Chapter 5: Blood and Bread.
Hunger gnawed at the walls of Kagemaru's stomach, sharp and insistent, growing worse with every passing day. Three days, maybe four, time had become meaningless in this prison of stinking piss and shit. There was no sunlight to mark the passage of time, no meals to divide the endless stretch of darkness. Just cold stone, the stench of unwashed bodies, and the hollow ache of starvation spreading through his limbs like poison.
The other prisoners had stopped talking on the second day, not that they spoke much anyway. Speech required energy, and energy was something none of them could afford to waste. They sat in their corners, conserving what little strength remained, their eyes growing duller with each passing hour.
Kagemaru pressed his back against the rough stone wall, feeling his ribs through the thin fabric of his shirt. His body felt wrong, lighter than it should be, weaker, his muscles seeming to dissolve from within, with not an ounce of fat on him. The system flickered occasionally at the edge of his vision, but he ignored it. What good were status screens when you were starving to death?
Is this how it ends? he wondered. Not in battle. Not escaping. Just wasting away in the dark like the rest of them...
The thought should have terrified him. Instead, it settled over him like the darkness of his cell, smothering everything except the gnawing emptiness in his gut.
Then suddenly the wall moved.
At first, Kagemaru thought he was hallucinating. Hunger did that, made you see things that weren't there, hear sounds that didn't exist. But the grinding of stone against stone was too real, too loud, filling the cramped cell with a noise that made his teeth ache.
One of the walls, the one furthest from the iron-barred door, was sinking into the floor.
Slowly, impossibly, it descended, revealing a vast chamber beyond. Dim light spilled through the widening gap, and with it came a smell that made Kagemaru's stomach clench so hard he nearly doubled over.
Food!
One of the other prisoners moved first. A thin man with hollow cheeks and eyes that had long since lost any spark of hope. He scrambled toward the opening on hands and knees, his movements desperate, almost animalistic.
"Food," he croaked, the first word anyone had spoken in days. "They're giving us food." He said again.
The others quickly followed, their bodies that had been motionless for days suddenly found the strength to move, dragging themselves toward the chamber with a desperation that was painful to watch. Still, Kagemaru rose on unsteady legs, swaying slightly as the blood rushed from his head, and joined the exodus.
The chamber beyond was massive. The ceiling stretched high above, lost in shadow, and the walls curved away into darkness. Torches lined the perimeter, casting flickering pools of orange light that barely penetrated the gloom. The floor was stone, worn smooth by countless feet, stained dark in places with substances Kagemaru didn't want to identify.
And along the far wall, on a raised platform, stood the Sound shinobi.
There were half a dozen of them, lounging against the railings with the casual arrogance of men who had nothing to fear. They wore the standard Otogakure uniform, purple tunics over grey pants, forehead protectors bearing the musical note symbol of the Hidden Sound. Their faces were twisted with amusement as they watched the prisoners stumble into the chamber like livestock being herded to slaughter.
One of them, a broad-shouldered man with a cruel smile and a scar running down his left cheek, held a basket in his hands. Inside, Kagemaru could see bread. Actual bread. Small loaves, dark and dense, probably stale, but food nonetheless.
"Look at them," the scarred man laughed, nudging his companion. "Like dogs begging for scraps!"
"Worse than dogs," another replied. "At least dogs have some dignity."
The prisoners gathered in the centre of the chamber, nearly fifty of them, drawn from cells throughout the pit. Men and women, young and old, all of them bearing the same marks of starvation and despair. They stared up at the platform with desperate, hungry eyes, waiting.
The scarred shinobi reached into the basket and pulled out a loaf of bread. He examined it for a moment, turning it over in his hands, then tossed it into the crowd below.
It took but a moment for absolute chaos to erupt.
Two prisoners lunged for the bread simultaneously. They collided in mid-air, crashing to the ground in a tangle of limbs. One of them managed to grab the loaf, but the other was already on top of him, hands closing around his throat, squeezing with a strength born of pure desperation.
