Year 49 of Konoha.
Kiyohara's expression was grim.
He was probably going to die.
He read the mission assignment sheet in his hand over and over again. No matter how many times he looked at it, the contents did not change: reinforce Minato's squad, destination Kannabi Bridge.
He was a transmigrator. Ever since recovering the wisdom of his past life after arriving in this world, Kiyohara had kept his head down and moved with extreme caution, all for one simple goal—living a little longer.
And yet, in the end, this so-called mission had still landed in his hands like a death sentence.
How exactly was he supposed to complete a mission on a battlefield where heroes bloomed and monsters walked among men?
To him, the Battle of Kannabi Bridge was a guaranteed death trap.
There was something wrong with this mission from start to finish.
On the enemy side were three battle-hardened elite jonin from Iwagakure. One of them, Hikari, was famous even among jonin as one of Iwa's strongest.
On Konoha's side, the lineup was Kakashi, a newly promoted jonin, plus Rin Nohara and Obito, both chunin.
During the mission, Minato Namikaze would leave to support the front lines. Which meant that, by the end of it, the real matchup would become one jonin and two chunin against three elite jonin.
Was that... reasonable?
If Kiyohara went too, he would only be one more disposable body thrown in to pad the casualty count.
Even Kakashi, who had already developed an S-rank Lightning Release ninjutsu at the age of twelve, had no idea how deep the water ran in this battle.
And as for him? Right now, he was just a low-level ninja.
As everyone knew, the difference between people could sometimes be greater than the difference between people and dogs.
Some genin fought with enough force that even the aftershock could shatter the Valley of the End.
Other genin—like him—existed purely as battlefield filler, cannon fodder meant to plug holes with their lives.
"What's wrong, Kiyohara?"
Rin Nohara looked at him in puzzlement.
As she spoke, a few strands of her short black hair brushed lightly against the purple markings on her cheeks. Why had Kiyohara's face turned so ugly the moment he received the order to reinforce their squad?
With Minato, the fastest shinobi in the world, personally leading the team, this mission should have been as safe as missions got.
"Nothing."
Kiyohara shook his head.
He lifted his eyes to the pretty girl in front of him. She had a pale pink skirt tied around her waist, a black top, and tight over-the-knee socks that made her look bright and lively even in a war camp.
"Don't worry," a blond young man said as he walked over, smiling gently. "I'll protect everyone on this mission."
Minato's voice was warm enough to make people believe him without question.
Kiyohara nodded at once. "I believe in Lord Minato."
What else could he say—that he didn't?
Minato Namikaze was at the absolute peak of his power. In other villages, shinobi who spotted him on the battlefield were allowed to abandon their missions without punishment.
But the cruelest thing about Minato's speed was that, for all his title as the fastest man alive, he had never managed to catch what truly mattered. In every disaster of his life, he was always one step too late.
"That's right," Obito said as he sauntered over, hands clasped behind his head, grinning stupidly as he planted himself next to Rin. "With Minato-sensei here, this mission will definitely be fine."
A white-haired boy wearing a black mask stood behind them, his eyes flat and indifferent, as if nothing in the world could stir his interest.
Kiyohara silently watched the scene of teacher and students gathered together, all trust and warmth and youthful confidence.
After this battle, Rin Nohara would be captured by Hidden Mist shinobi.
Obito would eventually fall into darkness, march back to Konoha in the name of his own twisted grief, and personally leave Naruto a grand gift wrapped in explosive tags.
So tell him—how exactly was he supposed to survive this?
Human joy and sorrow had never been shared.
All Kiyohara felt was that they were noisy.
After trading a few perfunctory words with the others, he turned and left.
He was still thinking about whether he should write a will in advance and sort out what little property he had when a voice suddenly rang out inside his mind.
[The will has been opened.]
[Last Will and Testament: With you as the anchor, countless possibilities will branch from the future.]
[Please check your will and urn, and arrange for your belongings to be properly buried.]
A synthesized female voice echoed in his head.
Kiyohara froze on the spot, then nearly lost control of his expression.
"No, wait. I'm going to die in the future too?"
He had already been saying they couldn't go to Kannabi Bridge, and now even the urn had been delivered ahead of schedule?
"An urn?"
The moment the thought surfaced, a phantom image appeared in his mind.
