Chapter 201: The New Mood Expert, Uchiha Obito
Stelle gripped the worn wooden handle of her kitchen knife. Scaling the towering wire fence with practiced ease, she reached the top and casually hacked a sturdy branch off an overhanging tree. She descended the opposite side, her eyes sharp as she precisely handled around the hidden Explosive Tags scattered across the perimeter. Snatching up the severed branch, she extended it toward the boy trapped in the muck.
"Grab on. I'll pull you out," she instructed, her voice steady.
Obito blinked, eyeing her slight frame. "But you don't look very strong. What if I drag you in too? Maybe you should go find an adult." Instead of reaching for the lifeline, he sat there in the mud, genuinely fretting over her safety.
"It's fine. I'm much stronger than I look. Just try it."
Under her relentless urging, Obito finally dared to wrap his mud-caked fingers around the rough bark. He didn't dare grip it too hard at first. Several times, as Stelle leaned back to pull, his slick hands slipped, nearly sending him face-first into the mire. Only after thoroughly convincing himself that she stood firm like a rooted boulder did he finally clench the wood with all his might.
With a sharp, forceful heave, Stelle dragged him out of the sucking swamp and onto solid ground. The metallic tang of blood immediately hit her nose. Glancing down, she took in his sorry state: completely plastered in foul-smelling mud, his ankle scraped raw and already swelling to the size of an apple.
Well, in his current state, he definitely wasn't walking out of here on his own.
Obito scratched the back of his head, smearing even more grime into his spiky black hair. He flashed her a sheepish, goofy grin—the kind of blindingly bright, sunny smile unique to clueless young boys.
"I guess I'll have to trouble you to fetch an adult for me," he chuckled nervously. "I definitely can't climb back over that fence by myself."
Stelle mentally calculated the distance. Trekking all the way back from this remote training ground to find a competent shinobi and returning would take hours.
She glanced up at the imposing five-meter wire fence, then down at her kitchen knife. Without a word, she marched over to a nearby tree and began hacking away at a cluster of thick, sturdy vines. Returning to the boy, she hauled him onto her back and expertly lashed him securely against her shoulders with the makeshift ropes.
Only then did she begin her ascent up the sheer metal grating.
"W-Wait! You don't have to—" Obito stammered, his face flushing violently. He tried to refuse, but the prolonged exposure to the cold, damp swamp had sapped his strength. After a few weak, shivering protests, he suddenly realized they were already suspended mid-air.
He instantly froze, terrified that even the slightest twitch would send his savior plummeting to the ground.
Once safely over the fence, Stelle untied the vines and took a brief moment to catch her breath. She tossed the kitchen knife into her woven foraging basket. Carrying the basket in one hand and supporting Obito's legs with the other, she trudged through the dense, uneven forest terrain.
Hearing her ragged breathing and feeling the sweat dampening her clothes, Obito felt a deep pang of embarrassment. Unable to endure the heavy silence, he scrambled for a topic.
"Thank you... you're really strong," he mumbled over her shoulder. "I can't believe you actually carried me over that huge fence. My name is Uchiha Obito. What about you? What's your name?"
"A-Mu," she replied simply.
"Which 'Mu' is it?"
"The 'Mu' for tree."
"Oh, I get it! The 'Mu' in Konoha. That's a really cool name."
Stelle mentally raised an eyebrow. He certainly knew how to talk. Finding a way to flatter a name as plain as dirt was an impressive skill.
[Host, at your six o'clock position ahead, how about you take a little tumble?]
[Host, trust me on this! Since your tragic persona is already perfectly established, let's farm some mood value while we're at it. It's just a side gig! The mood value from the second boss of Shippuden is incredibly high quality. Just do me a solid and take a fall. Please?]
The System's usually robotic voice had pitched up into a sickeningly sweet, pleading whine.
Stelle's eye twitched. [You aren't going to suddenly issue some mandatory penalty mission later, are you?]
[Host, what are you thinking? I would never! Just hurry up and fall!]
Honestly, asking a frail-looking young girl to carry a boy her own size, scale a massive fence, and hike through a rugged forest was already pushing the limits of believability.
As they passed the gnarled roots of an ancient oak, Stelle deliberately let her foot drag. Her toe caught sharply against a jagged rock. She immediately let her center of gravity collapse, sending them both tumbling down the steep, grassy slope ahead.
Mid-roll, she quickly curled her body inward, wrapping her arms tightly around Obito to shield him from the impact—especially his head. The kid already looked gullible enough; if he suffered brain damage now, he'd be completely hopeless.
After a chaotic flurry of crushing leaves and snapping twigs, they finally skidded to a halt at the bottom of the ravine.
"Are you oka— Wah!"
Obito pushed himself up into a sitting position, the words dying in his throat as his gaze locked onto Stelle's face.
During the violent tumble, a stray branch had snagged the silk scarf covering her lower face, tearing it away. Now, completely exposed in the dim, damp light of the dense forest, were the horrific remnants of severe fire burns.
