Mangekyo

After a few quick leaps, Uchiha Gen arrived at his next-door neighbor Uchiha Sasuke's home. Uchiha Sasuke was among the oldest members of the Uchiha Clan. In his youth, he'd probably been an elite Jonin. Now, he was a Special Jōnin at best. Against Uchiha Gen, who had just reached Kage Level and had his Mangekyō Sharingan activated, he didn't stand a chance.

In the dead of night, Uchiha Gen stared at the old man in bed with his wicked eyes...

A stream of Dojutsu Power rapidly flowed from Uchiha Sasuke's eyes into Uchiha Gen's! After the Mangekyō had hypnotized him with reason and appeals to emotion, Uchiha Sasuke showed no sign of resistance. Even when he woke the next morning, he wouldn't remember Uchiha Gen, because Gen had subdued him in his sleep—he'd never even seen him! Even searching his memories wouldn't help!

Feeling the Dojutsu Power contained in his eyes, Uchiha Gen was secretly delighted!

If he had to assign numbers to Sharingan Dojutsu Power, a normal One-Tomoe would have a value of 10 to 99, a Two-Tomoe 100 to 2,999, a Three-Tomoe 3,000 to 9,999, and a Mangekyo 10,000 or higher. The value of an Eternal Mangekyo was currently unknown. Now that he'd absorbed Uchiha Sasuke's Dojutsu Power, his Divine Grace Eye had a value of around 25,400, while his Tsukuyomi Eye remained at 10,200.

Uchiha Sasuke had a decent amount of Dojutsu Power. His eyes had more than 10,000 between them—more than a single Mangekyo eye. Unfortunately, the upper limit of his Three-Tomoe was too low, nowhere near the threshold for awakening a Mangekyo.

Even with this much Dojutsu Power, Gen was nowhere near being able to use Izanagi freely! A normal Three-Tomoe could use Izanagi, but that was the technique's minimum requirement. There was no coming back from it: even if you used a Mangekyo to cast Izanagi, you'd still go blind! But Izanagi cast with a Three-Tomoe lasted one minute. A Mangekyo should be able to hold out for two hours...

At that thought, Uchiha Gen focused his Divine Grace Eye and began transferring Dojutsu Power to his Tsukuyomi Eye, stopping only when its value had fallen to 3,000!

Either way, whether you had 3,000 or 10,000, you'd go blind after using Izanagi. If you were going to cheat, so was he. He'd make do with just over 3,000—he wasn't going to miss those extra one or two hours! If his Tsukuyomi Eye went blind, he'd just transfer another 3,000 over!

Then Uchiha Gen resumed his grand enterprise of mooching off his clansmen with reason and appeals to emotion!

By dawn, Uchiha Gen had mooched off the entire Uchiha Clan, from those who had just awakened their eyes to Three-Tomoe users, young and old, men and women alike. The only two who escaped were Uchiha Mikoto and Uchiha Itachi. There was no helping it; Uchiha Fugaku had them under his protection, so Gen couldn't touch them for now. He wasn't afraid of Fugaku, but Fugaku would definitely notice if he went after them! After all, Fugaku had a Mangekyō Sharingan too!

Back home, Uchiha Gen checked his current Dojutsu Power values: 3,000 in his Tsukuyomi Eye and 278,286 in his Divine Grace Eye. Judging by the recovery rate of ordinary clansmen, it would take a Three-Tomoe user a week or even longer to recover from zero to 3,000. But you didn't have to wait until you'd recovered 3,000 to use it. Even a few dozen points were enough for a Three-Tomoe, so it wouldn't affect daily use. It wasn't wartime, after all!

Leave some room for future dealings. If a Three-Tomoe took a week to recover, then coming around every eight days to... to teach them a lesson with reason and appeals to emotion should count as fairly considerate! Staying up late and working overtime was bad for your health. Work one night, play for eight days. He was the boss, so there was no need to bring in that 996 nonsense. Be decent. Do something decent. Say no to 996.

Over the next month, Uchiha Gen continued his nightly lessons in reason and appeals to emotion, making four rounds of the entire clan. He collected a total of 1,202,450 in tutoring fees. This kind of large-scale, repeated tutoring had started to attract the clansmen's attention! After all, one person feeling weak could be a kidney problem, but if the whole clan felt weak, it was probably the flu.

The clan head and the Uchiha elders had already held several meetings about it. In the end, they paid a hefty fee to have Konoha Hospital give the entire clan a checkup. The results showed that, aside from a few children with roundworms, a few older women with gynecological inflammation, and several elderly people with osteoporosis, everyone else was healthy. The loss of Dojutsu Power, however, remained a mystery.

After discussing the matter, the clan head and elders decided to observe it firsthand. They'd figured out that the Dojutsu Power drained roughly once every eight days, so they planned to find a typical case to watch on the eighth day! But the loss of Dojutsu Power was like the wave-particle duality of light: the moment they tried to observe it, it stopped. Now the clan head and elders were at a loss!

Seeing Fugaku and the elders looking grave in the distance, Uchiha Gen quietly slipped behind the crowd. It looked like he'd have to suspend tonight's lesson in reason and appeals to emotion.

Sigh! What a pain! October 10 was only two days away. Would 1.2 million Dojutsu Power be enough? Izanagi cost 3,000 per use and lasted five minutes. With 1.2 million, he could use it 400 times—that was 2,000 minutes, or thirty-three hours of Izanagi. He could sit on the Nine-Tails' head and take a dump several times over!

No, he couldn't just think about taking a dump. He had to look at the bigger picture. In the original story, everyone saw the Sharingan in the Nine-Tails' eyes, so the Uchiha Clan was blamed. The clan could have explained things by fighting the Nine-Tails, but Danzo's order sent everything completely off course! Still, you couldn't blame Fugaku. The Konoha elders had ordered him not to fight. What would it look like if he insisted on going out anyway? Like he was rushing to help the Nine-Tails?

If things went the same way as in the original story, the Uchiha Clan would still be doomed. At best, Gen could save himself. But what a shame to lose such a fine crop of... clansmen! As a communist successor raised under the red flag, a Young Pioneer, a transmigrator, a member of the Konoha Military Police Force, and a member of the Uchiha Clan, how could he stand by and let something so awful happen? He wouldn't allow it!

So the only way to break this vicious cycle was to avoid receiving the Konoha elders' order not to fight. That was easy enough: on the night of the incident, he'd sleep on the ground at Kage Rock. They could send the order to the Uchiha Clan Compound while he watched the stars on Kage Rock. If he didn't receive the order, there'd be nothing he could do about it.

For this, Uchiha Gen even went to check Konoha's constitution. It said nothing about sleeping on the ground at Kage Rock! That settled it! They could control the heavens and the earth, but they couldn't stop him from sleeping on Kage Rock, could they?

So he wouldn't make it look too deliberate, Uchiha Gen decided to start his sleeping-on-the-ground operation that very night. After work, he packed a few things and headed straight for Kage Rock!

"Stop! What are you doing here?" A Konoha Anbu member on night patrol shouted at Uchiha Gen, who was pitching a tent on Senju Tobirama's head!

"Uh, pitching a tent. Camping. Can't you tell?" Uchiha Gen explained. The First's influence was too great, the Third Hokage was still alive, and the Fourth Hokage had only just taken office. So he couldn't sleep on any of their heads. He'd have to settle for the Second Hokage!