The Sound shinobi laughed.
"Twenty Ryō on the big one," one of them called out.
"I'll take that bet. The skinny ones are always faster."
More bread flew through the air. Each loaf sparking a new fight, a new explosion of violence as the starving prisoners turned on each other with fists, feet, teeth and anything else they could use as a weapon. The chamber filled with the sounds of combat, the crack of bone, the wet thud of flesh striking flesh, the screams of those who fell and couldn't get back up.
This is what they want, Kagemaru realised, watching the carnage unfold. They're not feeding us. They're making us fight for entertainment. Making us kill each other so they don't have to waste the resources.
Suddenly A loaf of bread landed on the stone floor three feet to his left.
He stared at it. Dark, dense, no bigger than his fist. A pathetic thing, really. Barely enough to take the edge off his hunger, let alone satisfy it.
But it was food. And food meant survival. And survival meant—
The sudden impact came from behind him.
Kagemaru hit the ground hard, the breath driven from his lungs, his vision flashing white. A massive weight pressed down on his back, a body, heavy and desperate, pinning him to the cold stone.
"The bread's mine, boy!" A voice snarled. Deep and rough, tinged with a madness in his eyes.
Kagemaru twisted, trying to throw off his attacker, but the man was too big, too heavy. He caught a glimpse of him while trying to steal a breath, a giant of a prisoner, easily six and a half feet tall, with arms like tree trunks and eyes that had gone completely feral. Whatever humanity he'd once possessed had been stripped away by days of starvation and months of captivity. What remained was pure animal instinct. Kill or be killed. Eat or starve. Only the strongest survived.
The giant's hands found Kagemaru's throat, wrapping around it like a twig.
No.
The word blazed through his mind, cutting through the panic and the pain and the desperate need for air. He was not going to die here. Not like this. Not for a piece of bread in a pit surrounded by monsters.
I will not die! Not here! Not again!
Something shifted inside him. A sensation he'd felt before, when Steel Release had first manifested, when black metal had crept across his hand under Orochimaru's hungry gaze. A heat in his chest, spreading outward, racing through his veins like liquid fire.
The system pulsed.
Kagemaru drove his elbow backwards with everything he had, and the blow connected with the giant's ribs, hard enough to loosen his grip, hard enough to buy a precious second of breathing room. He rolled, scrambling away, and came up in a crouch, his body screaming at him, his lungs burning.
The giant was already coming at him again, determined to finish what he had started.
He was fast for his size. Too fast. His fist descended like a hammer, aimed at Kagemaru's skull, and there was no time to dodge, no time to think, only...
Steel.
The word formed in his mind, and his body responded. He raised his arm to block, and felt the familiar heat flood into his forearm, felt his flesh harden and darken, transforming in the space between heartbeats.
The giant's fist connected with the black metal that was now, Kagemaru's arm.
The impact rang through the chamber like a bell, and the giant staggered back, clutching his hand and howling. His knuckles were split, blood streaming between his fingers, the bones underneath shifting in ways they shouldn't.
Kagemaru stared at his arm. Black steel gleamed in the torchlight, covering his skin from wrist to elbow like armour forged from shadow. It was stronger than before. Denser. Not the pale imitation Orochimaru had dismissed, but something more. Something real.
[STEEL RELEASE ACTIVATED]
[+500 EXP]
The notification flickered at the edge of his vision, but he barely registered it. The giant was coming again, his broken hand forgotten, his face twisted with rage and hunger and the absolute need to destroy the obstacle between him and his food.
Kagemaru ducked the first swing, felt the wind of it pass over his head, and drove his steel-coated fist into the giant's stomach, hitting him with everything he had. Not thinking, he didn't have time for that. His body moved on instinct alone.
The blow lifted the man off his feet, his eyes going wide from the force of the blow.
He crashed to the ground three feet away, curling around his midsection, his breath coming in wet, agonised gasps. Kagemaru stood over him, his fist still gleaming black, his heart pounding in his ears.
