The Shinobi World is a mess. In the past thousand years, the only brief flicker of peace was the fifteen-year window when Hashirama Senju suppressed the nations through sheer, overwhelming force.
Half of all ninjas die before the age of thirteen. Scarcely twenty percent of those who survive make it past thirty. Civilians have it even worse; they are like the wild grass of the fields—born in silence, dying in obscurity, with no one knowing when or how they vanished.
Tetsumaru didn't want to die. To stay alive, he had to be a ninja. Power was the only currency that mattered. By becoming a ninja, he could prove his worth to the village; a valuable asset is not easily discarded.
But being a ninja came with its own set of taboos. You couldn't be mediocre, or you'd be treated as cannon fodder. You couldn't be too exceptional either, or you'd be targeted and cut down, much like Sakumo Hatake.
Most importantly, you should never want to be the Hokage. In fact, you shouldn't even think about it. The position was cursed.
The First: Fought his best friend, suffered heavy injuries, and died shortly after.The Second: Ambushed by rebels during a peace talk with the Cloud; died in the line of duty.The Third: Beaten by his own student, dying just to seal a pair of hands.The Fourth: Backstabbed by his own student, dying to seal the Nine-Tails.The Fifth: Beaten into a coma and nearly usurped. She's the first to survive until retirement without dying in office.The Sixth: Literally died and was resurrected. Perhaps because he'd already "paid his dues" and ruled during peacetime, he avoided the curse.The Seventh: The ultimate corporate slave Hokage. He'll likely die from overwork.
Even those who simply dreamed of being Hokage usually met miserable ends. If someone offered the hat to Tetsumaru, it would probably scare him to death.
Ultimately, it was Hashirama Senju's fault. After establishing the "One State, One Village" system, he unified the military might of nations under the Hidden Villages, but he failed to achieve true political unification. Conflict didn't end; it just scaled up from skirmishes into world wars.
In fairness, one can't blame him entirely. True unification isn't something achieved by a single "super-weapon" of a man. The trend of the Warring States period was toward increasing chaos. Without a unified administrative system, a standing unified army, or even a shared ideology, how could the world unite? Unification isn't a gift from the heavens; it grows from the ground up.
When the First Emperor of China swept across the six kingdoms in Tetsumaru's old world, the common people largely accepted it because the foundation for a unified identity had already been laid. But Hashirama committed one error he couldn't deflect: he spent his life trying to "balance" the military strength of the nations.
It was incredibly naive. A balance of power isn't a guarantee of peace; on the contrary, when forces are equal, they are more likely to fight until a definitive winner emerges.
Once Hashirama died, conflict became the norm. When there were enough ninjas, they fought world wars until the fields were red with blood. When the population dropped, they called it "peace" while continuing to slaughter each other during missions.
In this landscape, ninjas from small countries died in a thousand creative ways, while ninjas from Great Nations suffered just as much. Privilege, corruption, shadow deals, and assassinations were the reality. Fairness, sunlight, kindness, and integrity were the rare anomalies. There's a reason Jiraiya's The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi wasn't a bestseller—it just wasn't relatable.
As a transmigrator, Tetsumaru's first instinct had been to lay low—to follow the "Way of the Survivor" and blend into the background.
Unfortunately, his young, uncoordinated body had betrayed him. His first brawl resulted in him pummeling Shio and Shijie, and he had been arrogant enough to brag about it. By the time the parents got involved, he realized he had punched the son of a Jonin and the grandson of an Elder.
Worse yet, during the "parental meeting," he hadn't been able to control himself and had hit the boy a second time right in front of the father. He had dug his own grave.
After that, Tetsumaru had to lean into his "impulsive brat" persona to avoid retribution from the higher-ups. This, combined with Masao's disappearance, made him doubt the protection his parents could provide. He began cultivating a "Genius" persona to win the favor of Elder Shiki.
By age five, when the clan faced a financial crisis, he traded his "Ant Sugar" technology for the protection and gratitude of the clan leadership. All of this had pushed him further away from a quiet life. He was now forced to sell his status as a "Genius" for self-preservation.
