Chapter 102: Studying Medicine Cannot Save the Ninja World
Stelle remained blissfully unaware that her actions had already planted the seeds of eternal life in Orochimaru's young, impressionable mind. Listening to the system chime in her head with a steady stream of emotional distress points—his mood value plummeting and spiking in a beautiful rhythm—she had even gone out of her way to single the pale boy out, showering his recent experimental progress with high praise just to farm a few more reactions.
The moment the gaggle of half-grown boys finally shuffled out of her hospital ward, Stelle prepared to pull up her system interface. Before she could even open the menu, a muffled scuffle broke out in the hallway. The sliding door rattled violently on its tracks, shoved open to reveal Hiruko. A masked Anbu operative had the boy hoisted by the back of his collar, dragging him backward. Hiruko, however, refused to go quietly. His knuckles turned white as he clamped onto the wooden doorframe, his legs kicking wildly at the empty air in a desperate bid to stay.
"Let him in," Stelle called out, her voice smooth and commanding.
The Anbu released his grip instantly, vanishing into the shadows with a silent flicker. Freed, Hiruko practically threw himself into the room, skidding to a halt right beside her bed. He braced his hands against his knees, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath.
"Hokage-sama, I..." he stammered.
Burdened by his lack of innate talent among prodigies, the boy carried a perpetual cloud of self-deprecation. His words wavered, thick with an ingrained timidity that made him shrink into his own shoulders.
"Hiruko, there is no need to rush," Stelle said, leaning back against her pillows. "Take your time. Tell me what is on your mind. I am listening."
She infused her tone with a practiced, sickeningly sweet gentleness. The effect was immediate. The rigid tension bleeding from Hiruko's frame melted away. He lifted his head. The messy fringe of pale hair that usually obscured his face parted, revealing eyes that had shed their usual fearful shyness. In their place burned a startlingly firm, unyielding light.
"Hokage-sama, I..." He swallowed hard. "I want to study medicine. I want to become a Medical Ninja."
Stelle blinked, momentarily thrown off script. Why would a perfectly good future mad scientist suddenly want to pivot to playing doctor?
A deep flush crept up Hiruko's neck, turning his pale cheeks a vibrant red. His breathing hitched, but he forced the words past his lips. "Because I refuse to see Hokage-sama suffer like this. If I study medicine, I can treat you. I will be able to help you, Hokage-sama."
'No, no, absolutely not,'Stelle screamed internally.'Studying medicine cannot save your Hokage, and it certainly cannot save the Ninja World. Only farming your delicious mood values can do that.'
She kept her expression serene, though a twinge of genuine surprise rippled through her. Out of all the monstrously talented brats she had been stringing along, she never expected the chronically insecure Hiruko to be the one most deeply invested in her well-being.
"I appreciate your sentiment, Hiruko," she said softly, offering a melancholic smile. "But you are not suited for the medical field. The Research Institute is where your true potential lies."
"But!" Hiruko stepped forward, his fists clenching at his sides. "Did you not say that as long as one works hard, even those who are not born geniuses can become great ninja? I want to put in that hard work. I want to become a Medical Ninja for you."
'I said that to Might Guy to farm his hot-blooded youth points, you idiot. Do not take my generic inspirational quotes out of context.'
Stelle reached out, her fingers gently brushing through the boy's messy hair. "Hiruko, human energy is finite. Your true gift lies in scientific research. We must let the professionals handle professional matters. Watching you shine brilliantly in your own unique field is what I truly wish to see." She tilted her head, her voice dropping to a fragile whisper. "You would not want to disappoint me, would you?"
She nudged his shoulders back, forcing him to stand tall and push his chest out, then carefully tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ear. "There, that is much better. A man should hold his head high and face the world, not shrink away in timidity."
Hiruko stood frozen, his entire face burning like a tomato. His mind spun with absolute devotion. His Hokage was truly the gentlest soul in the world. If she believed his path lay in research, he would tear the very secrets of the universe apart just to prove her right.
"I understand," he bowed deeply. "I will continue to work hard in my research."
