UK:GSW Chapter 323 – And That's How I Gave Up First Blood
Who am I? Where am I? What am I even supposed to be doing?
At this very moment, a dazed Kakashi had fallen into the "three great philosophical questions."
A brand-new world, a brand-new environment, and—before he even had time to think—a colossal war demanding he go be cannon fodder.
Kakashi felt as if everything was an illusion, and his first suspicion was naturally that he'd fallen into a Genjutsu.
This was practically the standard ninja answer. Whether it had been Senju Tobirama back then, or Hatake Sakumo later, anyone suddenly thrown into a world like this immediately assumed they were caught in an illusion.
Of course, because of the unbelievably real sensations that followed, they had all ended up believing that this "other world" was real.
The truth was, the power of the Psychic Network System could, in a sense, be called an Infinite Tsukuyomi Plus Edition. The so-called Infinite Tsukuyomi was just the mini version.
Kakashi was no exception. After exhausting every trick he knew, he found he couldn't dispel the Genjutsu. Every sensation was vividly real. And as one who had personally suffered through Uchiha Itachi's Tsukuyomi, he could be certain this was a completely different experience.
"So… I really am another Kakashi from a completely different world? And there are planets, universes, an Empire, a God-Emperor, Chaos…?"
"What kind of joke is this? These are real? A world with things like that? With such terrifying existences?"
Kakashi's head buzzed. A massive flood of memories belonging to this body surged into his mind, throwing him into a total mental fog—as if he'd been hit with a "confusion debuff."
After all, he'd just been a native of the Shinobi World. Suddenly finding himself in the middle of an Imperial interstellar war was a complete destruction of his worldview.
It was like a man from a medieval society—fed up with the cruelty of the nobility—rallying his people to revolt… only to reach the castle gates and watch the castle stand up, transform into a hundred-meter-tall Titan, and crush him without mercy. The sheer shock and despair would shatter his perception of reality.
That was Kakashi now. Everything was so fantastical, so unreal.
Compared to what he was seeing now, all his past experiences seemed trivial. The so-called Great Ninja Wars—compared to the interstellar fleet battles he'd just seen in his inherited memories—were nothing more than village skirmishes.
Even in the memories of this body, just one such cosmic battle had seen billions of lives vanish into the cold void of space.
Here on this planet called Cadia, the Imperial Guard alone numbered over ten billion—and reinforcements were still arriving without end.
And that was just what Kakashi knew as an ordinary soldier; most of the larger picture was beyond his clearance. He only knew they'd been ordered to hold Cadia at all costs, to prevent the forces of Chaos from taking this forward outpost of the Imperium.
After sorting through his new memories, Kakashi's only coherent thought was: I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am, but I know I need to start killing.
Well… that was the abstract version. The reality was: he knew he couldn't run. Like a certain freedom-loving boy named Eren, now was the time to tatakae—because if he didn't, he wouldn't survive.
Following the instincts of this body, Kakashi tested the rifle in his hands. The thunderous crack and heavy recoil of the semi-auto, the pungent reek of gunpowder mixing with all the other foul smells of the battlefield—it all hit him like a sudden drag of a cigarette, snapping his mind into grim clarity.
It was too real.
Yes—far too real.
Real enough to fill Kakashi with a deep fear, and make him wonder how he had ended up with his soul inhabiting an Imperial Guardsman named Kakashi.
What had happened in between?
He had no idea, no frame of reference. As a native of the Shinobi World, he hadn't been saturated in Earth's web novels. He had no concept of "transmigration," much less "soul transfer."
He was lost. Uneasy. And the experience and vision of Konoha's Number One Technician felt pitifully inadequate—because in terms of scope, the dead Imperial Kakashi he'd replaced had far more worldly knowledge than he did.
It was like a Sengoku-era island peasant suddenly dropped onto the Russo-Ukrainian battlefield, staring at a swarm of incoming drones—only magnified several times over.
Above him, the sky was an ominous dark red streaked with sulfur-orange from the war and the corruption of Chaos. Shells, missiles, and aircraft crisscrossed overhead. The frontlines stretched to the horizon. Towering over a hundred meters tall, a terrifying war machine crowned with a massive cathedral advanced under a glowing energy shield, surrounded and guarded by smaller—but still enormous—mechs. Leman Russ battle tanks rolled forward in droves, their guns thundering without pause. Explosions and bombardments raged both in sight and beyond it.
In this chaos, Kakashi couldn't even see the enemy—only the constant rain of return fire from the other side. The whole visible zone ahead was shrouded in smoke and dust, like a sandstorm had swallowed the battlefield. Through the haze, he could make out only gigantic, indistinct shapes.
And his instincts screamed at him—that deep, primal animal terror—that something unspeakably horrific lurked in that shrouded zone.
He knew it was the power of Chaos. The enemy commander was the "Despoiler," Abaddon the Warmaster of Chaos, leading an army of damnation.
