Hotaru, Jugo, the dungeon, even Orochimaru himself—everything from that nightmare faded like a bad dream. In a single step, I was no longer a lab rat crawling through the dark. No, now I was cannon fodder for the Hidden Leaf Village.
A promotion, some might say.
Of course, maybe that's just my paranoia talking. Maybe Konoha really did accept me. After all, the second they exposed my identity as a Magnetic Release user, I was reclassified as a "special talent." Special talents get special treatment, right?
...Right.
I don't buy it. Not for a second.
I still don't know what year it is, which is ridiculous when you think about it—no sane person walks around asking, "Excuse me, what year is this?" But given the chatter, the way everyone moves like they're one step from death, it's clear the Third Shinobi World War hasn't ended yet.
War demands cruelty. Not just from the battlefield, but from everything orbiting it. Everyone involved becomes cruel, or they die.
So here I am, temporarily stationed in a frontline camp, grouped with three strangers and a Chūnin squad leader who looks like he regrets waking up this morning. We exchanged names, tactical roles, the bare minimum... and that was that. Silence settled between us like the bars of a cell.
Familiar, in a way.
Strangers. No trust. No teamwork. Just people breathing the same air and pretending not to watch each other. I had the most contact with Saku, the youngest among us—maybe because she didn't know better than to speak.
After a short conversation with our squad leader, a vague unease began creeping in. Our team composition made no sense. Not tactically, not politically, not even statistically.
Here's what I noticed: all of us, except me, had only single names. No surnames. In the world of shinobi, that's a red flag. A rough metric, yes, but usually, names without clans mean civilians. Add in the Chūnin commander—hardly high-ranking—and what you get is not a real Konoha unit. Through Saku, I confirmed what I suspected: most of us weren't from Konoha at all. We were strays. Naturalized ninjas. Outsiders trying to pass.
This wasn't a team. It was a liability.
So no, escaping Orochimaru didn't mean safety. It just meant trading one danger for another—one that smiled at me from behind a forehead protector. I needed to tread carefully. One wrong move and I might fall into a pit I didn't even know existed.
Compared to the dungeon, my range of movement had improved. I could walk freely within the camp, though permission was needed to leave. We were being deployed soon, after all.
Within those constraints, my time was mine. I made use of it.
Hotaru's note—hidden in her bindings—turned out to be a detailed map. She'd marked one spot in red, with our old cell block as the point of origin. She must've anticipated her death. Must've known what would happen and chosen to entrust the information to someone Orochimaru would never suspect: me.
I didn't matter. I was beneath notice.
Maybe Hotaru was planted by Konoha. A spy. Her job was likely to leak intel on Orochimaru, and when she delivered something important—maybe about "A," the artificial wood-style project—she was silenced. It made sense.
What didn't make sense was why I was released so easily. If she'd reported Orochimaru's test of the Curse Seal, wouldn't they have locked me up? Dissected me?
My guess? She never got the chance. The test hadn't truly started yet. She didn't know what he was doing to me. Lucky me.
Now I had a choice. If I found whatever she hid and handed it to Konoha, I might finally earn their trust. No more side-eyes. No more isolation.
Tempting.
But no. Not now.
I wasn't going to stir up trouble unless I absolutely had to. Not in a world like this—so familiar, yet so strange. Everything about it made my skin crawl. The politics, the death games, the way history swallowed everyone whole. If I wanted to survive, I needed to stay beneath the current.
This world didn't need saving. It had its disasters, sure, but it also had its heroes. The loop would close itself.
Me? I just needed to stay alive.
If I had to name my biggest advantage in this world, it wouldn't be my kekkei genkai. It wouldn't be chakra, either. It'd be knowledge. Intel. I knew everything. The grand arcs, the betrayals, the timelines, the war crimes—names, locations, secrets that hadn't even happened yet.
But memory fades. Even now, I can feel the fog setting in. If I lose that advantage... I'm dead.
So I started repeating the things I needed to remember. Mantras of survival. Key names. Dangerous alliances. Who kills who. When. Where.
I couldn't write anything down, of course. Even if I encrypted it, a few strange markings or scribbles would raise alarms. What was I supposed to say if they found it? "Oh, this is just my daily scribble sheet of ancient war prophecies."
No thanks.
Once I had a safe place—really safe—I'd consider transcribing things. Until then, it all had to stay in my head.
Besides information, I needed something else: a way to categorize threats.
There were too many monsters in this world walking around in flak jackets. I needed a system. Something to measure how likely someone was to wipe the floor with me.
So I built one.
First, I needed a baseline. That part was easy: 26-year-old Hatake Kakashi, three-tomoe Sharingan active. Everyone knows "one Kakashi" is a solid benchmark for real combat power. A complete shinobi, versatile, clever, lethal.
Call him the One Card.
Then came the categories. The old standards—ninjutsu, taijutsu, genjutsu, strength, speed, seals, chakra control, intelligence—felt lacking. They didn't tell the whole story. So I added two more: "Burst," for how much chakra a ninja could release in an instant, and "Trump," for forbidden techniques and hidden ace-in-the-hole jutsu.
Ten stats. Ten points each. A full score of 100. If someone surpassed the norm, I'd tag them with a "+". Too broken? More pluses. Overpowered? Go nuts.
Kakashi's scores looked like this:
Ninjutsu (10)
Taijutsu (9)
Genjutsu (8)
Strength (7)
Speed (9)
Seals (10)
Control (6)
Intelligence (10)
Burst (6)
Trump (5)
Total: 80
Combat Rating: 900
That's one card. From there, I scaled up.
Take Jiraiya, for example:
Nin (10), Tai (9), Gen (6), Strength (9), Speed (9), Seals (9), Control (10), Intel (9), Burst (10+), Trump (10+).
Score: 91++
Normal Rating: 2100, Peak Potential: 6300
Then there's Hashirama Senju. The guy was a walking war crime.
Nin (10+), Tai (10+), Gen (10), Strength (10), Speed (10), Seals (10), Control (10+), Intel (10), Burst (10+++), Trump (10+++).
Score: 100++++++++
Normal: 20,000, Peak? Don't even try.
Of course, at some point, the numbers break. The scale stops meaning anything. Trying to compare Hashirama to Kakashi is like comparing a storm to a puddle. Still, it helps frame the world I live in.
For perspective, my own stats?
Don't laugh:
Everything below 3.
Okay, fine, let's be generous and round it up to a 50 overall.
That makes me a "New Five Scum of the Ninja World." What an honor.
Still, it puts things into focus. Even "one card" is terrifying from down here. Makes you realize just how far the climb really is.
And whether I make it or not, depends entirely on what I do next.