Barely a minute after she managed to shoo the comforted child out the door, the sliding panel opened again. Hiruzen and Danzo stepped inside. The two men had just been chased off by her feigned righteous fury earlier, yet here they were, looking grim and official.
"After a thorough consultation, the council has reached a decision," Hiruzen announced, his pipe absent from his mouth. "We are classifying the technique you used as a Forbidden Technique. Its danger rank is officially equal to the Edo Tensei. You are strictly forbidden from ever using it again."
"Understood," Stelle replied meekly.
'As if I would ever use a suicide jutsu casually anyway,' she scoffed in her mind.
Hiruzen stepped up to the bed and held out a heavy, blank parchment scroll. "Write the mechanics of your technique on this. It must be sealed within the Archive of Forbidden Techniques for the village's safety."
Stelle accepted the heavy scroll, letting it rest on her lap, but made no move to unroll it. "You must be joking," she said, letting a dry chuckle escape before dissolving into a harsh, rattling cough. She covered her mouth, playing up the sickly angle. "That technique is not suitable for anyone else to learn. The price is far too steep. It requires... well, only I am destined to be able to use it, and even then, only once. You two should simply erase it from your memories."
She had dug a massive, melodramatic grave for this specific persona; there was zero chance she was going to hand over the shovel. What if she was trying to dramatically kill off this alias in the future, and one of these idiots had a sudden burst of loyalty and used Kisho Tensei to revive her? She would be trapped in this identity forever.
"Write it down immediately," Danzo demanded, his single visible eye narrowing. The sheer threatening weight in his voice left no room for negotiation.
Realizing she could not simply brush them off, Stelle sighed, picked up the ink brush, and began to write. Instead of the resurrection jutsu, she carefully documented the formulas for her Flame Release. Those particular jutsu were notoriously difficult to manifest in reality. She had burned through countless hours of secret practice just to produce her signature high-intensity purple flames. The odds of anyone else in the village successfully replicating the chakra nature transformation were practically zero, making it perfectly safe to hand over as a pseudo-forbidden technique.
To pad out the scroll, she finally added the theoretical framework for the Hell Realm Domain. To this day, Danzo was the only living soul who had personally witnessed the terrifying expanse of that technique. She filled the parchment with a dizzying, impossibly long string of spatial and chakra theories, and even then, the dense text only scratched the absolute tip of the iceberg.
Hiruzen and Danzo leaned over her shoulder, their eyes scanning the wet ink. Both men visibly recoiled, thoroughly intimidated by the sheer, crushing density of the theoretical knowledge displayed before them. However, as they reached the end of the scroll and realized there was not a single line pertaining to Medical Ninjutsu or life-transference, their expressions soured drastically.
Their hidden agenda was obvious. They had fully intended to find a highly talented, highly expendable Medical Ninja to master the resurrection jutsu. If the technique required a one-for-one equivalent exchange, they were more than willing to sacrifice a medic's life to ensure Stelle survived. Yet, she stubbornly refused to give them the loaded gun.
"Where is the other technique?" Danzo pressed, tapping a calloused finger against the wooden bedframe.
Stelle immediately deployed her ultimate defense: playing completely dumb. She blinked innocently, her eyes wide and confused. When Danzo continued to interrogate her, she simply let her eyelids droop, feigning extreme exhaustion. She slumped back into the pillows, her breathing turning shallow, and refused to utter another syllable.
"Honestly, it is no wonder Tobirama-sensei refused to let you..." Danzo blurted out, his frustration finally boiling over. Halfway through the sentence, his jaw snapped shut. His eye widened a fraction of an inch as he realized the massive slip of the tongue he had just made.
Stelle sat bolt upright, all signs of her previous weakness vanishing in an instant. What was that? What exactly had Tobirama said about her? Had that paranoid, white-haired inventor been plotting something behind her back without her system picking up on it?
'Hey, hey, Senju Tobirama, that is crossing a line,' she fumed internally. Yes, the pragmatic genius had managed to strip away one of her carefully crafted aliases, but she had dozens of them running simultaneously. Was he even sure he had unmasked the correct one? God only knew what kind of convoluted conspiracy theory Tobirama had cooked up in his head.
