Although Tahara Rokuro was a transmigrant, he didn't come with a golden finger or a [System]. The only real "cheat" he had was the coding ability from his previous life as a programmer, plus the enhanced STEM-minded talents his rebirth granted—things like a photographic memory and lightning-fast mental arithmetic.
In a mundane world those gifts might have made him shine—maybe he'd become a world-class developer, headhunted by top tech firms.
But in the extraordinary world of Naruto, talent and bloodlines mattered far more, and Tahara Rokuro's short trial had already shown the truth: compared to the prodigious Itachi the Dutiful Son, his natural shinobi aptitude fell short.
When one door closes, another may open—though sometimes all the windows are bolted shut. For Tahara Rokuro, that window was the art of sealing: the study of fūinjutsu.
His father in this life was a Uchiha jonin, so the family was comfortably off—at least they didn't face hunger like some poor kids. His mother, though only a chunin, was a rare kind of shinobi: a sealing specialist who maintained Konoha's barriers. Her job was relatively safe and steady.
Tahara Rokuro began learning fūinjutsu at three. It didn't take long for him to notice something surprising: the sealing formulas that composed fūinjutsu weren't just mystic scripts—they behaved like source code for ninjutsu. With his coder's intuition, Tahara Rokuro found he could analyze even chakra itself through sealing formulas.
That realization opened up a whole new world. In three months he had absorbed everything his mother could teach. Then, combining his coding skill with sealing techniques, he experimented with using seals to invoke jutsu—and succeeded. Even the most basic of ninja techniques, like the Bunshin no Jutsu, could be executed through sealing inscriptions.
Of course, there were trade-offs. Casting via sealing inscriptions cost more chakra in practice, and the speed and adaptability were inferior to traditional hand seals.
In short: using sealing formulas to perform Bunshin-type techniques didn't improve them; it often made them worse.
The reason was simple. Even a basic Bunshin required a dozen or more sealing inscriptions to construct, whereas traditional hand signs might need only one or two. The overhead was heavy.
But seals had an advantage seals could not be handily mimicked by hand signs: they could be bound to chakra materials and persist for long periods. In other words, if you pre-wrote a jutsu's sealing formula onto a chakra-bearing material, you could trigger it instantly.
That turned jutsu into ninja tools. In battle, a shinobi carrying the right tools could instantly unleash techniques—no hand seals needed.
Tahara Rokuro stood at the small lake, turning the black tube in his hands and thinking.
"Ninja tools grant instant cast and save about thirty percent chakra—those two benefits alone can decide a match. The only problem is the cost of chakra materials."
He weighed the black tube.
"This tool's material is chakra metal—the same material as Konoha White Fang's short blade and the later Asuma's chakra blades. Material costs alone are five million—about one-sixth of Asuma's entire worth. If it weren't for that sudden death benefit some time ago, we couldn't have afforded it."
Indeed, Tahara Rokuro could not escape the origin-story trope of orphanhood: his father, Uchiha Taidachi, had died a year earlier on the battlefield between the Uchiha and the Hidden Mist. Though the Uchiha were formidable, a politically weak clan head had been assigned to enfrent the Mist shinobi, whose prowess in fog techniques and water-style jutsu countered them—resulting in many Uchiha casualties, including Tahara Rokuro's father.
Luckily, his mother Suzuki Taharazi's role as a fūinjutsu specialist generally kept her off the front lines; otherwise Tahara Rokuro might also have fallen into the orphanhood cliché.
"Besides expensive materials, there are two major hurdles to unlocking a ninja tool's full potential. First: you need a deeper knowledge of sealing formulas—ideally you'd get a scroll of Uzumaki clan sealing techniques. Combine that with my coding ability and I could probably become a new-generation inventor of ninjutsu—maybe even surpass the Second Hokage's innovation."
"Second: chakra capacity. Tools reduce chakra consumption, but talent gaps among shinobi are huge. A genin like Naruto can possess dozens of 'k' of chakra even without counting the Nine-Tails. If I could secure Naruto-level reserves, and then use tools, I could become a ninjutsu machine-gun—apart from the few overpowered characters, who would stand a chance?"
At the mention of Naruto and the Nine-Tails, Tahara Rokuro's mind flipped to the approaching Nine-Tails Night.
"I remember the Nine-Tails incident happens in Konoha Year 51—next year. There's also a movie where a shinobi collected fragments of Nine-Tails chakra and turned his son into a fake jinchūriki. That shinobi was apparently a former colleague of Asuma's, one of the Twelve Guardian Ninja."
Tahara Rokuro stroked his chin, considering feasibility.
"Even if movies aren't canon, the idea's useful: after the Nine-Tails Night, there should be residual Nine-Tails chakra scattered around Konoha's outskirts. If I collect it and seal it with fūinjutsu, I could make a small Nine-Tails."
"Then I could seal that miniature Nine-Tails into a chakra core to power my tools. That would solve my limited chakra problem. The plan looks workable—dangerous, but feasible with enough preparation."
He spun the black tube on his fingertip like a basketball, index finger pressed on its center.
"If I hadn't been born into the Uchiha, I wouldn't need to grind so hard. But since I inherited this clan's bloodline, I have to bear its fate. Even if it's for survival, I must grow strong quickly—or Itachi and Obito's blades will come for me."
Pocketing the tube, Tahara Rokuro set off for home—and halfway there he bumped into a girl with a beauty mark at the corner of her right eye and waist-length hair who perfectly matched Tahara Rokuro's type.
Tahara Rokuro used Bunshin no Jutsu: one clone waved at her while the real him moved behind and lifted her skirt with a quick, cheeky hand.
"She's wearing leggings? Boring."
The next second his left cheek was struck; he flew three meters.
"Bastard Tahara Rokuro, do you want to die?"
He rubbed his face, grinning like a rogue as he greeted her.
"Kei—good morning!"
"You pervert. If you lift my skirt again I'll beat you to death!"
The girl was Uchiha Kei—the original anime-version girlfriend of the Dutiful Son, the genius girl who awakened the three-tomoe Sharingan at thirteen.
In terms of talent, in the Uchiha clan she likely ranks third, behind Itachi and Shisui. Even Sasuke, before joining Orochimaru's training, wasn't on her level.
Tahara Rokuro had always considered the Dutiful Son his number one rival from birth, so he took every chance to undercut him—seducing someone's girlfriend was a small part of that strategy.