Two Years of Assimilation

Chakra was tied to a person’s physical constitution, and even more so to their bloodline. If training the body and improving one’s physical qualities was addition, then acquiring the bloodline of the Ōtsutsuki clan was multiplication.

In the Naruto World, there was no truly perfect method for utilizing Hashirama Cells. Whether it was Yamato’s Wood Release, so weak it could only be used for landscaping, or the unicorn arm Danzo Shimura had made for himself, they were either weakened to the point of being useless or cobbled together with serious hidden dangers. Even Madara Uchiha, who had achieved the best fusion, had his best friend’s face growing out of his chest.

But this was no great issue for Yota. The Munch-Munch Fruit was uniquely suited for alteration. It could completely fuse even metal with flesh, and growing a cannon out of one’s mouth was effortless. Hashirama Cells were nothing by comparison.

This was completely different from the bodily modifications Yota had performed before. Previously, he had altered his own flesh according to the bodily structure of others. Now, he only needed to integrate Hashirama Cells into his body.

Black mist swept past. First came a large quantity of Hashirama Cells, followed by the Uchiha clan’s Sharingan. The unconscious Fugaku Uchiha also fell victim to Yota’s hands. Both his eyes and the Uchiha clan cells within his body were thoroughly plundered by Yota. Afterward, Yota threw the blind, weakened Fugaku Uchiha—who had also had some of his flesh absorbed—near Konoha and let him crawl away on his own.

Yota had no fondness or sympathy for Konoha, whether it was the Uchiha clan, the other ninja clans, or even the profession of ninja itself. Reading the manga had felt pretty satisfying, but once he had come to this real world and been forced onto the battlefield at the age of ten, all his fantasies had vanished.

A savior like Uzumaki Naruto only appeared once in a thousand years. Yota was merely an ordinary person; he could not repay grievances with kindness like a savior.

"There’s still one Kamui Sharingan, but I have nowhere to put it…" Yota frowned before finally storing the Kamui Sharingan away.

Although his Munch-Munch Fruit ability could directly fuse the Kamui eye with another Mangekyo and turn them into an Eternal Eye, he had tried it and discovered that having one Eternal Eye and one Mangekyo actually made them difficult to control. So he separated the Kamui eye and the Mangekyo again, intending to wait until he had gathered a complete set.

In any case, he now possessed the dual bloodlines of the Uchiha and Senju Clans. Using the Mangekyo placed no strain on him whatsoever, and with the help of Hashirama Cells, there was even less danger of blindness.

"The Uzumaki Clan cells inside Kushina Uzumaki are quite similar to the Senju Clan’s cells. Maybe I can alter and fuse the two as well. I’ll try it first."

Yota spent an entire day carrying out all kinds of bodily modifications. Compared to other researchers, even if he was dissatisfied with an alteration, Yota could use the Munch-Munch Fruit to revert himself to his original state, allowing him to experiment freely. Each modification took at most one or two minutes, and within a single day, he had conducted several hundred attempts.

Only when Yota felt that the bloodlines of the Senju Clan, Uzumaki Clan, and Uchiha clan had fused almost perfectly did he finally relax.

For some time afterward, Yota kept a low profile and rarely showed himself. He began studying the ninjutsu in the Scroll of Seals and the various forms of anatomical knowledge he had obtained from Root.

It had to be said that Konoha’s ninjutsu, anatomical knowledge, and research into various Bloodline Limits were all profoundly extensive. If Yota had not learned a technique like Shadow Clone immediately after obtaining the Scroll of Seals, this knowledge alone would have been enough to occupy him for decades.

And that was only the portion of knowledge Yota was capable of researching. He simply could not learn talent-dependent ninjutsu such as the Flying Thunder God Technique and the Spirit Transformation Technique.

He created dozens of Shadow Clones to study various ninjutsu and conduct anatomical research, while Yota himself began training in the Eight Gates. With the physique of the Pirate World, a Sage Body, and the Munch-Munch Fruit to remedy the hidden injuries caused by training, Yota felt that not training in the Eight Gates would be an insult to his own gifts!

Still, there was something troubling him. A Sealing Jutsu like the Dead Demon Consuming Seal was truly a headache. Even Yota’s Dark-Dark Fruit could not corrode its way into the seal. Or rather, the seal remaining on the surface of the corpse was already completely empty. The true Nine-Tails and Minato Namikaze had already entered the Shinigami’s belly.

Under such circumstances, Yota naturally had no way to obtain half of the Nine-Tails. It was the one imperfection among all his gains.

Time passed swiftly, and more than two years went by in the blink of an eye.

During those two years, Yota himself vanished without a trace, while beneath the calm surface, undercurrents surged through Konoha and the entire ninja world.

With Yota’s involvement, Konoha had suffered even heavier losses this time. Root had been nearly wiped out, and the Uchiha Clan Head had been completely crippled in that battle. The Fourth Hokage and the Jinchuriki were both finished, while more than a dozen jonin had been killed or injured. The combat strength they had lost was nearly comparable to that of a Ninja World War.

Under such circumstances, the other ninja villages naturally began stirring. Fortunately, the brutality of the Third Great Ninja War had not only severely damaged Konoha’s vitality, but also left the other major ninja villages deeply wary.

No one could predict how a Ninja World War would unfold. At the beginning, every ninja village was brimming with confidence, yet by the end, there had never truly been a winner.

The Third Great Ninja War had only just ended, and no one had yet recovered their strength. If another Ninja World War really broke out now, a ninja village might well be erased from existence. Under such circumstances, the other villages naturally had to proceed with caution.

But testing and harassing Konoha, as well as doing everything possible to gain a few advantages, was inevitable.

The most aggressive among them was naturally Kumogakure. After all, they had yet to sign a ceasefire agreement with Konoha. Though the two sides had effectively ceased fighting, that did not stop Kumogakure from using the matter to extort Konoha on a large scale.

Yota did not pay much attention to these matters. As a lone wanderer, he had never been particularly sensitive to the state of the world.

Konoha was not pursuing him with much intensity either. Given their current circumstances, they truly had no additional combat strength to spare. At most, they placed a bounty on his head in the Black Market, which made people from the other ninja villages aware of a figure known as the Black Shadow Ninja.

Thus, the ones most actively searching for Yota during this period were actually Kumogakure, Iwagakure Ninja, and Akatsuki.

Kumogakure had always been arrogant and liked collecting Bloodline Limits and secret techniques. They coveted the "Dark Release" Yota used with all their hearts.

The Iwagakure Ninja were not as ambitious as Kumogakure, but the Third Tsuchikage, Ōnoki, loved hiring powerful bounty hunter ninjas, so he naturally wanted to make contact with Yota.

As for Akatsuki, there was even less need to say anything. Obito Uchiha was greatly interested in the ninja who had ridden his coattails and taken advantage of Konoha’s misfortune, though he was also somewhat wary of him. Akatsuki was currently at the stage of recruiting members and expanding its strength, so naturally, it also wanted to bring a powerful ninja like Yota under its command.

However, Yota had hidden in his underground base for more than two years. He had little contact with the outside world and went out only to buy daily necessities. Finding someone living in seclusion deep in the mountains and forests was like searching for a needle in the sea of the ninja world. Even Akatsuki, with large numbers of White Zetsu at its disposal, found it immensely troublesome.