The clan needed geniuses. To be needed was to be protected. To put it bluntly: if a drug lord's son wanted to mess with the organization's head chemist, the drug lord would most likely string his son up for a beating just to appease the expert.
By clobbering an Elder's grandson and establishing himself as a prodigy, Tetsumaru gained access to the clan's upper echelon—Jonin, Elders, and the Clan Head.
Through these contacts, he quickly abandoned the idea of being a "Political Genius." The political IQ of his clan's leadership was barely above zero. They were so dense that if he didn't spell things out, they wouldn't understand; but if he did spell them out, it would be too transparent. If his words ever reached the Third Hokage or, god forbid, Danzo... it would be a death sentence.
Looking at the White Fang incident, the Uchiha Massacre, and the treatment of Naruto, it was clear the Third's mind was a fickle thing. Who knew how he would interpret a child's political insights? And Danzo? That man's mind was so twisted his reading comprehension likely resided in the eighteenth circle of hell.
Through the Ant Sugar venture, Tetsumaru also realized that in the minds of the leadership, "Economic Geniuses" didn't exist. Elder Shiki had put it bluntly:
"Must you be the one to watch the ants? Must you be the one to harvest the sugar? You're better at it, sure, but it's not necessary. Go do what you're supposed to do. If your generation can't produce ten Jonin, all the money in the world will just end up in someone else's pocket."
The message was clear: without combat power, wealth was just a target on your back. The clan needed powerful ninjas—combat geniuses—above all else.
Despite his mediocre talent in the clan's secret arts, Tetsumaru was a genius ninja. He received everything he asked for. The clan needed him to ace the Academy entrance exam to bring them honor, and they wouldn't let anyone lay a finger on him.
The Aburame were powerful but stayed out of the spotlight, and their internal politics weren't lethal. It was a rare stroke of luck to be born into this clan. It was certainly better than being a Kaguya, an Uchiha, or even a Hyuga—those families were practically death traps. And don't even get started on being a civilian; that was a one-way ticket to misery.
Tetsumaru didn't care about the upcoming entrance exam. Every six-year-old in Konoha had either been beaten by him or had their face "washed" by his various chemical powders. First place was a lock.
He was focused on the future.
If he stayed on the traditional Aburame path, he estimated he could reach Jonin rank by thirty. Jonin was the highest standard rank—good pay, decent power. But for Tetsumaru, it wasn't enough.
In a few years, the Second Great War would begin, followed by the Third, the Nine-Tails incident, and the Konoha Crush. (Actually, the Konoha Crush wasn't that dangerous—it was basically a village-wide agreement to let Orochimaru send the Third Hokage on his way while burying Suna in the process. Jonin were safe there.)
But the real threats were Nagato's "Almighty Push," Madara putting the world to sleep, and the eventual Otsutsuki invasions. In the face of those, a standard Jonin was just a fancy term for "background casualty."
Tetsumaru had three main "cheats": his past-life knowledge, Insight, and the Kikaichu.
His past knowledge provided the scientific and philosophical framework—the what and the why. Insight allowed him to see the world at a microscopic level, and the Kikaichu were his biological tools. Together, they solved the how.
Insight was the key. With it, he could:
Analyze and breed Kikaichu with surgical precision.Monitor his own body, perfectly mapping his chakra pathways and identifying blockages.Use Kikaichu to perform microscopic "surgeries" to clear those pathways.
After dozens of these micro-surgeries, Tetsumaru's chakra capacity had skyrocketed, reaching levels comparable to the Uzumaki lineage. With such vast reserves, he could afford to nourish his body with chakra, leading to a stronger physique, which in turn supported even more chakra. It was a perfect positive feedback loop.
However, the results were getting too good.
Fifteen days before the entrance exam, Tetsumaru hit a critical milestone. Using his knowledge of meridians, he planned to connect his Conception (Ren) and Governing (Du) vessels—creating the Grand Chakra Circulation.
Most ninjas refine chakra, but no matter how much they make, it eventually "leaks" away. Tetsumaru used his control to circulate it to nourish his body, but the leakage was still significant. Furthermore, leaking chakra made a ninja a beacon for sensors. An experienced sensor could judge a ninja's strength from miles away just by their "scent."
