"Mangekyō Sharingan!!!"
Shimura Ryōma stared at the masked figure in black, shock and disbelief flooding his face.
As a high-ranking member of Konoha's Shimura clan, he naturally knew that beyond the standard three-tomoe Sharingan of the Uchiha clan, there existed an even more powerful eye technique the Mangekyō Sharingan.
However, the chance of awakening this legendary eye was incredibly rare. It hadn't appeared in the Uchiha clan for many years.
At least, as far as anyone knew, no one in the current Uchiha clan possessed it.
And yet, here it was a Mangekyō Sharingan user had appeared right before his eyes.
"A Mangekyō Sharingan… someone in the Uchiha clan has awakened it?!"
His body tensed involuntarily, sweat soaking through his back as the terrifying rumors surrounding this eye came flooding into his mind.
"Wind Style: Vacuum Great Sphere!"
In the face of a life-or-death crisis, his instincts kicked in, and he performed hand seals at a speed faster than ever before.
A barrage of massive, cannonball-like wind blasts shot toward the masked enemy blocking his path.
This was his strongest Wind Style technique but even so, he knew it likely wouldn't be enough to harm his opponent.
Stories about the Mangekyō Sharingan were often dismissed as exaggerations. To most ninja who had never encountered it, the tales sounded impossible.
But as a Shimura clan elite, Ryōma knew better — those stories were not exaggerated. The Mangekyō Sharingan possessed power that could match, or even surpass, the terrifying legends.
He wasn't hoping to defeat the enemy — he just wanted to buy a little time to escape.
Each wind sphere struck the ground like a cannonball, sending dirt and debris flying and filling the area with dust.
The cloud of smoke and ash engulfed the enemy, obscuring everything in sight.
Taking advantage of the cover, Ryōma turned to flee. But in the very next instant, he froze.
The masked figure had suddenly appeared right in front of him, completely untouched by the explosion, not a speck of dust on his clothes.
"Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire Technique!"
A massive dragon of flame roared into existence, surging toward him with blistering heat.
Trees along its path caught fire, and the ground was scorched black in a perfectly straight line.
Before he could react, the fire dragon struck. Flames engulfed him, launching him backward.
His screams echoed as the fire devoured his body, the pain like being torn apart by thousands of ants.
Dozens of meters away, he crashed to the ground, his body charred and burned all over.
His face was blackened beyond recognition, the skin completely scorched.
With great difficulty, he rolled over and patted out the flames, then looked up at the masked figure in horror.
"He didn't even use hand seals!!!"
Normally, only masters with extreme proficiency in a jutsu could reduce the number of hand seals required — from dozens to just a few.
But to use a complex technique without any hand seals at all? Impossible — unless the jutsu was naturally seal-less.
Yet the enemy had clearly used
"Fire Style: Great Dragon Fire Technique"
A technique that required seals — and had done it without any.
It made no sense. It terrified him.
And the masked man wasn't finished.
Without any seals once again, he unleashed another jutsu:
"Fire Style: Majestic Flame Annihilation."
A sea of flames surged forward, sweeping across the forest with terrifying force.
Everything in its path ignited it was like watching a wildfire consume the world.
"Earth Style: Earth Flow Wall!"
Panic overtook Ryōma as the flames came crashing down.
Even at full strength, he couldn't have escaped an attack of this scale and now, injured and barely able to move, he had no chance.
He hastily performed hand seals, just managing to raise a wall of earth in front of him before the fire reached him.
But the stone wall he conjured didn't stand a chance.
The wall shattered, and the sea of flames swallowed him whole, dragging his body along as it surged forward for over a hundred meters.
When the fire finally died out, Ryōma was gone.
His body was completely carbonized a charred corpse, with no trace of life left.
Around him, the forest had been turned to a desolate wasteland.
Ashes were all that remained of the trees.
The ground was scorched black.
The air still shimmered with residual heat.
And then suddenly all of it disappeared.
The scorched earth vanished.
The heat in the air dissipated.
The lush forest returned to its original state, completely unharmed.
All except for one thing.
Shimura Ryōma's corpse remained fully carbonized, black as charcoal, lifeless.
"So it does carry over into reality…"
The Mangekyō Sharingan faded from his eyes. Uchiha Fugaku removed his mask, gazing at Ryōma's scorched remains.
None of that battle had actually happened.
It had all taken place inside a genjutsu.
From the moment Ryōma saw Fugaku's Mangekyō Sharingan, he had already fallen into his right eye's dojutsu: True Genjutsu.
Inside that illusion, they had fought — but because it was true genjutsu, every injury sustained within it manifested in the real world.
That was why Fugaku had been able to perform jutsu without hand seals within the illusion, the usual rules no longer applied.
"And not just seal-less ninjutsu…"
Inside the True Genjutsu, he could defy logic in many other ways.
Infinite resurrection. Infinite chakra. Teleportation to anywhere. And more.
He simply hadn't needed to use those abilities Ryōma was too weak to warrant them.
After all, Ryōma was only an elite jōnin — while Fugaku had already reached the level of a Kage.
And with the Mangekyō Sharingan, he wasn't just any Kage-level ninja he was one of the strongest among them.
"Everything about it is incredible… except for the toll it takes on the eyes."
He rubbed his right eye, which was now aching.
Even without a mirror, he knew it must be bloodshot and his vision had noticeably worsened.
Using the Mangekyō Sharingan had brought him one step closer to blindness.
His past self had rarely used the eye precisely to avoid this fate.
Fortunately, he now had a way to solve that problem.
Otherwise, like before, he would have had no choice but to seal away the Mangekyō Sharingan's power forever.
"No kekkei genkai, no special talent in ninjutsu, taijutsu, or genjutsu… not suitable for corpse refinement."
He walked over to Ryōma's charred body and shook his head.
The corpse, severely burned and lacking any bloodline limit or extraordinary talent, was of no value for refining into a puppet.
Too damaged, too ordinary.
Just another casualty in the growing shadow cast by the Mangekyō Sharingan.