Celestial Pivot

Yet the instant he turned, Asami Ri's body, which should have been lying in a pool of blood, began to twist violently like a reflection on water.

There was no smell of blood. Instead, a strong scent of gunpowder filled the air.

The "corpse" impaled by the lightning blade turned into a heavy log in a puff of smoke.

And several Explosive Tags were plastered haphazardly across that log!

"What?!" The savage grin froze on Raiga Kurosuki's face.

The Substitution Technique combined with Explosive Tags.

"Detonate."

A calm voice came from behind a nearby tree.

BOOM!!!

Several Explosive Tags detonated at point-blank range, and towering flames instantly swallowed Raiga Kurosuki whole.

A savage shock wave swept outward, and the scorching flames rampaged through the woods like a roaring beast.

The smoke gradually cleared, leaving only the acrid smell of burning in the woods.

Raiga Kurosuki lay curled in the center of the crater. His entire body was blackened, and his torn, curling flesh gave off a nauseating smell of charred meat.

Asami Ri did not let his guard down at the sight.

Bracing himself against a tree trunk, he staggered with every step before finally stopping at a safe distance of three meters.

His eyes remained cool and composed.

Celestial Pivot's scan showed that although Raiga Kurosuki had stopped breathing, his heart still beat faintly.

"A shinobi's vitality... can't be judged by ordinary standards."

Expressionless, Asami Ri drew kunai from his ninja tool pouch. With no intention of approaching, he hurled them straight at Raiga's throat and heart with unerring precision.

Shhk!

The sound of kunai piercing flesh was jarringly sharp in the silent woods.

Raiga Kurosuki, who had kept his eyes closed while waiting for his enemy and gathering his last scraps of strength for a counterattack, suddenly opened them.

He felt the cold blade pierce his heart. His final scheme came to nothing in the face of the boy's caution.

"Are all Konoha genin... this unreasonable?"

Raiga Kurosuki's voice was barely louder than a mosquito's whine, filled with bitterness and disbelief.

In the final moment before his consciousness faded, what surfaced in his mind was not Kirigakure in the Land of Water, but a green figure wreathed in blood-red vapor.

As Asami Ri's follow-up kunai pierced his skull, the "Lightning Blade," once renowned throughout the shinobi world, sank into eternal darkness.

"Whew... it's over."

[Overclock mode disengaged.]

As Celestial Pivot's voice faded, devastating pain instantly engulfed the mind that had been as calm as an icy spring.

The metabolic waste accumulated from operating beyond his limits overwhelmed his nerves. Every muscle in his body felt as though thousands upon thousands of steel needles had pierced it at once, and the spasms and agony nearly knocked him unconscious.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Asami Ri forced himself to crawl over to Raiga Kurosuki's corpse.

He reached out with a trembling hand and pressed it against the charred body.

"Celestial Pivot... absorb... hurry..."

Humm—

A stream of chakra, not much greater than the previous one, flowed through his palm as his brain greedily devoured this spoils of battle.

Asami Ri's vision narrowed further and further. The world began to spin, and his consciousness teetered wildly on the edge of oblivion.

In the final second before he plunged into darkness, a dazzling figure raced toward him through the gap at the edge of the forest, which the setting sun had stained red.

A flash of vivid green became the last thing Asami Ri saw before losing consciousness.

"You're... finally here..."

His eyes closed completely, and he collapsed onto the ravaged ground.

An unfamiliar ceiling.

Asami Ri opened his eyes slightly, his blurry vision gradually clearing.

A pristine white ceiling greeted him. Sunlight spilled through gaps in the curtains in scattered streaks of gold, with tiny motes of dust drifting in the beams.

After the mud and blood of the battlefield, that pure white seemed almost blinding.

His nostrils twitched, and the sharp, cool scent of disinfectant filled his lungs.

To an ordinary person, that smell might have meant sickness and suffering, but to Asami Ri at that moment, it was the strongest proof that he was alive and safe.

He instinctively tried to prop himself up and check his surroundings, but the moment his brain issued the command, sharp, prickling pain erupted throughout his body.

"Hss..."

He could not help sucking in a breath.

This was the brutal price of forcibly removing his brain's limits and pushing his muscles beyond their capacity.

Every inch of his muscles now felt as though it had been hammered repeatedly with a sledgehammer, then pierced deeply by countless steel needles. The slightest movement brought an unending barrage of stabbing pain.

Asami Ri glanced down and found himself tightly wrapped in bandages from the neck down, looking like a swollen cocoon.

The faint coolness around his wounds told him they had already been treated.

Since he could not sit up, he simply stopped struggling.

He closed his eyes and lay quietly on the soft hospital bed, feeling the reassuring support beneath his back and listening to the steady, strong beat of his heart.

The exhaustion of repeatedly skirting the edge of death became an indescribable peace in that moment.

No killing intent, no mire, no jonin trying to kill him.

I survived.

That simplest of realizations brought him immense happiness.

In this cold, cruel shinobi world, simply lying quietly in a hospital bed and smelling disinfectant was a luxury in itself.

As he lay there, questions he had previously had no time to consider rose in his mind.

Why had there been no response before?

Why had it activated at that exact moment?

As streams of data cascaded like waterfalls, a manual for Celestial Pivot slowly unfolded in his consciousness.

It turned out that the top-tier supercomputer from his previous life had not vanished in the explosion. Instead, it had become a pure logical concept, crossing dimensions and binding tightly to his soul.

Ever since he had first molded chakra at five years old, Celestial Pivot had been steadily drawing in energy.

Over the years, every time he molded even a little chakra, Celestial Pivot took one percent of it as an energy reserve.

So it started all the way back then... Asami Ri mocked himself inwardly. No wonder he had always felt he had slightly less chakra than his peers. He had been feeding a money pit.

However, filling its energy reserves did not mean it could simply boot up.

The system's full activation required an "ignition" with high instantaneous power.

[Using the host's own chakra as the activation source would require 98% of the host's chakra, with an extremely high probability of causing the host's death.]

Reading that line made Asami Ri break out in a cold sweat.

Celestial Pivot also had strict criteria for absorbing external chakra.

[External chakra must be "unclaimed" or supplied by a target killed by the host. The host's contribution to the kill must exceed 50%.]

"A contribution of over fifty percent?" Asami Ri frowned.

[Chakra is an active energy formed by combining spiritual energy and physical energy, carrying a portion of a shinobi's subjective consciousness. Only when the host achieves "over 50% contribution to the kill" will the target's chakra develop a clear orientation toward the host, fulfilling the absorption conditions.]

Asami Ri fell silent.

On the battlefield, he had mostly played a supporting role, calmly setting traps and driving enemies into desperate situations, while his teammates often delivered the final, fatal blow.

He had killed quite a few shinobi himself, but he had no habit of touching corpses after a battle.

It was precisely that caution and restraint that had kept Celestial Pivot dormant in his mind for six full years.

Until this unexpected encounter with Raiga Kurosuki.

"Is this... fate's idea of dark humor?"

Asami Ri let out a long breath.

[Absorbed external chakra cannot be used directly. This energy serves only as power for Celestial Pivot's operations and as a reserve of "information samples."]

Asami Ri froze for a moment, then slowly nodded in understanding.

According to the theory he had learned at the Ninja Academy, chakra was not simply a "mana bar." It was a combination of spiritual and physical energy.

Raiga Kurosuki's violent, deranged will was deeply imprinted in his chakra. If Asami Ri forcibly absorbed it, he would probably become a schizophrenic madman before he ever grew stronger.

So I can't use it directly... Asami Ri asked quietly in his mind. Then what does "information samples" mean?