Tetsumaru wanted to store his chakra. If he could keep it contained, he could reduce his detection radius, hide his true strength, and release it as a trump card when needed.
Currently, his chakra volume likely surpassed his father, who was a Chunin. That was a death sentence. If an Aburame kid had more chakra than an Uzumaki, he'd be whisked away to a lab before he could say "insect." He could hide it during daily life, but during combat or training, it was impossible to mask.
Is there a way to store chakra in this world? The Yin Seal was the gold standard, but that was a Senju/Uzumaki masterpiece he couldn't get his hands on. He checked his drawer and found two Explosive Tags he'd "borrowed" from his dad. That was a second way: solidifying chakra into paper. But despite his basic sealing knowledge, the complexity of a finished tag was a total "black box" to him.
The third way was Jinchuriki, but he wasn't about to volunteer for that.
Finally, he turned to the Taoist theories of his past life. He would build a Grand Circulation to attract and hold the chakra within his body. He chose the Ren and Du meridians because they perfectly matched the flow of chakra—they were symmetrical, running down the center of the front and back of the body. They shared a starting point and ended near the face, just inches apart.
Tetsumaru didn't know how Taoist masters did it, but his method was direct and dangerous: he would use Kikaichu to "dig" four parallel channels through his flesh, connecting the points beneath his eyes to his forehead (the Third Eye) and his philtrum (the Man's Middle).
Physical excavation of chakra pathways is as dangerous as it sounds. He had to proceed micrometer by micrometer. To maintain perfect feedback, he refused any anesthesia.
1:00 AM—The Hour of the Rat. The time when Yin transitions to Yang. Tetsumaru wanted a little bit of "ritual" for his gamble.
The surgery began. Beneath his skin, the Kikaichu began to gnaw. At first, it felt like needle pricks, but it quickly escalated into a blinding, white-hot agony. It was worse than an unanesthetized root canal.
Then came an intense "acidic itching" as the insects began to scrape against his bone.
Tetsumaru's muscles locked up. He bit down hard on a towel, sweat drenching his forehead. Fortunately, the insects were fast. Within ten minutes, the connection was made. Tetsumaru collapsed to the floor, his body limp and trembling.
As the pain subsided, a reckless thought crossed his mind: I've already gone through this much pain. I might as well finish it. I won't have the courage to do this to myself again tomorrow.
Leveraging his remaining stamina, he directed the Kikaichu to dig twelve more parallel "bypass" channels. By the time he was finished, he looked like he'd been pulled out of a lake. His face was starting to balloon, and his lower eyelids were so swollen his eyes were mere slits.
Ten minutes later, the chakra began to flow. It wasn't the single loop he'd expected; instead, the chakra stratified into two layers—one flowing forward, one flowing backward.
Two hours later, he felt the third effect: the circulating chakra created a "suction" effect. The stray chakra in his body was being drawn into the loop, and the "leakage" began to drop. As the volume in the meridians increased, the flow sped up, further increasing the suction. It was slow, but the trend was unmistakable.
His detection radius had shrunk, and his internal reserves were becoming a self-sustaining pool. Both goals achieved.
As the first light of dawn broke, Tetsumaru fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. Without anesthesia, enduring that level of pain for a whole night had finally broken his limit.
Tetsumaru spent the next seven days locked in his room.
His face was a disaster. It was so swollen he couldn't open his eyes, and his mouth was a tiny slit. He looked like a human balloon.
On the eighth day, he could finally see through the swelling. He felt better, but the moment he stepped out, his parents nearly had a heart attack. His mother insisted on taking him to the hospital, eventually calling in a Medical Jonin to examine him.
The verdict: "He's fine. No permanent damage."
The parents didn't believe it. "Our son's head is a sphere! How is he fine?!"
Tetsumaru just had to endure the fuss. Elder Shiki even paid a personal visit, checking the boy's body thoroughly before leaving with a satisfied nod. Soon, every relative was dropping by to tell him to "look after his health."
Because they'd called in a Medical Jonin, word got out. The rumor spread through the Aburame clan and eventually the whole village: The Aburame have a little idiot who messed around and turned his head into a ball.
Tetsumaru sat in his room, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He was finally famous.