That evening, back at home, Yuji pulled up the system panel.
His experience point situation was lean. Positive experience sat just over a thousand.
Negative experience had accumulated past four thousand, with three thousand of that coming directly from the Third Kazekage's death.
Without that particular contribution, the numbers would have been considerably more modest. The years spent managing village affairs had left little room for the kind of sustained accumulation that active battlefield operations produced.
His time in Amegakure and the various contract work outside had generated money more reliably than experience, and the targets there had generally been too weak to produce meaningful returns.
He reviewed two options that had been sitting in his thinking for some time.
The first was the Red Eye (Akagan), a bloodline limit originating from the character Ranmaru, classed as a natural counter to the Byakugan.
Its capabilities covered clairvoyance, sensory perception, danger detection, and chakra-based imaging for investigation. In terms of chakra observation, its specifications exceeded even the Byakugan's.
The second was the Blood Dragon Eye (Ketsuryūgan), a bloodline limit originating from a blood-affiliated clan. Activation came through intense emotional stimulation.
Its appearance was distinctive: black pupils against blood-red whites, accompanied by bleeding from the eye on activation.
In the genjutsu domain it carried a hypnotic effect capable of converting targets into living weapons, and it could also activate various techniques through blood.
Its most relevant characteristic for Yuji's purposes was its connection to Yin Release, purchasing it would change his chakra nature and open the Yin Release pathway directly.
The system catalog contained other sensory and ocular options, including abilities from entirely different power systems, but most of those sat outside the Naruto world's framework and raised complications around concealment and integration.
These two were different. Both were world-native bloodline techniques, and both would produce natural-seeming chakra nature changes rather than introducing something that required extensive explanation.
The system could technically offer Byakugan and Sharingan as well. Their capabilities overlapped partially with what these two options provided. But the cost calculus was different.
The Byakugan carried evolution potential toward the Tenseigan. The Sharingan could develop into Mangekyō, then Eternal Mangekyō, and with the right conditions, the fusion of Indra and Ashura's bloodline, toward the Rinnegan.
The ceiling on both was extraordinarily high, which was precisely why they were extraordinarily expensive.
The Red Eye and Blood Dragon Eye had no established evolution path in the original work. That made them cost-effective for the specific goal at hand, closing the sensory gap and acquiring Yin Release, without requiring the experience point investment that the premium ocular techniques demanded.
Whether they could evolve further was a separate question that the system's deeper catalog might eventually answer. For now, that wasn't the priority.
What the war would provide was volume. A sustained battlefield operation against real opponents would generate experience at a rate that village work couldn't match. After that wave of accumulation, the more expensive options would be worth reconsidering.
He also noted one more consideration. The Byakugan and Sharingan were both famous enough within the ninja world that carrying one would generate immediate questions about origin.
The Byakugan and Sharingan were Konoha's strategic assets in the most direct sense. If he suddenly possessed either of them, the explanation would be impossible to construct convincingly.
The most charitable interpretation from Konoha's perspective would be espionage. The Uchiha and Hyuga clans would be drawn into it immediately, and beyond the clan politics, someone like Danzo would take a personal interest.
The Byakugan hadn't yet circulated outside Konoha's sphere at this point in time, the Hidden Mist hadn't acquired it yet. A Sunagakure shinobi appearing with both Konoha's signature bloodline techniques would produce a response that had nothing to do with proportionality.
The goal for this war was prominence, not complications. He needed capability, not a reason for Konoha to redirect significant resources toward eliminating him specifically.
The Red Eye and Blood Dragon Eye were the same cost, two thousand negative experience points each. Unlike the Blood Manipulation techniques, neither came with an extensive catalog of developed derivative skills.
Their origins in theatrical versions and spin-off material meant relatively contained ability sets. That also meant evolution, if it came, would require either system resources or his own research rather than arriving as a predefined upgrade path.
He bought both without further deliberation.
Congratulations, host. You have obtained the bloodline limit doujutsu Red Eye and Blood Dragon Eye. Would you like to spend experience points to fuse the two abilities?
"Fuse."
The two powers have merged and successfully assimilated.
The moment the notification finished, something changed in his vision.
His eyes went blood-red. Faint lines appeared within his black pupils. The transformation was immediate and total, and in the same instant his sensory awareness expanded outward in a way that felt less like a technique activating and more like a membrane lifting.
He could feel the space around him differently. He pushed the perception further and through walls he couldn't see with normal vision, several hundred meters away on a rooftop, a figure was moving through the darkness, a village security patrol member, identifiable by movement pattern.
He got up and looked in the mirror.
Blood-red eyes looked back at him, but the pupils carried several concentric yellow halos that hadn't been present in either ability's original description. The fusion had produced something that matched neither source exactly.
He let out a slow breath.
That was actually ideal. If the eyes had appeared exactly as documented in either original form, recognition was possible, unlikely at this point in time, but possible.
With this fused appearance, presenting them as a natural evolution of his Blood Release Kekkei Genkai was entirely plausible.
Blood Release as the foundation, an unprecedented ocular expression emerging from it as its power deepened, no origin to trace, no precedent to compare against, nothing that pointed anywhere inconvenient.
He set the mirror down and looked through the wall of his house into the distance, testing the range.