Jujutsu System; Six Eyes

"No!"

With a furious roar, Kaguya Yama abruptly raised his right hand. The skin on his index finger burst open, and a section of finger bone shot out like a bullet.

"Pfft—"

A bloody hole appeared in the middle of the scrawny rogue ninja's forehead. The savage grin on his face froze, and after swaying slightly, he fell backward.

Kaguya Yama sat limply on the ground, his chest heaving violently.

The physical revulsion of killing someone for the first time churned his stomach, but before he could vomit, another rogue ninja noticed him and charged over, brandishing a kunai.

[First kill confirmed. Jujutsu System unlocked.]

A cold, emotionless metallic voice rang out in the depths of his mind.

[Beginner reward issued: Six Eyes]

In that instant, the entire world underwent a heaven-shaking transformation.

Mountain's vision suddenly became incomparably clear and broad. He could even see the flow of energy in the air, winding through space like multicolored streams.

He could also see the chakra pathways inside that rogue ninja's body, every contraction of his muscles, and every movement of his bones.

Even the passage of time seemed to slow completely at that moment.

The rogue ninja's charge became a fragmented slow-motion scene, and the path of the stabbing kunai was perfectly clear beneath the Six Eyes' perception.

Not only that, Mountain saw the three follow-up variations that could come after that stab. He saw the sign that the man's left foot was about to exert force and shift to the right.

So this was the Six Eyes?

Before he had time to think, his body had already moved instinctively.

He slid back and to the left, narrowly dodging the kunai. At the same time, the skin on his left forearm tore apart, and a thirty-centimeter bone blade burst through flesh from the outside of his forearm.

This was a form he had never successfully condensed in his previous experiments. Before, he had only been able to fire finger bones or harden his bones beneath his skin for defense.

The bone blade was grim and sharp-edged, gleaming with a cold light beneath the sun.

The rogue ninja was startled when his strike missed and immediately switched moves, slashing sideways.

But all of it was meaningless before the Six Eyes' perception. Kaguya Yama crouched in advance, and the kunai passed mere inches above his head.

Then the bone blade swept diagonally upward, precisely cutting across the wrist holding the kunai.

"Ah!"

The rogue ninja screamed and staggered back, his wrist nearly severed completely.

Kaguya Yama did not pursue him. Instead, he swiftly surveyed the entire battlefield.

The vision granted by the Six Eyes allowed him to instantly grasp the whole situation: Achun had some skill, but she was being suppressed by that one-eyed brute and had also been wounded in the left shoulder.

The remaining three caravan guards were barely holding on, while two rogue ninjas moved between the cargo wagons, attempting to flank them.

At that moment, the flow of chakra, the tension in muscles, the paths of weapons...

All the information flooded into his mind like a stream of data, yet it brought no burden whatsoever.

The Six Eyes were not merely observing. They were automatically processing this information and providing the optimal solution to the current situation.

"Hiss... Hah..."

Kaguya Yama took a deep breath and kicked off with both feet. His target was not the enemy before him, but a rogue ninja who was flanking Achun from behind.

That man was staring intently at Achun's back and had not noticed a six-year-old child approaching from his blind spot.

By the time he heard the wind and turned around, Mountain's bone blade was already stabbing toward the back of his neck.

"What..."

The bone blade pierced through flesh and struck the cervical vertebrae. Kaguya Yama felt a burst of resistance, then pressed down with force. With a crack, the light vanished completely from the rogue ninja's eyes, and he crumpled to the ground.

"Brat?"

The one-eyed brute was both shocked and enraged. Abandoning Achun, he turned and chopped down with his sword.

A trace of Wind-nature chakra clung to that strike. Before the blade even arrived, the fierce blade wind had already sliced through the air.

Through the Six Eyes, Kaguya Yama could clearly see chakra spinning at high speed around the blade, forming invisible serrated edges.

I can't take it head-on!

Kaguya Yama rolled to the side. The blade grazed past his body and cut into the ground, carving a deep trench.

The one-eyed brute followed with a horizontal slash, but Kaguya Yama was faster. He had predicted the direction in which the man would exert force. As he ducked, the skin around his right shin tore open and three bone spikes shot out.

"Slash!"

The bone spikes scraped across the brute's calf, scattering droplets of blood. Though it was not a fatal wound, it was enough to make his movements falter.

Now!

"Ten-Finger Bullet Barrage!"

Kaguya Yama pressed the bases of his palms together, spreading his ten fingers like a flower. The skin at his fingertips burst open at once, and ten pale finger bones shot out like buckshot, covering the one-eyed brute's entire upper body.

"Damn brat, what is this..."

The brute roared as he continuously swung his ninja sword to block them, knocking aside seven bones. But the remaining three struck his shoulder, abdomen, and thigh respectively.

"Urgh!" The brute screamed and stumbled backward.

Achun did not let the opportunity pass. Her kunai accurately stabbed into his back, piercing his heart.

The battle ended completely within a few minutes afterward.

Of the five rogue ninjas, three were dead and two were severely wounded and captured. On the caravan's side, two guards had died, three were injured, and Achun's left shoulder was badly wounded.

Kaguya Yama knelt on the ground, gasping heavily.

With his eyes tightly shut, that omniscient sensation of perception disappeared, replaced by agonizing pain throughout his body and the weakness of excessive chakra consumption.

Both his hands were drenched in blood. Those were wounds where his skin had torn from using Shikotsumyaku. His chakra was insufficient; although his bones had already begun regenerating, the flesh would need time to heal.

"Mountain... you..."

Achun walked over while clutching her shoulder, looking at him with a complicated expression.

"The Kaguya Clan."

Mountain spoke softly. There was no longer any need to hide it. "I'm a Kaguya orphan who escaped from Hidden Mist."

Achun fell silent for a long while after hearing that. In the end, she sighed. "Clean this up. We need to leave quickly. The smell of blood will attract more trouble."

Kaguya Yama nodded and struggled to his feet.

He looked at his bloodstained hands, at the rogue ninja corpses on the ground, then at the barren land of the Land of Rice Fields in the distance.

In his mind, that cold metallic voice seemed to still echo.

Jujutsu System? Six Eyes?

He understood that in this world, where human lives were as worthless as grass, strength was the only thing that could let him live freely.

He needed strength.

And the power unleashed by the combination of the Six Eyes and Shikotsumyaku during that brief battle gave him a glimpse of a way to grow stronger faster.

The caravan hastily buried the dead and continued on with the wounded. Kaguya Yama sat atop a cargo wagon, letting Achun bandage his wounds.

As the sun set, staining the wilderness of the Land of Rice Fields blood-red, he closed his eyes and tried to call out to that system in his mind.

But unfortunately, there was no response at all.

Yet when he focused and sensed himself, he could feel that something was taking root and sprouting deep within his consciousness.

The carriage swayed onward, carrying the survivors toward an unknown market, deeper into this chaotic country. Kaguya Yama clenched his bandage-wrapped hand.

In his previous life, he had struggled miserably as a food delivery rider, working from morning to night without a day off all year, only to be run over and killed at the roadside, like an old dog abandoned by the world.

But in this life, he would live stronger, freer, and more boldly.