The black nine-tailed fox's howl split the sky.
Nine tails unfurled like terrible whips, each one thick as a tree trunk. An aura of pure malice radiated outward, and the wind picked up—yellow sand swirling into a vortex that climbed toward the clouds.
"Ninjas from Konoha! Die!"
The beast's eyes locked onto Hanekawa. The murderous intent was suffocating, a physical weight pressing down on his chest.
Hanekawa's eyebrows rose slightly. So the Paradise Box doesn't just create bodies—it copies personality and memory too. Wonderful.
The nine tails came at him like pillars of heaven, each one capable of leveling a mountain.
Hanekawa clapped his hands. "Water Style: Water Formation Wall!"
A massive wall of water erupted from the ground, thick enough to stop a charging elephant. The tails crashed against it—and held.
Good. As expected.
Two reasons: First, this black Nine-Tails was a pale shadow of the original. Second, his Water Style bonus was absolutely broken.
The "Rain God" entry alone gave him 100% bonus to B-rank Water Style. Add in "I Am the Water Shadow" (another 100%), the A-rank "Turtle" entry (100%), and the A-rank item "Water Style Jonin" (150%)—when it rained, his water techniques gained a 450% power multiplier.
The wall cracked. Then shattered.
Hanekawa formed seals without hesitation, his expression blank. Can't show emotion. Muku's watching. If I react, it'll know I'm conscious.
"Wood Style: Tree Realm Emergence!"
Tree roots exploded from the sand like serpents, growing into a forest in seconds. Branches and vines coiled around the Nine-Tails' limbs, binding them tight.
The beast thrashed. Its nine tails whipped the air, creating wind that scattered sand like snow.
The vines only tightened.
The Nine-Tails opened its mouth and fired a Tailed Beast Bomb.
The explosion was catastrophic. A mushroom cloud bloomed over the forest, and half the trees disintegrated into splinters and sand.
Hanekawa had already vanished—Flying Thunder God Technique—reappearing fifty meters away.
Still has Tailed Beast Bombs. Noted.
The black Nine-Tails exhaled a breath of dark chakra and charged. Its four limbs hammered the ground like an avalanche.
"Wood Style: Tree Wall!"
"Water Style: Water Formation Wall!"
Two barriers rose. The beast hit them both at once—the impact sent it reeling backward, dazed.
It recovered instantly and charged again, all raw power and fury.
The wooden wall bent inward. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface.
Three seconds before it breaks through, Hanekawa calculated. Time to escalate.
He formed new seals. "Wood Style: Art of the Wooden Man!"
Chakra surged. A massive humanoid figure of wood erupted from the ground—easily fifty meters tall. It clenched its fists and drove a punch straight at the Nine-Tails.
The beast was still tangled in the walls. It couldn't dodge.
The punch connected with its skull. The Nine-Tails flew backward, carving a trench through the sand for hundreds of meters.
It stood up, snarling.
The Wooden Man followed, relentless. Another punch. The Nine-Tails went down again, this time deeper into the sand.
A third punch. Its mouth twisted into a snarl.
It fired three Tailed Beast Bombs at once.
The Wooden Man caught two with one hand, then batted the third away with both palms. The three bombs collided mid-air and detonated in a chain reaction.
Light erupted. Sand filled the sky. A true sandstorm was born.
Hanekawa's eyes narrowed.
Someone's watching.
He spotted it immediately—an eye made of sand, hovering in the sky. The Eye of Sand. Rasa's technique.
Makes sense. We're in the Land of Wind. This much noise would wake the dead.
Hanekawa ignored the spy and focused on the Nine-Tails. It was in bad shape now—blood and flesh hanging from its body, its recovery struggling to keep up with the damage.
The Wooden Man was barely scratched.
Hanekawa formed new seals. "Wood Style: Wood Dragon Technique!"
A wooden dragon erupted from the ground and coiled around the Nine-Tails' head like a collar. Then another. And another.
By the time he was done, five wooden dragons had the beast completely immobilized. They absorbed its chakra with every second, draining its strength.
