The Uchiha’s grimore guide to winning: chapter 8: Powerscaling, Xianxia and rain of steels

Hello. Late happy new year to all of you. Only the best, hopefully 2026 doesn't sack us in an alley like its big brother 2025 did. To be frank, this is half a chapter and if writing the other half would not take me more time, I would have written it whole. Because of that, I was not able to include Ren using the perks he gained at the end of the last chapter but here they are:

ROLL 1: 50 CP - Chapter 5: Domain

• Name: Sorcery - Mana Manipulation Ritual (Shape Mana)

• Source: World of Darkness: Sorcerer

• Description: The sorcerer alters the flow of magical energy in an area, changing its direction or effects. This can be used to attract luck and spirits of a desired type, at least in a general sense, but it can also be used to redirect ley lines and alter spells that are affecting the area.

• Note: Requires Sorcery - Mana Manipulation (Two Dots) first.

ROLL 2: 400 CP - Chapter 9: Transformation

• Name: Royal Jelly

• Source: Wonderland No More

• Description: A transparent jelly used by Flying Elephants to transform into Queens. This special version offers improved healing without risks, and when fed to a wild(ish) animal (sapient or non-sapient), the eater will transform into a "queen" version of the species – an enhanced form that often has greater intelligence, size, power, and charisma over its own kind.

ROLL 3: 200 CP - Chapter 8: Divination

• Name: WITCH SIGHT

• Source: Warhammer Fantasy: Kislev

• Description: You can see even the slightest trace of magic in objects, people and the very air itself. Moreover you can spot Chaotic taint within the souls of those around you, allowing you to see clearly who has been corrupted by dark powers and to what extent.

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The world turned to metal.

That was my first coherent thought as I jerked my head to the side, watching a kunai, no, dozens of kunais, scream through the space my skull had occupied a heartbeat ago. The weapon whistled past my ear close enough that I felt the displaced air kiss my skin, close enough to smell the oiled steel.

Then came the rain.

Not water. Not mercy. Steel.

Hundreds of kunai descended from above like the wrath of some forgotten god, each one catching the morning light as they fell. They weren't scattered randomly, no, that would've been too kind. These traced geometric patterns in the air, creating a lattice of death that contracted inward with every meter they dropped. Someone had thrown these with what seemed pure utter precision, calculating trajectories and intersection points to create an inescapable kill zone.

That someone was my aunt.

I took a breath. Deep. Controlled. Let the air fill my lungs completely before releasing it in a measured exhale. The technique, one I'd read about in my past life, in books about meditation and focus, helped center my thoughts even as my ten-year-old body screamed at me to run.

But running wouldn't help. Not against this.

So instead, I looked.

My eyes shifted, and the world changed with them. The Sharingan activated without conscious thought, a reflex as natural as blinking by now. Three tomoe spun to life in each eye, painting my vision in shades of crimson and shadow. Time didn't slow, that was a common misconception I'd had before awakening these eyes. Time moved exactly as it always did.

I just moved better.

The kunai weren't falling anymore. They were arcing, each one following a parabolic path that my enhanced perception could trace from apex to impact. I saw rotation speeds, estimated metal composition from how light reflected off their surfaces, tracked which ones had explosive tags attached by the subtle weight differences in their flight patterns.

My head tilted. Three kunai passed through the space it had occupied, so close I felt one nick the very tip of my hair. My hand snapped out, fingers closing around a fourth weapon mid-flight. The impact should have driven it through my palm, the kunai was moving fast enough to punch through flesh and bone. Should have. Would have, for anyone else.

But I'd caught it at the perfect angle, letting its momentum carry it into my rotating grip rather than fighting against the force. The weapon's handle settled into my palm as naturally as if I'd been holding it all along.

Ten more kunai converged on my position. I pivoted on my left foot, brought the captured kunai up, and moved.

Steel met steel.

The first kunai deflected high and to the left, spinning away with a metallic ching that rang across the clearing. The second I caught on the back edge of my own weapon, using the angle to redirect it down and away. The third, fourth, and fifth came simultaneously, a coordinated strike that would've been impossible to defend against with normal human reaction time.

The Sharingan saw their intersection point. My body moved to meet them.

Ching. Spark. Impact.

Ching. Spark. Impact.

Ching. Spark. Impact.

