A Dark Underground Room
The air was damp, musty, and carried a deeply unsettling feeling.
Along both sides of the hallway stood rows of empty incubation tanks. Beside each tank were some white, humanoid-shaped figures.
At the far end of the basement, a brightly lit room was illuminated by a high-wattage incandescent lamp, making it look as bright as daytime.
A young boy, no older than sixteen or seventeen, stood nervously in front of a surgical table. He wore a white lab coat and black-rimmed glasses.
Sweat beaded on his forehead and nose. In his left hand, he held a clump of some sticky, paste-like substance. In his right hand was a vial filled with a blood-like red liquid.
"It has to work this time. It must work! If I fail again, I'm seriously going to smash my head into the wall!"
The boy muttered to himself. His name was Uchiha Raizen.
"Damn it, Heaven! I was at home peacefully watching some adult romance films—why the hell did you suddenly throw me into this dangerous shinobi world?"
"And not just anywhere—but into the Uchiha clan! The one everyone hates and envies!"
"It's been five years... five whole years! Do you even know how nerve-wracking it's been?!"
Thinking back on those years, Uchiha Raizen's heart was filled with sorrow.
He remembered when he first crossed over to this world—he had only been an eleven-year-old brat.
His parents had died in the Third Great Ninja War, leaving just him and his older sister, who was three years older than him.
Sure, the clan leader's kids were already joining the ANBU at eleven, but Uchiha Raizen didn't have that kind of talent or those kinds of opportunities.
To someone with a modern soul like his, being eleven years old should mean playing in the dirt and licking lollipops—not being forced to learn assassination techniques and ambush tactics.
That was basically child abuse.
But that wasn't even the worst of it.
What worried Uchiha Raizen the most was the increasingly unstable and unwelcome position of the Uchiha clan within the Hidden Leaf Village.
No matter where he went, he always felt like someone was watching him.
Even at night, while trying to sleep, he could sense a pair of sinister eyes staring at his back.
Countless nights, he would wake up from nightmares—Danzo digging out his eyes, Itachi chopping off his head, Orochimaru dissecting his corpse.
The ninja world is too dangerous! I want to go back to Earth!
Raizen gasped for air, drenched in cold sweat, but all he could do was accept the hopeless reality—he had transmigrated to this world.
Fortunately...
At a critical moment, the system awakened.
A system shop appeared in front of his eyes. He could spend real-world ryo to buy items from it.
And the things inside gave Uchiha Raizen a sliver of hope.
Devil Fruits—straight from the world of One Piece!
Even though the power levels in the later parts of Naruto far surpassed those in the One Piece world, for ninja below the Six Paths level, the power of a Devil Fruit was still something that couldn't be underestimated.
If Uchiha Raizen could eat a Devil Fruit, he would instantly gain the ability to protect himself, and at least he wouldn't have to be so nervous all the time like before.
So, Uchiha Raizen did everything he could. He convinced his sister, took out the inheritance left by their parents, mortgaged their house, and even risked danger to catch bounty criminals and exchange their rewards on the Bounty Station.
Finally, he managed to gather ninety million ryō.
It wasn't that every Devil Fruit cost this much, but the one he wanted to buy was the Fish-Fish Fruit, Mythical Zoan type, Azure Dragon form!
This was a god-level fruit, so its price was naturally far higher than others.
As for why he didn't choose the even stronger Sun God Nika Fruit—
First, he simply didn't have extra money.
Second, the Nika Fruit needed to be awakened to show its true power, and it also demanded great life force sacrifice.
Uchiha Raizen still wanted to live a few more years.
The Azure Dragon Fruit was different.
It not only gave the power to control natural disasters like wind, thunder, and fire but also granted incredible vitality, defense, and recovery.
For Uchiha, whose body would become weak from overusing his eyes, this was extremely important.
Uchiha Raizen was very hopeful. After eating the Mythical Zoan Azure Dragon Fruit, maybe awakening his Sharingan, or even the Mangekyō Sharingan, would no longer harm his body.
With great excitement, he paid the system ninety million ryō.
However, fate played a huge joke on him again.
The Devil Fruit bought from the system store couldn't be eaten directly, or he would immediately die!
"Damn it!!!"
Uchiha Raizen angrily activated his Sharingan right away, almost smashing the Devil Fruit—the Azure Dragon fruit—in his hand.
He had spent ninety million ryo, losing everything, and now you tell me I can't eat it?
Are you kidding me?
Uchiha Raizen's eyes turned blood red. At that moment, the system gave a prompt:
Although Devil Fruits cannot be eaten directly because the two worlds are incompatible, they can be used for research.
Research?
Calming down, Uchiha Raizen immediately thought of Vegapunk. Vegapunk once created an artificial Azure Dragon fruit.
But this is the Naruto world. Where could he find Vegapunk here?
The strongest scientist in the Naruto world should be Orochimaru.
If I go to see Orochimaru...
Just the thought of that scene gave Uchiha Raizen chills.
With Orochimaru's greed and evil, Raizen guessed he wouldn't even live long enough to see the research results—he'd probably end up as a lab experiment himself.
After racking his brains, Uchiha Raizen finally made a decision that went against his ancestors.
Damn it, I can't rely on anyone else. I'll do it myself. After all, in my previous life, I went through nine years of compulsory education, and my university major was biology.
Uchiha Raizen made up his mind. That ninety million ryo could not be wasted. Throwing money away is useless!
That's how it was.
For five years, no one knew that within the Uchiha clan—the top ninja clan of the ninja world and Konoha's guard—there was an odd member who didn't develop the Sharingan or practice ninjutsu. Instead, he focused solely on academic research.
This was probably the first time in Uchiha history that someone went down a technology path. If the old Madara were still alive, who knows what he would think.
Hard work pays off.
With the foundation of a past life, Uchiha Raizen easily understood knowledge about cell transplantation and Lineage Factor.
Even luckier, he accidentally discovered a secret laboratory left behind by Orochimaru before his defection from Konoha.
Inside the lab were many materials Orochimaru hadn't taken or destroyed. Most of these were about Hashirama's cells, curse mark techniques, Living Corpse Reincarnation jutsu, and other miscellaneous things.
Uchiha Raizen welcomed it all, reading and studying eagerly.
He almost went mad from learning, constantly mixing Devil Fruits with various technologies to research.
Finally, he found a way to extract the power hidden in Devil Fruits: by merging it into a curse mark, then injecting the curse mark into the body.
Uchiha Raizen named this technique the Devil Fruit Curse Mark. Each fruit matched a different curse mark. The one he was about to fuse now was the Azure Dragon Curse Mark!
The fusion of a curse mark was not easy.
Even knowing the theory and method, Uchiha Raizen kept failing again and again.
The more times he failed, the more anxious and crazed he became. He was almost losing his mind.
The Mythical Zoan fruit, the Azure Dragon Fruit, which had cost ninety million ryō, was gradually being used up bit by bit during the failed experiments.
Right now, what Uchiha Raizen held was the last few remaining portions.
If he failed again, he really might break down completely and bang his head against the wall, hoping the heavens might let him travel through time once more.