.I needed to train. The urge wasn't just a desire; it was a physical itch beneath my skin, a frantic drumming against the inside of my ribcage. It was born of a terrified, absolute realization: I was weak. Pathetically, dangerously weak.
In the grand calculus of this world, the standard "Kage level"—the pinnacle for 99% of shinobi—was merely a stepping stone. To the average ninja, a Kage was a god. To me? A Kage was a victim waiting to happen. Beyond that lay the true monsters. There was the "Super Kage" tier, though my mind, poisoned by years of debates on internet forums, preferred to classify it as "Peak Kage." Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha inhabited that strata—beings so powerful they reshaped maps when they threw tantrums.
But even that wasn't the ceiling. My knowledge, a curse as much as a gift, stretched far beyond the history books of this era. I knew about the Ten-Tails Jinchūriki, a state where Madara would become dozens of times stronger than his base self. I knew of the Six Paths level, where physics became a suggestion rather than a rule.
And above them all? The celestial horror of the Ōtsutsuki clan. Alien parasites that ate worlds. And at the very apex, the concept that kept me awake at night: Shibai Ōtsutsuki. A being who had ascended past biology into literal godhood, abandoning his physical form to exist in a higher dimension. He was universal. He was absolute.
And here I was, lying on a cold steel table, struggling to contend with mere mortals, worrying about a snake man who just wanted immortality.
"Rest," Orochimaru had hissed when I demanded training. "Your body is a vessel, Sasuke-kun. It must adapt to the abrupt evolution of the three-tomoe Sharingan and the corrosive influence of the Heaven Seal. Do not break the cup before you pour the wine."
So, I rested. I did nothing. I lay in this sterile room and practiced chakra control exercises until my mind went numb, stifling the urge to scream until my throat felt raw.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
The scream remained internal, echoing in the hollows of my skull. Externally, I remained the stoic Uchiha avenger, staring blankly at the ceiling tiles while Yakushi Kabuto conducted his daily examination.
The air in the room smelled of antiseptic and stale dampness, a signature scent of the Sound Village's underground network. Kabuto stood over me, his silver hair catching the harsh light of the fluorescent bulbs. His hands prodded my abdomen, cold and clinical. He wasn't gentle. He treated my body not like a person, but like a piece of high-end hardware he was debugging.
He adjusted a series of instruments on the metal tray beside him. Clink. Clatter. There were over ten distinct tools glinting there—scalpels, chakra induction needles, measuring tapes.
"It's weird," Kabuto muttered, breaking the heavy silence. He placed the bell of a stethoscope over my heart, the metal icy against my skin.
"What is?" I asked, turning my head slightly. My voice sounded deeper than I expected—puberty and the Curse Mark were working in tandem.
"You are growing too quickly." He didn't look at my face. He moved the stethoscope lower, checking the pulse near my femoral artery, his hand brushing dangerously close to my inner thigh.
A jolt of modern paranoia shot through me, a reflex from a life lived on the internet. Is the 'Pedomaru' meme real? Is this some twisted initiation?
I violently suppressed the thought. Orochimaru desired the Sharingan, the lineage, the power. He wanted to wear me like a suit, not sleep with me. This was about the vessel. It had to be. But looking at Kabuto—his inscrutable expression, the way his glasses reflected the light so you couldn't see his eyes—it was hard not to feel violated.
"What do you mean, too quickly?" I kept my voice flat, feigning ignorance. I needed to play the role of the confused, power-hungry teenager, not the transmigrator who knew exactly what was happening to his cellular structure.
"Your strength parameters shouldn't have spiked this aggressively." Kabuto straightened up, adjusting his glasses with a single finger. He picked up a clipboard, his pen scratching loudly against the paper. "I estimate you are nearly sixteen times stronger than you were during the Chūnin Exams. Your muscle density, your chakra capacity... the data doesn't make sense for a mere few weeks of rest."
Only sixteen? I thought, analyzing the feeling of power thrumming in my veins. Give it a week of this passive growth, and I'll hit twenty. The Curse Mark is pumping natural energy into me like a steroid drip.
"Maybe it's the Curse Mark," I suggested, looking away, forcing a look of brooding indifference.
