Chapter 109: Now It's Triple Queue
Black Zetsu stared coldly at the cavern floor.
Ye lay weakly collapsed against the cold stone, his small face streaked with gruesome, bloody tears. The child no longer had the strength to thrash or struggle. He merely curled into a tight, trembling ball, his voice a hoarse, broken whisper. "Pitch-black... don't be like this... I'm scared... my eyes hurt so much..."
"Hmph." Black Zetsu offered no sympathy. He knelt just long enough to casually smear a basic coagulant over the empty, bleeding sockets, confirming the boy wouldn't bleed to death. Without another word, he turned his back on the weeping child. The ground rippled like water beneath his feet as he activated the Mayfly Technique, his dark form sinking smoothly into the earth to leave the underground base.
He had a tight schedule. He needed to infiltrate Konoha and retrieve the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. No matter how absurdly powerful this Ida Mutzuki was, she was still just flesh and blood. He refused to believe she possessed no exploitable weaknesses.
The moment the last trace of Black Zetsu's chakra vanished from the cavern, the oppressive atmosphere shattered.
Ye immediately sat up from the dirt, brushing the dust off his knees. He took a deep, steadying breath, his trembling completely vanishing.
After expanding his senses to absolutely guarantee that Black Zetsu had traveled far away and wasn't doubling back to check on him, Ye didn't hesitate. The ground beneath him softened, and he too used the Mayfly Technique, slipping out of the subterranean prison.
If he didn't run now, when would he get a better chance?
Let Black Zetsu go on his little scavenger hunt for the Sharingan. When the ancient mastermind finally returned, expecting to find his captive prize... ah, his precious Wood Release ninja would be long gone. The sheer, unadulterated panic that would induce? That was guaranteed to be a massive wave of high-quality mood value.
He was the only Wood Release user left in the entire world right now. Let's see how much effort Black Zetsu would expend trying to track him down.
Where should I go, though? Ye mused as he traveled rapidly through the root systems of the earth. The Ninja World is massive. I'm having a bit of trouble choosing a destination.
Forget it, I'll just roll the gacha and pick a random direction.
Come, come, come! Step right up! Here's a wild Wood Release ninja, the exact same model as Senju Hashirama! Come and take a look! Special clearance sale! Only 9.99! You won't lose out, you won't be fooled!
Ye, still bearing two horrifying, bloody holes where his eyes used to be, burst out of the earth and into the dense foliage of a sprawling forest. Black Zetsu's base had been extremely remote, buried deep underground, so emerging simply placed him in the middle of an uncharted wilderness.
It didn't matter. Ye flared his sensory abilities, locking onto distant chakra signatures, and sprinted forward, putting as much distance between himself and the base as possible.
A few miles out, he sensed a massive cluster of chaotic chakra. A large group of ninja were engaged in a brutal skirmish ahead.
In a fraction of a second, Ye switched gears. His smooth, rapid sprint devolved into a clumsy, desperate stumble. He tripped over an exposed root, crashing hard into the dirt, only to scramble back up on scraped knees.
"Help!" he wailed, his voice cracking with manufactured terror. "Pitch-black... where are you...!"
He crawled and staggered through the underbrush. With his blood-caked face, empty eye sockets, and mournful, terrified cries, he looked like the absolute pinnacle of human misery. He kept up the pathetic display, blindly running straight into the active combat zone.
Kunai clashed against swords, and elemental jutsu scorched the earth. Neither side of the warring shinobi paid the slightest bit of attention to the crippled child stumbling through the crossfire. In the brutal reality of the Ninja World, if a civilian wandered into a battlefield and caught a stray kunai, it was their own damn fault. If any of these hardened killers softened their hearts and slowed their assault to save a child, they would be the ones going home in a body bag.
However, the apathy shattered in an instant.
A shinobi from the losing side threw a wide spread of shuriken. His opponent easily ducked beneath the lethal volley, allowing the spinning blades to continue their trajectory—straight toward the blind, weeping child.
