A Cheat?!

"Whoa~ We've finally got a new guy~"

One of the white teenagers in a suit walked over and greeted him enthusiastically.

Judging by his appearance, he seemed to be a high school student...

"All right, let's take care of business first~"

Another kid with narrow, smiling eyes walked over and held out his hand to Orochimaru.

"This..."

Orochimaru froze, completely at a loss as to what was going on.

"You'll understand as soon as you take his hand..."

The last one, a young Chinese man, smiled and spoke mysteriously.

"This..."

Orochimaru paused at his words, eyeing the other three suspiciously.

Still uncertain, he took the smiling-eyed boy's hand.

The moment he did, a huge amount of information suddenly appeared in his mind.

"You're... Zhuge Qing?! And you're... me too?!"

After a long while, once he had finished going through the information, Orochimaru stared at the smiling-eyed boy in disbelief and asked.

The person before him was also himself, except he had been transported to the world of The Outcast and become Zhuge Qing, whose first appearance had been incredibly impressive, but who spent the rest of the story either taking a beating or on his way to taking one.

But just like Orochimaru, he was only seven years old and had just started first grade...

"That's right. Not just him—all of us are 'me.'"

The white teenager from earlier smiled and held out his hand to Orochimaru.

Orochimaru took a deep breath and shook the white teenager's hand. As before, a wave of information poured into his mind.

Only this time, there was much more of it than there had been from "Zhuge Qing"...

"Harry Osborn?!

You're... the Green Goblin kid?!"

After going through the information, Orochimaru asked again in disbelief.

The white teenager before him had been transported to the Marvel World and had even become a villain.

"I'm not the Green Goblin yet~"

Harry shrugged and corrected him.

Although he was Harry Osborn, he had no intention of becoming a villain.

"Fine~ Then who are you?"

Orochimaru nodded, then turned to the last person and held out his hand.

As someone who'd been transported into Orochimaru, he didn't exactly have much room to judge.

"Ahem, just so you know~

There's a lot of information on my end~"

The young Chinese man cleared his throat, then took Orochimaru's hand.

"Hm? A lot?!"

Before Orochimaru could react, an amount of information several times greater than before poured straight into his mind.

It was mixed with memories from several different eras...

"Ssu~"

It felt as if someone had stuck an iron rod into his brain and stirred it around. Orochimaru sucked in a sharp breath and took quite a while to recover.

Seeing this, Zhuge Qing and Harry Osborn laughed. They'd both been caught off guard by the same thing earlier.

"So... you were transported to the world of Assassin's Creed?"

After going through the information, Orochimaru understood the third person's situation. He'd been transported to the world of Assassin's Creed, where he was named Reed Hayrick.

He currently worked for Abstergo Industries, where, like Desmond, the series' modern-day protagonist, he was being studied.

The company was part of the Templar Order, the series' villainous organization. Its goal was to use a machine called the Animus to access ancestors' memories through DNA sequences.

Then they could search those memories for Pieces of Eden hidden away by the Assassins...

The huge amount of information just now had come from his ancestors in that world—several legendary Assassins...

"Yeah. If I hadn't gotten a cheat at the last minute, I'd have been done for~"

Reed shrugged, still shaken.

Accessing his ancestors' memories wasn't without risks. Too much exposure could scramble his own memories with those of his ancestors, resulting in a pathological state of split personality.

If he hadn't come here at the crucial moment and anchored his sense of self through his other two selves, he might already have gone insane.

"So... what's going on here?"

Orochimaru took a deep breath and asked the other three.

He understood the situation. Now he wanted to know what had caused it.

"My theory is... we were caught in a Reactor explosion just before we ended up here.

The high-energy particle stream scattered our souls across different worlds.

For some unknown reason, we've maintained a connection at the quantum level, allowing us to exchange information..."

Harry Osborn explained. His last memory was of a high-parameter plasma experiment. The Q-value had successfully exceeded its target, but the plasma density and temperature in the core had also surpassed the Reactor's design limits.

As the project leader, he hadn't evacuated with the others. To prevent the Catastrophe from worsening, he'd had to manually shut down the core's residual-heat removal system and prevent a secondary meltdown.

But a chain of unexpected reactions had caused him to be struck by the escaping superheated plasma. That was probably what had caused their current situation.

"You mean... souls exist at the quantum level?

Can you prove it?!"

Hearing this, Orochimaru's eyes lit up, and he asked excitedly.

