The moment Natsuhiko opened his eyes, he realized that nothing seemed to have changed.
The world was still filled with color. There was no strange overlay of red and black, nor any stark interplay of black and white distorting his vision.
Seeing this, he finally let out a quiet breath of relief. At the very least, it meant there was nothing wrong with his eyes—they were still his own.
To be certain, he pulled out a kunai and angled it so that it reflected the moonlight, using it as a makeshift mirror. After examining his reflection carefully, he confirmed that there were no visible changes whatsoever.
"So I've only inherited the power… but my eyes themselves haven't changed?"
He turned the thought over in his mind as he slowly pushed himself to his feet.
Having sat there from morning until night, it was only thanks to his exceptional physical condition as a shinobi that he could even stand without issue. For an ordinary person, getting up after such a long time would likely have been dangerous.
Chakra circulated swiftly through his body, easing the stiffness and restoring vitality to his limbs.
Even so, he didn't leave. Instead, he remained where he was, staring intently at the kunai in his hand, its polished surface still reflecting his face.
Though his eyes appeared unchanged, he could clearly feel the immense power contained within them.
That power carried traces of the same overwhelming, destructive force he had sensed before—but now, it was completely subdued.
It rested quietly within his eyes, showing no signs of unrest.
And, as if it were instinctive, Natsuhiko found that he somehow knew how to control it. More strangely still, he seemed to possess an innate understanding of what his eyes were capable of.
"Still… if I want to truly understand them, I'll have to activate them, won't I?"
Taking a slow breath, he steadied himself.
As a member of the Senju, he had never imagined that he would one day possess such eyes.
And yet fate seemed to have played a peculiar joke on him. With the help of the system, he had obtained something that the Senju were never meant to have.
The leap he had taken, however, was far too great.
If anything, the closest precedent he could think of was Madara Uchiha.
Madara had shattered the thousand-year divide between Indra and Asura, fusing their powers together to create something truly extraordinary.
Although that path might not necessarily suit Natsuhiko, he was still well aware of the principles behind the Sharingan.
In fact, he even knew where one might obtain an Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan in the future.
And yet, instead of gaining the power of the Sharingan, he had ended up with a pair of eyes—ones whose origins lay in the Byakugan, but whose current form was something entirely unknown.
As his initial excitement faded, a trace of confusion crept in.
"If I remember correctly… when I took that Byakugan from Ao, my goal was to see if I could extract the Ōtsutsuki power within it…"
He retraced his thoughts, recalling what he had originally hoped to gain.
But after so much time—and especially after obtaining these new eyes—he had almost forgotten that initial intention altogether.
Still, there was no point dwelling on it now.
If anything, he hadn't lost out at all.
Taking another deep breath, Natsuhiko suppressed the restless excitement in his heart and focused.
It was time to test these eyes.
Following the instinctive understanding that had come with them, he began to carefully guide his chakra.
This was his first time activating them—he couldn't afford to be careless.
As he slowly channeled chakra into his eyes, he immediately felt the dormant power within them stir to life.
That destructive force began to pulse once more, but his eyes acted like a cage, containing it completely and preventing it from running wild.
At the same time, as his chakra flowed in, something unexpected happened.
His vision… began to change.
Although the color of his vision remained perfectly normal, Natsuhiko quickly realized that something fundamental had changed—
He could see incredibly far.
"And if I focus..." he murmured to himself.
His gaze locked onto a squad of Konoha ninja in the distance. From the look of them, they had just completed a mission and were on their way back to the village.
Yet what truly caught his attention wasn't their movements—it was what he could now perceive.
He could clearly see the fluctuations of chakra within their bodies.
More than that, the chakra wasn't a single uniform blue. Instead, it shimmered in a variety of colors, each distinct and layered.
"This is… chakra nature?"
The realization came almost instantly. The multicolored hues were too vivid, too structured to be anything else.
Based on his past experiences with cultivating chakra seeds, he could more or less guess what each of those colors represented.
"My range of vision has expanded tremendously, and I can observe chakra directly—that much aligns with the abilities of the Byakugan."
He narrowed his eyes slightly, analyzing what he was seeing.
"But distinguishing chakra natures… that doesn't seem like a standard Byakugan ability."
There was more.
"These eyes don't seem to possess the Sharingan's traits either—no copying, no genjutsu casting, and no extreme level of predictive insight."
That last point, in particular, stood out.
In Natsuhiko's understanding, the true strength of the Sharingan wasn't merely its ability to copy techniques or cast illusions.
Those were powerful, certainly—but in real combat, its greatest advantage was its unparalleled perception.