"The Curse Mark enhances, yes, but not to this extent. It usually breaks the body down before rebuilding it." Kabuto tapped his pen against his chin, staring at me with a mixture of scientific curiosity and thinly veiled jealousy. "Hmmm. It must be the maturation of the three-tomoe Sharingan. The synchronization between the eyes and the body... it forces an evolution."
He paused, sighing as he looked down at me. "The Uchiha bloodline is truly... something."
Light flared against his circular lenses, turning them opaque white. For a split second, I swore I saw it—a flash of pure, unadulterated madness. It wasn't just scientific interest; it was obsession. It was the look of a man who had dedicated his life to a master, only to see a pampered brat walk in and take the center stage.
He fell silent, lost in his own calculations for an uncomfortable minute. The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.
"So," I interrupted, my patience fraying. "When does my training start?"
Kabuto finally lowered his hand from his glasses. I fought the urge to punch him. The gesture was infuriatingly smug, the sign of a man who knew he held the keys to my cage, at least for now.
"Tomorrow," Kabuto said, his tone clipped. "Wake up early. You do not want to see what Lord Orochimaru does when he is kept waiting."
He packed his equipment with efficient, fluid motions, the tools vanishing into his pouch. He walked toward the heavy iron door. Just as the latch clicked, he stopped. He didn't turn his body, but he poked his head back through the opening, peering at me from the shadows of the hallway like a serpent peering from a rock crevice.
It was a theatrical attempt at intimidation. You don't need to try so hard, Kabuto. You're always going to be the second fiddle. No matter how many sages you eat, you're just the Dragon to Orochimaru's Dungeon Master.
"Lord Orochimaru has high expectations for you as his vessel," Kabuto whispered, his face half-obscured by darkness, his voice dripping with a warning that felt more personal than professional. "Do not disappoint him. I would hate to have to study your corpse instead of a living subject."
I didn't react. I stared him down. I knew the script. Orochimaru wouldn't kill me; I was his prize. I was the golden goose he had spent years hunting. Kabuto could glare all he wanted, but Orochimaru was already my tier-one devotee.
Seeing his threat land on deaf ears, Kabuto closed the door with a decisive thud. His footsteps faded down the corridor, the echo dying away.
I flopped back onto the bed, staring at the stone ceiling. The mattress was shockingly soft, filled with high-quality down.
People always pitied Sasuke for his time with Orochimaru, imagining him in a damp dungeon eating rats, suffering in squalor. They couldn't be more wrong. This wasn't a prison; it was a five-star hotel buried underground.
My breakfast was eggs, milk, fresh fruit imported from who-knows-where, and protein supplements that tasted like chalk but worked like magic. Lunch was miso soup with clams, onigiri, and perfectly steamed rice. Dinner was a feast of meats—venison, boar, fish—rich in fats and proteins essential for a growing super-soldier.
It was better than what I ate in Konoha. It made me think of the future Sasuke in the Boruto era—always traveling, one-armed, leaving his wife and daughter in a cramped apartment with a mortgage. The Uchiha inheritance I received upon becoming a Genin was roughly 2.3 billion Ryo. Where did it all go in the original timeline?
A realization struck me like lightning, almost making me laugh aloud in the empty room. Sasuke spent it all on high-end food and travel gear. It was the only explanation. The man had standards.
I sat up, crossing my legs in a lotus position. Physical training was banned for now, but my mind was free to work. I reached for the book on my nightstand.
It was a monstrosity of a tome—leather-bound, heavy as a brick, and filled with over twenty thousand pages of cramped, handwritten notes on advanced chakra theory. The author? Orochimaru, of course. The man loved the sound of his own intellect almost as much as he loved immortality.
I opened the book, the smell of old parchment filling my nose. I had been devouring this text for a week. It was dry, dense, and utterly brilliant. It stripped away the mysticism of chakra and laid bare the mechanics.
Since reading it, my chakra control had ascended. In Konoha, my control was a flickering candle, unstable and emotional. Now? It was a roaring bonfire contained within a glass lantern.
I closed my eyes, entering a meditative state. I pulled on the chakra in my gut—that potent mix of spiritual and physical energy. I guided it to my right hand. It obeyed instantly. A sphere formed above my palm—perfectly round, humming with power, spinning at a terrifying velocity.
