Sasuke's First Kill

In the dead of night, in a remote corner of the Forest of Death, the young Sasuke Uchiha was fighting desperately against a middle-aged ninja.

Although the middle-aged ninja had had his tongue removed and his meridians crippled, leaving him with only taijutsu, Sasuke still held no advantage.

"Put some strength into it! Didn't you eat dinner?" Black Shadow stood to one side, offering cutting commentary. "Don't shout your move before you use it! Who taught you that awful habit?!"

"Shouting the name of a ninjutsu before casting it is either showing off or being an idiot!"

"If you can't beat him head-on, can't you use a dirty trick and ambush him?! Hurry, now! Use Monkey Steals Peach and crush his balls!"

Listening to Black Shadow's vicious roars, Sasuke clenched his back teeth hard. As the young master of the Uchiha clan, he truly could not bring himself to use such an elegant and dignified move as Monkey Steals Peach!

Smack! The middle-aged ninja, having lost too much blood, finally could not hold on any longer. Filled with despair, he collapsed to the ground and lost his life.

"Very good. Not bad at all." Black Shadow took out Villain's Self-Cultivation and recorded Sasuke's training results. Then he casually swallowed the middle-aged ninja's soul. "The flavor of despair, rage, and unwillingness... truly delicious~"

Sasuke silently grinned beside him, but his expression changed the next moment. "Why am I so excited?"

Something was wrong!

Sasuke realized that his condition was highly abnormal. To obtain power from Black Shadow, he had gone against his conscience and killed an innocent ninja who had been alone. Under normal circumstances, he should have felt pain, guilt, and self-denial. There was no way he should have felt excited!

—He was not a pervert!

"Isn't this a good thing? That ninja put his remaining value to its fullest use, and you don't have to bear any psychological burden. You can happily level up and gain power, just like playing a game. Countless people would kill for that." Black Shadow smiled as he twisted part of Sasuke's cognitive ability. Sasuke was only a child with an incomplete worldview anyway. Itachi and Fugaku had failed to set a proper example, so wasn't it perfectly reasonable for Sasuke to grow crooked after losing the guidance of his elders?

Sasuke was still somewhat uncertain. He turned to look at the corpse on the ground and asked, "How should we deal with this?"

"Destroy the body and erase the evidence!" Black Shadow seemed highly practiced at this. "You don't need to understand too much. Just remember this: generally speaking, the clearance rate for missing-person cases is far lower than that for murder cases. After killing someone, you must thoroughly dispose of the body and destroy any traces at the scene that can prove the victim died. That way, it can only be classified as a disappearance. And when it cannot even be determined whether a missing person is alive or dead, it is difficult to devote a large number of police officers to the investigation."

Sasuke nodded with difficulty, indicating that he understood. "Can I burn him to ashes with the Great Fireball Technique?"

"The Great Fireball Technique isn't hot enough. It can only roast him, and the smell that spreads and the dripping fat will both be hard to clean up. You don't need to worry about this. Someone will handle it." Black Shadow waved his sleeve, telling Sasuke to go back and reflect on today's experience.

Sasuke wandered away in a daze. It was his first time doing something bad, and false excitement and warped guilt repeatedly washed over his heart. He needed to calm down.

Not long after Sasuke left, one tall and one short figure slowly appeared in the Forest of Death. As they collected the middle-aged ninja's corpse, they complained wildly, "Sasuke is still worse than Neji. Neji never makes this much blood spray when he kills someone. He can dispose of the body himself."

Removing the man's tongue and crippling his meridians had all been done to weaken the middle-aged ninja, making him a punching bag for Sasuke. Yet Sasuke's performance could only be called mediocre.

"Among the pieces chosen by the main body, Sasuke Uchiha's progress ranks near the bottom. Such a pretentious pain in the ass. Number One Clone really wants to chop him to death right now."

"It doesn't matter whether Sasuke lives or dies. He is merely an idle move; if not him, there are others. The main body found a colony of Ibuse in the sea, along with blue-ringed octopuses and Portuguese man o' wars. Their venom is especially potent. Gaara's sand has already been poisoned. I wonder whether Chiyo can handle it."

As they spoke, the middle-aged ninja had already been neatly dismembered and packed into freezer bags. The two rose and unhurriedly headed back.

"Uncle Teuchi, Ayame? Why are you still outside so late?" A female ninja who suddenly appeared by the roadside looked at them in surprise, then wariness and suspicion surfaced on her face.

"You just came from the direction of the Forest of Death. Teuchi and Ayame are both ordinary people. They would never venture deep into the Forest of Death at night. You two are spies in disguise, aren't you?" The female ninja's tone was certain. As she prepared for battle, she also intended to launch a distress signal. She was the very picture of caution.

—Only powerful ninja had the capital to take risks. Ninja who were weak but addicted to showing off mostly died young.

"What a bother. We were actually seen." Ayame scratched the back of her head. "Then we can only silence her."

"Nothing we can do. We're merely logistics personnel split off from the main body. Our mana pool is limited, so we can't maintain Concealment for long." Teuchi sighed. "Concealment is clearly just one of the main body's passives..."

Before the female ninja could react, Ayame snapped her neck and stuffed her into a freezer bag. She never had a chance to call for help. Looking at the female ninja's face, her eyes still open in death, Teuchi offered some halfhearted comfort. "Don't worry. Even after death, you can still contribute the tiniest bit of residual warmth to Konoha."

Being cautious before a fight, then slowly showing off while stepping on the corpse after defeating the enemy—this was the art of a Demon!

At the Uchiha Estate, Sasuke finally obtained the Sharingan he had long dreamed of and temporarily shook off the emo state brought on by killing. Yet the Sharingan's power left him deeply disappointed. "Other than making my vision red, it doesn't seem to have any other abilities?"

Of course it did not. Black Shadow had merely altered the iris structure of Sasuke's pupils. The so-called "Sharingan" was nothing more than a cosmetic skin with no substance.

Black Shadow was not Orochimaru, who would carefully cultivate Sasuke. Nor was he one of those cheap protagonists from Hokage fanfiction who, despite having their entire family slaughtered by Itachi, still insisted on devoting themselves heart and soul to Itachi's younger brother, Sasuke.

He regarded Sasuke as a chess piece, so naturally he did not want that piece to possess power that could escape his control. Better to forget about the Sharingan. He would only grant Sasuke magic power, magic power that could be reclaimed at any time.

"Developing the Sharingan probably requires guidance from elders and secret bloodline technique scrolls passed down through the clan. Search carefully around the house. The Uchiha have been passed down for a thousand years, so their collection of ninjutsu must be extensive." Black Shadow spouted nonsense to fool Sasuke.

Sasuke furrowed his brow. Though he was young, he remembered clearly that the Sharingan was not like this! Once the Sharingan awakened, it could be used!

Black Shadow said, "Perhaps your talent is simply too poor, and you cannot bring out the power the Sharingan should possess?"

Sasuke could not accept that he was worthless...