The atmosphere violently shifted.
Without warning, the ground in front of the boy erupted. Thick, vibrant wooden branches burst from the soil, twisting and weaving together into an impenetrable shield. The shuriken slammed into the wood with dull thuds, completely deflected, leaving the child entirely unharmed.
"Wood Release Ninjutsu?!" a shinobi screamed, his voice cracking in sheer disbelief.
Instantly, the clash of steel ceased. Every single ninja from both warring factions froze, their eyes snapping toward the writhing vines and sturdy branches still actively defending the crying boy.
Everyone recognized it. That was the legendary, signature ninjutsu of the First Hokage of Konohagakure. A power that, until this very second, no one else in the entire Ninja World possessed.
The shinobi from both sides slowly turned to look at each other. The previous animosity was instantly replaced by an entirely new, terrifyingly fierce determination.
If they could secure this Wood Release child and bring him back to their respective hidden villages...
The fighting resumed, but the intensity skyrocketed to a suicidal degree. It was no longer a skirmish; it was a desperate slaughter for the ultimate prize.
After a deafening barrage of colliding elemental jutsu, the faction that had already been at a disadvantage was pushed to the brink of total annihilation. As the last surviving ninja of the losing side fell to his knees, coughing up blood, a dark, spiteful thought consumed him. If my village can't have this power, neither can the enemy.
With his final breath, he rapidly formed a sequence of hand seals and aimed directly at Ye.
"Earth Release: Earth Dragon Bullet!"
The ground tore open as a massive, roaring dragon constructed of compressed mud and rock surged forward, its jaws unhinging as it charged straight toward the blind child's position.
Sensing the lethal mass of chakra barreling toward him, Ye wrapped his arms around his head, curling into a ball. "Save me!" he shrieked.
More branches violently burst from the earth, attempting to form a barricade, but the raw kinetic force of a Jonin's dying strike was too much for an untrained child's automatic defense. The wood splintered under the crushing weight of the earth dragon.
In the absolute nick of time, a blurred figure lunged through the debris. Strong arms wrapped around Ye's small frame, tackling him out of the dragon's path. They hit the dirt hard, rolling several times to bleed off the momentum. The enormous impact rattled Ye's skull, and he let his body go entirely limp, flawlessly feigning unconsciousness.
"He's still breathing," a gruff voice panted from above him. "Quick, send a messenger hawk to the Raikage. Tell him to dispatch an elite escort unit to meet us at the border immediately. Tell him we found a child who can use Wood Release."
Listening to the frantic, hushed voices, Ye mentally gave himself a massive thumbs-up.
He had originally assumed he would be picked up by some desperate Rogue Ninja or opportunistic mercenaries who would try to sell him on the black market or hand him over to some shady underground organization. He hadn't expected to hit the absolute jackpot on his first try.
He had been scooped up directly by shinobi from the Hidden Cloud Village. In the original canon, Kumogakure was notoriously obsessed with hoarding Kekkei Genkai, having launched multiple covert operations to kidnap bloodline users from Konoha.
Now, a living, breathing Wood Release user had practically fallen right into their laps. How was this any different from a divine gift dropping from the heavens?
They would undoubtedly guard him with their lives, locking him away in their most secure, hidden facilities.
He really, really wanted to see how Black Zetsu was going to track him down now, and exactly how much effort it would take to steal him back from the Raikage's paranoid grip. He certainly wasn't going to give Kou any hints.
Meanwhile, in the heart of Konoha Ninja Village.
Early morning sunlight streamed through the windows of the Hokage Building. Stelle was slouched lazily in the grand, oversized chair behind the desk, her feet propped up on a stack of highly classified documents. She was currently waiting for Sakumo Hatake to return with her breakfast from her absolute favorite dumpling shop.
Before the scent of fresh food could arrive, the office door clicked open, and Uchiha Kou slipped inside.