Corrupted humans, daemons, traitor Guardsmen, and the superhuman warriors called the Chaos Astartes.
The Astartes—also called Space Marines, the Emperor's Angels of Death—were the finest of humanity, remade by nineteen genetic augmentations into warriors beyond mortal limits. They possessed inhuman speed, endurance, strength, and an iron will, able to annihilate entire mortal armies single-handedly. They were the Imperium's most trusted champions.
But even they could fall to Chaos. And when they did, they became the nightmare of every mortal army—because only loyalist Astartes could truly face them.
And somewhere out there, in this battle stretching across half the planet, countless of the Emperor's Angels were locked in combat with their blasphemous, corrupted kin. A fight Kakashi, as a mere mortal, could never hope to join.
Yes—mortal.
For a man who, in the Shinobi World, was a Konoha elite jōnin and top strategist, this was absurd. In the next Great Ninja War, he would have been a general, leading the Leaf's armies. And in that world, "mortals" were the civilians.
But here… even with his chakra and jutsu, he was barely tougher than an average Guardsman. Compared to the genetically-engineered Astartes in their power armor, he was a paper target—one bolt round from a Chaos Marine would erase him.
So…
"…Just stay alive. On a battlefield like this, all I can do is survive."
Muttering under his breath, Kakashi adopted the "coward's" combat style—firing blind over the trench, then staying hunkered down, prioritizing survival above all.
Around him, curses and shouts rang out. Occasionally, some unlucky soul's head—or upper torso—would simply vanish in a spray of gore, victims of enemy fire. Many were just strays; in an Imperial-scale battle, even "outdated" solid rounds had ridiculous power. For a human, helmets and flak armor might as well be paper—grazes meant crippling injury, hits meant instant death.
Kakashi saw the dark-skinned, Cloud-style uncle who had called him "rookie" earlier simply lose everything above the chest. The wound's edges were seared; the missing flesh vaporized, and the cooked meat smell hit Kakashi's nostrils.
Even for a veteran of the Ninja Wars, the sight and smell churned his stomach. What made his scalp crawl even more was that the soldiers around him barely reacted. Numb-faced, they simply held their lines—cannon fodder with discipline.
These people… aren't they afraid?
He soon learned why.
A man's voice rose above the din, impassioned, rallying the troops. The memories in Kakashi's head identified him as a "Commissar"—a political officer whose job was to inspire with faith and honor. His most common cries: "For the Emperor!" and "By the God-Emperor's will!"
Here, the Emperor and the God-Emperor were one and the same—the Imperium's supreme ruler, the eternal guardian on the Golden Throne, worshiped as the one true god by the Imperial Creed.
In His light, the Imperium had stood in the cold galaxy for millennia, holding fast for over ten thousand years. Life was the Emperor's coin, and as soldiers of the Imperium, they were to offer eternal loyalty—spending their lives to crush His foes.
That was the mindset Kakashi now found himself thinking in—ideals inherited from the body's former owner, a devout believer eager for an honorable death and to have his soul join the Golden Throne.
Of course, the man had been too cowardly for that. He'd died of sheer fright.
Kakashi figured this unlucky namesake was never making it to the Golden Throne.
Just as he was thinking that, a shrill scream cut through the air—followed by excited, evil laughter.
Several massive figures slammed down into the trench like artillery shells. They wore power armor defaced with blasphemous Chaos runes, radiating a sinister purple aura. Each stood over 2.5 meters tall.
Chaos Astartes. Traitor Marines.
The cry went up: "Chaos Astartes! The blasphemous traitors!" Gunfire and explosions roared back at them.
But weapons that shredded human flesh barely scratched them. Their armor shrugged off small arms, and the power of Chaos wrapped them like a conceptual shield, rendering conventional fire almost useless.
If anything, the barrage seemed to please them. A few even moaned in obscene delight before laughing wildly.
Then they raised their twisted weapons—guns whose muzzles resembled warped, screaming human heads. When the triggers were pulled, an earsplitting cacophony blasted forth, unleashing a devastating shockwave.
In an instant, Imperial soldiers nearby clutched their heads, blood pouring from eyes, ears, and nose. Their skulls burst under the psychic assault, their final seconds an eternity of agony.
Kakashi was one of them.
It was like his head being torn apart, every blood vessel slashed, every muscle ripped from the bone. His vision went red, his nerves screaming at amplified intensity, his body locked in total paralysis, forced to feel the pain.
It brought back memories of Uchiha Itachi's Tsukuyomi—but compared to this, Itachi had been gentle. The master of ninja illusions had only stabbed him again and again. This was utter sensory violation.
And so, in that all-consuming agony, Kakashi surrendered the first blood of his new life in this hellish world.
He'd also proven one thing—on a battlefield like this, if all you do is hide and hope to live, you'll only die in the most miserable way.
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