The skin was a mangled mess of twisted, hypertrophic scars, crawling across her jaw and cheek like grotesque centipedes. In the shadowy woods, the disfigurement looked exceptionally terrifying.
Confronted with such a gruesome sight without warning, Obito gasped. His pupils shrank to pinpricks. Driven by the pure, instinctual reflex of a child encountering a monster in the dark, his body violently recoiled.
Throwing himself backward too quickly, his head slammed into the solid trunk of a tree with a loud, hollow thud. He hissed, clutching his skull as pain flared.
[Ding! Mood value from Uchiha Obito +50,000.]
Stelle remained frozen on the ground. In the System's twisted logic, the "beautiful, strong, and miserable" trope wasn't just about being broke or having a tragic backstory that made people cry. It was about raw, visceral shock value.
But... this mood value was seriously tempting. Maybe she could put her dignity aside for just a little bit.
What good was dignity anyway? Could she spend it? Was it worth more than cold, hard mood points?
The internal struggle lasted less than a second.
Stelle's hands flew up, desperately covering the ruined lower half of her face—the face that had just terrified a child to tears. She whipped her head around, her eyes wide and frantic, playing the role of a panicked victim searching for her lost silk scarf.
Spotting the fabric resting on a patch of weeds a few yards away, she scrambled toward it. But, feigning overwhelming distress, her legs tangled together, and she face-planted hard into the dirt.
[Ding! Mood value from Uchiha Obito +50,000.]
Just as her trembling fingers brushed the edge of the silk, a blur of orange and blue crashed into her field of vision. Obito, still clutching his throbbing head and groaning, had literally rolled across the ground toward her.
Moving with a desperate, clumsy speed, he snatched the silk scarf first.
"I'm sorry! I... I didn't mean to shrink away!"
He grabbed her arm, hauling her up from the dirt. Obito clutched the scarf tightly, his mud-streaked face now burning a brilliant, shameful red. Behind his orange goggles, his dark eyes darted everywhere, absolutely terrified of meeting her gaze, yet brimming with intense guilt.
He felt like the worst scum on earth. If he hadn't met A-Mu, if she hadn't risked her neck to pull him from the swamp, he would still be sitting out there like an idiot, waiting for some Jonin instructor to bail him out.
And how did he repay his savior? By treating her like a monster just because of some scars.
He was such a massive idiot.
Dropping to his knees in the dirt, he carefully held the silk scarf out to her. His voice wavered, thick with a choked-up blend of self-loathing and genuine worry.
"I... how about I help you tie it back on?"
He was such a pure, kindhearted boy. The raw earnestness in his cracking voice made it almost impossible to refuse.
Stelle deliberately turned her head away, her shoulders trembling slightly. "But... it's ugly... it will just scare you again."
"No, it's not! A person's beauty isn't measured by things like that!" Obito yelled, his voice echoing through the trees.
He was young. He didn't possess the eloquent vocabulary needed to comfort a scarred girl. He scratched his messy hair, his face twisting in anxious frustration, before finally blurting out, "I... anyway, in my opinion, it's not ugly at all!"
His face flushed an even deeper crimson as he racked his brain for better words.
[Ding! Mood value from Uchiha Obito +50,000.]
[Ding! Mood value from Uchiha Obito +50,000.]
Stelle's eyes practically bulged out of her skull.
Good heavens, was playing the victim really this profitable? What kind of broken logic was this?
In less than five minutes, she had raked in 200,000 mood points. If this were the Sengoku Period, she'd be a warlord by now with this kind of capital.
Suppressing her inner glee, she turned back around and crouched in front of him. She sat perfectly still as Obito clumsily wrapped the silk around her head, his fingers trembling as he carefully secured a firm knot at the back of her neck.
During the process, his knuckle inadvertently brushed against the raised edge of a scar. He jerked his hand back as if burned, his expression twisting in phantom agony, looking as distressed as if the horrific injury were carved into his own flesh.
"A-Mu... your injury... it must have been so painful," he whispered.
"It hurt a lot at first, but it's fine now," she replied softly.
It was the truth, mostly. After the Konoha Enforcement Team had raided the bandit den and rescued the captives, a shinobi with basic Medical Ninjutsu had given them emergency treatment. After all these days, the wounds had fully scabbed over. Aside from the grotesque appearance, there was no lingering physical damage.
Stelle picked up her wild vegetable basket, hoisted Obito back onto her shoulders, and resumed the long trek toward the village.
Thanks to the little emotional rollercoaster, a heavy silence settled over them.
Obito was clearly lost in deep self-reflection. Even though he didn't utter a single word, the System interface kept pinging with several thousand mood points trickling in every few minutes.
Inside her mind, the System was practically throwing a parade, dancing a ridiculous seaweed jig to claim credit for the brilliant strategy. Stelle couldn't help but feel utterly speechless.
But the results were obvious. The constant influx of points was a siren song, endlessly enticing her to permanently bury her integrity and fully embrace the path of the tragic, manipulative victim.
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