Chapter 3: What a Beautiful World
This sensation wasn't unfamiliar to Yoru.
Before sudden cardiac death strikes, the body sends warnings.
From excessive sleep deprivation, sometimes you become unable to sleep at all. Instead, your mind grows increasingly agitated. Your mouth goes dry, your temperature spikes.
Most terrifying of all, your heartbeat accelerates dramatically. That feeling of panic and chest tightness creates an overwhelming fear that if you fall asleep, you might never wake up again.
Yoru had experienced these symptoms many times in his previous life. He'd simply been too young and foolish to take them seriously.
Now that the sensation had returned, terror gripped him.
Without hesitation, Yoru got up to drink water, but he didn't gulp it down. Instead, he took small, careful sips.
After the dry mouth feeling eased slightly, he carried the water pitcher back to his room and lay down again, trying to empty his mind and let his heart rate return to normal.
Yet no matter what he tried, Yoru's racing heartbeat wouldn't slow even a fraction.
In the silent night, the sound from his room resembled someone beating a drum.
Pulling up his shirt, he could see his chest visibly pounding, as if his heart were trying to burst out of his body.
His agitated mental state, combined with the periodically spiking temperature and persistent thirst, made sleep impossible. All he could do was repeatedly boil and drink water.
Yoru even took several cold showers, but nothing helped.
This condition persisted without improvement until noon the next day.
Not counting yesterday's half-hour nap, Yoru had gone a full thirty hours without sleep.
Yet he felt no discomfort whatsoever.
In his previous life, going this long without sleep would have left him with strained nerves and bloodshot, even hemorrhaging, eyes despite mental agitation.
But in this life, Yoru experienced none of those symptoms.
In fact, once he calmed down, he realized his energy felt incredibly abundant—like a perpetual motion machine.
Clearly, this was the effect of his heart pumping blood at such an intense rate.
This state continued for a full seven days.
Yoru remained sleepless for seven days—nearly two hundred hours without closing his eyes.
During those seven days, he consumed nothing at all, only drinking massive amounts of water.
Not because he didn't want to eat—he physically couldn't stomach anything.
Miraculously, despite seven days without food, his body showed no deterioration. His energy remained abundant.
Yoru's emotional state gradually shifted from initial terror to growing excitement.
If this were sudden cardiac death, he'd already be dead and buried after seven days without sleep.
But he hadn't died. Which meant this wasn't cardiac failure—his body was undergoing some unknown transformation.
Perhaps... his cheat was finally arriving!
Had some unknown bloodline limit from the Gojo family awakened in his generation?
Or was this a special ability that had transmigrated with him from his previous life—perhaps even the primary cause of his transmigration?
The sensation resembling sudden death finally began fading at noon on August 28th, Year 30 of Konoha.
"Finally it's end—"
As his heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm and the low-grade fever and dry mouth vanished, Yoru hadn't even finished his relieved sigh or begun checking his body for changes when his vision suddenly went black. He collapsed onto his bed, immediately falling into deep sleep.
He had no idea how long he slept. Only the churning hunger of stomach acid finally dragged him back from the depths of unconsciousness.
"So tired..."
Even after opening his eyes, Yoru had no desire to get up.
He hadn't felt this kind of sleep-deprived exhaustion in a very long time.
If not for the ceiling and familiar surroundings reminding him otherwise, he might have thought the past six years had been nothing but an extended dream.
Turning to open the nightstand drawer, Yoru retrieved a box containing two rows of six pills—the Naruto world's equivalent of compressed rations and chakra restoration: soldier pills.
One wasn't enough. Yoru consumed three full soldier pills before his utterly depleted body recovered some strength.
Getting out of bed, he stood before a full-length mirror. After stripping off his clothes and examining his reflection from all angles, he found no visible external changes. He immediately sat cross-legged on the floor, adopting the chakra refinement posture to check for internal changes.
BOOM—
A sound like war drums exploded in Yoru's ears, in his mind, in 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" was a black heart, beating with steady pulses.
