Renjiro stared at Kushina, the vibrant crimson of his newly regenerated Sharingan reflecting the dim light of the room, but seeing nothing of it. Her words didn't just land; they detonated in the silent space between them, scattering the fragile hope he'd begun to rebuild.
The glorious return of sight, the intoxicating power of the regeneration, all of it turned to ash in his mouth. The world, so recently restored in vivid colour, seemed to grey at the edges.
"Say that again," he whispered, his voice hollow, the command more a plea for contradiction.
Kushina didn't flinch from his gaze. "Every time you force your body to regenerate a Sharingan, you aren't just healing. You're inflicting serious, systemic damage on your healing. You're weakening the very thing that makes this possible. Permanently."
He shook his head, "How? I felt it. The second time was faster. More efficient."
"Because I had to pour more chakra into you," Kushina countered.
"The increase was marginal, barely a fraction of a per cent, but it was there. I suspect the chakra cost isn't linear, Renjiro. It's exponential. Meaning at some point, the chakra cost would double."
She let the horrific mathematics hang in the air.
Renjiro's mind, ever the analyst, seized on the discrepancy. "But I didn't feel weaker. My reserves… they're still growing as I age. Wouldn't that mask the drain?"
"Temporarily, perhaps," Kushina conceded. "Like a river that's getting deeper but also developing a sinkhole in its bed. You see the water level rise and think all is well, but the foundation is being eaten away."
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, the posture of a man trying to physically hold himself together. "Even if the chakra cost is rising… how does that translate to weakening my healing? They're separate systems. One is fuel, the other is the engine."
Kushina took a deep breath. She gestured with her hands, "Chakra is not just power, Renjiro. It is the fusion of physical energy, drawn from every cell in your body, and spiritual energy, the force of your consciousness, your will… your soul."
She emphasised the last word, making it tangible in the quiet room. "The Sharingan is not a physical organ like a liver or a lung. It is a dōjutsu. A visual prowess born of the mind and spirit, etched into the biology. When you regenerate it, you aren't just rebuilding photoreceptors and nerve clusters. You are forcing your soul to replicate a piece of itself."
A cold deeper than any chakra drain seeped into Renjiro's bones. "My… soul?"
"Every regeneration," Kushina said, her voice grave and gentle, "shaves off a microscopic sliver of your spiritual essence to act as the template, the blueprint for the new eye. Your soul provides the pattern."
Renjiro's voice was a dry rasp. "So I'm… shaving off my lifespan every time I do this? Trading years for eyes?"
Kushina shook her head sharply. "No. That's the cruel irony. Your Uzumaki soul is incredibly dense, incredibly resilient. It can withstand this erosion for a long, long time. Lifespan isn't the immediate cost." She leaned in, her gaze piercing. "The cost is on your healing. Your soul isn't being destroyed; it's being injured, repeatedly. And what does your chakra seinōu do? It heals. Constantly. It's working overtime, around the clock, to repair the spiritual damage you're inflicting every time you pluck out an eye and force your body to regrow a cursed kekkei genkai. It's diverting resources, stretching itself thin. The healing that should be available to mend a broken bone, purge a poison, or fight off an illness is being monopolised by this… this internal, self-inflicted soul surgery."
She paused, letting the full, monstrous picture assemble itself in his mind. "The result is that your overall, physical healing capacity is being slowly, steadily overburdened and weakened. It's being cannibalised to sustain this cycle. If you continue…" Her voice dropped to a whisper filled with dread. "You could push it past its breaking point. The healing could fracture or burn out completely. And your soul… repeated, unhealed trauma could damage it beyond even an Uzumaki's ability to recover. You'd be left with neither your healing nor your soul's integrity."
Renjiro sat in perfect, terrible silence. The news didn't hit him like a wave; it seeped into him like a poison, cold and paralyzing. Fear, sharp and primal, clawed at his throat. Frustration, a white-hot fury at the cruel trap of his own biology, burned in his gut. And beneath it all, a profound, weary resignation—the sense that every gift in this world came with a hidden, razor-lined price tag.
He felt a cocktail of emotions churning: the bitter tang of betrayal by his own body, the acidic bite of fear for his future, and the flat, grey taste of hopelessness. He stared at his hands, which had performed the grisly surgery so many times, seeing them now as instruments of his own slow ruin.
Finally, the analytical part of him, the survivor, pushed through the emotional morass. His voice, when it came, was flat and resigned.
"Then… I can't keep regenerating my eyes anymore."
He lifted his gaze back to Kushina, a flicker of desperate hope igniting. "The Hashirama cells. Could they… compensate? Stabilise the healing?"
Kushina's expression was deeply uncertain. "I don't know, Renjiro. No one truly does. Those cells… they're not a medicine; they're an invasive, dominant life force. They subsume and rewrite. Even Lord Orochimaru," she said the name with clear distaste, "a genius of biology and forbidden jutsu, has never been able to fully control or integrate them."
A bitter, almost hysterical laugh nearly escaped Renjiro. He choked it back. 'Orochimaru. He should be in his labs right now, trying to graft wood release them onto children, creating a future Captain Yamato in some hidden dungeon.'
The thought was a dark, ironic footnote to his despair.
His shoulders slumped. "...So there's nothing we can do."
Kushina watched him deflate, and her stern expression softened with pity. She sighed, a long, weary exhalation.
"It depends, Renjiro," she said, "It depends on what exactly you want to do with the cells. Using them as a simple regenerative crutch is fraught with peril. But if your goal is something else… something more targeted…"
Renjiro's head snapped up. The resignation in his eyes was burned away by a sudden, fierce intensity.
"My goal wasn't to heal the blindness," he said, his voice low and vibrating with conviction.
He gestured to his own face, his earlier destroyed blind eyes, "My goal is to evolve my eyes."
Kushina's eyebrows shot up. Confusion etched itself on her features. "Evolve? What are you talking about? The Mangekyō is the final stage of the Sharingan. The pinnacle."
Renjiro knew he was treading on dangerous ground. He couldn't mention the Eternal Mangekyō by name; knowledge of it was buried in the deepest, most secret Uchiha lore, and tied directly to Madara—a name that would raise far too many questions. He had to frame it as intuition, as a personal, instinctual drive.
"It's a feeling," he lied, weaving truth and deception seamlessly. "A… pull. An instinct deep in the chakra of these eyes. The Mangekyō is a doorway, Kushina, not a destination. I know it. The blindness, the degradation… they're not flaws. They're limitations. And the evolution… the next stage… it removes them. It stabilises the power permanently." He chose his words with extreme care, hinting at the truth without exposing its source.
Kushina stared at him, her initial confusion transforming into dawning, staggering comprehension. A form of Sharingan that transcended the Mangekyō. That removed its fatal cost. A power so stable, so supreme, it existed outside the cycle of self-destruction.
Her breath caught. Her eyes widened, not with shock at a biological oddity this time, but with the horror of historical revelation. The pieces clicked together in her mind with an almost audible snap. The legendary, almost mythical power of Madara Uchiha at the Valley of the End.
'This,' she thought, the realisation a cold stone in her gut, 'this must be the power Madara Uchiha held.'
=====
Bless me with your powerful Power Stones.
Your Reviews and Comments about my work are welcomed
If you can, then please support me on Patreon.
Link - www.patreon.com/SideCharacter
You Can read more chapters ahead on Patreon
Latest Chapter: 694-False Calm