Lava Bullets and the A-Rank List

His right arm transformed into lava.

Dark crimson patterns spread from his shoulder to his fingertips, and his arm became flowing magma. The temperature rose, and the fallen leaves around him curled and charred on their own.

Today's goal—precisely controlling the size and throwing accuracy of lava balls.

He gathered a fist-sized lava ball in his palm.

Smaller.

From fist-sized to egg-sized.

Smaller still.

Marble-sized.

Maintain its shape.

Three seconds... eight seconds.

—Pop.

The lava ball exploded.

Scorching fragments scattered everywhere, burning five or six black holes into the bushes before him.

"Damn."

Yan shook out his hand.

Once it shrank to marble size, the internal pressure became too great to maintain. Either his mental control was not precise enough, or this body was not strong enough to bear it.

Again.

The fourth attempt—

Pop, pop, pop, pop.

It exploded four times in a row.

The bushes in front of him had gone from plants to charcoal skewers.

"..."

The fifth attempt.

This time, he changed his approach. Rather than shrinking it through "compression," he used "extraction"—drawing the excess magma back into his arm and leaving only a small clump behind.

The lava ball in his palm slowly shrank.

Fist. Egg. Marble.

It stabilized.

Ten seconds... thirty seconds.

It did not explode.

Yan's eyes lit up.

He flicked the marble-sized lava ball out of his palm.

Whoosh—

The lava bullet traced a dark crimson arc and struck a tree fifteen meters away.

Sizzle—!

The trunk was instantly burned through at the point of impact, leaving a fist-sized hole billowing white smoke.

"Enough penetration. Accuracy's a little off. The target was twenty centimeters to the left."

Again.

One marble-sized magma bullet after another flew from his fingertips.

The sixth shot missed by fifteen centimeters.

The seventh shot missed by ten.

The eighth shot missed by five.

The ninth shot—

Hit the center of the trunk.

Straight through.

Yan clenched his fist.

"If Red Dog from the pirate world knew a twelve-year-old kid was using his fruit to practice target shooting, I wonder what his face would look like."

A faint smile hung at the corner of his lips as he muttered to himself.

The feeling of this power gradually becoming obedient—was like the first time he learned to ride a bicycle in his previous life, pedaling forward unsteadily before suddenly finding his balance.

Awesome.

But training could not be all about offense.

He still had to test something else—the defensive limits of elementalization.

He tossed the shuriken in his hand, reluctant to use it. Shuriken were expensive. Unless he married into Tenten's family, he could not afford to waste them casually.

He picked up a stone. It passed through his lava-transformed arm, and when it fell out the other side, it had already become a scorching-hot lump of rock.

"What if the attack is infused with chakra?"

There was no way to test that for now. He could not exactly find a ninja and ask them to cast ninjutsu at him for an experiment.

But in theory, the system had said that the power of the Magma-Magma Fruit "did not belong to the chakra system." So could chakra-based ninjutsu harm an elementalized body?

There were two possibilities.

First, the chakra in the ninjutsu would be vaporized by the heat the instant it touched the magma, rendered useless like river water meeting lava.

Second, the special properties carried by the ninjutsu itself—such as the penetrative nature of Lightning Release or the cutting nature of Wind Release—could interfere with the material structure of the magma and inflict damage.

The former meant he was nearly invincible.

The latter meant he still had weaknesses.

"Don't get carried away," Yan told himself. "Don't forget, this world has sage arts, the Rinnegan, and the Otsutsuki. Amaterasu of the Mangekyo Sharingan is black flame that never goes out—something that can burn even flames. Whether it works on the Magma-Magma Fruit is still hard to say."

Not to mention the Sage of Six Paths' Truth-Seeking Orbs. Those things were said to be "the union of Yin and Yang Release," and theoretically could annihilate all matter.

The road ahead was long.

Long enough to walk from Konoha to the moon.

Uh... though the moon here was not home to Chang'e, but Kaguya Otsutsuki!

But at least—he was stronger today than yesterday.

Yan withdrew the magma and sat on a fallen giant tree to rest.

Night had already fallen. Insects chirped one after another in the Forest of Death. Somewhere in the distance, something large moved through the underbrush, but it was far enough away that he did not need to worry about it for now.