That dynamic vision, the ability to instantly read an opponent's movements, anticipate their attacks, and identify their weaknesses in a split second—it was invaluable in the life-or-death battles of a shinobi.
Natsuhiko didn't possess that kind of insight.
His fighting style wasn't elegant. He couldn't effortlessly dismantle an enemy with a single, perfectly timed strike.
What he relied on was his sensory ability—detecting an opponent's position and general intent.
And even with just that, his performance in Sunagakure and Kirigakure had already been considered monstrous.
He couldn't help but think of Uchiha Madara—the man who had pushed the Sharingan to its absolute limits.
Faced with thousands of enemies, Madara moved like a butterfly dancing through flowers—graceful, yet merciless, dismantling his opponents with terrifying precision.
That kind of ability wasn't something one could simply learn.
It was talent.
If you didn't have it, then you simply didn't.
Still, Natsuhiko wasn't particularly disappointed.
After all, who said that overwhelming burst power couldn't rival someone like Madara?
Just look at Naruto.
Or Guy.
The Eight Gates technique—practically suicidal—was the very embodiment of explosive power.
"And besides, I have both the Nine-Tails Mode and Sage Mode… both are forms of extreme burst strength."
With that thought, he withdrew his gaze from the distant squad and turned his attention back to the kunai in his hand.
"Hmm?"
The moment his reflection came into view, he froze.
Even though he had been mentally prepared, the sight still caught him off guard.
His eyes… had changed.
They were now a faint shade of blue.
And within those blue pupils, strands of light shimmered faintly, like something alive beneath the surface.
For a moment, he felt a strange sense of familiarity.
He had seen eyes like this before.
Naruto's son—Boruto.
That so-called "Jōgan."
As for what exactly the Jōgan was, Natsuhiko couldn't say for certain.
But if he had to make an educated guess, it was likely another form of Byakugan mutation.
After all, Boruto's mother was Hinata—the princess of the Byakugan, possessing one of the purest bloodlines.
Even if her combat prowess didn't seem particularly overwhelming, her lineage and talent were beyond question.
And Naruto, as the inheritor of Asura's chakra, combined with Hinata's bloodline…
If their child didn't end up with something extraordinary, that would have been far stranger.
The emergence of that eye—whatever it truly was—seemed to be the best proof of all.
But as for its exact abilities, Natsuhiko had no clear understanding. He hadn't followed those later developments closely; the only thing he really knew was what it looked like.
"Could mine… be the same kind of eye?"
He couldn't help but think along those lines.
Naruto had inherited Asura's chakra, while Natsuhiko himself had directly obtained a fragment of Asura's power. If that were fused with the power of the Byakugan, then producing something like that mysterious eye didn't seem all that strange.
And yet… there were differences.
If he remembered correctly, that eye's sclera had a darker tone—so much so that, at a glance, it could even resemble the eerie appearance of someone revived through Edo Tensei.
But his own eyes were different.
The whites of his eyes remained perfectly normal, clear and unchanged. Only his pupils had shifted, taking on that faint, glowing blue.
Looking closer, there was even a subtle resemblance to the Tenseigan.
"Though the Tenseigan has a darker core… and mine is still light blue. So they're not quite the same."
Quickly, Natsuhiko compared his eyes to both the Jōgan and the Tenseigan from his memory. The conclusion he reached was both exciting—and frustrating.
Exciting, because it was obvious that his eyes were anything but ordinary. Especially now that they had been activated, more information about their abilities was beginning to surface in his mind, like instincts he had always possessed.
Those fragments of knowledge alone were enough to make him feel a surge of anticipation.
But frustrating, because these eyes seemed to be a hybrid of sorts—bearing traits of both, yet belonging fully to neither.
And that meant he had no reference point.
No precedent to study.
No clear path for improvement.
It was just like the Kekkei Tōta he had previously fused—because there was no existing knowledge about it, he had been forced to develop and refine it entirely on his own.
"One headache after another… did the system deliberately give me something like this because I was planning to build a lab and research new techniques?"
Natsuhiko couldn't help but complain inwardly, though he knew it was pointless.
The system had no consciousness, no logic of its own.
Everything he obtained was essentially the result of chance—like drawing cards from a deck. Whether he was lucky or not would only become clear over time.
For now, at least, he considered himself fairly fortunate.
Especially after fully absorbing the information about these eyes.
Their baseline abilities aligned closely with what he had initially deduced—but that was only the most basic level.
Before fully activating their power, they functioned somewhat like a weakened fusion of the Byakugan and the Sharingan.