I did that. I...
But there was no time to process. Another prisoner was charging at him, a wiry woman with wild eyes and broken fingernails, drawn by the bread that still lay on the ground behind him. Kagemaru spun, bringing up his steel arm to block her desperate lunge, and felt her fingers scrape uselessly against the metal that was his flesh.
He shoved her away with his free arm, and she stumbled back, falling, and was immediately set upon by two other prisoners who had seen her weakness. The pair of them pounced on her as they resorted to cannibalism.
[NEW OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE PIT]
[REWARD: 1,000 EXP]
The system's notification burned in his vision, cold and clinical, but the message was clear. This wasn't about the bread anymore. This was about walking out of this chamber alive.
Kagemaru grabbed the bread and shoved it into his shirt, freeing both hands, and turned to face the chaos around him.
The next few minutes blurred together in a haze of violence and survival.
A man came at him with a piece of broken stone. Kagemaru felt the Steel Release flow into his jaw just before the blow landed, the makeshift weapon shattering against black metal while his attacker screamed, clutching fingers that bent in the wrong directions.
Then three prisoners rushed him at once. He met them with fists and elbows, feeling his steel spread and contract according to his need, protecting his vitals when he couldn't dodge, adding killing force to his strikes when he couldn't block. The ability was responding to him now, reading his instincts, flowing through his body with a fluidity it hadn't possessed before as his understanding of the technique grew.
I'm getting stronger, he realised, driving his knee into an attacker's chest and feeling ribs give way beneath the impact. The more I fight... The better it gets.
But the chamber was filled with desperate people, and desperation bred numbers. For every opponent he put down, another took their place. His breath came harder. His movements slowed. The Steel Release flickered, faltered, the strain of maintaining it wearing at something deep inside him. Coming to realise that what the system meant by 25% was that was the amount of his body he could cover in it at any one time.
One of his attackers, a tall, thin man, covered in blood with a piece of bread in his mouth, already rushed him, what looked like a rock in his hand or a broken tile, Kagemaru didn't know. All that he knew was that in this place. In this pit... It was kill or be killed.
Kagemaru's hand shot forward.
Steel flowed into his fingers, sharpening them, hardening them into something that was no longer flesh but blade. They punched through the man's chest like a knife through paper, sliding between ribs, finding the soft organs beneath his chest cavity.
Heat washed over Kagemaru's hand. Wet. Spreading.
The man made a sound, not a scream, not a word, just a soft, surprised noise, like he couldn't quite believe what was happening, either that or he was choking on the bread in his mouth. Then his eyes went glassy, and his body went slack. Kagemaru pulled his hand free, blood spraying across his face, with a little going into his mouth.
I killed him...
The thought arrived distantly, muffled by the roaring in his ears. He looked at his hand, steel giving way to flesh, black metal receding to reveal skin stained crimson. He felt something inside him crack. The weight of what he had just done came crashing down on him.
I killed someone...
But the system pulsed.
[DNA SAMPLE DETECTED]
[ANALYSING...]
[SECRET TECHNIQUE IDENTIFIED: WATER STYLE - BLACK RAIN JUTSU]
[INTEGRATION COMPLETE]
[NEW JUTSU ACQUIRED: BLACK RAIN JUTSU (C-RANK)]
What?
"ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH!"
The voice cracked through the chamber like a whip, cutting through the sounds of combat, freezing every prisoner in place. The Sound shinobi on the platform had stopped laughing. The scarred one was standing at the railing, his hands raised in a seal that glowed faintly with chakra.
"Back to your cells," he commanded. "All of you. Now!"
The prisoners obeyed. Not out of respect or fear, but out of exhaustion. The fight had drained them, left them empty husks with barely enough strength to drag themselves back to the opening in the wall. Those who had managed to secure food clutched it to their chests like treasures. Those who hadn't stared at the ground with hollow eyes, already resigned to another day or days of starvation.