Each deflection created a brief flash of light as metal scraped against metal. Each impact sent a miniature shockwave rippling through the air, not visible, but I felt them, little pulses of displaced atmosphere that buffeted against my skin. The force of these collisions was wrong. Kunai shouldn't create shockwaves. Deflecting thrown weapons shouldn't make the air itself shudder.

But this was the Naruto world, where physics took a backseat to chakra-enhanced impossibility.

I kept moving. Had to. Because the rain hadn't stopped.

My feet carried me forward in a weaving pattern, each step carefully placed to avoid the growing number of kunai embedding themselves in the earth. The weapons hit with enough force to crater the soil, punching half a meter deep into packed earth that should have been rock-hard. Grass vaporized where superheated metal touched it. The sound was constant now, a drumbeat of impacts that shook the ground beneath me.

Thud-thud-THUD-crack-BOOM.

One struck close enough that debris peppered my left side. I felt rather than saw the shallow cuts open on my arm, thin lines of hot pain that my adrenaline-flooded system almost dismissed entirely.

I kept moving.

Ten meters covered. The clearing, yes, that's what this open space was called, a clearing, though calling it that felt woefully inadequate now that it was being systematically demolished, stretched about fifty meters across. I was one-fifth of the way to relative safety.

Assuming safety existed anywhere when Aunt Fumiko decided to go all out.

Another kunai. This one came from the side rather than above, moving far too fast for a normal throw. I watched its approach, saw the paper seal trailing from its handle like a mocking ribbon, saw the way that seal flickered with contained chakra.

Oh.

Oh no.

My body moved before conscious thought caught up. Every muscle in my legs detonated as I expelled from the sole of my feet chakra-enhanced force, launching me backward in a desperate leap. The amount of chakra I'd just burned through was stupid, reckless, the kind of thing that would leave me wheezing and chakra-exhausted if I kept it up.

Thirty meters. I crossed thirty meters in less than two seconds, landing hard enough to crack the earth beneath my feet.

The explosion seal detonated.

Sound came first. Not the quiet 'poof' of smoke bombs or the sharp 'crack' of a firecracker. This was pressure, a wall of compressed air that slammed into my chest even at this distance. The noise came half a second later, a roar that rattled my teeth and made my ears ring.

Then came the heat.

I crossed my arms in front of my face on instinct. Felt the wave of superheated air wash over me like standing too close to a forge. My skin prickled, then burned, layers of epidermis protesting the sudden temperature spike. I bit down on my tongue to stop the scream that wanted to escape, tasted copper as teeth broke skin.

The pain was... God, it was everything. Like a bad sunburn concentrated into three seconds. Like someone had pressed a hot iron against every exposed inch of skin. My arms took the worst of it, positioned as they were to shield my face.

But I was fine. Whole. Unbroken.

When I lowered my arms and blinked away the spots dancing in my vision, I saw the crater. Three meters across, maybe a meter deep at its center. The grass around it had been reduced to ash. The soil was scorched black in a radius that extended nearly ten meters from the detonation point.

I'd been thirty meters away and still felt like I'd stuck my head in an oven.

What the original Ren and thus I'd learned about explosive seals in the Academy, basic theory, handling procedures, how to store them safely, hadn't prepared me for this. The sterile explanations about "concentrated chakra release" and "controlled destruction" failed utterly to capture what it felt like to be on the business end of one.

In the anime, explosions looked cool. Bright flashes of light, maybe some smoke, characters emerging dramatically from the blast with tastefully placed scuff marks on their clothes. Clean. Sanitized for television audiences and weekly publication schedules.

Reality was messier. Louder. Hotter. Reality was standing thirty meters from the epicenter and still feeling like your skin was about to slough off.

"This is insane," I muttered, and couldn't stop the grin that split my face.

Because it was insane. Gloriously, impossibly insane. I was ten years old, dodging weapons that moved faster than sound, surviving explosions that could level buildings. My body, this child's body, was doing things that should be impossible.

And I loved it.

The memories from my past life stirred, bringing with them context that my ten-year-old self shouldn't have. I remembered jokes made in Reddit threads, memes shared on forums. "Nawaki killed by an explosion tag" had been a whole thing in the corner of the Naruto community I was familiar with, people poking fun at how the descendant of someone like Hashirama and the brother of Tsunade, such powerful characters could be killed by basic ninja tools.

