by clans with secret traditions, such as the Nara Clan's Shadow Secret Technique, the Yamanaka Clan's Mind Body Switch Technique, the Second Tsuchikage's Dustless Bewildering Cover, and the Second Mizukage's Mirage.

The scroll belonged to the Uchiha Clan. Shunren's parents had reportedly sacrificed their lives to protect the Uchiha's interests, so this could be considered a little compensation from the clan. It was also why the Uchiha had taken him in.

The scroll was very short and dealt with the theory of Yin Release. It contained no actual Yin Release techniques for Shunren to learn.

His circumstances were that dire, and it was a fact he could not change.

Shunren could only accept it in silence. Reality had left him little time. If he remembered correctly, in less than a year, war would erupt across the Shinobi World—the Third Shinobi World War! Countless ninja would lose their lives then. In that catastrophe, only the strong could survive, and the starkly different fates of Obito Uchiha and Kakashi Hatake were the best examples.

Before war broke out, Shunren had to grow strong enough to protect himself. Otherwise, death would be his end.

Shunren was just an ordinary person. He treasured his life and feared death. And no one needed to talk to him about defending home and country. As a transmigrator, he didn't have half a coin's worth of ties to Konoha or the Uchiha Clan. Shunren cherished a wonderful dream of the two-dimensional world, but he also knew full well that it was all bullshit if his life wasn't secure.

"Power... I need the power to protect myself now!" Shunren clenched his fists tightly.

Having made up his mind, Shunren let out a long breath, quickly calmed himself, and closed his eyes.

"Thump..."

Flowing.

He felt the Chakra trickling through his body in a thin stream.

In his mind, he envisioned it.

He strained to imagine it, drawing on the images in his memory...

About the length of a palm, angular and sharp.

His five fingers snapped open, and pale blue Chakra gathered in his palm, forming a long, narrow object.

"Clink!" Entirely black and sharply edged, no different in appearance or anything else from an ordinary Kunai, a Kunai constructed from spiritual energy had appeared in Shunren's hand!

This was the power of Yin Release, which created form from nothing!

With his left hand, Shunren pulled a Kunai from his pocket. It looked much the same as the Kunai he had created with Yin Release in his right hand, except the one in his right hand was a dull black, lacking the sheen of metal.

He struck the two Kunai against each other. At first, nothing changed, but after more than ten collisions, cracks quickly appeared in the Kunai in his right hand, and it broke apart. As its physical form was destroyed, the fragments turned back into Chakra and dissipated.

"Although they look exactly alike on the surface, the inside is completely hollow. And even if I leave it alone, it'll fall apart and dissipate on its own before long. So weapons made with Yin Release are still a long way from qualifying as ninja tools." Shunren shook his head, thinking that with such a fatal flaw, it was no wonder hardly anyone used Yin Release to make weapons.

A copy was always a grade inferior to the original. That was beyond doubt.

But.

What if...

If the thing being copied was powerful enough to begin with, then even a grade lower, it would still be powerful, wouldn't it?

A sharp light flashed in Shunren's eyes. He then concentrated all his spiritual energy in his palm.

His mind swiftly recalled something from the two-dimensional world...

"Crackle..." A flash of cyan light revealed a small black-and-white sword in Shunren's hand, with a yin-yang fish Taiji pattern in its center!

Shunren smiled faintly. "Does this... count as the Hokage version of Unlimited Blade Works?"

"Crack!" After lasting just one second, the sword in his hand shattered.

Shunren's expression stiffened, and he couldn't help smiling bitterly. "Looks like it won't be that easy."