Kagemaru moved with them. His body felt like it was made of lead, his legs threatening to give out with every step. The bread was still tucked against his chest, warm from his body heat, real in a way that nothing else seemed to be right now.
Behind him, bodies lay on the ground. He didn't count how many. Only the one he had left there.
The cell was darker than he remembered. Smaller. The survivors filed in and found their corners, curling around their prizes, eating in silence. No one spoke. No one even looked at each other. In the pit, there were no allies. Only competitors. Only threats. Only survival.
Kagemaru found his spot against the far wall and sank down, his back against the cold stone. He pulled out the bread, still intact, still whole, and stared at it.
His hands were shaking. Not from hunger. Not anymore.
I killed someone...
The words repeated in his mind like a broken record. He could still feel the resistance of flesh giving way beneath his steel fingers. Could still taste the copper of blood on his tongue. Could still see those eyes... Terrified, dying, staring up at him in the moment before they closed forever.
I killed someone, and the system rewarded me for it.
He bit into the bread harshly, almost out of anger. It was stale. Gritty. The best thing he had ever tasted.
He chewed slowly, mechanically, forcing himself to eat even as his stomach twisted with something that wasn't hunger. The body needed fuel. The body needed to survive. Everything else, the guilt, the horror, the creeping realisation of what he was becoming could wait.
When the bread was gone, he closed his eyes and summoned his system.
[STATUS]
Name: Kagemaru
Level: 3
EXP: 1,500 / 3,000
SKILLPOINTS: 2
[JUTSU]
Secret Technique - Black Rain Jutsu (C-Rank) - Creates a black rain of oil.
[PERKS]
CHIMERA ABILITY LV 2 — User can now hold one Kekkei Genkai permanently. Normal limitations apply.
[KEKKEI GENKAI ABSORBED]
Steel Release - Lv 1 - Strength of Kekkei Genkai at 25% of full power.
Level 3, he thought distantly. And a new jutsu...
But it wasn't the level that caught his attention. It was the jutsu itself. Black Rain. A Water Style technique that could create oil? Not a kekkei genkai. Not a bloodline limit. A secret technique learned from the blood of a dying man.
The system said it absorbed his DNA. Does that mean... can I copy more than just kekkei genkai? Can I learn techniques too?
The implications were staggering. If consuming DNA could unlock not just bloodlines but secret jutsu, the techniques that shinobi spent years mastering, the skills that separated genin from jounin, the weapons that won wars, then the possibilities were...
Terrifying, he thought. The possibilities are absolutely fucking terrifying.
He opened his eyes and stared at the darkness of the cell. Around him, the other survivors slept or pretended to, their bodies curled protectively around their stomachs, their faces slack with exhaustion. None of them knew what he was. None of them knew what he could do. What he could become.
I killed a man today, Kagemaru thought. I drove my hand through his chest and swallowed his blood, and the system gave me his jutsu as a reward. He said to himself, looking at his hand with dried blood stains still fresh.
He should have felt sick. Should have felt horrified at the monster he was becoming. But all he felt was tired. Tired, and hungry despite the bread, and coldly, brutally aware of a single, inescapable truth.
This was his life now. The pit. The fighting. The killing. The consuming.
Fight, survive, grow stronger.
The System demanded it. Orochimaru demanded it. And if Kagemaru wanted to live long enough to escape this hell, to find some way out of Orochimaru's grasp, to become something more than Subject 402...
Then he would demand it of himself.
The Chimaera Ability doesn't just steal bloodlines, he thought, the realisation settling into his bones like ice. It can steal much more...
He closed his eyes again, feeling the weight of the day pressing down on him, feeling the new jutsu sitting in his mind like a coiled snake waiting to strike.
Black Rain... He wondered, thinking of how a jutsu like that could work amazingly with a fire style.
He would grow stronger, one stolen ability at a time, until he was powerful enough to escape this pit, this village, this life...
In the days to come, there would be more trials. More fighting. More killing.
But tonight, for just a few hours, he could rest and try to recover some of his strength.