They retained enhanced perception and long-range vision, but neither aspect reached its peak potential.
However, once fully activated… that was when their true power would unfold.
For instance, he could enter a state of "super perception."
As for what that actually meant in practice—Natsuhiko had no idea.
According to the system's description, he would be able to see anything he wished to see.
And that was it.
No further explanation.
It was, frankly, very much in line with the system's usual behavior—never giving clear answers, always leaving him to figure things out on his own.
Fortunately, he was already used to that.
He trusted that the details would reveal themselves in actual combat.
In any case, his attention wasn't focused on that so-called "super perception" right now.
Because there was something even more remarkable.
A chakra mode—belonging specifically to these eyes.
That alone had caught him completely off guard.
He had never expected a pair of eyes to possess their own chakra mode.
And what was more, from what he understood, these eyes had a total of four distinct stages—each with its own unique abilities waiting to be unlocked.
Natsuhiko was currently still at the initial stage—so early, in fact, that he hadn't even reached what could be called "Stage One."
And yet, even at this level, he was already able to activate a chakra mode. That alone spoke volumes about the terrifying potential hidden within these eyes.
"Still… at this stage, the amplification and duration of the chakra mode probably aren't very impressive. After all, it's only the beginning."
Power was something that had to be accumulated step by step, and Natsuhiko understood that better than anyone now. So he didn't dwell on it too much.
Besides, he had noticed something amusing—he seemed to have an unusual affinity with chakra modes.
Sage Mode was already a form of chakra mode. The Nine-Tails Chakra Mode was another. And now this as well.
At this point, could it be considered a kind of "threefold convergence"?
Feeling the destructive force surging within his eyes, Natsuhiko slowly deactivated them.
That power… was likely the key foundation of the chakra mode itself. And its quality alone was enough to make even him feel a trace of unease.
Taking a deep breath, he fully closed down the activation of his eyes before shifting his attention to the remaining trees.
Today had truly been a day of harvest.
These eyes alone were already a tremendous gain—but that was far from everything. After all, what he had planted wasn't limited to just this.
He was still looking forward to what kind of results Kimimaro's bone—born from the Shikotsumyaku—would produce.
And beyond that, there was also the chakra of the Three-Tails.
With those thoughts in mind, Natsuhiko stepped toward the other trees.
—
"Uchiha Shin… just what exactly are you planning to do?!"
Inside a room within the Uchiha compound, Uchiha Shin stood calmly as he looked at the several men of similar age before him.
They could never forget what had happened just hours earlier—how, while they were gathered discussing their plans, they had suddenly been ambushed by Uchiha Haru and his unit.
The operation had been clean and decisive. Haru's strength was overwhelming, and more importantly, they themselves had deliberately cleared the surrounding area in advance.
Because of that, no one noticed that they, with only minimal guards, had already been completely subdued.
Now, as they glared at him in anger and disbelief, Uchiha Shin silently let out a sigh.
These people had once been his comrades. His friends, even.
They had known each other since childhood, shared similar beliefs, and once worked toward the same goals.
But now… they had reached this point.
Not quite drawing blades against each other, but not far from it either.
He could feel it clearly—the bonds between them had already been shattered tonight.
It pained him deeply. But no matter how much it hurt, he had no choice but to endure it. He had to steel his heart and face it coldly.
From the moment he accepted Natsuhiko's proposal, Uchiha Shin had known this day would come.
The path he had chosen left no room for compromise. Either it would be understood and supported… or in the end, it would only lead to estrangement.
And even former comrades would eventually become strangers—or worse, enemies pointing blades at one another.
"What I am doing… is for this clan," Uchiha Shin said calmly, meeting their gazes without wavering.
"The clan has already reached a critical point of survival. It may not be obvious yet, but I can tell you this with complete certainty—we have already been marked."
"So what?!"
One of the elders roared in anger.
"That is not a reason for you to betray the clan—or to oppose the clan head!"
"If you can arrest us today to clear your obstacles, then what's stopping you from killing anyone who opposes you tomorrow?!"
Another elder shouted as well, his eyes burning with fury.
"I will never accept such methods! At this point, you're probably already planning to move against the clan head next, aren't you?!"
"Maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows what the future holds?"
Uchiha Shin neither confirmed nor denied it.
His ambiguous response only deepened the chill that crept into the hearts of the Uchiha elders present. They truly could not understand why he had changed into someone like this.
He kept insisting that everything he was doing was for the clan—but was it really necessary to go this far for the sake of the clan?
They would admit one thing: his reforms to the Police Force had been undeniably effective. But those results had also come at the cost of the clan's own interests.
