"WHAT?! What the fuck did you just say?!"
Danzo Shimura's roaring voice shattered the heavy silence of the underground Root headquarters like a thunderclap.
Kneeling on the cold stone floor, the reporting Root ninja shivered violently. Looking up, he genuinely feared that Danzo's bandaged right eye was about to pop straight out of its socket, given how violently the man was glaring at him.
"Y-Yes, Lord Danzo," the operative stammered, swallowing hard to keep his voice from trembling further. "Not only was Lord Hokage defeated... it was an extremely miserable defeat. He was beaten to a pulp."
Danzo's scowl deepened, his single visible eye narrowing into a slit filled with deep skepticism.
"Nonsense," Danzo snapped, slamming his cane against the ground. "His last shadow creature... what did you call it? Mahoraga? Are you telling me it possesses an ability as absurd as adaptation? That after being hit by an attack, it instantly becomes immune to it?"
"Precisely, Lord Danzo!"
Danzo immediately fell into suspicion. Sure, on paper, an ability like that sounded completely absurd—borderline broken. But he knew Sarutobi better than almost anyone in this village. That old fool was hailed across the five major nations as the 'Professor of Ninjutsu' for a reason. The man knew thousands of jutsu across every elemental spectrum.
How could Sarutobi possibly lose to a single summons?
Did sitting in that comfortable Hokage chair rot his brain so badly that it took him a hundred different jutsu just to realize the thing was adapting?
"Danzo-sama, it wasn't like that at all," the Root operative quickly clarified, sensing his master's rising blood pressure. "Hokage-sama only used basic taijutsu and a single Fire Release jutsu to figure out the creature's core ability."
Danzo's eyebrow twitched. "THEN HOW THE FUCK DID THAT BASTARD LOSE?!"
Hearing Danzo casually refer to the Third Hokage with such absurd disrespect, the Root ninja wisely chose to ignore the language and hurried on with his explanation.
"Danzo-sama... it seems you have slightly misunderstood the situation."
"Misunderstood what?" Danzo growled.
"When I say 'adaptation,' I don't mean Mahoraga adapts to a single, specific ninjutsu, leaving only that specific technique ineffective," the operative explained, his voice laced with faint terror as he recalled the fight. "No, Lord Danzo. It is far more absurd than that. The very moment it survived Hokage-sama's first Fire Release... the creature became completely immune to all fire-type attacks."
"WTF?!"
Danzo almost thought his ears were playing tricks on him. He stumbled back half a step, staring at his subordinate as if the man had lost his mind.
Immune to an entire element after taking one hit?!
Is that not straight-up cheating?! What kind of hack-code bullshit bloodline did that kid awaken?!
The Root ninja pressed on, desperate to deliver the full report before Danzo blew a fuse. "Hokage-sama initially hit Mahoraga with a high-tier Fire Release. It was injured pretty badly—almost half of its body was incinerated. But in the blink of an eye, the monster completely regenerated. Then, when Hokage-sama attacked it again with a completely different, much stronger Fire Release... it didn't do a single scratch. It was totally immune."
Danzo leaned forward, listening intently, his jaw tightening.
"And then... Hokage-sama made another massive mistake," the operative continued, wincing slightly. "In an attempt to end the fight quickly before the creature could adapt further, he unleashed his signature move—a massive Quadruple Element Compound Jutsu."
Danzo's heart skipped a beat. Quadruple Compound Jutsu... Fire, Wind, Lightning, and Earth. That's Sarutobi's ultimate flex. Did the creature survive that too?
"The moment the attack hit," the Root ninja said, shaking his head in disbelief, "Mahoraga forcibly cancelled out the fire attribute from the combined blast. Because the fire element vanished mid-collision, the entire compound jutsu instantly broke down and lost most of its power. The remaining four elemental attributes hit the creature... and after tanking the weakened hit, Mahoraga instantly became immune to all four of those elements as well."
The operative took a deep breath, pausing for dramatic effect.
"And after that... that thing beat Hokage-sama black and blue. Right now, he is admitted to the Konoha Hospital, being treated by an entire team of medical ninja."
Silence stretched across the dark room.
Danzo stood frozen, processing the chaotic series of events. Sarutobi... beaten into a bloody, bruised mess by a five-year-old's pet... in front of an audience... and now lying in a hospital bed looking like a battered purple eggplant.
