The Copy Ninja Tragedy

Hotaru, Kou, the dungeon, and Orochimaru instantly became things of the past. Yuhara was no longer Orochimaru's test subject; he had become cannon fodder for Konoha Village.

Of course, this might be Yuhara "projecting his own pettiness." Perhaps Konoha really had accepted him as he was. Since his "Magnet Release Kekkei Genkai" identity had been directly exposed, he could count as a special talent, warranting special recruitment... Unfortunately, Yuhara himself didn't believe in such naive conjectures.

Although he still hadn't figured out the exact year—after all, asking "What year is it now?" was not something a normal person would do—he was certain that the Third Ninja World War was still raging.

War was cruel. Its cruelty lay in demanding that every element involved in it become equally cruel.

Yuhara temporarily halted in that camp. The four members of his squad basically stayed together, but aside from exchanging a few words at the start to learn each other's names and tactical positions, there wasn't much else to say... It was similar to his situation in the dungeon.

They were all strangers to begin with, lacking mutual trust. At this point, talk of cooperation and synergy was out of the question. Compared to the squad leader and the withdrawn teammate, Yuhara had a bit more interaction with Tigo, the youngest member.

After learning a little about the current team's composition from Tigo, Yuhara grew uneasy. The team's makeup seemed abnormal...

Generally speaking, ninjas with surnames were likely from ninja clans or sects, while those with only given names were probably commoners... Although this judgment method was very rough, in Yuhara's squad, everyone except him had only a given name, no surname.

Aside from the highest commander being only a Chunin, Yuhara learned through casual chat with Tigo that the proportion of orthodox Konoha-born ninjas in this team was very low. Besides people like Yuhara, there were more foreign ninjas trying to integrate into Konoha, or simply called "naturalized ninjas"... In short, the current squad had a complex mix of personnel. Unreliable and untrustworthy was the baseline.

So leaving Orochimaru didn't mean safety either. From now on, Yuhara had to be extremely vigilant, or he might unknowingly fall into a trap.

Unlike his time in the dungeon, Yuhara's range of movement had significantly increased after arriving at the camp. He could move freely within the camp's boundaries, but since the team was soon heading to the front lines, he couldn't leave without permission.

Within the defined limits, Yuhara's time was essentially his own to manage.

He found an opportunity to secretly read the note Hotaru had left him. It turned out to be a detailed map. Using the cell he had once stayed in as a coordinate point, it marked a special location in red...

Hotaru might have foreseen her own end, so she had hidden something away and passed the information to Yuhara, who had no ties to Konoha and whom Orochimaru wouldn't suspect.

Yuhara could guess that Hotaru was likely someone Konoha had planted near Orochimaru. She must have transmitted some of Orochimaru's classified intelligence to the village, and that's why she died... That intelligence was most likely about "Kou." Konoha was definitely very concerned about the application of the First Hokage's Cells.

As for the Cursed Seal experiments concerning Yuhara himself, Hotaru probably hadn't passed that on. Otherwise, Yuhara wouldn't have been released from the dungeon so easily. Still, this wasn't hard to understand—Orochimaru's Cursed Seal experiments hadn't truly begun yet, and Hotaru likely had no idea what Orochimaru was doing.

If Yuhara retrieved the things Hotaru had hidden and handed them over to Konoha, he might be directly accepted by the village... That was the potential benefit he could gain and the motivation to act for Hotaru.

But after thinking it over, Yuhara decided to put this matter aside for now. Unless absolutely necessary, he didn't want to stir up any trouble. In this familiar yet unfamiliar world, his current attitude was: don't meddle in things that aren't his business.

This world was a "closed loop." There were great catastrophes and saviors, so grand narratives weren't something Yuhara needed to worry about. He just had to ensure his own survival.

He had to think for himself.

If asked what Yuhara's greatest advantage was in coming to this world, the answer wouldn't be his "Kekkei Genkai," but his "intelligence advantage"—there wasn't a big secret or small piece of information about this world that he didn't know.

So he had to take advantage of his fresh memories of the ninja world to reinforce his recollection of things he absolutely couldn't forget... Better safe than sorry. It would be ridiculous if, after a long time, he accidentally forgot some key information.