He pulled out half a cold omelet wrap from his pocket—Minato had forcibly stuffed it into his hands at lunch.

He took a bite.

Still salty.

Even saltier now that it was cold.

But he chewed carefully, wasting none of it.

After he finished eating, he stood.

It was time to leave. Training for too long would draw the attention of people with ulterior motives.

He turned around.

Observation Haki suddenly caught a faint presence.

At the edge of his perception—roughly forty-eight to fifty meters away.

One person.

An adult.

Their presence was concealed to the extreme, nearly blending into the trees. But unlike the ANBU who had followed him before, this person's aura possessed a peculiar sense of "blankness."

They were probably not the Third Hokage's ANBU.

Possibly Danzo's Root.

Yan did not pause, pretending not to notice. He maintained his normal pace, passed through the underbrush, and headed toward the forest exit.

The presence behind him did not follow.

It merely remained where it was.

At the edge of the area where he had just trained.

Over there. Observing. Recording.

A sense of danger filled Uchiha Yan's heart. It seemed he would have to be even more careful from now on. For the sake of his own life, he had no choice but to make some plans. Otherwise, he might die without even knowing how.

—Konoha underground. Root headquarters.

A masked ninja knelt on one knee before Danzo. The character "C" was carved into his mask.

"Lord Danzo. The target trained for approximately forty minutes today."

"Report."

"Confirmed. The target possesses the ability to transform his limbs into high-temperature lava. Based on preliminary estimates, the temperature exceeds the limit of ordinary Fire Release ninjutsu. There are multiple traces of cooled magma in the training ground, identical in composition to the material at the bottom of the Nanga River."

Danzo said nothing.

"Additionally—" C paused. "The target's sensory ability exceeded expectations. When I was approximately fifty meters from the target, the target displayed a brief reaction of alertness. I had employed the highest-level concealment technique within that distance, but the target..."

"But the target noticed you." Danzo finished for him.

"...Yes."

Silence.

Danzo's bandaged right hand slowly tapped the tabletop once.

"A twelve-year-old child. Chakra talent rated D-. No sensory training whatsoever. Yet he could detect a formal Root member's concealment."

His tone was calm as he spoke, as though reading from a menu.

But C had served at Danzo's side for seven years. He could hear it—the intense interest beneath that calmness.

"C."

"Here."

"Starting tomorrow, increase the surveillance distance to eighty meters. Do not let him discover you again."

"Yes."

"Also—archive today's training record separately. Categorize it under the list of A-rank surveillance targets."

C hesitated.

A-rank surveillance was second only to S-rank surveillance.

Only three people in all of Konoha had ever received S-rank surveillance—the Nine-Tails jinchuriki Uzumaki Kushina, Orochimaru, and the Third Hokage himself.

A twelve-year-old orphan, ranked only beneath those three names?

But C did not question it. Root members did not need to question orders.

"Yes."

He vanished into the darkness.

Danzo sat alone in the empty office, his single eye fixed on the thin report atop the desk.

Four words were written on its cover.

Uchiha Yan.

Danzo extended his unbandaged left hand and opened the report.

The first page was his Ninja Academy entrance assessment. Extremely poor chakra talent. The Three Basic Techniques had failed to meet standards.

The second page was the Nanga River Incident report. An unknown energy fluctuation. It did not belong to any known chakra nature.

The third page was a written summary of C's verbal report just now—arm transformed into lava, temperatures exceeding the limit of Fire Release, suspected extraordinary sensory ability.

Three sheets of paper.

They had turned a "worthless orphan" into an "A-rank surveillance target."

Danzo flipped to the blank space on the last page and picked up a pen.

He wrote one line.

"Activate the third contact plan. Time frame: within one week."

After writing it, he added another line beneath it.

"If contact fails, activate the seventh plan."

The pen tip paused on the paper for a second.

Then he closed the report and returned it to the drawer.

"An anomaly among the Uchiha."

He had already made that assessment once.

But tonight, it tasted different from before.

Last time, it had been the curiosity of a hunter who had discovered an unusual prey.

This time—it was the vigilance of a hunter who had discovered that his prey might be more uncontrollable than he had imagined.