First Appearance

On a desolate stretch of wasteland, the proctor led the other ninjas as they began searching the area and making their final count.

"Gasp!"

"How is this possible?!"

"How terrifying! Were they all killed?"

What appeared before them was a hellish, blood-soaked scene. Corpses and severed limbs littered the ground. The dead stared with eyes that would never close, their faces frozen in disbelief, showing the ninjas just how horrifying the boys' final moments had been.

Even the proctor in charge of the exam couldn't help drawing a sharp breath. He had overseen exams for many years, but had never encountered anything like this.

"Search the area and find any survivors! We have to figure out what happened!" the proctor ordered. Had this been nothing more than a slaughter during the exam, or had Kirigakure's enemies done this?

Reason told him that sneaking undetected into a place this heavily guarded just to slaughter a group of students would be absurd. So...

"Who could have been so cruel? This incident will definitely shake the village."

Before long, the ninjas who had searched the area returned one after another, bringing news that chilled the proctor to the bone.

"None."

"They're all dead."

"No survivors."

At last, a young Chunin brought back some useful information. He had found a boy, and was carrying an unconscious child on his back.

"I found a survivor," the Chunin said hesitantly, lowering the child from his back to the ground. The movement drew everyone's attention.

In his opinion, the boy shouldn't be called a survivor. He should be called "the culprit who slaughtered everyone."

"One is the boy behind me." The Chunin shifted aside, revealing a masked boy whose expression was indifferent, a cold detachment emanating from his eyes.

"And the other is him." The Chunin pointed at the child on the ground, frowning.

"Hmph!" The masked boy glanced at the child and snorted in disdain. "He actually survived my blade? Impressive!"

"What an arrogant brat," the proctor thought. He took out the roster, quickly flipped to a page, and compared the picture there to the boy before him.

"Momochi Zabuza." The proctor narrowed his eyes, deep in thought.

Under normal circumstances, the name Zabuza wouldn't have caught his attention in the slightest. But this world was cruel. After carrying out a slaughter of almost supernatural proportions, Zabuza had naturally earned the recognition—even the fear—of outsiders. Even a Jonin like the proctor was now taking notice of other names.

Zabuza. The name meant "never cut twice": he never struck a victim a second time, never needed a second blow. What an arrogant name.

By comparison, the child who seemed to have survived only because Zabuza had been careless was clearly far less impressive. The proctor had already found his file.

"Kanna."

The proctor didn't think much of Kanna's file, but soon one of his subordinates reported something that left him at a loss for words.

"Ah, I see. His heart is on the right side!"

"Lucky boy."

A medical ninja treated Kanna's wounds. Ninjas were specialists in combat, and their treatment of external injuries was clearly far beyond anything Kanna had known in his previous life, to the point of seeming almost unscientific. A man in a white robe knelt down, covered Kanna with a white cloth covered in strange symbols, then began forming Hand Seals. After a few breaths, all the blood seeping from Kanna's wounds flowed to the center of the cloth, and strings of blood-red symbols spread across it. A faint, weak breathing sound began to rise.

"He can still be saved." The medical ninja nodded calmly. Even faced with the gaping wound that had pierced Kanna's flesh, his expression didn't change in the slightest.

Having his heart on the right side was a rare condition in which the heart was located in the right side of the chest, unlike ordinary people. Zabuza had single-handedly slaughtered all his fellow examinees, so it was only natural that he was powerful and arrogant. In that situation, he wouldn't bother checking whether a boy he had stabbed through the left side of the chest—the location of a normal person's heart—might have survived. That was why Kanna had been lucky enough to live.

"Take him to the hospital," the proctor ordered. Then he turned to Zabuza and forced a smile.

"Zabuza, right? I'll be frank," the proctor said after a moment's thought. "You haven't broken any of the village's rules, but the death toll in this exam was far too high. Someone will probably come looking for you afterward, either to conduct the usual investigation or to cause you trouble."

"I don't care," Zabuza said indifferently. "You don't have to tell me all that. Or do you think I'm not prepared to face the consequences?"

The proctor's lips twitched. He sighed inwardly and said no more.

In Kirigakure's decades of history, there had been few boys as ruthless as this Zabuza. He was certain this boy would amount to something one day!

Meanwhile, Kanna, who had narrowly escaped being cut down by Zabuza, was taken to a hospital in Kirigakure while unconscious.

"Your heart is truly on the right side. It's different from dextrocardia and a displaced heart."