"What did he say?" Stelle demanded, her gaze locking onto Danzo with laser precision.
Originally, losing a single alias was a minor inconvenience. She operated on a system of aliases within aliases—a massive, tangled web of identities, big and small, tragic and villainous. They could never strip them all away. But now, her curiosity was genuinely piqued. Just how many layers of her deception had Tobirama actually managed to peel back?
A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the ward. Hiruzen, Danzo, and Homura—who had been quietly hovering near the back—exchanged panicked glances.
"I just remembered, Biwako has something urgent to discuss with me. I cannot be late for our date," Hiruzen coughed, adjusting his hat.
"Um, my livestock in District One are still waiting for their evening feed," Homura muttered, avoiding eye contact.
"A newly discovered spy in the Uchiha Police Force requires my immediate interrogation. I will go take a look," Danzo stated stiffly.
The three of them fired off their terrible excuses in rapid succession. Refusing to even use the door, they scrambled toward the open window and vaulted out into the evening air, fleeing the scene like startled genin.
Stelle stared at the empty, fluttering curtains. 'Not talking, huh?'she mused, a dangerous smirk playing on her lips.'Then I will just have to trick the information out of you.'
She mentally reviewed her targets. Danzo was the one who let it slip, but the man was a paranoid spymaster. He would not be easily fooled twice. Hiruzen? She immediately discarded the thought. The future Hokage was notoriously tight-lipped when it came to village secrets. She strongly suspected that even if she trapped him in a Mangekyo Sharingan illusion right now, he would bite his own tongue off before spilling Tobirama's words. Finally, her predatory gaze shifted toward a new target: Uchiha Kagami.
They had grown up together, sharing countless battlefield rations and training bruises. Kagami would undoubtedly lower his guard around her far more easily than Hiruzen or Danzo ever would.
Wasting no time, she flagged down a passing Anbu and sent a message inviting Kagami over for a private drink. To guarantee the Uchiha prodigy would actually lose his inhibitions, she accessed her system inventory and purchased ten bottles of the highest-proof liquor available. The virtual shopkeeper's description had explicitly guaranteed that ten bottles of this specific vintage could knock out a rampaging summon beast.
To seal the trap, she personally prepared a spread of side dishes to accompany the alcohol: Drunken Shrimp swimming in spirits, rich Drunken Crab, and bowls of Sweet Fermented Rice Balls. The entire menu was aggressively themed around a single, obvious objective: no one was going home sober tonight.
Across the village, Uchiha Kagami stepped out of the gloomy underground halls of the Interrogation Department. Upon receiving the Anbu's summons, he immediately diverted to the bathhouse, scrubbing himself raw and changing into fresh, casual robes to ensure not a single trace of blood or death lingered on him before visiting her hospital ward.
When he finally slid the door open and took in the sight of the small table groaning under the weight of ten massive liquor bottles, he immediately deduced exactly what Stelle was plotting. Still, ten bottles of high-proof spirits? Was she vastly overestimating his alcohol tolerance, or her own?
Kagami offered a warm, knowing smile. "Is Stelle planning to get me blackout drunk so she can trick classified information out of me?"
Stelle's eye twitched. The man truly knew how to murder a conversation in cold blood. If he already knew her exact purpose, could he not just play dumb and go along with the atmosphere? It was absolutely no wonder the man was still single. At this agonizingly slow rate, she had no idea when Shisui's father was actually going to be born. If Kagami kept delaying his romantic life with this terrible social awareness, Shisui was going to end up born in the same generation as Naruto and the rest of the future rookies.
Masking her internal frustration, Stelle flashed him a bright, disarmingly silly smile. "I made all of these dishes myself, Kagami. Do you not want to at least sit down and try them?"
Kagami's expression softened, his dark eyes reflecting the warm room light. "Since you went through the trouble of making them yourself, I am certain they taste incredible. In that case, I suppose I will just have to eat every last bite."
[Inorin's Note: "Lake Biwa" in the raw is a mistranslation of Biwako Sarutobi, Hiruzen's future wife. "Crown Prince" is a common Chinese fandom slang term referring to Naruto Uzumaki.]
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