The Mangekyō That Wouldn't Awaken?

In the Laboratory, time seemed to have lost all meaning. Only the low hum of machinery and the faint flicker of indicator lights marked its passage.

Minamoto Takuya stood before the device in which he had once placed such high hopes.

This precise, cold machine had once been his key to a shortcut toward the Mangekyō Sharingan. Now, it felt more like a silent mockery.

Two years.

A full two years had quietly slipped away amid one failed activation after another.

His Three Tomoe Sharingan reflected the device's frigid metal casing. Deep within his gaze lingered an inescapable murkiness and gloom.

The Mangekyō remained as distant as ever, like flowers in a mirror and the moon in water.

Past experience had once given him a measure of comfort.

Although the device had failed to directly awaken the Mangekyō, he could clearly sense that his ocular power increased after every attempt.

That had once given him the idea that quantitative change would eventually trigger qualitative change.

Yet the results of the last two experiments had utterly shattered that illusory hope. The growth curve had already stalled, and the cold readings of the instruments declared that he had reached his limit.

His ocular power had not budged an inch!

Quantitative change? Qualitative change? That notion collapsed before reality, leaving behind nothing but wreckage and profound frustration.

Then was there only that ancient, cruel path left?

Find "love," then personally destroy it or witness its destruction, igniting those cursed eyes amid ultimate agony?

Minamoto Takuya's thoughts coldly swept over that option. It was not as though he had never weighed it before.

It was simply that he knew the underlying nature of his own soul better than anyone. It was a near-absolute indifference.

Love? Friendship? Such burning emotions were as foreign to him