Except now, having felt the edge of one's wrath, I completely understood. These weren't "basic tools." These were weapons of mass destruction used by murder hobos punch wizards masquerading as ninjas wrapped in paper and sold at the local shop.

A sound cut through my thoughts. A whistle. Multiple whistles. High-pitched and getting closer.

I looked up.

Shuriken now. Because of course it was shuriken. Couldn't just be one type of projectile, that would be too simple.

These weren't falling from directly overhead like the kunai had. These came at angles, dozens of throwing stars converging on my position from every direction. I saw their paths intersect, saw that in approximately 1.3 seconds, every single one would occupy the same space I currently stood in.

This is supposed to be training, not an assassination attempt!

But complaining wouldn't help. Neither would panicking.

My hands moved. Not with thought, but with muscle memory burned into my brain from countless hours watching, studying, memorizing. The Sharingan had copied this technique months ago, stored it away in perfect detail. Now my body executed what my eyes had learned.

I held the kunai horizontally, edge facing outward. The first shuriken came from my right. Instead of blocking it directly, I angled my kunai thirty degrees and tapped the incoming projectile. Metal kissed metal for a fraction of a second. The shuriken's trajectory shifted, just slightly, just enough.

It collided with a second shuriken coming from my left.

Both weapons deflected each other, spinning away in new directions. But I was already moving, already repositioning my kunai to intercept the third shuriken. Another tap, another precise angle. This one ricocheted into the fourth.

Tap. Deflect. Ricochet.

Tap. Deflect. Ricochet.

The rhythm built itself naturally. My kunai became a conductor's baton, orchestrating a symphony of colliding steel. I didn't block the projectiles, I redirected them. Each shuriken I touched became a tool to deflect two more. Those two would hit four others. Those four would scatter eight.

Progression. One became two became four became eight became sixteen.

Using the enemy's attacks against themselves, turning quantity into a liability rather than an advantage. The Uchiha specialized in this, in turning overwhelming force into elaborate traps.

My wrist flicked. A shuriken heading for my throat met my kunai at a forty-five-degree angle. It spun away, collided with three more projectiles, and all four scattered like billiard balls after a break.

Tap-tap. Clink-clink-CLANG.

The sound of chain reactions filled the air. Metal struck metal in cascading patterns, each impact spawning more impacts. My Sharingan tracked every trajectory, calculated every angle, fed the information to my muscles before my conscious mind could process it.

Another shuriken. This one came low, aimed at my ankles. I dropped my kunai's point down, caught the projectile on the blade's edge, and flicked upward. The redirected shuriken shot straight up, intercepted a descending throw, and both weapons spiraled away into the tree line.

Tap. Redirect. Eliminate.

But even as my body moved through this deadly dance, even as my hands played out the technique with increasing confidence, another part of my mind was doing something different.

I closed my eyes to the purely visual information and opened them to something else. That other sense, the one that came with my psychic abilities. The one that let me touch the minds of animals.

Reach.

The world exploded into sensation.

Not sight. Not exactly. This was something older, something more primal. I felt the presence of every living thing within a hundred meters. Felt their awareness as distinct points of consciousness, each one a tiny spark of life that burned with its own unique color.

A sparrow in the tree line: nervous, alert, ready to flee at the first sign of danger.

Three squirrels in the branches: curious, watching the strange two-legs make noise and light.

A fox in its den: sleeping, unconcerned with the chaos above.

Two dozen insects crawling through the grass: each one registering as a minute pinprick of awareness, tiny sparks of instinct-driven existence.

My psychic sense washed over them all, and I pulled.

Not with my hands. With my mind. With that strange ability that I still didn't fully understand, even months after discovering it. I reached out to every creature I could sense and commanded them.

Come.

Not words. Animals didn't think in words. Instead I projected intent, purpose, direction. Showed them images of where I needed them to go, what I needed them to do. Promised them safety, protection, food, whatever their simple minds desired in exchange for this service.

They came.

All of them. The sparrow exploded from its perch in a burst of frantic wing-beats. The squirrels bounded from branch to branch, moving with acrobatic grace. The fox emerged from its den, shaking off sleep and confusion. The insects, too small to be individually controlled, moved as a swarm, a living carpet of chitin and compound eyes.

And as they moved, I saw.

Not through my own eyes, I was too busy deflecting shuriken for that. My hands moved in patterns I'd copied from Itachi, rapid strikes that turned my stolen kunai into a blur of metal. Each impact jarred my bones, sent vibrations up my arms that promised bruises later. But I kept at it, because stopping meant dying.