Stelle didn't even look up. She casually waved a hand, signaling all the hidden Anbu guards stationed in the rafters to withdraw from the room. Once the subtle shifts of air confirmed they were alone, she let out a long, dramatic yawn.
"What do you want?" she asked, finally eyeing her clone. "Your eyes are practically sparkling with mischief."
Kou stepped forward, a smug grin plastered across his face. He presented a small, carefully carved wooden box, holding it out with his single remaining arm. "A gift for you. Take a look."
Stelle raised an eyebrow. Giving yourself a gift? What kind of bizarre, narcissistic move is that?
Curious despite herself, Stelle leaned forward and flipped open the lid of the square wooden box.
A second later, she slammed it shut.
She blinked, rubbing her temples. I must have woken up too quickly. I could have sworn I just saw Madara's Sharingan floating in there.
Taking a steadying breath, she opened the box a second time.
Nope. She wasn't hallucinating. Suspended in a glass bottle filled with preservative fluid were the unmistakable, crimson irises of Uchiha Madara's Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan.
"Surprise!"
Kou struck a wildly exaggerated pose. He had somehow procured a cheap plastic party horn and a confetti cannon from Kami-knows-where. He blew the horn—producing a pathetic, reedy squeak—and popped the cannon, showering the Hokage's desk in brightly colored paper scraps. He struggled slightly to manage the props, given he only had his left hand, but his enthusiasm more than made up for his lack of coordination.
Stelle stared blankly at the confetti settling over the legendary eyeballs.
No wonder Black Zetsu's mood value had been violently exploding in the middle of the night. Usually, when she trolled the ancient entity, the system fed her points in increments of ten thousand. But last night? It had been detonating in bursts of fifty thousand, ringing endlessly in her head like someone had hit the jackpot on a casino slot machine and the coins were vomiting out.
She was genuinely baffled. She had gone through all the trouble of physically planting the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan into Ye's head specifically to hand Black Zetsu the Rinnegan. She was trying to lay the groundwork for the Fourth Great Ninja War so she could farm the entire world at once.
But now, her two clones had gone rogue and stolen the damn eyes back? What kind of chaotic play was this?
"What exactly are you and the little brat up to?" Stelle asked, brushing a piece of pink confetti off her cheek.
Kou tossed the party horn over his shoulder. "Didn't you always complain that the people around you were just boring background characters, and you only had a few decent targets to farm for points? So, the little brat and I teamed up. We started a Duo Queue to thoroughly clean out Black Zetsu's emotional reserves. But now that you're directly involved holding the loot, it's officially become a Triple Queue."
Triple Queue.
Stelle's mouth twitched violently. There were so many things wrong with that statement, so many layers of absolute absurdity to complain about, that she honestly didn't know where to start.
Pulling up a chair, Kou carefully broke down the little brat's deranged strategies for farming Black Zetsu. He detailed the fake blindness, the crying, the emotional manipulation, and the grand escape to Kumogakure.
As Stelle listened to the sheer, unadulterated psychological torture her clones had inflicted on the canon mastermind, she actually felt a fleeting, microscopic pang of pity for Black Zetsu.
This entire, convoluted scheme had spanned several years, revolving entirely around dangling that specific pair of Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan just out of reach, leading him on a wild goose chase for the Rinnegan. They had literally used one pair of eyes to string Black Zetsu along like a donkey chasing a carrot, driving the ancient manipulator to question his own reality.
He had to be utterly, catastrophically devastated right now.
"Alright," Stelle sighed, tapping the lid of the wooden box. "I'll keep the eyes safe for now. Once Black Zetsu realizes they're missing, he'll be wandering into Konoha soon enough to tear the place apart. How exactly do you plan to get his attention when he arrives?"
"Actually, I have a brilliant plan for that, but it requires a little bit of cooperation from you," Kou said, his grin widening into something truly sinister. He leaned in close to Stelle's ear, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
And so, one original and one clone sat together in the highest office of the Hokage Building, cheerfully plotting the absolute ruin of the Ninja World's greatest shadow.
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