That would indeed explain their current situation. After all, there was a similar phenomenon in the real world: quantum entanglement.

Simply put, in quantum mechanics, entangled particles displayed a strong correlation.

For example, imagine two people each had a quantum die and agreed in advance, "Whenever you roll a six, I'll get a one."

No matter how far apart the dice were, the moment one of them rolled a six, the other die's result would instantly become one.

The change was immediate and ignored distance...

Just like the exchange of information between them...

"Heh~ Shouldn't you be focusing on more pressing matters right now, rather than doing research?"

Looking at Orochimaru, Harry Osborn smiled.

Even though they'd been transported into different people, they really were the same deep down~

But for now, researching this wasn't their most pressing concern...

"That's true..."

Hearing this, Orochimaru scratched his head. Whether it was him or the others, they all had more important things to deal with.

His counterpart in the Marvel World had to cure the Osborn family's hereditary illness. Otherwise, he'd either die young or have to become the Green Goblin.

His counterpart in the world of Assassin's Creed had to escape and avoid being a test subject.

As for his counterpart in The Outcast, he had to deal with summer homework...

Uh...

At that thought, Orochimaru turned to look at Zhuge Qing with an odd expression.

"Oh, well~ It can't be helped~"

Seeing Orochimaru's gaze, Zhuge Qing looked a little embarrassed.

It seemed like he was the only one without any real troubles. If he wanted to avoid taking a beating, he could always just skip the Luo Tian Dajiao twenty years from now.

"..."

Orochimaru shook his head. There was nothing to be done about it.

After they chatted a little longer, Orochimaru prepared to leave.

The moment he made up his mind, that weightless feeling swept over him again.

"Whoa~ So that's what it feels like?"

In the Naruto World, Orochimaru jolted awake and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Then he looked at the time. About a minute had passed.

After such a novel experience, Orochimaru was wide awake, so he checked his own condition instead.

There had been no changes, which meant that he and his counterparts in the other worlds had only exchanged information on a spiritual level.

Still, that was enough...

As he went through the information that had appeared in his mind, Orochimaru smiled.

There was quite a lot of useful information...

First was his counterpart in the Marvel World. He'd been transported there the longest ago, ten years earlier.

To cure his genetic disease, his counterpart in the Marvel World had switched to studying biology early on.

With the experience from his previous life and the resources and wealth of the Osborn family, he'd already earned two doctorates, despite being only eighteen.

He even had his own biological laboratory and research team...

In other words, Orochimaru didn't need to start learning biology from scratch. He was already an expert in the field.

Next was the world of The Outcast. The most useful thing there was a cultivation method for strengthening the essence, energy, and spirit.

The worlds of The Outcast and Naruto had a lot in common. Both featured Yin-Yang and Five Elements, Qimen Dunjia, and similar concepts.

Even Chakra and Qi had similar properties and effects. Both could influence the body and mind, or produce physical phenomena such as fire and lightning.

The difference between the two worlds lay in their cultivation methods and how they used that energy...

There was a fundamental difference between them. The Naruto World was constantly at war, and its training methods focused on building combat strength in the shortest possible time. Ninja pushed themselves through grueling training, like Rock Lee's brutal regimen in the original story.

They focused most of their efforts on applying techniques, which was why they had a huge variety of Ninjutsu.

How strong someone could become was basically determined by their talent and bloodline...

The Outcast, on the other hand, emphasized Dual Cultivation of Life and Nature, strengthening one's foundations and gradually growing stronger. The various abilities were merely by-products of that process.

Neither approach was better or worse. After all, the worlds had different circumstances.

In a world like Naruto, where people were constantly at war and the average ninja didn't live to thirty, slowly training like they did in The Outcast would basically be suicide.

To use an analogy, they were like a nuclear bomb and a nuclear Reactor. Although their basic principles were similar, one released a huge amount of energy in a short time, while the other produced a steady, sustained output.

They had different applications and different needs, so there was no point comparing them...

Then there was the world of Assassin's Creed. It had provided him with the experience of several master Assassins, including Altair and Ezio, covering special skills such as stealth, hand-to-hand combat, assassination, and pickpocketing.

Those skills were essential for a ninja, too. With a little adjustment, they could turn him into an expert in combat and assassination.

And so, the next day,

Orochimaru headed out with dark circles under his eyes.

His destination was to meet his future teammates and instructor...