The pitch-black Demonic Compendium still floated in that dark inner space, hanging above a small altar. On the altar below it, more than twenty strands of black "smoke" of varying thickness drifted and coiled, never resting.
When Uchiha Feiyu stepped into this inner space, he asked it a very direct question:
Could the Compendium guarantee that the inheritances it granted would actually be useful to him?
The hovering book pulsed with black light. Twisted, eerie characters formed in midair:
If a specific goal is named at sacrifice, tenfold the lives must be offered.
Feiyu blinked, then rubbed his chin.
"So basically, if I really want some particular kind of demonic knowledge, I have to pay ten times the usual sacrifice to get it, huh?
"And if I just sacrifice normally, what I get is random—could be useful, could be junk… like that silver-scale venomous snake breeding method I got the first time."
Despite being called the Demonic Compendium of All Ways, from Feiyu's two experiments so far, it seemed the book didn't care whether something was "orthodox demonic arts" or not. As long as it was vicious, twisted, or cruel, it might be included.
Soul-Binding Reaper and the Silver-Scale Venom Serpent method were both technically just "evil arts" rather than proper "demonic paths," yet they'd both been listed. That suggested the content inside this book was probably truly all-encompassing and borderline endless.
Which also meant: most random rewards from normal sacrifices would probably not line up with what he wanted.
"Well, whatever. Let's test it properly first," Feiyu thought.
"I'll start with a normal offering—ten wisps of black energy—and then try a targeted sacrifice."
Ten strands of black mist flared and vanished.
The Compendium shuddered slightly, then released a beam of black light that shot straight into Feiyu's body.
"Vampire Touch…? Isn't that a necromancy spell from Dungeons & Dragons? That counts as 'demonic' too?"
Feiyu's expression went a bit strange.
"So does that mean I might get things like Finger of Death, Lich Transformation, or Summon Undead Legion later? Just go full necromancer or what?
"Still… Vampire Touch in the Naruto world is gonna be a pain to localize. Chakra and DnD-style spell slots aren't even the same system."
In the DnD world, Vampire Touch was a 3rd-level spell that inflicted heavy damage and converted half of that damage into healing for the caster. The catch: the spell required direct physical contact.
In DnD terms it was only mid-tier, but in the Naruto world it would easily rank as an S-rank technique—both high damage and self-healing, in one package.
The problem was: turning it into a workable chakra-based ninjutsu would be hard. With Feiyu's current foundation, it definitely wasn't happening anytime soon.
And Vampire Touch required touch. Sword strikes didn't count. That made it awkward to integrate into his current fighting style—not completely incompatible, but far from seamless.
"…Fine. I'll treat it as foundation accumulation for now. Sooner or later, I'll figure out a way to use it."
"Next, let's try a targeted sacrifice."
Feiyu's thoughts shifted, and the remaining dozen strands of black mist on the altar evaporated all at once.
The Compendium trembled again, then sent a new packet of information pouring into his mind.
This time, during the sacrifice, Feiyu had quietly pictured a sword art—nothing too fancy, just something sword-related. After all, targeted sacrifice only had one-tenth the efficiency; offering the equivalent of a single Chunin's death energy was never going to net him some supreme scripture.
And indeed, what he got wasn't earth-shatteringly powerful—just the form-only version of the Bixie Sword Art.
The Bixie Sword Art originated from the Sunflower Manual, a sinister internal art that required a heavy… "investment" to practice. Once that first hurdle—self-castration—was crossed, one could rapidly achieve eerie, ghostlike speed and agility.
However, what Feiyu received was only the sword forms—the "flower-rack" version that Lin Zhennan and Lin Pingzhi had initially cultivated in Smiling Proud Wanderer. No inner cultivation method, no true essence—just the external movements.
"Tsk… it's not completely useless," Feiyu muttered, "but calling it useful is a stretch too."
He skimmed through the Bixie Sword moves with clear distaste, then decided he'd throw it to Hatake Sakumo to look over later.
"At least White Fang's style is a high-speed kenjutsu as well. Maybe he can get some inspiration from the forms and graft them into his own swordplay."
Having harvested his two new "rewards," Feiyu withdrew from the demonic space and made up his mind:
"I need to cut down a lot more people.
If I take out, say, two hundred-plus enemies, I can afford a fully targeted S-rank inheritance on the level of Vampire Touch."
An offensive-and-healing-in-one technique like Vampire Touch, localized properly, would absolutely qualify as a top-tier S-rank ninjutsu in this world.
Any S-rank technique of that caliber could single-handedly make a shinobi an elite jōnin, and even among Kage-level fights it would count as a trump card.
If he could get a supporting system of related spells or arts, Feiyu was confident he could push his strength up another tier in a short time—stepping firmly into quasi-Kage territory.
In fact, with all his training recently, Feiyu's current self, when possessed by Hatake Sakumo, already qualified as a genuine Kage-level combatant—albeit on the very lowest rung.
Even without Sakumo possessing him, Feiyu's "base form" had reached elite jōnin level. Just as his possessed state was Kage-level floor tier, his normal state was the entry-level floor of elite jōnin.
Carrying this pleasant outlook on his future, Feiyu stepped out of the demonic space. After more than a month of rest and training, he felt his condition was at its peak. It was time to go find Orochimaru and ask for more missions.
"This time, I can afford to be a bit more aggressive," he thought.
"At this point, there's almost no one on this battlefield who can actually threaten my life. Unless the Fourth Kazekage has a brain spasm and comes personally to kill me, even Chiyo the puppet master doesn't have the power to finish me off."
Mulling over that, Feiyu left the hidden training area he'd carved out and walked toward Konoha's main camp.
Halfway there, though, his expression shifted.
"…Huh? Why are there so many unfamiliar souls in the area all of a sudden?"
Thanks to Soul-Binding Reaper, Feiyu could sense souls within a certain range. In that sense, he now counted as a kind of sensor ninja as well—just with a very short radius.
At first, his sensing range had been less than twenty meters.
But after killing so many Sand ninja—and integrating the sensory talent of one of their sensor-types—his range had expanded more than tenfold. Now he could detect the soul-fluctuations of living beings within roughly two hundred meters.
And right now, inside that circle, he was picking up several new, unfamiliar soul signatures.
Something—or someone—had entered his killing field.
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