Hotaru, Kou, the dungeon, and Orochimaru had all become things of the past in an instant. Yuhara was no longer Orochimaru's Test Subject. He had become cannon fodder for Konoha Village.
Of course, this might just have been Yuhara being overly suspicious. Perhaps Konoha really had accepted him as one of their own. Since his identity as a Magnet Release Kekkei Genkai user had been exposed outright, he could be considered a special talent. So, special talents received special treatment... Unfortunately, Yuhara himself didn't believe such an innocent possibility.
Although he still had no idea exactly what year it was—after all, a normal person wouldn't just ask, "What year is it?"—he could be certain that the Third Ninja World War was still raging.
War was cruel. Its cruelty lay in demanding that everything involved in it become cruel in the same way.
Yuhara temporarily remained in that camp. The four members of the same squad basically stayed together, but aside from exchanging a few words at the beginning to learn one another's names and tactical roles, there was nothing much to say... It was similar to how things had been in his cell.
They had been strangers to begin with, and they still lacked trust in one another. At a time like this, there was no need to talk about cooperation or teamwork. Compared with the squad leader and the withdrawn teammate, Yuhara had relatively more interaction with the youngest member, Tigo.
After learning a little from Tigo about the composition of their current team, Yuhara grew somewhat uneasy, because the team's makeup seemed abnormal...
Generally speaking, a ninja with a surname was likely to come from a Ninja Sect clan, while a ninja with only a given name was most likely a commoner... Although this method of judgment was extremely crude, everyone in Yuhara's squad except him was a ninja with only a given name and no surname.
Aside from the fact that their highest-ranking commander was merely a Chunin, Yuhara learned through his casual conversations with Tigo that the proportion of true Konoha-born ninjas in this squad was very low. Other than people like Yuhara, most were foreign ninjas trying to assimilate into Konoha—or, more bluntly, "naturalized ninjas"... In short, this squad was made up of complicated and unreliable people. Not worth trusting was the general tone.
So leaving Orochimaru didn't mean he was safe. From here on, Yuhara had to be twelve times more careful. Otherwise, he might fall into a trap without even realizing it.
Unlike when he had been in the dungeon, Yuhara's range of activity had clearly increased after arriving at the camp. He could move freely within the camp, but since the squad would soon be heading to the front lines, he couldn't leave on his own.
Within the designated area, Yuhara could more or less manage his own time.
He found an opportunity to secretly read the note Hotaru had left him and discovered that it was a detailed map. Using the cell he had once stayed in as its reference point, it marked a special location in red...
Hotaru might have sensed her own fate in advance, so she had hidden something and passed the information on to Yuhara, who had no connection to Konoha and was someone Orochimaru would never suspect.
Yuhara could guess that Hotaru might have been someone Konoha had planted beside Orochimaru. She should have passed some classified information about Orochimaru to the village, and that was why she had died... That information was very likely related to Kou. Konoha would certainly be extremely interested in the applications of the First Hokage's Cells.
As for the Cursed Seal experiments involving Yuhara himself, Hotaru probably hadn't reported them. Otherwise, Yuhara wouldn't have been released from the dungeon so easily. That was understandable, too. Orochimaru's Cursed Seal experiments hadn't truly begun yet, so Hotaru probably had no idea what he was doing.
If Yuhara obtained the things Hotaru had hidden and handed them over to Konoha, he might be accepted by Konoha directly... That was the benefit he might receive, as well as his motivation for acting on Hotaru's behalf.
But after thinking it over, Yuhara decided to set the matter aside for now. Unless absolutely necessary, he didn't want to create any unforeseen complications. In this familiar yet unfamiliar world, his current attitude was simple: if something wasn't his business, he wouldn't get involved.
This world was a "closed loop." It had great calamities and saviors, so he didn't need to worry about the grand narrative at all. All he needed to do was make sure he survived.
He had to think about himself.
And if someone asked what Yuhara's greatest advantage after coming to this world was, the answer definitely wouldn't be his Kekkei Genkai. It would be his "information advantage"—there was no major secret or minor piece of information in this world that he didn't know.
