Dark Knight

1991, New York, USA, at a dock on Manhattan Island.

A criminal transaction was taking place here.

Darkness should have been the only witness to this deal, but tonight, a third party was lurking nearby.

Atop the steel beams of the dock warehouse, a shadow almost completely fused with the night watched both sides of the deal coldly.

The lights suddenly went out, and the brightly lit warehouse was instantly plunged into pitch darkness.

"Water Release: Great Shark Bullet Technique!"

An exceptionally youthful voice rang out above their heads.

A sudden whooshing sound followed, like some rapidly moving object plummeting violently downward.

Along with the sounds of collision and splashing water, a brief scream rose from the crowd below before abruptly cutting off.

The muzzle flashes briefly illuminated the warehouse, but when they looked up, there was no trace of any enemy.

"Great Exploding Water Surge!"

That strange cry was accompanied by the sound of an even greater torrent of water.

Then, a jumble of furious shouts erupted throughout the warehouse.

A shadow darted back and forth through the warehouse.

The dock warehouse went from a barrage of gunfire, to only a few scattered shots, and then back to silence—all within a few short minutes.

The warehouse doors slowly opened, and a young man walked out.

Moonlight fell faintly across his face, outlining his perfect features in varying shades of light and shadow.

Under the dim lights, the young man's long black eyelashes fluttered softly, while his mismatched pupils gave off an eerie glow in the night.

Just as he was about to leave, the young man suddenly stopped, his gaze settling on a sports car outside the warehouse.

A moment later, the roar of the engine gradually faded into the distance, leaving only the wreckage-strewn dock behind.

After the young man left, two transparent figures abruptly emerged from thin air in the open space beside the warehouse.

"It seems little Kyle is quite lively. What do you think, Newt?" One of them, an old man with a long white beard, looked at his companion and spoke with a smile.

The old man called Newt slowly replied, "Without anyone to teach him, he managed to master such an advanced technique as wandless casting on his own. He even created several very interesting spells. I think Hogwarts will become lively very soon."

The white-bearded old man seemed quite pleased with Newt's assessment, and there was a trace of pride in his voice. "After all, part of the Dumbledore family's blood flows through his veins."

Hearing Albus Dumbledore praising himself, Newt mercilessly shot him down. "His surname isn't Dumbledore."

Dumbledore's face darkened. "No matter what, Kyle is half my son!"

Newt thought for a moment, then dealt another blow, striking directly at Dumbledore's sore spot.

"Half a son you sent to an orphanage and then lost?"

Dumbledore flew into a rage and decided never to discuss anything related to Kyle's background with Newt again.

"Let's go! We're going to pick up Kyle!" With a loud crack, Dumbledore suddenly vanished from where he stood.

Immediately afterward, Newt vanished as well, leaving only the increasingly close sirens echoing through the sky above the dock.

A sports car sped through the moonlight, its roaring engine carrying far down the deserted highway.

Before long, the sports car entered an abandoned factory in Brooklyn and stopped on a level patch of ground.

Kyle sat in the driver's seat and calmly formed several Hand Seals.

"Earth Release: Earth Dome Nucleus!"

The ground beneath the car slowly sank, like the lift mechanism of a multistory parking garage.

In fact, it was a lift mechanism, except it was powered by "Chakra."

The platform eventually stopped in a vast underground space.

This was the underground base where Kyle had lived for five years.

After parking the car, the patch of ground rose again under the control of the Earth Style Ninjutsu Earth Dome Nucleus, stopping only once it was level with the ground above and showed no unusual traces.

Kyle picked up the briefcase from the passenger seat and walked to an iron door. Beyond it lay his true residence.

The base was fully stocked with everyday necessities, as well as entertainment and fitness facilities. It was nothing short of luxurious.

Even deeper underground, several generators continuously supplied the base with electricity.

Looking at the results of his labor, a smile appeared on Kyle's face.

Over the past five years, he had unknowingly amassed such a substantial fortune.

Kyle placed tonight's spoils on the table in the center of the living room and began examining his haul.

At the sight of stacks upon stacks of Franklins in the briefcase, Kyle's face broke into a brilliant smile. This was the richest haul he had obtained in the five years since leaving the orphanage.

That's right, Kyle was an orphan. In theory, he should have been living in an orphanage right now, or with a family that had adopted him.

But aside from being an orphan, Kyle had another identity: he was a transmigrator from China.

A bolt of lightning had struck him and sent him through time.

When he woke up again, he had become a one-year-old little brat—and had returned to 1980.

After roughly learning about this world through newspapers, he discovered that it was no different from the world of his previous life, aside from the timeline being slightly earlier.

Originally, he had planned to quietly build himself up in the orphanage. Once he had the ability to earn his first pot of gold, he would rely on his understanding of future social developments to become one of life's winners.

However, that plan went wrong when he was six years old.

Kyle was shocked to discover that he seemed to possess superpowers.

That day, he suddenly felt something like an electric current surging through his body, and energy poured out uncontrollably.

By the time he came back to his senses, the area around him was already a complete mess.

Fortunately, no one else had been around when he awakened. He quickly cleaned up the scene and pretended that nothing had happened.

After many secret attempts, Kyle, who had devoured countless webnovels and anime in his previous life, finally found a way among the things he had once read and watched to crudely control and use the energy within his body.

That was using hand gestures to guide it—or rather, forming seals.

Uh... so was his cheat Chakra?

To prevent the people around him from discovering his abnormality, and to have a place where he could train his abilities, Kyle left the orphanage and eventually chose this abandoned factory in Brooklyn as his base.

During the day, he trained in the Naruto Ninjutsu and Taijutsu he remembered inside the factory.

At night, driven by the need to make a living, Kyle went fishing on the streets, seeing whether some clueless punk might be kind enough to give him all the money on them.

The strange and unpredictable nature of Ninjutsu gave Kyle the ability to easily defeat an ordinary adult, so taking down a few street punks was no problem at all.

After several years of exploration and training, Kyle had now mastered some relatively low-level Water Release and Earth Style Ninjutsu.

As for the Great Shark Bullet and Great Exploding Water Surge he had used earlier, those were completely made-up names he had shouted at random. Their actual power was probably only at the level of C-Rank Ninjutsu.

This hidden underground base, meanwhile, had been built with Earth Style Ninjutsu after he had poured a great deal of time and effort into it.

As his combat power increased, Kyle's ATMs had changed from lowly street punks to more dangerous gangsters. After all, no matter how hard he squeezed the former, he could not get more than a few Franklins out of them. As for the latter...

The suitcase full of U.S. dollars in front of Kyle was proof enough of just how much money they had on them.

After roughly counting tonight's earnings, Kyle tossed the pile of Franklins on the table into the safe beside it.

But just as he was about to close the safe door, he heard an unusual sound—the sound of the Chakra-powered elevator at the base being activated.

--

Notice: Most of the homophonic names for Ninjutsu in this book have been changed back to their original names.

If there are any omissions, you can let me know in the comments so I can correct them.

(There are too many saved chapters, so I don't know which parts I haven't changed yet.)