The gloomy sky was exceptionally oppressive.
The smell of war and gunpowder permeated the air.
Accompanied by the drizzling rain, the atmosphere here became even more somber.
On the ground, wisps of smoke occasionally rose, making the black scorched earth appear even more desolate.
Dismembered limbs were everywhere, and blood soaked the ground underfoot.
A white-haired young man with a kunai in his backhand carefully avoided corpses.
With a delicate face, he suppressed the nausea in his heart and slowly proceeded with his reconnaissance.
Although he had been transmigrated here for over a week, such scenes were nothing new to him.
But whenever he saw such a tragic environment, Kirito still couldn't help but feel a sense of sorrow, a rabbit mourning the death of a fox.
Kirito was originally a college student and an otaku in the 21st century.
During summer vacation, his greatest interest was to play games and read novels all night long in bed.
Although he didn't contribute much to his family, at least he didn't cause trouble for his parents, right?
But one night, he passed out while reading a novel, and when he woke up again, he was already in another world.
Within a week, Kirito had figured out his identity and where he had transmigrated to.
The Naruto World.
He was thirteen years old this year, currently a Genin from the Hidden Cloud Village, a complete nobody.
It was the Third Great Ninja War.
The Five Great Ninja Villages on this continent were attacking each other, and the war was brutal.
Thousands of people died on the scorched earth every day.
The scene before him formed a stark contrast to the passionate ninja world he remembered from the anime.
Kirito fully realized that this was the true Naruto World—cruel and bloody, where ninja were merely tools for killing.
Every mission meant killing or being killed.
His own life had been unsafe from the moment he arrived.
"God, don't you know that the Naruto World is a world of comparing cheats, comparing eyes, comparing talents, and comparing backgrounds?"
"Even if I get fired up, it's useless."
"You throw me into Kumogakure as a commoner Genin, and now you're sending me to the front lines."
"This is just going up to die for nothing!"
Kirito cursed this unfair fate thousands of times in his heart.
As a transmigrator, did he really not have a golden finger?
Actually, he did.
In Kirito's mind, there was a system—but after studying it thousands of times, his final conclusion was that it was trash.
Not even comparable to a normal Bloodline Limit, much less the Rinnegan or the Six Paths power.
The description of Kirito's system was only one sentence:
[Please choose a powerful Ninja Tool, and the system will strip the power from the powerful Ninja Tool and turn it into the Host's own power.]
[Note: This system only has one chance to choose. After that, the system will settle and disappear. Please choose the Ninja Tool carefully.]
"Bah!"
Looking at the system's introduction, Kirito almost cursed out loud.
This Ninja Tool system was practically a scam.
This was the Naruto World, not a cultivation world where divine weapons were abundant.
Most ninja tools were kunai, shuriken, senbon—worthless in terms of power.
How much energy could these things even have?
Yet there were indeed powerful Ninja Tools—things used by the big bosses.
The Six Paths Staff.
The Uchiha Gunbai.
Weapons from which one could extract powerful chakra or even traces of Six Paths power.
But recalling where these items were located, Kirito immediately dismissed the idea.
The Six Paths Staff was with Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki, who existed only within the consciousness space of Ashura and Indra. He couldn't reach it.
The Uchiha Gunbai belonged to Uchiha Madara, and Kirito didn't know whether it was with Obito yet.
Even if Madara wasn't dead yet, he was still a monster with the Rinnegan.
Kirito didn't dare approach that old monster. A single glance might kill him instantly.
After much deliberation, Kirito felt that this system had not given him any path to survival.
He was ready to give up—until he heard a crucial piece of information.
This time, the Hidden Cloud Village was preparing for a decisive battle with Konoha.
Kirito volunteered to scout ahead.
Not for the mission—but for something else.
Two days ago, he overheard a secret while chatting with companions:
It was said that Kumogakure's notorious predecessors, the Kinkaku and Ginkaku Brothers, were buried nearby.
They were powerful shinobi when the First Raikage founded the village.
But due to their terrible personalities and actions—including disrupting peace talks with the Second Hokage—they were despised by the village.
Their corpses were not buried in Kumogakure's official cemetery but hastily buried somewhere near Kirito's current location.
Kirito planned to find that grave and dig their bodies up.
Why?
Because from the anime, he remembered that when the brothers were revived by Edo Tensei, they immediately produced the Five Treasured Tools of the Sage of Six Paths:
The Bashōsen
The Seven Star Sword
The Kōkinjō
The Purple Gold Gourd
The Kohaku no Jōhei
These five treasures were said to be relics of the Sage of Six Paths.
The brothers treasured them so much that they sealed them within their bodies, and after they died, Kumogakure never retrieved them.
Which meant…
They were still buried underground.
Kirito's idea was simple—use his system to try stripping power from these five treasures.
Each treasure was ridiculously powerful, borderline broken in the anime.
Even if they weren't the strongest, anything related to the Sage of Six Paths would never be weak.
Getting these tools might allow him to extract Six Paths-level power.
This was Kirito's one chance at survival.
He couldn't reach the Sage of Six Paths.
He didn't dare approach Uchiha Madara.
But the Kinkaku and Ginkaku Brothers were already dead.
Kirito refused to believe he couldn't even handle two corpses.
He was going to gamble.
Slowly, Kirito followed the geographic memory he had and finally found the land where the two brothers were buried.
It was a desolate flat area surrounded by bushes, suitable for burying bodies.
Kirito picked up his kunai and began digging the soil.
The soil wasn't loose, and he dug with great effort.
Two hours passed.
He had dug up a layer of dirt but found nothing.
Kirito wiped sweat from his forehead. "This is my last chance to turn things around. I can't give up now!"
Determined, he resumed digging.
Another two hours passed.
The hole was nearly two meters deep.
Exhausted and panting, he suddenly spotted a bone sticking out from the earth.
He pulled it out—it was indeed human.
Filled with renewed energy, Kirito continued.
Soon, two skeletons appeared—damaged, incomplete, clearly buried for years.
Judging from their size, they were likely adult men.
If his memory was correct, these were the Kinkaku and Ginkaku Brothers.
Seeing this, Kirito ignored everything else.
He sat cross-legged before the skeletons, placing his palms on them.
He silently chanted in his heart:
"System, these two skeletons must contain the five Ninja Tools. If you're still useful, extract them for me. Otherwise, I'm done for in this world."
As his words fell, the system responded:
[Ding! Unsealing in progress, please wait...]
End of the chapter.