Chapter 4 — The Chimera Technique
After resting for about half an hour, Hyūga Ritsu felt his mind sharpen and his chakra steady — his entire being tuned to its peak.
He lit another oil lamp and set it on a small stone ledge jutting from the cave wall. The dim amber glow painted wavering shadows across the rough stone. Then he walked forward, unlatched the cell door, and stood before the unconscious "precious specimen."
Ritsu drew in a slow, deep breath.
Then, his hands began to move.
The Chimera Technique required nineteen hand seals.
With each completed seal, his chakra surged and rotated through precise meridians, flowing according to an ancient pattern that only he and his teacher truly understood.
By the time the final seal formed, his palms were glowing with a faint blue light.
Through the Byakugan's sight, that glow revealed its true nature — thin, blade-like layers of chakra, overlapping and humming with cutting energy.
Those blades sliced across his own pale hands, opening dozens of thin, deliberate wounds that wept scarlet lines of blood.
Without hesitation, Ritsu pressed both palms against the prisoner's bare chest.
A sharp shhhkk! tore through the silence as fabric shredded under the chakra blades.
Moments later, a web of small, bleeding cuts bloomed across the Kaguya's muscular torso. Droplets of blood began to well and bead, glowing faintly as chakra enveloped them — before being drawn, strand by strand, into Ritsu's palms.
The exchange had begun.
Instantly, the veins in his forearms bulged like writhing serpents. His muscles convulsed; his pulse pounded so violently it felt as though his veins would burst.
But Ritsu's expression stayed hard as iron.
Not a flinch.
Not a cry.
He continued the jutsu with unwavering focus.
At the same time, he released the regenerative ability he'd kept suppressed. Each time a vessel ruptured, it immediately began to knit back together. But maintaining that balance had a cost — his palms needed to be reopened again and again, cutting deeper, faster, to keep ahead of the healing.
The pain was unspeakable.
The slicing in his palms was nothing compared to the agony that followed inside.
His blood burned — boiled — surging wildly through his body as if trying to escape. His muscles spasmed uncontrollably, twitching as though struck by lightning.
Then came the bones.
Agonizing grinding, twisting, drilling pain erupted from within — as if someone were carving intricate patterns into his skeleton with an electric saw. Every nerve screamed, every joint shuddered.
Even his eyes — the Byakugan — throbbed with unbearable pressure, sharp, stabbing pain radiating from deep within the sockets. Blood leaked in thin crimson threads down his cheeks.
Cold sweat soaked him from head to toe. He trembled, drenched and pale, his breathing shallow, his teeth clenched so tightly they threatened to crack.
Time began to lose meaning.
Seconds stretched into minutes.
Minutes into hours.
Each moment dragged endlessly, like running along an infinite serpent path toward a horizon that never drew closer.
His consciousness wavered, sinking and rising through the pain, his mind dissolving into a haze of agony and instinct.
And then—
It broke.
The pain, which had climbed higher and higher, suddenly fell away — a sheer drop, a release so profound that for a second he felt weightless, hollowed out and utterly clear.
His entire body tingled, flooded with lightness, as if every pore had opened, every impurity had been scoured away.
The contrast was so intense it almost made him moan aloud.
"…Did I—did it work?"
Ritsu blinked, dazed.
He had drifted somewhere between waking and dreaming during the process — but now, snapping back to clarity, he immediately sensed the difference.
First, his chakra — it was no longer the familiar steady flow of ten units. It had multiplied, surging within him like a river after a flood.
If his chakra before was ten, now it was at least a hundred — a tenfold leap.
And more than that—
He could feel his body differently now.
His consciousness extended through every bone in his frame, as though his very skeleton had become an extension of his will.
His fingers curled, and the motion rippled down into his bones, answering with faint, living resonance.
"So this is… the power of the Shikotsumyaku."
He stared at his trembling hands, breathing shallowly, the faint blue chakra still flickering between his fingers.
The experiment had worked.
But deep beneath that thrill of success, something ancient and cold stirred within his blood — something that did not belong to the Hyūga.
Something that was watching him back.
He raised his right hand and willed it.
A sharp, pale-white shard of bone—smooth like carved jade—protruded from the center of his palm.
"Shikotsumyaku!"
Hyūga Ritsu stared at the bone jutting from his hand, a small, almost imperceptible smile tugging at his lips.
It had worked. He had, by means of the Chimera Technique, successfully seized the Kaguya clan's Kekkei Genkai — the Shikotsumyaku.
But that was only a byproduct. He had not risked everything merely to wield another bloodline.
He opened his Byakugan. The veins around his temples throbbed as the world snapped into crystal clarity. This time it was a full, unabridged vision — a true 360° without the one-degree blind spot the Caged Bird seal had always forced upon Branch members.
That extra single degree made his heart race.
He removed his forehead protector and fetched the small mirror he had used earlier, holding it to the tiny flame of the oil lamp. The reflection that looked back was vivid and alive: a handsome face, eyes the purest white like the finest jade, and—most importantly—his forehead was smooth and unmarred.
The Caged Bird seal had collapsed of its own accord. There was no trace left.
"Finally… it's done! Hahahahaha!"
He laughed without restraint, laughter echoing in the hollow laboratory until tears streamed from his eyes.
After a moment, he composed himself. There was no time for celebration; removing the Caged Bird was only the opening move.
Hiruko's parting warning returned to him: even freed from the seal, he was not free. The Main House's system—Main versus Branch—was its own prison. The moment the Hyūga leadership learned the seal was gone, he would become their target: a living reproach to be cut down to set an example.
Only by making an example of him could the Main House snuff out the Branch families' ambitions and keep the clan's hierarchy unshakable.
"This is a fight to the death," Ritsu murmured to himself, feeling the words harden into resolve. "There's no room for compromise. If anyone yields, it will only be to gather strength to strike back."
The expression in his white eyes chilled like cooling magma. A killing intent flared there—cold, precise, unbearable.
He would not follow Hiruko's advice to leave Konoha.
Konoha offered the highest standard of living in the shinobi world—closest to the modern life he remembered from another life. In his fifteen years here, he had learned every street and tree, had built relationships and a place for himself. Why should he abandon all of that because a few entitled Main House bastards thought Branch members were no better than property? Why should he become a hunted deserter, living on the run while the ANBU never let sleep rest on his eyelids?
The ancients said: the one who lives apart either becomes beast or deity. Ritsu wanted neither. He wanted to be a social creature—a normal human with ties and a life.
To him, desertion was the worst, last-resort option—only to be considered when all other roads had closed. Until then, he would fight with everything he had.
He would exhaust every possible avenue to stay, to struggle, to win.