Chapter 3: What a Wonderful World
This sensation was not unfamiliar to Yoru.
Before sudden death occurs, the body gives warnings.
If one stays up too late, sometimes sleep becomes impossible—instead, excitement intensifies, accompanied by dry mouth and rising body temperature.
More terrifying is the rapid heartbeat, that panicked, chest-tightening feeling that breeds the fear that if one falls asleep, they might never wake up again.
Yoru had experienced this many times in his previous life, but being young, he never took it seriously.
Now, as this feeling surged through him again, Yoru couldn't help but feel a wave of fear.
Without a moment's hesitation, Yoru got up to drink water, but he didn't gulp it down recklessly. Instead, he took small, careful sips.
Once the dryness in his mouth eased slightly, Yoru carried the water pot back to his room, lay down on the bed again, and tried to clear his mind to normalize his heartbeat.
Yet no matter what he did, Yoru's heart rate showed no sign of slowing.
In the silence of the night, his room felt as if someone were beating a drum.
Lifting his clothes, he could see his chest throbbing, as though his heart were trying to burst out of his body.
His heightened mental state, along with the occasional spikes in body temperature and dry mouth, made it impossible for Yoru to sleep. All he could do was repeatedly boil water and drink it.
He even took several cold showers, but nothing alleviated the symptoms.
This condition persisted until noon the next day, showing no signs of abating.
Not counting yesterday's half-hour nap, Yoru had already gone a full thirty hours without sleep.
Yet, he felt no discomfort at all.
In his previous life, staying awake this long would have left his nerves strained, his eyes bloodshot, or even congested, even if he felt mentally alert.
But in this life, Yoru experienced none of those latter symptoms.
In fact, once he calmed down, he realized his energy was incredibly abundant, as if he were a perpetual motion machine.
Clearly, this was the effect of his heart—the blood-pumping organ—beating violently.
This condition lasted for seven full days.
Yoru suffered from insomnia for seven days, nearly two hundred hours without closing his eyes.
During those seven days, he didn't eat a single thing, only drinking large amounts of water.
It wasn't that he didn't want to eat—he simply couldn't.
Miraculously, despite not eating for seven days, his body showed no changes and remained full of energy.
Yoru's emotions gradually shifted from initial fear to growing excitement.
If this were sudden death, he would have long been dead after seven days without sleep.
But since he hadn't died, it meant this wasn't sudden death. Instead, his body was undergoing some unknown transformation.
Perhaps… his cheat was about to arrive!
Was it an unknown Kekkei Genkai of the Gojo clan, awakening in his generation?
Or was it a special ability that had crossed over with him from his previous life, perhaps even the main reason for his transmigration?
The sudden death-like sensation lasted until noon on August 28th, Leaf Year 30, before slowly fading away.
"Finally, it's over…"
As his heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm, the low-grade fever-like body temperature and dry mouth vanished. Before Yoru could finish his sigh of relief or check for any changes in his body, his vision suddenly went black, and he collapsed onto the bed, falling into a deep sleep.
...
He had no idea how long he slept, only that the gnawing hunger from stomach acid churning eventually pulled him out of his deep slumber.
"So tired…"
Yoru opened his eyes but had no desire to get up at all.
It had been a long time since he last felt the exhaustion of insufficient sleep.
If not for the ceiling and surroundings reminding him, Yoru would have thought the past six years were merely a long dream.
Turning sideways, he pulled open the bedside drawer and retrieved a box containing two rows of six pills—the compressed biscuits and chakra potions of the Naruto world: Food Pills.
One pill wasn't enough. Yoru ate three Food Pills in total, and only then did his drained body regain some strength.
Getting out of bed, he stood before a full-length mirror, removed his clothes, and turned to examine his reflection. After confirming there were no visible changes, he immediately sat cross-legged and began refining Chakra to check for any internal alterations.
Thump—
A sound like a pounding drum exploded in Yoru's ears, mind, and the depths of his soul.