It was an ash urn bearing the symbol of Konoha—except the leaf insignia had been slashed across with a single horizontal line.
Kiyohara immediately sensed something was wrong.
No, hold on...
Why did that look exactly like the mark of a missing-nin?
"By the time you hear these words, I am already dead. What follows should be my final words..."
A familiar voice suddenly sounded.
Kiyohara's eyes widened as a ghostly figure drifted out of the urn in his mind.
The spirit resembled him seven or eight parts out of ten, though older, like a version of himself that had reached middle age. His face was weathered by years, and on his forehead he wore a shinobi protector slashed clean through the center.
A rogue ninja.
"You're... me after death?" Kiyohara asked. "And you defected?"
He immediately thought of the description attached to the will.
Using him as a temporal anchor, endless possibilities would extend from the future.
Did that mean defecting from the village was one of the possible paths his life could take?
"More or less," the ghost said with a shrug. "As you can see, I'm just a missing-nin now."
He even tapped the slashed forehead protector as if to make the point clearer.
"When did you defect? No—forget that. When in the future did you defect?"
Kiyohara corrected himself midway through the question.
This was only one branch among infinite possibilities. It didn't mean he was fated to betray Konoha.
"A few years after the war ended," Rogue Kiyohara said softly.
There was a trace of weariness in his tone. Maybe even regret.
"Why?"
Kiyohara stared at him.
"For advancement, obviously. In the ninja world, clans rely on bloodlines. Commoners rely on mutation. If I wanted to become stronger, the only path left was joining Orochimaru."
That was the answer the dead rogue version of him gave.
Kiyohara fell silent.
It was brutally realistic—so realistic it made his chest feel cold.
That was exactly what the ninja world was like.
Talent shone like gold, yes, but for ordinary shinobi born without clan techniques, bloodline limits, or powerful masters, all that remained was hard work and the occasional miracle.
Everyone knew that in this world, true power was usually inherited from one's mother, handed down by a mentor, or carved directly into the blood.
If you had none of those things, then all you could do was burn incense to the Sage of Six Paths and pray that good fortune might one day descend from heaven.
"Then how did you die?" Kiyohara asked the question he actually cared about most.
"Explosive tags," Rogue Kiyohara said.
"..."
That was an astonishingly hasty way to die.
Then again, once he thought about it, there were probably a great many people in the shinobi world who died that way.
"At least that proves I made it past the Kannabi Bridge mission," Kiyohara said slowly. "Can you tell me the details?"
Even with foreknowledge of the original plot, the slightest butterfly effect could alter everything.
One tiny shift, and the future could become unrecognizable.
"No," Rogue Kiyohara replied. "I never received that mission."
Kiyohara blinked.
"What?"
"Back then, I spent most of my time doing logistics." The rogue version of him spread his hands. "I didn't go to Kannabi Bridge at all."
Kiyohara's eyes opened wide.
Didn't that mean his future possibilities worked something like the world inside a Limited Tsukuyomi? Not only could he himself change, but other people, assignments, and even entire chains of events could also shift?
If so, then maybe there could also be an Anbu Kiyohara in some future. Or a Hokage Kiyohara.
The thought was absurd enough that it almost made him laugh.
Almost.
"Then what are the belongings inside the urn?" he asked, remembering the system's words. "If you're calling them relics, what exactly did you leave behind?"
Was there only one ghost inside?
"If we're talking about relics... it's probably me," Rogue Kiyohara said. "I can still linger for a while, and while I do, I can teach you some ninjutsu."
He paused, and for the first time his expression turned faintly complicated.
"But I likely won't remain for long. I also awakened a Book of Last Words—but I awakened it too late. After I died, I was packaged up and sent to other versions of myself."
Kiyohara listened in silence.
From what this dead future self was saying, the so-called Book of Last Words seemed to work by allowing the living to fulfill the dead person's final wishes in exchange for inheriting some part of that dead person's luck, strength, or fortune.
If that was true, then this thing in his head was less a blessing and more a graveyard delivery service.
He looked at the spectral missing-nin version of himself and felt a chill run down his back.
Kannabi Bridge was still waiting for him.
A future corpse had already arrived.
And somewhere among the countless branches of possibility, there were clearly many ways for Kiyohara to die.
The only question now was whether, before that happened, he could use the dead to claw out a path for the living.