Slowly, the heavy scowl on Danzo's face began to melt away. A wide, downright sinister grin stretched across his lips, escalating into a quiet, raspy chuckle.
"Haaaaah... hahahaha!" Danzo burst out, tapping his cane merrily against the floor. "That brat did a great job! A truly magnificent job!"
Suddenly, Danzo felt an overwhelming wave of warm favorability toward little Rei. Anyone who could embarrass Sarutobi to this extent deserved an award in Danzo's book.
"Yato!" Danzo turned toward his right-hand man, his eyes gleaming with delight. "Cancel my afternoon schedule. Let's go to the hospital first to admire Sarutobi's miserable state and wish him a long, happy recovery. And after that... I want to meet this magical brat in person."
It wasn't just Danzo who received the shocking news.
Within an hour, every single major shinobi clan in the Leaf Village had received the same intelligence report, leaving their leaders in absolute shambles.
"What?! Are you sure, Riyo?!"
Inside the traditional tatami room of the Uchiha Clan compound, the current leader of the Uchiha clan stared at his elite scout with wide, unblinking eyes. The teacup in his hand hovered halfway to his mouth, completely forgotten.
"Clan Head, it is 100% true," Riyo answered, bowing his head deeply. "The new bloodline ability awakened by that boy is indeed that absurd. Hokage-sama was completely overwhelmed."
The Uchiha Clan Head lowered his cup, his brow furrowed in deep thought.
Honestly, it was hard to believe a single summoned creature could be that ridiculously powerful. But if it was just raw combat power, it wouldn't be this surprising. The ninja world already had legendary combat bloodlines—like the First Hokage's Wood Release. Heck, the Uchiha clan themselves possessed the Sharingan, widely considered one of the absolute greatest bloodline limits in history.
Dynamic battle vision, genjutsu copying, predictive tracking—the Sharingan was a masterpiece of combat design.
Or at least... it used to feel like one.
Because as Riyo listed the rest of Rei's bloodline capabilities, the Uchiha Clan Head felt a sudden sense of existential dread.
This wasn't just a combat bloodline. It was a perfect bloodline.
"Let me get this straight," the Uchiha leader murmured, running a hand over his face. "Not only does he have an absurdly overpowered, unkillable combat unit like Mahoraga... but he also has a creature specifically dedicated to instant healing?"
"Yes, Clan Head."
"And a massive creature dedicated entirely to defense?"
"Yes."
"A creature for high-speed flight?"
"Correct."
"A creature for land transport?"
"Yes."
"Two distinct creatures specialized purely for long-range reconnaissance?"
"That is also correct."
"AND a swarm creature meant for mass distraction and escape?!"
"Yes, Clan Head. It covers literally every single operational role a shinobi squad could ever need."
The Uchiha Leader slumped back against his cushion, feeling an overwhelming headache coming on.
Normally, if a summoner possesses ridiculously strong summons, there is an obvious, glaring weakness: the summoner themselves. Summons take time to cast, require huge chakra reserves, and leave the caster vulnerable. Any decent assassin would simply bypass the monster and cut down the weak squishy kid controlling it.
Except this kid can literally dive inside his own shadow to hide.
If an enemy tries to target him, he just dips into the floor like a drop of ink and lets his terrifying, adaptation-god monster crush the attacker into finger food. How the hell were you even supposed to fight someone like that?!
The Uchiha Clan Head sat in silence for a long time.
He slowly activated his Sharingan, looking down at his own reflection in the dark wooden table. The crimson eyes with their elegant, spinning tomoe stared back at him—the very eyes he had spent his entire life being fiercely proud of. The eyes his clan had boasted about for over a thousand years as the pinnacle of ninja evolution.
Suddenly, he felt like his eyes were cheap, knock-off garbage.
He couldn't help but wonder... back when God was crafting bloodline abilities for humanity, did He spend all His effort meticulously designing this kid's god-tier shadow kit first... and then, realizing He was running out of time and budget, just swept the leftover scraps off the table, slapped them together, and handed them to the rest of us?
Otherwise... how else could you explain why the world-famous, thousand-year-old Sharingan suddenly felt so completely dogshit by comparison?
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