Even that one line of his—"Is the Police Force the police force of Konoha, or the police force of the Uchiha?"—had been profoundly thought-provoking.
But without even fully understanding what kind of danger the clan was facing, they were unwilling—and unable—to support such reckless actions.
"Shin… now that things have come to this, can you at least tell us what is really going on?"
One of the elders could no longer endure the situation. In his mind, Uchiha Shin had clearly gone mad—but years of shared history made him reluctant to fully believe it was that simple.
He wanted answers. He wanted to understand what had driven everything to this point.
As he had said, they were already restrained. They posed no real threat anymore. No matter how unwilling they were, there was nothing they could do.
This room was filled with sealing restrictions, and their chakra had been suppressed. Escape was nothing more than a fantasy.
"…Haah."
Uchiha Shin let out a long, heavy sigh before fixing his gaze on them.
"Since it has come to this… there are indeed things I can tell you."
"Whether you understand or not, none of you will be leaving here until this matter is resolved."
"And it all… began more than a year ago, when I first considered sending Shisui into the ANBU."
—
Meanwhile, Uchiha Haru lay on the ground clutching his chest, his gaze fixed with a complicated expression on the two figures clashing ahead of him.
With his father Uchiha Shin's prior warning, he already knew that by the side of Grand Elder Uchiha Jin, there existed a man—an unseen guardian—like an Asura in human form.
Just how strong that person truly was, Uchiha Haru had no real frame of reference for.
He was one of the few within the clan who possessed the Three Tomoe Sharingan, and he had even been to the battlefield before. Though he had been protected, he had still witnessed the brutality of war firsthand and risked his life there.
And yet, the moment he brought his unit—and the ANBU accompanying them—to assassinate Grand Elder Uchiha Jin, he realized something terrifying.
Even among those who possessed the same Three Tomoe Sharingan, the difference in strength could be so vast it was suffocating.
Their operation had gone smoothly at first. They had cleared the guards along the way without alerting anyone. But the moment they attempted to make the actual arrest, that man appeared.
And in that instant, Uchiha Haru experienced a gap in power unlike anything he had ever felt before.
The man was dressed in black from head to toe, wearing a strange mask. His movements were ghostlike—almost inhuman—and his control over the Sharingan was nothing short of terrifying. He completely overwhelmed Haru, leaving him no room to counterattack.
It was the first time he had ever seen someone wield the Sharingan with such refinement—genjutsu, taijutsu, and ninjutsu seamlessly woven together at an impossible level.
But… who was this man?
Why was someone this powerful completely unknown?
That question echoed endlessly in Uchiha Haru's mind as he lay defeated.
Clenching his teeth, he prepared to make a desperate final stand against the approaching figure—
but at that very moment, an ANBU shinobi suddenly appeared.
The newcomer looked young, with short silver hair, and carried a short sword at his waist. His presence caused Uchiha Haru to pause in confusion.
That silhouette… felt strangely familiar.
Like something he had seen nearly ten years ago.
"…He looks kind of like the White Fang."
Haru murmured inwardly, though unease quickly followed that thought.
"So young, and he's already a division commander… but the enemy he's facing is no ordinary opponent. Looks like things are going to get ugly."
Uchiha Sora did not believe for a second that the young division commander before him could truly handle a monster like that, a man who felt like a walking Asura. After all, that was the power of the Uchiha clan itself.
A force like that wasn't something some newly appointed division commander could deal with.
As a member of the Uchiha, Haru found his emotions tangled and conflicted. Part of him hoped the division commander would win—but another part of him deeply respected, almost worshipped, the strength of the Uchiha.
Caught in that contradiction, his expression gradually shifted.
"How is this kid possible—?"
...
"So it really is the ANBU… as expected, Konoha's fingerprints are all over this."
At the same time, Kakashi appeared within the Uchiha compound wearing his mask. From the side, Uchiha Jin—currently blocked off by members of the Police Force—spoke with a cold tone.
Everything that had happened tonight far exceeded his expectations. He truly hadn't thought Uchiha Shin would actually go so far as to move against his own clan members.
That decisiveness… it was impressive. For the current Uchiha clan, what they lacked most was exactly that kind of resolve.
But when such decisiveness appeared in an opponent, everything took on a different meaning entirely.
Uchiha Jin had long found it strange—why had Uchiha Shin's personality begun to change?
After investigating, he discovered that Shin had sent many clan members—including even the clan's so-called genius, Uchiha Shisui—into the ANBU.
That alone carried an enormous implication: Uchiha Shin might have already established direct ties with Konoha.
