Determination

The Black Shadow's attitude toward Sasuke suddenly turned nasty because it had grown impatient. It did not understand where Sasuke got the confidence to bargain with it.

The Black Shadow kicked Sasuke out of the mental world, then slowly emerged into the air.

"You can actually come out?" Sasuke was surprised, but quickly regained his composure.

"You were never my only choice. I can abandon you and find someone else at any time," the Black Shadow said calmly. Back when it had impersonated a system, it often encountered idiots who arrogantly believed the system could not do without them. They pushed their luck every day, exploiting loopholes for benefits. The Black Shadow had never had patience for such people: a warning the first time, a stern warning the second, and direct murder to silence them the third.

Compared to Gaara and Neji Hyuga, Sasuke was a little harder to handle. The Black Shadow found him troublesome. On second thought, it would be better to kill him outright. When choosing a pawn, an obedient one was more appropriate.

Sasuke instantly sensed the frigid killing intent radiating from the Black Shadow and panicked. "Didn't you want to take control of my body? You can have it."

The Black Shadow: "???"

As if noticing the Black Shadow's confusion, Sasuke explained, "My body has no meaning to me. Or rather, my existence itself has no meaning. Other than killing Itachi, I cannot find any reason to keep living. If you can live in my body in my place, that would actually be pretty good."

"If you use my body, you will inherit the name Sasuke Uchiha. One day, you will face Itachi. That would count as avenging my parents."

After experiencing the horrific tragedy of the clan massacre and being relentlessly tortured by Tsukuyomi, it was normal for someone to wish for death. Yet it somehow seemed abnormal when it was Sasuke.

After a moment of silence, the Black Shadow finally spoke. "You are rather different from the Sasuke I remember."

Second Pillar's personality in the manga was truly... hard to put into words.

A trace of confusion flashed across Sasuke's face. "You knew me before?"

The Black Shadow nodded. Perhaps without Indra's chakra influencing him, Sasuke was now smarter and calmer. With that thought in mind, the Black Shadow casually stuffed the Hokage manga into Sasuke's hands.

The Black Shadow eagerly awaited Sasuke's reaction.

Sasuke did not disappoint it. He put on a full display of facial expressions—shock, confusion, gritted teeth... It was as if he had completely broken down, with all sorts of expressions gathering on his little face at once.

"Are you okay?"

"..."

Sasuke remained silent. After a long time, he finally spoke in a hoarse voice. "It's unbelievable. So Itachi was actually so... I don't know what words I should use to describe him. I think I need some time to calm down."

After saying that, Sasuke lay down, closed his eyes, and refused to communicate, as though the "truth" had dealt him an incomparably devastating blow.

"I will kill. I hope you can give me... the power to destroy everything."

A few days later, at the Ninja Academy, during Iruka's class.

A group of unusually excited little girls stared intently at Sasuke, who had skipped class for many days. Scorching, expectant gazes could be seen everywhere.

A complicated look flashed through Ino Yamanaka's eyes. "I heard the Uchiha clan was wiped out. Sasuke must be really sad right now. I'll go comfort him. Maybe I can... hehehe."

"Ino-pig, Sasuke belongs to me!" Sakura Haruno clenched her fist and declared her claim. When she turned to look at Sasuke, her gaze was filled with sympathy.

Sasuke sat in the back row with a cold expression, looking as though he were listening attentively. He remained completely unmoved. Yet the anger in his heart continued to rise. He hated those sympathetic looks. He did not need something as cheap as sympathy!

Iruka spoke endlessly from the podium, but in truth, for ninjas born into clans, they had heard the little bit of basic knowledge Iruka taught countless times already. For these second-generation clan children, the social value of school far outweighed learning itself. They could build good connections at school, and graduating early was not necessarily a good thing.

Sasuke looked focused on the surface, but he was secretly observing the Black Shadow, which was flipping through Iruka's lesson plans.

It was too strange. The Black Shadow was clearly floating beside Iruka and even made plenty of noise while turning pages, yet everyone in the classroom turned a blind eye to it, as though only Sasuke could perceive its existence.

"Is it genjutsu?" Sasuke pondered. The Black Shadow did not seem like a ninja, because a ninja should not be interested in textbooks for Ninja Academy students.

During the break, Sasuke pretended to sleep with his head on the desk. His consciousness sank into the mental world, and he got straight to the point. "Where is my Sharingan?"

In the manga's storyline, Sasuke awakened a one-tomoe Sharingan on the night of the clan massacre. But the real Sasuke had nothing. He could only assume that the Black Shadow had caused some kind of mutation.

"I suppressed Indra's chakra, so you failed to awaken it," the Black Shadow casually made up a lie. Those eyes had long since been sacrificed to the Magic Lamp by its main body.

Sasuke was irritated. He could not determine whether the Black Shadow was telling the truth, including the manga that recorded the "future." Yet at this moment, he had no other choice but to trust the Black Shadow. Otherwise, he was just trash who could not awaken the Sharingan.

"Indra's chakra can grant you power, but it will also weaken your sanity. You should be thanking me instead. You do not want to become that stupid-ass Second Pillar from the manga, do you?" The Black Shadow tried to manipulate Sasuke.

Unfortunately, Sasuke did not fall for it. He had an extraordinary obsession with the Sharingan; after all, it was the symbol of the Uchiha clan.

"You are so damn melodramatic. I remember telling you from the start: you kill people, and I give you power. Why do you have so much useless crap to say? Pick one lucky person from your classmates and kill them, and I'll help you awaken the Sharingan. That's a pretty good deal, right?" The Black Shadow's voice brimmed with temptation.

Sasuke was still wavering. His nature was truly kind. Unfortunately, the devil was corrupting him every moment, extinguishing his humanity and driving away his morals. Only then could he become a qualified pawn capable of throwing the world into chaos.

After school that evening, Sasuke walked along the road, preoccupied with his thoughts. He heard two unfamiliar classmates say that many civilians in the village had been mysteriously disappearing lately, neither alive nor dead. Rumors claimed that the demon fox had been secretly eating people.

Upon hearing that, Sasuke's heart tightened. He slightly turned toward the Black Shadow. "You did not cause those disappearances, did you? Since you came looking for me, another reincarnation of a Sage's son's chakra, there is no reason you would not look for Naruto Uzumaki too."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hokage has already killed plenty of people. With his current strength, he could blow up ten of you with one punch!" The Black Shadow smiled maliciously.

Sasuke clenched his fists, as though he had made some sort of decision.