The Nine-Tails thrashed and roared, but it was over.
After a few more moments, it let out a final, agonized cry.
Its body convulsed. The nine tails vanished. Wings sprouted. Its limbs merged into a single pair of legs. The massive frame shrank down to something almost humanoid—a round head with pointed teeth.
Muku's true form.
Three lines of text appeared in Hanekawa's vision:
[S-Rank Ninja Tool Entry: Paradise Box]
[Trigger Condition: Defeat Muku]
[Effect: Contains vast reserves of Yin Release chakra]
The Paradise Box's surface cracked. Fissures spread like a spiderweb. Then it shattered completely, and Muku dissolved into nothing.
Hanekawa took a breath and made his choice.
Synthesis.
[S-Rank Talent Entry: Mangekyō Sharingan]
[Trigger Condition: Synthesized from A-Rank Item "Illusion Jonin" and S-Rank Item "Paradise Box"]
[Effect: Evolve Three-Tomoe Sharingan into Mangekyō Sharingan]
[Note: Absorbing any pair of Mangekyō Sharingan can upgrade to Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan]
A flash of scarlet light.
The three tomoe in Hanekawa's eyes began to spin. Faster. Faster. The world seemed to tilt as power flooded through him—cold, precise, overwhelming.
The three tomoe connected, forming a pattern like interlocking branches.
Information crashed into his mind like a tidal wave. Mangekyō techniques. Abilities. Limitations.
But I've never experienced emotional trauma, he realized. So I can't form the standard eye techniques through suffering.
The system had adapted. Instead of forcing him to relive trauma, it offered him a choice: Select any two eye techniques from the original work as your own.
Hanekawa's first instinct was Double Kamui. Kakashi's technique—space-time manipulation on both eyes, perfect synergy with Flying Thunder God.
But he already had Flying Thunder God. Would Double Kamui be redundant?
No. Kamui is far more than teleportation. It's spatial distortion itself.
Other options: Betsutenshin—the ability to silently rewrite someone's will and control them. Powerful, but the cooldown was brutal. Though with Hashirama cells or a Sage Body, that could be reduced.
Eight Thousand Spears—Uchiha Hikaru's technique from the movie. It created a connection between controller and controlled, allowing chakra transfer across any distance.
Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu, Kagutsuchi—all powerful, but less versatile in his hands.
No rush, he decided. The system isn't time-limited. I can choose whenever I want, even mid-battle.
He pulled out Obito's Mangekyō Sharingan and made a silent choice.
Synthesis.
Eye power flowed from Obito's eyes into his own. The Uchiha's Mangekyō lost its luster, becoming ordinary.
[S-Rank Entry "Mangekyō Sharingan" upgraded to Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan]
Hanekawa nodded with satisfaction. Nothing wasted. The system's efficient.
He was about to leave when another notification appeared:
[A-Rank Talent Entry: False Nine-Tails]
[Trigger Condition: Defeat the Nine-Tailed Fox transformed by Muku]
[Effect: Chakra limit increased by 100%. Body's self-healing ability increased by 100%]
Unexpected bonus.
Chakra was his bottleneck. Wood Style, Water Style, Mangekyō Sharingan—everything consumed massive amounts. Combined with his existing "Almighty Jonin" entry, he now had a 400% chakra limit increase.
The self-healing was useful too. Hard to injure him, but when it happened, recovery would be faster.
Kushina would be interesting to fight, he thought idly. If she wasn't pregnant.
He dismissed the thought and used Flying Thunder God to leave the desert.
By afternoon, he was back in Konoha.
The increased chakra limit had extended his Flying Thunder God range considerably. The maximum distance was now significantly greater than before.
Hanekawa landed in his usual spot and took a breath.
Mangekyō Sharingan. Finally.
The power thrummed through him, waiting. Patient. Ready.
He had a lot of decisions to make about which techniques to unlock, but that could wait.
For now, he had a village to return to. A teacher waiting. A spy cover to maintain.
And apparently, a centipede to hunt down eventually.
But that was a problem for another day.