The Edge of Magma and Root's Gaze

Rumors spread faster than a ninja's taijutsu.

Within three days, news that "Uchiha En had been possessed by an evil spirit" spread throughout the clan compound, growing more outrageous with every retelling. At first, it was merely, "That useless orphan scared Yashiro into tears by the river." By the second day, it had become, "His right arm turned into a magma monster and nearly burned Yashiro to death." By the third day, the story was even more absurd—"He was possessed by the vengeful spirit of the Nine-Tails. He's an ominous person, and anyone who gets near him will have bad luck."

En's assessment was this: If you people put that imagination into ninjutsu, the Uchiha would have conquered the ninja world already.

The academy.

Eight in the morning. When En entered the classroom, the entire room went silent for 0.3 seconds.

Then—

The students three rows to his left shifted their chairs to the right. The students two rows to his right shifted their chairs to the left. The children who had originally sat in front of and behind him silently chose seats farther away.

The effect was outstanding.

With En's seat as the center, a perfect vacuum zone formed within a two-meter radius.

En glanced around.

He was neither angry nor hurt. He merely felt the dull tedium of having his expectations confirmed. It had been the same when he had been sidelined at his company before transmigrating. Once the boss said something, his colleagues would instinctively keep their distance, afraid of catching the bad luck.

Human nature didn't change even across dimensions.

He walked to his seat, sat down, and opened his textbook.

Whispers drifted over from behind him.

"Don't look at him... I heard you'll be cursed if you even glance at him..."

"Yashiro still hasn't come to school. I heard he got so scared he fell sick."

"My mom told me to stay away from that person. She said he has evil energy on him..."

En turned a page.

Evil energy.

Red Dog's Magma-Magma Fruit was being called evil energy.

If Eiichiro Oda heard that, he'd be flipping in his grave.

"En—!"

The classroom door was pushed open. A golden-haired head poked in, drenched in sweat, his backpack strap hanging crookedly off one shoulder, two cloth-wrapped lunchboxes raised in his hand.

Minato Namikaze.

The already quiet atmosphere in the classroom froze even further. Everyone's eyes moved back and forth between Minato and En, waiting for a show.

Minato didn't notice any of it. Or rather—he noticed, but simply didn't care.

He walked straight through that two-meter vacuum zone, dropped into the seat beside En, and set the lunchboxes on the desk.

"I made tamagoyaki today! It's way better than last time! You said the rice balls last time were too salty—"

"When have I ever said anything you made was good?"

"If you ate it, then it was good!"

En didn't reply.

Minato opened the lunchbox. The tamagoyaki did look better than last time's rice balls. At least it had a regular shape. As for the color—it was a little burnt.

"Did you use too much heat?"

"Huh? I thought this color looked great. It's nice and browned, so it smells really good."

"That's called burnt."

"Is there a difference between browned and burnt?"

"Yes. Browned is food. Burnt is garbage."

"That's so mean!"

A Sarutobi child in the back couldn't help whispering to his companion, "Is that Minato Namikaze stupid? Everyone's avoiding Uchiha En, but he keeps going up to him."

Minato had sharp ears. He turned around and said with a smile, "I'm not stupid. En is my friend, and friends should sit together."

He said it with complete conviction.

The Sarutobi child opened his mouth but couldn't find anything to say in reply.

En lowered his gaze to the tamagoyaki on the desk.

Suddenly, he wanted to test something.

"Minato."

"Yeah?"

"Do you know... what happened by the Nanga River that night?"

Minato bit his chopsticks and tilted his head as he thought.

"A little? There've been lots of rumors outside. They said you... how did it go again—oh, right, 'were possessed by an evil spirit.'"

"Aren't you scared?"

Minato looked at him and smiled.

It wasn't a perfunctory smile. He genuinely found the question funny.

"En, if you were an evil spirit, then evil spirits really have no standards. What kind of evil spirit wears clothes that ragged? At the very least, you should have some armor on, right?"

"..."

"And evil spirits don't need to eat, do they? But yesterday, you ate every last grain of the rice balls I made."

"That was because wasting food is shameful."

"Exactly! Evil spirits wouldn't care whether food was wasted or not. So you're not an evil spirit. Perfect logic!"

En stared at him for three seconds.

What kind of nonsense logic was that?

"Fine." En picked up his chopsticks, grabbed a piece of tamagoyaki, and put it into his mouth.

He chewed twice.

Too salty.

Again.

"How is it? How is it?"

"It's edible."

"Great!"

Minato looked as happy as if he had gotten a perfect score.

En chewed the unbearably salty tamagoyaki, his throat feeling a little tight.

Not because of the salt.

"Minato."

"Yeah?"

"When you cook in the future... use half as much salt."

"Oh! Okay!"

