"Yeah." Fujimoto Tōma nodded. "Itachi isn't a threat to me anymore. But for you, he's still a hard wall."
He didn't say the rest out loud.
If Itachi and Sasuke really fought, Itachi would hold back. Almost certainly.
But that wasn't what Sasuke wanted.
What Sasuke wanted was a clean, frontal duel. No mercy. No excuses. To kill Itachi with his own hands.
And beyond Itachi… there were still Konoha's upper ranks.
Tōma's thoughts drifted back to yesterday.
"By the way," he said casually, "you didn't seem to have any issues with Tsunade-sama when she showed up. That surprised me."
He'd expected Sasuke to be far more hostile toward Konoha's leadership.
Sasuke shook his head. "She wasn't in the village back then. And in recent years, she hasn't targeted me. She even handed over some old reports voluntarily."
As someone who'd worked in ANBU for years, Sasuke had seen enough to judge Tsunade fairly.
Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if she'd been Hokage back then.
But the thought never went far.
The Uchiha clan had been planning a rebellion. No Hokage could have ignored that.
The more Sasuke understood, the clearer the dead end became.
Still, there was one thing he would never forgive.
If Itachi could spare him, then why was it impossible to spare others? Those loyal to the village. Those who posed no threat. Infants still wrapped in blankets.
Sasuke had survived because he was the clan head's son. Because of his potential. Because the higher-ups found him useful.
So why did everyone else have to die?
If Itachi truly intended total eradication, why not kill him too?
As long as Sasuke lived, he had no choice. Revenge wasn't an option. It was an obligation.
Tōma listened without interrupting and nodded slowly. Tsunade's approach made sense. Sasuke would uncover the truth eventually. Feeding him pieces now was better than letting everything explode at once later.
Whether emotional buffering worked on an Uchiha was another question entirely.
"Don't go to ANBU today," Tōma said suddenly. "I need you."
"Okay." Sasuke agreed without asking why.
"You don't need to inform Jūgo or Karin?"
"They're nearby. If I don't show up, they'll assume there's no assignment."
Tōma nodded. "Good. This is about the curse mark Orochimaru left on you."
Sasuke touched his neck, almost surprised it was still there. "That thing?"
It hadn't mattered much lately. It was useful mainly to absorb excess power from Jūgo, and Jūgo's episodes were getting rarer.
Part of that was Tōma's fault. The sealing array he'd placed back then had been… thorough. Too thorough. The curse mark hadn't even twitched since.
They entered a training room.
Sasuke removed his shirt and sat with his back turned, exposing the mark on his neck.
Tōma placed his fingers against it. Chakra flowed. Layer by layer, he peeled back the outer seals until only the Four Symbols Seal remained.
The moment it was exposed, he felt it.
Dirty. Turbid. A repulsive blend of energies.
Natural energy was there, yes. But it was contaminated with chakra and something else entirely.
Time passed quietly. Sasuke only felt mild tingling. No pain.
Tōma exhaled softly. Orochimaru really was brilliant in the worst way. Even with Jūgo's abnormal constitution as a reference, designing a mark that absorbed and stored natural energy was no small feat.
Jūgo's berserk episodes suddenly made perfect sense.
Natural energy came in different "flavors." Toads. Snakes. Slugs. Even crude, unstable variants.
Jūgo absorbed everything indiscriminately. The fact that he merely lost control instead of dying outright was already a miracle.
"If the prerequisites were lower…" Tōma thought.
Kiba. Shino.
Wolf-like instincts. Insect symbiosis.
They might have paths too. Someday.
Not now.
Right now, even if Tōma revealed everything, no one else could walk his road.
Unless…
He smiled faintly.
Later.
His focus returned to the curse mark.
Originally, he'd planned to extract Orochimaru's mental imprint from it and use that to locate the man. The mark had to contain one. Orochimaru had revived from a similar mark before.
But now, Tōma saw more possibilities.
After a brief pause, he acted.
Using his refined control, he purified the chaotic natural energy inside the mark, reverting it to its original state.
There was a lot of it. Years' worth.
He converted it effortlessly.
Then came the modification.
He layered his own ability into the structure, adding a filtration function. From now on, the mark would reject impurities and store only refined energy.
But pure natural energy wasn't ideal for Sasuke.
Too clean. Too incompatible.
So Tōma adjusted it again.
Snake-aligned natural energy only. Everything else filtered out.
Dragon's Cave suited Sasuke perfectly.
As for the energy Sasuke had accumulated over the years?
Tōma didn't waste it.
Energy was energy.
Finally, he re-sealed everything, this time using a reversed Eight Trigrams Seal.
The work was precise. Controlled. Quiet.
"All done," Tōma said, finishing the last stroke.
Sasuke pulled his shirt back on. "Did you get what you wanted?"
"More than that," Tōma replied. "But I need to test something. Can you call Jūgo over?"
Sasuke hesitated briefly, then nodded.
A short while later, Jūgo arrived.
The moment he stepped close, his expression changed.
A deep, instinctive awe washed over him.
It felt like standing before something of the same origin… yet infinitely higher.
Something unreachable.
Jūgo swallowed.
Whatever Tōma had become, it was no longer something he could measure.
And that, somehow, terrified him.