With a thought, I morphed it. The sphere elongated, sharpening. A sword. Then a spear. Then a bow. Finally, a miniature effigy of myself, complete with tiny, glowing eyes.
I raised my left hand and shaped the energy there into the Uchiha fan crest.
I looked at the glowing blue construct with a tenderness that surprised me. My emotional control was solidifying, my focus sharpening. The madness of the Curse Mark was still there, whispering at the edges of my mind, but I was learning to use it as fuel rather than letting it drive the car.
Perfect chakra control, I mused, dissolving the constructs. Sakura claimed to have it, but hers was merely efficiency—wasting nothing, leaking nothing. That was an accountant's version of perfection.
True perfect chakra control was artistry. It was reality manipulation. It was Sasuke at the Valley of the End, absorbing the chaotic chakra of all nine Tailed Beasts and fusing them into his Susanoo without exploding, creating a vessel of divine power. It was performing the Sage of Six Paths' Creation of All Things technique without actually possessing the Sage's body.
Currently, I possessed perhaps 10% of that potential. But it was a start. It was more than anyone else in this era had.
I stood up and walked to the small mirror in the corner of the room. My eyes were black, but I willed the chakra into them. The world turned red. Three tomoe spun lazily in my irises.
Itachi. Danzo. Konoha.
The names were like ash in my mouth.
The chakra flared at my back, rising like phantom wings, reacting to my emotions. A grin stretched across my face—wide, feral, and tinged with a necessary madness. I let the intent leak out, filling the room with a suffocating pressure.
Just wait. When I am done with you, I will conquer this world. I will be the emperor who finally ends the cycle of suffering. The world waits for its destined ruler, and I am done waiting.
"There is something I need to ask you about, Lord Orochimaru."
Kabuto's voice slithered into the quiet of the inner laboratory, cutting through the low hum of machinery and the antiseptic sting of formaldehyde. The room was vast, filled with rows of glass cylinders containing failed experiments, glowing with an eerie green luminescence.
Orochimaru did not look up. He was hunched over a dissection table, his long, pale fingers stained with dark fluids as he meticulously peeled back a layer of dermis from a fresh cadaver. His movements were almost affectionate, like a lover caressing a cheek.
A long silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the rhythmic drip, drip, drip of a viscous purple liquid falling from a distillation coil into a beaker.
"There is something I need to ask you about, Lord Orochimaru," Kabuto repeated, louder this time, shifting his weight.
"Yes, Kabuto, I heard you the first time." Orochimaru's head barely tilted, a rasp of impatience in his voice that sounded like dry leaves skittering on pavement. "Do you truly believe my hearing fails with age?"
He paused, a thin, serpentine smile stretching his lips as he addressed the glistening organs before him. "Speak your mind, or return to whatever minor irritation you have conjured this time. I am on the verge of isolating the enzyme responsible for the Kaguya clan's bone density."
Kabuto stepped into the circle of light cast by the overhead surgical lamp, his glasses flashing opaque white, hiding his eyes. "It is about the Uchiha boy."
Orochimaru's hand froze mid-incision. The scalpel hovered millimeters above a beating heart.
"His development… it exceeds all previous parameters," Kabuto continued, his voice stripped of its usual sycophantic lilt, replaced by cold, hard data. "The Curse Mark, the Sharingan's evolution—his body adapts with unnerving speed. I have never witnessed such accelerated growth, not even in your previous vessels. It's... unnatural. Even for us."
Orochimaru finally turned. He slowly wiped the blood from his hands with a white cloth, staining it crimson. His golden, slit-pupiled eyes fixed on Kabuto, burning with a predatory delight that made the air in the room drop a few degrees.
"Fascinating, isn't it?" A low chuckle, like stones grinding together deep underground, escaped his throat. He walked toward Kabuto, towering over his subordinate. "The unpredictability of genius. The Uchiha are a clan of emotional volatility, Kabuto. Their power is tied to their instability."
Orochimaru leaned in close, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. "Tell me, Kabuto… what precisely disturbs you about such a promising specimen? Are you worried for my safety? Or are you worried that your utility is being outpaced by a child?"
Kabuto swallowed hard, sweat beading on his forehead. "I merely suggest caution, my Lord. He is... different."
"Good," Orochimaru hissed, turning back to his work. "I require different. Uniformity is for the grave."