"And—"

"Yeah, yeah?"

"...That's all."

He had wanted to say "thank you."

But after living twenty-six years in his previous life and another six in this one, he realized he was becoming less and less capable of saying those two words.

Forget it.

He would repay him some other way.

—The bell rang.

The examiner announced a practical taijutsu class, and everyone gathered at the training field.

On the training field, the new students stood in four rows. The examiner stood in front of them, with a line of wooden targets behind him.

"Today, we'll be testing basic target practice. Three shuriken per person. Points for hitting the center of the target. We'll go in roster order."

The first few children stepped up one after another, with varying results.

When it was a child from the Hyuga branch family's turn, all three shuriken hit the outer ring of the bullseye. Decent and unremarkable.

The next one was an Uchiha child. Two hit the bullseye, while one went wide.

Then came Minato.

Three shuriken left his hand.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

All of them struck the bullseye dead center.

The final one had even embedded itself in the handle of the first, at an absurdly precise angle.

The examiner raised an eyebrow. "Minato Namikaze, full marks."

Another perfect score.

The whispers on the training field gained a sharper edge of envy. It wasn't unheard of in the history of the Konoha Ninja Academy for a civilian-born child to surpass every scion of the prominent clans, but whenever it happened, it made those clan children born with silver spoons deeply uncomfortable.

"Uchiha En."

The examiner called his name.

The training field instantly fell silent.

Everyone watched as En walked to the throwing line. Their expressions varied—curiosity, mockery, fear, wariness.

En weighed the three shuriken in his hand.

He had watched Naruto shuriken-throwing tutorials countless times in his previous life. Angles, force, rotation speed—at least in theory, he understood more than any child present.

The problem was—between theory and practice lay an abyss called "this body is unbelievably terrible."

The first one.

He threw it.

The shuriken spun through the air and struck the wooden target—it missed.

Not by a little. It was off by more than half the target's width, barely catching the edge of the wooden post.

The second one.

He adjusted his angle.

He threw it.

It was a little better than the first. It landed on the third ring outside the bullseye.

The third one.

En stood there, gripping the last shuriken.

He closed his eyes.

Observation Haki spread out in an instant.

Everything within a fifty-meter radius poured into his mind—the wind speed, wind direction, the imbalance in the shuriken's center of gravity, the target's exact distance.

It wasn't ninjutsu.

It wasn't chakra.

It was a sensory power from another world.

He opened his eyes and threw.

Clang—!

The third shuriken struck the bullseye dead center.

The training field fell silent again.

But this silence was different from before.

The terrible first two throws stood in stark contrast to the precision of the third. The examiner frowned as he stared at the shuriken, his gaze carrying an indescribable scrutiny.

"Pass." The examiner wrote down his score without saying anything else.

En returned to the line.

Minato leaned over. "That third one was amazing! How did you do that?"

"Lucky throw."

"Even your lucky throws are that accurate? Teach me how to get lucky!"

"How do you teach luck?... Is there a hole in your brain?"

"Hehe."

At the back of the line.

Yashiro's four lackeys huddled in the crowd, not daring to raise their heads.

They remembered that magma arm. They remembered the river exploding. They remembered the black, smoking ground.

"That guy really is a monster..."

"Stop talking... he'll hear us..."

Of course En heard them.

Observation Haki could sense more than locations. When he focused, it could even catch subtle fluctuations in people's presence.

Monster.

He had heard that word once in each of his two worlds.

In his previous life, he had been "the invisible man at the company."

In this life, he was "the evil spirit of the clan."

Different labels, different flavors.

His previous self hadn't possessed the Magma-Magma Fruit.

—After school.

As usual, En did not return directly to the clan compound. He took a long detour and shook off his follower again—today's stalker was someone different, whose presence was slightly more restrained than yesterday's, but before Observation Haki, he was still an easy target.

Twenty minutes later, he confirmed it was safe.

The Forest of Death.

En found a new training ground.

He closed his eyes and summoned the system panel.

[Magma-Magma Fruit Evolution: 3% (+3%)]

Three days. It had risen from 0% to 3%.

The speed was neither fast nor slow—it was truly slow. After all, the training he could do now was limited. This twelve-year-old body had poor endurance; every time he used the Magma-Magma Fruit at full power for more than ten minutes, he became dizzy and lightheaded.

"The system said that evolution can be raised through actual combat, near-death experiences, system rewards, or emotional shocks..."

Actual combat was not an option for now. As for near-death experiences—the time at the Nanga River had been thrilling enough. He had no plans to go through that again anytime soon. Emotional shocks, though...

Minato's smiling face flickered through his mind.

Yan crushed the image. He had no intention of becoming some brain-wired freak who killed his friend as a sacrifice to the heavens. That was my bond!

"Control training first."