And reality seemed to confirm that suspicion. Shin's transformation was obvious. He had become more confident, more assertive.
And all of his actions increasingly aligned with Konoha's interests—so much so that he was now openly opposing the clan head, Uchiha Fugaku.
As for Fugaku, Uchiha Jin had never held him in high regard.
He was indecisive in action and judgment, lacking the resolve expected of a clan head. He constantly sought balance within the clan rather than making clear choices.
Such a person might have been acceptable in a time of peace and stability.
But in the clan's current situation, that hesitation was nothing short of disappointing.
Still, disappointment or not, Fugaku was still the clan head. Uchiha Jin had to respect that position—especially now that Shin had forced him into alignment with their faction.
Kakashi said nothing in response to Uchiha Jin. His gaze remained locked on the man ahead of him—an existence that felt like a walking Asura.
He didn't fully understand what had happened within the Uchiha clan. Natsuhiko hadn't explained much to him either.
But upon arriving here, he could roughly piece it together: this was likely an internal conflict within the Uchiha, and Natsuhiko's influence was probably involved as well.
He didn't particularly want to get involved in something like this.
However, it was Natsuhiko's order. So he would follow it without hesitation.
At most, once everything was over, he would return and ask for the full explanation.
Standing quietly in place, Kakashi did not move an inch. But the single Sharingan beneath his mask had already begun to spin slowly.
"Clang!"
In an instant, he twisted his body.
His short blade was drawn in a flash, blue chakra wrapping around it as he intercepted an incoming strike from behind.
The sound of metal clashing echoed through the empty courtyard.
Kakashi narrowed his visible eye while closing the other, his Sharingan spinning rapidly as he analyzed the battlefield.
Behind him, a figure wielding a kunai had appeared out of nowhere, while another in front of him simultaneously increased pressure—coordinated, precise, and lethal.
At that moment, Kakashi had no room to retreat.
The blade from the figure behind him drove straight into his body without the slightest hesitation.
And yet, in the very instant it struck, the man who looked like an Asura reacted with astonishing speed—he yanked his sword back and leapt to the side.
The next second, Kakashi burst out from the ground where he had been, as if emerging from a substitution technique, his own blade slashing fiercely toward the opponent.
"Substitution jutsu?"
After narrowly avoiding Kakashi's strike, the man spoke calmly.
"Not bad. You actually saw through my technique… Is it because of that eye?"
"This is Obito's eye," Kakashi replied after a brief silence, still gripping his blade.
"I am Uchiha Tatsumi. Remember my name."
The man—Uchiha Tatsumi, the one who resembled an Asura—spoke evenly.
"For an outsider to wield the Sharingan to this extent… it's impressive. But this eye still belongs to the Uchiha."
"Then show me what you've got," Kakashi said coldly.
His expression turned distant, almost emotionless, as chakra began to surge violently through his body.
In the next instant, he shot forward.
Crackling arcs of lightning appeared across his form as he accelerated.
His blade swung down in a flash of lightning-fast motion—cutting straight across Uchiha Tatsumi's throat.
But Tatsumi's reaction was just as absurdly fast. He tilted his body forward, narrowly avoiding the slash, and in the same motion brought his own blade sweeping toward Kakashi.
In an instant, the sound of metal clashing rang out endlessly.
Their movements were so fast they were nearly impossible to track—two streaks of light colliding again and again across the battlefield.
Their combat techniques, their predictions, their counter-readings in mid-fight—it was all so refined that anyone watching would feel their vision blur.
Uchiha Haru sat frozen on the ground.
He truly hadn't expected that this seemingly young division commander possessed such terrifying strength.
The only thought in his mind was: How did that kid even reach this level?
By now, he had already figured out who this division commander was. After all, in the entirety of Konoha, there was only one outsider known to possess the Uchiha Sharingan.
And yet—
Just as the two clashing figures suddenly separated, neither appearing injured as if the entire exchange had been an illusion—
Kakashi adjusted his grip on his blade and immediately charged forward again.
But this time, Uchiha Tatsumi did not follow.
He stood still, forming hand seals with calm precision.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu!"
"Hmph."
Kakashi let out a cold snort. His momentum briefly halted as he kicked off the ground and leapt to the side.
But the moment he landed, a sharp sense of danger erupted in his mind.
Without hesitation, he pushed off again, his body twisting midair as he drifted several meters toward the front-left.
A kunai sliced through the air where he had just been standing, close enough that even without looking, he knew his clothing had been cut.
And the moment he landed again, Uchiha Tatsumi had already closed the distance.
His blade came for Kakashi's throat in a merciless horizontal strike.