Hokuto didn't reincarnate with a bloodline… but fate still handed him something that could rewrite the ninja world.
Konoha.
Sunset spilled through the canopy, turning the leaves into molten gold.
"Failed again…?"
Beneath a tree, a small boy stared at the faint golden glow flickering at his fingertips. The light was real—but thin, stubborn, and frustratingly hard to control.
His name was Hokuto.
And he wasn't supposed to be here.
By the usual transmigrator lottery—one moment alive, the next moment somewhere else—he'd landed in the world of Naruto.
When he'd first realized it, he'd done what every idiot with a cheat did in their head:
I'll step on Kamui Obito. I'll punch Six Paths Madara into the dirt.
Reality had been much less romantic.
Yes, he had a "cheat."
No, it didn't make him a monster from day one.
As an infant, he could barely sense the world. If it hadn't been for the voices around him, he might've thought he'd reincarnated as a lump of meat that could hear but not live.
And the babies were weak. Painfully weak.
Even with an adult mind, he couldn't control his body. His vision was blurry. His stamina was a joke. Most days he could stay awake only in short bursts before the body forced him back into darkness.
He drifted through those early years half-asleep, half-aware.
It wasn't until he turned one that his hands finally started obeying him—and that was when the fear truly sank in.
This was the shinobi world.
A world where people were born with red eyes and white eyes like they were legendary artifacts handed down by gods.
And Hokuto?
He had none of them.
No Sharingan. No Byakugan. No bloodline. No clan secrets.
A civilian shinobi with nothing special usually had two endings:
Best case? You spend your life staring at geniuses' backs… and die anonymously on some random mission.
Worst case? You never even become a shinobi. You live as an ordinary villager, powerless, waiting for some "Child of Prophecy" to reshape the world while you hold your breath and pray you're not crushed in the process.
Even so, Hokuto didn't collapse into despair.
Because civilians had produced monsters too.
Minato Namikaze.
Jiraiya.
Orochimaru.
All common-born—or close enough to it—and all of them had carved their names into history with sheer talent and will.
And then there was Might Guy, the man who nearly kicked his way into the finale.
Granted, Guy technically wasn't a clan heir, but he had the Eight Gates, a hereditary forbidden technique that made "ordinary" feel like a joke. If anything, Guy was the definition of a low-born elite.
Hokuto's family had nothing like that.
No secret art. No inherited technique. Nothing that could brute-force him into Kage territory through sweat and stubbornness alone.
(Note: There's no official "Kage-level" ranking in Naruto canon. This story uses Kage / Super-Kage / Six Paths for clearer scaling.)
So yes—he worried.
And then, on his third birthday, all of that worry cracked apart.
A streak of golden light bloomed at his fingertips.
…
That night, Hokuto entered a misty space in his sleep.
Fog rolled endlessly in every direction. The world felt hollow—like a dream with no floor.
In the center of it floated a lottery cylinder, shaking rhythmically as bamboo slips clattered inside. The crisp collisions echoed through the mist like bones tapping in a jar.
One by one, slips shot out, floating around him—each glowing with a different color.
Hokuto grabbed one.
The moment his fingers closed, knowledge poured into his mind like a flood.
Each slip contained an ability… but from the outside, you couldn't tell which was which.
And the first ability he drew was—
Golden Light Mantra.
From that day onward, every three years, Hokuto could return to that misty space and draw again.
What he'd get next?
Pure luck.
…
Six years old now, Hokuto sat under the same tree and watched that stubborn glow flicker at his fingertips.
"Tomorrow's enrollment day," he muttered. "I wonder what the future Fourth Hokage was like when he was still a kid."
Since gaining the Golden Light Mantra, he had cultivated without pause.
That same year, he drew his second slip.
Blue Silver Emperor Soul Bone.
A ridiculous name for a ridiculous thing—an overflowing core of regenerative life energy that constantly nourished his body. It strengthened him even while he slept. Even while he breathed.
It even granted flight… though he didn't dare test that too openly in Konoha.
Because for now, the soul bone's effects were mostly passive.
So Hokuto poured his real effort into the Golden Light Mantra.
But no matter how hard he trained, the golden radiance he refined could only wrap his body like a thin layer of armor.
He couldn't shape it into constructs. Couldn't form it into weapons. Couldn't do anything flashy.
It was there.
And it wasn't enough.
The Golden Light Mantra was dual cultivation—life and vitality.
But Hokuto had a problem.
His "vitality" cultivation—the spirit, the self, the perception—grew too fast.
His "life" cultivation—the body's true vitality—lagged behind.
It was the mismatch of a transmigrator: old memories and life experience trapped in a child's body.
Even with the soul bone reinforcing him, he couldn't balance the two cleanly.
Vitality was tied to will and spirit.
Life was tied to flesh and blood.
He hadn't trained the mind systematically. He was guessing, stumbling, learning through trial and error.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Still… when he looked at the golden light wrapping him, he couldn't help but feel a little proud.
At least it covers me.
With a sigh, Hokuto withdrew the glow, brushed dust off his pants, and headed home.
One small mercy of his transmigration was that he hadn't started out as an orphan.
No sleeping in strange houses.
No Konoha Orphanage.
No risk of being dragged into something ugly by a certain one-eyed man lurking in the shadows.
…Of course, he wasn't far from an orphan either.
His father had died on a village mission not long after Hokuto was born.
His mother had succumbed to illness when Hokuto was five.
All that remained was his grandmother.
Their income came from village subsidies and his grandmother's grilled fish stall. Hokuto's Academy tuition was waived—"hero's family," they called it.
But Konoha wasn't a charity.
Once he became an official shinobi, those subsidies would be cut.
And the money itself?
More like compensation for his father's sacrifice—pitifully small, justified by the Hokage office's endless "financial difficulties."
Hokuto didn't feel grateful.
He understood too well what kind of lunatics and zealots sat behind that building's walls.
…
The next morning, his grandmother dragged him out of bed and dressed him in the new clothes she'd prepared weeks in advance.
She tried to walk him there.
Hokuto refused.
Enrollment day meant crowds, and his grandmother was an ordinary civilian. One careless bump could turn into an injury.
So she stood at the door and watched him go.
Along the road, neighbors called out.
"Hokuto! Enrollment today, right? Have you eaten? Want some red bean soup?"
"I already ate. Thanks, Auntie."
"Big Brother! When you come back, tell us what the Ninja Academy is like!"
"Didn't your brother tell you enough already?"
"It's different!"
Hokuto chuckled. "Alright. I'll tell you when I'm back."
He'd always been the obedient one. The sensible one. The kid who knew fun games and never started fights.
In the neighborhood, that earned him a nickname:
Big Brother.
Soon, he reached the Ninja Academy.
After showing his documents, he found his assigned classroom and took a random seat.
He watched the other kids file in and couldn't help thinking the same thing he always did about shinobi fashion:
These hairstyles are crimes.
He felt almost grateful his own hair was black and normal.
Then—
BANG!
A scar-faced man slammed his palm onto the podium.
"Quiet!"
The classroom snapped into silence.
Hokuto lifted his eyes.
And for the first time, he thought—
So this is where it starts.
The scar-faced teacher's gaze swept the room like a knife, and Hokuto felt the weight of it settle right on him.
The Academy wasn't a playground.
It was the first gate into the meat grinder.
And Hokuto had just stepped through.
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