That said, Yuhara couldn't write those things down on paper right now, not even in coded form... Writing so many patterned scribbles—what if a Konoha ninja saw them? What the hell are you trying to do?

Only after Yuhara's surroundings became stable and safe would he consider making paper records.

Besides key ninja world intelligence, Yuhara also wanted to digitize the information on key ninjas to better assess their combat power. Or, for his own safety, he wanted a more intuitive way to evaluate the threat level of certain ninjas.

Since he was going to assess combat power, he naturally needed to choose a suitable baseline. It didn't take long for Yuhara to directly settle on a very appropriate subject—26-year-old Kakashi Hatake with the Three-Tomoe Sharingan.

As everyone knew, this combat power was the famous "one Kakashi."

With a baseline for combat power established, what about the evaluation criteria?

The standardized eight attributes—Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, Strength, Speed, Hand Seals, Stamina, and Intelligence—Yuhara felt were not comprehensive enough. They couldn't intuitively reflect a ninja's combat level.

After thinking it over, Yuhara decided to add two more attributes to the base eight:

First, "Burst" to represent a ninja's instantaneous peak Chakra output.

Second, "Mystic" to represent the power of the Secret Techniques, Forbidden Techniques, and ultimate-level ninjutsu a ninja mastered.

With these two additions, the data could better reflect a ninja's combat power.

Using these ten attributes for measurement, each scored out of ten, the full score could be recorded as one hundred. At the same time, since some ninjas' scores in certain attributes might far exceed what a full ten points could cover, Yuhara decided to use "+" to indicate exceeding the standard. This "+" essentially meant the ninja was unmatched in that subcategory.

After calculating the base score from these ten attributes, each attribute was then weighted by a factor of ten, plus Yuhara's subjective impression evaluation. This could roughly outline a ninja's combat power.

So, the data for Three-Tomoe Kakashi was: Ninjutsu (10) Taijutsu (9) Genjutsu (8) Strength (7) Speed (9) Hand Seals (10) Stamina (6) Intelligence (10) Burst (6) Mystic (5), total 80, standard combat power estimate 900.

Thus, the so-called "one Kakashi" quantified to a total score of 80 and a combat power level of 900.

Using this method for evaluation, the peak combat power of a normal ninja, the "Three Legendary Sannin" Jiraiya, looked like this: Ninjutsu (10) Taijutsu (9) Genjutsu (6) Strength (9) Speed (9) Hand Seals (9) Stamina (10) Intelligence (9) Burst (10+) Mystic (10+), total 91++, standard combat power estimate 2100, limit combat power estimate 6300.

Then, if this method was used to evaluate the "God of Shinobi," the First Hokage Hashirama Senju, the situation got interesting: Ninjutsu (10+), Taijutsu (10+), Genjutsu (10), Strength (10), Speed (10), Hand Seals (10), Stamina (10+), Intelligence (10), Burst (10+++), Mystic (10+++), total 100+++++++++, standard combat power conservative estimate, limit combat power... that number could be written however you wanted.

Of course, comparison showed that while this data had some rationality, it wasn't truly objective. Jiraiya's normal combat power being a little over two Kakashis was fine, but the "God of Shinobi" being only twenty Kakashis was unreasonable.

The Nine-Tails' Chakra volume was over a hundred times that of Kakashi. Hashirama Senju's Chakra volume was comparable to the Nine-Tails. Even with just that comparison, the gap between them was more than twenty times.

So, outlier data that exceeded the norm was meaningless and had no research value. Quantifying the "God of Shinobi's" combat power was only good for a laugh.

After establishing the "one Kakashi" standard, Yuhara tried to analyze his current self... Well, there was no need for analysis. Many of his scores wouldn't exceed three, and his combat power estimate was between 30 and 50.

Let's be bold and give him 50. From now on, Yuhara would be the ninja world's "new five-point weakling."

From this, it was clear that looking down on "one Kakashi" was unreasonable. For an ordinary ninja, "One Kakashi" was so far out of reach.