The image vanished in a flash.
Yoru's eyes shot open, his face shocked.
If he hadn't seen it wrong, that heart had been... black?
'That couldn't have been my actual heart, could it?!' he thought with alarm.
To confirm his suspicion, Yoru closed his eyes again and began refining chakra.
The internal vision didn't reappear.
Instead, as his physical energy and spiritual energy prepared to merge, a special third energy suddenly surged from his cells, forcefully joining the fusion of the other two energies.
Then a thread of black chakra—formed from the fusion of three distinct energy types—manifested in Yoru's lower abdomen.
"Black chakra... Could this be my Cheat?"
Yoru opened his eyes again and formed hand seals, attempting to manipulate that thread of black chakra.
The black chakra seemed no different from ordinary chakra. Following the guidance of his hand seals, it flowed through his meridians to Yoru's right palm.
Perhaps the amount was insufficient, or perhaps Yoru's chakra control hadn't reached the necessary level—the thread of black chakra failed to manifest externally.
Moreover, after just a few seconds, the black chakra disappeared within his body.
That brief duration gave Yoru no opportunity to discover what made the black chakra special.
So he continued refining more chakra with his eyes closed.
The special energy surged forth again, mixing with his physical and spiritual energies to form threads of black chakra.
When Yoru could no longer extract physical or spiritual energy from his cells, the special energy went straight to the source—merging into the blue vortex of his chakra reserves.
Like spreading ink across white paper, portions of his chakra gradually transformed from blue to black.
By the time Yoru could no longer extract the special energy from his cells, one-third of his total chakra had turned black.
"Let me see exactly what you can do!"
Yoru stood up, equal parts anticipation and nervousness as he formed hand seals. He channeled the black chakra within him and began attempting techniques.
Since refining his first thread of chakra at age three, Yoru had achieved basic mastery of the Three Basic Academy Techniques taught at the ninja school. During this vacation, he'd also begun training in C-rank elemental ninjutsu.
Obviously, he couldn't perform elemental techniques inside his house, so Yoru decided to test the black chakra using the Three Basic Techniques.
The result was... absolutely nothing happened!
He couldn't create a Clone. His body's appearance didn't change at all with Transformation...
Rather than disappointing him, this discovery filled Yoru with joy.
His inability to perform standard jutsu proved the black chakra was fundamentally different from ordinary chakra. The lack of any obvious special effects simply meant its unique properties were deeply hidden.
And mystery meant... power!
Yoru swallowed another soldier pill, then opened the glass door to his balcony. Looking at the dim pre-dawn sky outside, he formed hand seals, preparing to leap out in a blur of motion.
Suddenly, his movement paused. Remembering how he'd successfully channeled black chakra to his palm earlier, he redirected the black chakra to concentrate in both feet, preparing to execute the Body Flicker Technique—a D-rank skill also taught at the ninja academy.
Just like with the Three Basic Techniques, Yoru didn't vanish in a blur of speed. However, his feet registered a sensation of stepping on empty air.
Looking down, his pupils contracted violently.
His feet—as if sinking into a swamp—had partially phased into the balcony floor, his calves disappearing beneath the surface.
Yet his feet felt no pressure or constriction. His body wasn't continuing to sink. It was as if his feet hadn't sunk into the balcony at all, but had somehow merged with it.
Slowly, carefully, Yoru lifted his leg, pulling his right foot out from within the balcony.
Staring at the balcony floor that showed absolutely no indentation or damage, Yoru could no longer control his expression. He lowered his head, covering his face with both hands as his shoulders trembled, emitting sounds that could have been sobs or suppressed laughter.
After a long moment, he finally lowered his hands and raised his head. The morning sun's rays illuminated Konoha, transforming the village into something as beautiful as a painted scroll. Looking at this place where he'd lived for six years as if seeing it for the first time, his face still stretched in a grin, Yoru spread his arms wide and laughed with genuine emotion:
"Hahaha — What a beautiful village! What a... beautiful world this is!"