In that moment, his vision seemed to turn inward, arriving at the chamber where the human heart resides.
Inside that "chamber," a black heart was pulsating rhythmically.
The image vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Yoru's eyes snapped open, his face filled with astonishment.
If he hadn't misseen, that heart seemed to be… black?
"Could that be my heart?!" Yoru wondered silently.
To verify his suspicion, he closed his eyes again and resumed refining Chakra.
However, the inward vision from earlier never reappeared.
Instead, as his physical and mental energies were about to merge, a peculiar energy suddenly surged from his cells, forcefully joining the fusion of the two energies.
Then, a strand of black Chakra, formed from the fusion of three energies, appeared in Yoru's abdomen.
"Black Chakra… Could this be my cheat?"
Yoru opened his eyes once more and formed hand seals, attempting to channel that strand of black Chakra.
The black Chakra seemed no different from ordinary Chakra. Guided by the hand seals, it flowed through his meridians to his right palm.
Perhaps due to insufficient quantity or his Chakra control not yet meeting the standard, the strand of black Chakra failed to manifest externally.
Moreover, within just a few seconds, this strand of black Chakra dissipated inside Yoru's body.
In such a short time, he couldn't identify any unique properties of the black Chakra.
Thus, Yoru closed his eyes again and continued refining Chakra.
The peculiar energy surged forth once more, blending with his physical and mental energies to form strands of black Chakra.
When Yoru could no longer extract physical and mental energy from his cells, this special energy headed straight for the main reservoir, merging into the blue vortex.
Like ink spreading across white paper, portions of the Chakra gradually turned from blue to black.
By the time Yoru could no longer draw the special energy from his cells, one-third of the Chakra in his body had turned black.
"Let's see what effects you really have!"
Yoru stood up, his hands forming seals with a mix of anticipation and apprehension as he channeled the black Chakra within him and began to perform a jutsu.
Since refining his first strand of Chakra at age three, Yoru had now initially mastered the Three Body Technique taught at the ninja academy and had begun training in C-rank Five Elements ninjutsu during this vacation.
Naturally, the Five Elements Release Techniques couldn't be practiced at home, so Yoru attempted to use the black Chakra to perform the Three Body Technique.
The result was... complete silence!
No phantom clones could be created, and there was no transformation in his physical form...
Rather than being alarmed by this discovery, Yoru felt delighted.
The inability to perform jutsus indicated that this black Chakra was different from ordinary Chakra. The fact that he hadn't noticed anything unusual before was simply because its 'special effect' was deeply concealed.
And mystery... meant power!
Yoru swallowed another Food Pill, then slid open the glass door to the balcony. Gazing at the dimly lit dawn sky, he formed hand seals, ready to transform into a blur and leap away.
Suddenly, his movements paused slightly as he recalled his earlier success in channeling the black Chakra to his palms. He once again gathered the black Chakra in his feet, preparing to execute the Leaf Village's Teleportation Jutsu—a D-rank skill even taught at the ninja academy.
Just like with the Three Body Technique, Yoru didn't transform into a blur and disappear. Instead, he felt a sensation of stepping into empty space beneath his feet.
Looking down, his pupils abruptly contracted.
His feet appeared to be sinking into swampy ground, with his lower calves submerged within the balcony itself.
Yet there was no feeling of compression or envelopment around his feet, nor was his body continuing to sink. It was as if his feet weren't sinking into the balcony, but rather merging with it.
Slowly, Yoru lifted his leg, pulling his right foot out from within the balcony.
Staring at the balcony floor that showed no trace of indentation, Yoru could no longer control his expression. He lowered his head, covering his face with both hands, shoulders trembling as he emitted muffled sounds that could either be sobs or suppressed laughter.
After a long while, he finally lowered his hands and looked up at the Leaf Village, bathed in the morning glow and beautiful as a painted scroll. It was as if he were seeing this place he'd lived in for six years for the first time. His face still wore a wide grin as he spread his arms open and laughed while sighing: "What a beautiful village, what a... wonderful world this is!"