So while his memories of the ninja world were still fresh, he had to reinforce his memory of everything he absolutely couldn't afford to forget... It was better to be prepared. If enough time passed and he accidentally forgot some crucial information, that would be ridiculous.
That said, Yuhara couldn't record those things on paper right now. Not even encrypting them would work... What if a Konoha ninja saw all those regular-looking scribbles? What the hell are you trying to do?
He would only consider making written records after the environment around him had stabilized and become safe.
Apart from key information about the ninja world, Yuhara also needed to memorize data on certain important ninjas in order to better assess their combat strength. Or rather, for the sake of his own safety, he wanted a more intuitive way to evaluate the threat posed by certain ninjas.
And since he wanted to assess combat strength, he naturally needed a suitable reference point. It didn't take long for Yuhara to settle on a very appropriate subject—Kakashi Hatake at age twenty-six, in his Three-Tomoe Sharingan state.
As everyone knew, this level of combat strength was famously known as "one Kakashi."
With a combat-strength baseline established, what about the criteria?
Yuhara felt that the formulaic eight categories of ninjutsu, taijutsu, genjutsu, strength, speed, hand seals, stamina, and intelligence were incomplete. They couldn't intuitively reflect a ninja's combat ability.
After thinking it over, Yuhara decided to add two more categories to the original eight:
The first was "Burst," which represented a ninja's instantaneous maximum Chakra output.
The second was "Secrets," which represented the power of the Secret Techniques, Forbidden Techniques, and ultimate ninjutsu a ninja had mastered.
With these two additions, the data could better reflect a ninja's combat strength.
Using these ten categories for measurement, each one was worth ten points, making a maximum score of one hundred. At the same time, since some ninjas' scores in certain categories might far exceed what ten points could encompass, Yuhara decided to use "+" to represent exceeding the normal scale. In practice, this "+" meant that the ninja was invincible in that category.
After calculating a basic score from the ten categories, he weighted each category tenfold, then added his subjective evaluation. That would roughly outline a ninja's combat strength.
Thus, Kakashi's data in his Three-Tomoe state was as follows: Ninjutsu (10), Taijutsu (9), Genjutsu (8), Strength (7), Speed (9), Hand Seals (10), Stamina (6), Intelligence (10), Burst (6), Secrets (5); overall score, 80; regular combat-strength rating, 900.
So, quantified, "One Kakashi" meant an overall score of 80 and a combat-strength level of 900.
Using this method of evaluation, the peak combat strength of a normal ninja—the Three Legendary Sannin, Jiraiya—was as follows: Ninjutsu (10), Taijutsu (9), Genjutsu (6), Strength (9), Speed (9), Hand Seals (9), Stamina (10), Intelligence (9), Burst (10+), Secrets (10+); overall score, 91++; regular combat-strength rating, 2,100; maximum combat-strength rating, 6,300.
Then, if the data of the "God of Shinobi," the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, were evaluated in the same way, things became interesting: Ninjutsu (10+), Taijutsu (10+), Genjutsu (10), Strength (10), Speed (10), Hand Seals (10), Stamina (10+), Intelligence (10), Burst (10+++), Secrets (10+++); overall score, 100+++++++++; conservative estimate for normal combat strength... As for maximum combat strength, that number could be written however one liked.
Of course, comparison revealed that although this data had a certain degree of rationality, it wasn't truly objective. Jiraiya having a normal combat strength of slightly over two Kakashis was fine, but the "God of Shinobi" being worth only twenty Kakashis wasn't very reasonable.
The Nine-Tails possessed more than a hundred times Kakashi's Chakra. Hashirama Senju's Chakra was comparable to the Nine-Tails'. Even with that simple comparison, the gap between them was more than twentyfold.
Thus, outlier data that exceeded the normal scale had no real meaning or research value. Quantifying the "God of Shinobi's" combat strength was only good for entertainment.
After establishing the "one Kakashi" standard, Yuhara tried to analyze himself... All right, there was no need. Many of his scores wouldn't exceed three, and his combat-strength rating was probably somewhere between 30 and 50.
Being bold, he could give himself a 50. From then on, Yuhara would be the ninja world's "new weakest fighter."
This showed that looking down on "one Kakashi" was unreasonable. To ordinary ninjas, "One Kakashi" was an unreachable level.
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