Embryos and School

Back in his room, Kagetsu first checked on the Big Green Worm lying motionless in the Window Flower Pot. He gently poked it with a finger. It lazily rolled over, exposing its belly, wriggled twice as if stretching, then stopped moving again.

This had come as a bonus when Kagetsu's talent advanced from white to blue, along with some basic knowledge of Kido.

Naturally, this Kido knowledge was of little practical use in this world. He could not expect that acquiring it would allow him to cast Kido here and create an entirely separate Kido system distinct from the ninjutsu system.

But that did not mean the knowledge was completely worthless here. At the very least, it could serve as a reference. After thoroughly adapting it, he could incorporate some of its concepts into the ninjutsu system.

The Shadow Coffin he had brought out was precisely such a thing—a Yin Release ninjutsu variant of Black Coffin from the world of Shinigami.

If the Nara Clan had not excelled at using Yin Release Power to control shadows, with all kinds of related Yin Release techniques, experience, and accumulated knowledge available for his reference, along with the full support of his bargain-bin father, Nara Shikaji, then his ideas would have remained nothing more than empty fantasies for a very long time.

As for the bonus item that looked like nothing more than an ordinary, lazy bug, the moment Kagetsu touched it with his finger, its relevant Status Panel immediately appeared in his mind.

Name: Unknown Larva

Quality: White (+)

Traits: Utterly unremarkable. Its sole trait is powerful vitality, extreme adaptability, and excellent modifiability.

Skills: Wriggle (Crawling), Eat, Spin Silk

Evaluation: How far it can grow depends on the breeder's skill and feeding.

Conclusion: Right now, it is a useless bug with zero combat power.

The Status Panel was utterly terrible, and its combat power was literally zero. Let alone an Inuzuka Clan Ninja Dog, even an ordinary little bird would be far more dangerous than this bug.

Without the support of its traits and the hint from its evaluation, this bug would have been utterly embarrassing as a summon. Throwing it out would leave everyone dumbfounded.

After all these days, Kagetsu had finally decided how to cultivate this Unknown Larva in its early stages. If he treated it as hardware that could continuously upgrade itself based on the resources invested into it, then what he needed to do was determine how its components would be configured, then write it an operating system and functional software.

His reference, naturally, was Mayuri Kurotsuchi's biological Zanpakuto, Ashisogi Jizo. Its strength might not have been much, but it was more than enough for setting traps and ambushing people.

First, he would try asking the Akimichi Clan for help with the foundational cultivation. In Kagetsu's eyes, the Akimichi Clan's Yang Release Secret Ninjutsu could solve the larva's future size problem.

Of course, this was only the most preliminary stage of cultivation. To raise it to the state Kagetsu envisioned, there was still a pile of major problems ahead, problems that perhaps no single person could solve in a short time.

As for whether the Akimichi Clan would agree to help cultivate it, Kagetsu had never doubted it. A request made by him personally might be refused, but a request from his clan, given the Ino-Shika-Cho trio's shared honor and disgrace, had little chance of being rejected by the Akimichi Clan.

After all, all the Nara Clan wanted was for them to use the Akimichi Clan's method of cultivating its own members to raise a special larva. As for their Yang Release Secret Ninjutsu, after hundreds of years of cooperation, the three clans were familiar with and deeply knowledgeable about one another's training systems and secret techniques no matter what.

Unlike Kekkei Genkai, Secret Ninjutsu was more often a cultivation method developed by a particular clan through extensive experimentation and summarization, using some characteristic of its bloodline or body and investing resources into refining it.

Without that cultivation method, even if you stole every ninjutsu of a secret technique clan, it would still be difficult for you to use them. Even if you possessed the traits of a certain attribute and could barely use them, their effects might not be as useful as casting some other ninjutsu.

After all, the Nara Clan's shadow secret techniques, the Yamanaka Clan's mental perception, and the Akimichi Clan's Physical Fitness were all gently cultivated bit by bit from childhood using methods developed through experience. Compared to those so-called Secret Ninjutsu displayed openly, these cultivation methods and resource allocations were the true core inheritance of a Secret Technique Clan.

Kagetsu took the flower pot away from the window and placed it beside his bed, lest he wake up in the morning to find that a bird had carried it off as food. Only then did he pull up the blanket and close his eyes.

Konoha Ninja Academy.

Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi stood at the podium, pipe in hand, giving a speech.

Nara Kagetsu sat lazily in his seat, his somewhat vacant eyes sweeping over the room. Among the crowd, he spotted quite a few familiar outfits and faces.

There were naturally Uchiha and Hyuga students. A silver-haired figure wearing a mask sat in the front row, while a child in a green jumpsuit with thick eyebrows was doing push-ups in the aisle beside him without a care for anyone else, panting hard as he moved so fast he practically left afterimages.

In the corner was another lonely child wearing sunglasses and wrapped head to toe in a loose robe, seemingly ignored by everyone.

Children from nearly every clan had gathered in this class. When Kagetsu saw them, an irrepressible desire rose in his heart—the influence of his Mayuri Kurotsuchi-themed talent.

At that moment, every one of them was prime research material in his mind. He really wanted to draw some blood from these classmates with their various bloodlines and unusual physiques, perhaps even dissect them for proper study.

He shook his head, throwing that terrifying thought out of his mind. If he actually did it, he would be stirring up a hornet's nest. With these tiny arms and legs of his, he was not even qualified to become a rogue ninja yet.

"...Wherever the leaves dance, fire shall burn. The shadow of the fire shall illuminate the village, and new leaves shall sprout..."

As those words fell, the Hokage's speech finally came to an end.

Compared to the students in the class who had become excited as though pumped full of stimulants, the lazy Kagetsu and the Aburame Clan members, who remained especially calm and expressionless, looked somewhat out of place.

But it did not matter. Unlike other transmigrators with civilian identities, or those with awkward identities like the Uchiha and Hyuga, who either took the initiative to ingratiate themselves and earn goodwill or treated him coldly, someone from the Nara Clan did not need to worry about such things or force himself to make an impression and gain favor.

The Ino-Shika-Cho clans were naturally Hiruzen Sarutobi's allies.

Even when he saw Kagetsu lacking all motivation, the Third Hokage would only smile and not take it to heart. After all, the Nara Clan had always been remembered as lazy. Just as the Akimichi Clan was always eating, the Aburame Clan always lacked presence, and the Hyuga and Uchiha were proud, these impressions had long since become deeply ingrained.