A week later, in a room at Kirigakure Hospital filled with the pungent smell of medicine, a doctor in a white coat was explaining something to a boy.

"I know." The boy impatiently waved a hand, cutting him off. "You've told me this so many times, Dr. Pu Jie. Can't you talk about something else?"

Dr. Pu Jie smiled faintly. "Then I'll tell you something you might care about. Based on our initial estimate, you'll need to stay in the hospital for at least a few months. Don't worry about the cost; the village will cover it. But your school has sent word. As the only surviving examinee this year, what do you want to do next?"

As he spoke, Pu Jie leaned closer and lowered his voice, putting on a conspiratorial air. "No wonder everyone calls you a lucky kid. Do you know how graduates from previous years had to go around asking favors and calling in connections to get good positions? But you're different. Since only you and Zabuza survived this year, you can choose any job you want, aside from a few positions involving special missions."

"Zabuza? He..." Kanna hesitated.

"That brat chose Anbu, I hear. What a battle maniac!" Pu Jie replied readily, as though he knew what Kanna wanted to ask.

"Heh." Kanna smiled, showing none of the dejection, fear, or hatred Pu Jie had expected.

Strangely enough, Kanna regained consciousness not long after being hospitalized, thanks to the effective treatment. To the doctors and nurses' amazement, just a few minutes after he woke up that afternoon, a muffled laugh filled with relief came from his room. It seemed something had made Kanna especially excited and satisfied.

Dr. Pu Jie was the one assigned to treat Kanna. He was a chatterbox who liked to talk with Kanna whenever he had nothing else to do. He talked a lot, but Kanna didn't find him frivolous. On the contrary, he thought Pu Jie was a steady sort of person.

Distracted for a moment, Kanna said nothing more. Pu Jie naturally assumed he was tired, so he said goodbye and let him rest in peace.

"How incredible..." Kanna, lying in bed, couldn't help smiling again.

The reason he could still smile after being so badly injured that he'd nearly died was that, the moment he woke up, he discovered something mysterious inside him.

Let's leave Kanna's previous life aside. In any case, he was more easygoing than most people and better able to accept reality. So after first feeling confused and astonished, and even suspecting he had fallen under some kind of genjutsu, he finally confirmed what it was and named it the System.

It wasn't very original, but the name described the thing's function well enough.

The first function Kanna discovered was also the reason he could barely keep from laughing in his sleep.

Every day at midnight, Kanna randomly received a ninjutsu. According to the explanation that somehow came to him from the System, this was the lowest-level ninjutsu. He could also trade three days for a chance to draw a more advanced ninjutsu. If he had more patience, he could wait nine, twenty-seven, or even eighty-one days.

The limit was 243 days. In other words, if Kanna waited that long, he could obtain a top-tier ninjutsu. Or, to put it another way, the time required to go from the lowest-level D-rank ninjutsu—there was technically an E rank in the original, but here D rank was the lowest—to the highest-level super S-rank, a ninjutsu that completely defied convention and that ordinary people wouldn't even dare dream of, ranged from as little as three days to as many as 243. Every threefold increase in waiting time raised the rank by one level.

We should also mention Kanna's personality. He was patient by nature, calm and unhurried. So if he had to wait more than 200 days in peace for a super S-rank ninjutsu, he would still have considered it worthwhile.

The problem was that ninjutsu obtained this way didn't work like skills in a video game, where one could use them with a single click. Take the seven ninjutsu Kanna had obtained so far: [Transformation Technique], [Wind Release: Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique], [Clone Technique], [Shuriken Manipulation Technique], [Shuriken: Throw Them All Out Technique], [Substitution Technique], and [Sexy Technique]. At present, Kanna could only use [Transformation Technique], and even that was because he had inherited the original owner of this body's memories.

Ninjutsu obtained through this lottery-like method came with all the relevant information, expressed in words or diagrams: the techniques, the chakra circulation patterns, the methods of use, and so on. The information was comprehensive, correct, and error-free, but Kanna still had to learn each technique one by one.

If that were all the System did, Kanna would surely have felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. He wouldn't be as excited as he was now, practically bursting with glee. The reason for his excitement was that the System had another function.

...(ps: As for the first few ninjutsu—the starter pack—I'll stick with the original version. That's right, I still remember the Flying Thunder God Technique and Shinra Tensei. I really was lucky enough to draw those two S-rank ninjutsu, the most powerful and useful ones. So don't accuse me of cheating! The author didn't deliberately give the protagonist these; I really was lucky. Back then, whatever I drew, I used. There was nothing I could do about it.)