While my body worked on autopilot, my mind was elsewhere. Distributed. Fractured across two dozen points of consciousness.

Sharp-sky-predator-vision: The sparrow's sight cut through distance like a blade. Colors I couldn't name, couldn't comprehend, painted the world in spectrums beyond human perception. Infrared heat signatures bloomed like flowers. The woman against the tree registered as warm-prey-big-danger. Her position locked in my mind with absolute clarity. Fifty-three meters, northeast direction, elevated two meters on a thick branch disguised by her dark clothing that shouldn't work but somehow did because of the way she held herself, still, patient, like stone-that-breathes.

Ground-level-scurry-awareness: The fox moved through underbrush, navigating by scent maps invisible to human senses. Chemical trails painted paths through the forest. The woman's scent was sharp-metal-danger-wrong, the kind that made prey-instinct scream to run-hide-burrow-deep. But louder than that instinct was my command, pulling puppet-strings attached to its primitive brain stem.

Multi-angle-small-nervous-food-seeker: The three squirrels offered triangulated perspectives. Tree branches became highways, three-dimensional space collapsed into efficient route-calculations. The woman's position visible from different angles simultaneously, creating a composite map that updated in real-time. She shifted her weight, micro-adjustment barely noticeable. Left leg supporting more, right leg ready to push off and move.

Collective-tactile-chemical-simple: The insect swarm didn't see or hear in any way I understood. Their world was pressure-gradients and chemical-signals and vibration-patterns transmitted through earth and air. The woman existed as a mass of disturbed-air-pressure and heat-source-different-from-ambient and ground-compression-weight-distribution. Pure data, stripped of interpretation, building a picture through mathematics rather than senses.

My consciousness fragmented further, spreading itself thinner and thinner across more and more minds. Each animal became a node in an expanding network. The sparrow recruited another bird. The fox's awareness touched a rabbit's terror and I grabbed that too, added it to my collection. The squirrels chittered signals that reached more of their kind.

Dozens became hundreds.

Flight-patterns-air-currents-thermal-columns: Birds spiraling upward on rising heat, seeing the clearing from above, seeing the full scope of destruction mapped out in craters and scorched earth.

Burrow-sense-earth-memory-safe-routes: Underground creatures feeling vibrations through soil, mapping the clearing's boundaries by where-it-shakes and where-it-doesn't.

Predator-distance-calculation-strike-timing: A hawk high above, tracking movement with mathematical precision, its killing-instinct repurposed to serve my reconnaissance needs.

Pack-thought-shared-awareness-distributed-consciousness: A family of raccoons thinking in almost-we rather than I, their collective intelligence multiplying my processing power.

The amount of information pouring into my mind should have been overwhelming. Should have shattered my sanity like glass under a hammer. Hundreds of sensory inputs, each one filtered through a completely alien nervous system, each one interpreted by a brain that evolved under completely different selection pressures.

But the psychic ability didn't just let me see through their eyes. It translated. Converted their perceptions into formats my human brain could process, then seamlessly integrated that processed data into my understanding of reality.

I knew where Aunt Fumiko stood. Knew how she was positioned. Knew she was watching me with an expression that had shifted from bored-patience to genuine-interest. Knew that a cloud of creatures, hundreds of insects and dozens of small animals, were converging on her location with wild abandon.

My body continued deflecting shuriken. Tap-tap-tap. Ricochet patterns creating empty spaces in the metal storm. But my attention was already shifting, already looking ahead to what came next.

Through the sparrow's eyes, I watched Aunt Fumiko notice the incoming swarm. Watched her eyebrows rise slightly. Watched her push off from the tree trunk with economical grace.

The boredom vanished from her expression. What replaced it made something deep in my hindbrain whimper and want to hide.

Excitement. Pure, undiluted, barely restrained excitement.

She looked like someone who'd just been given the most interesting toy in the world. Her smile was too wide, too sharp. Her eyes too bright. The casual aunt-energy evaporated, replaced by something predatory and eager.

This was the expression of a battle maniac who'd been holding back and just received permission to stop.

Her hands blurred through seals. Even distributed across multiple viewpoints, even with my Sharingan processing the movements, I only caught fragments. Tiger. Ram. Monkey. Something. Ox. Dog. And then her hands were at her mouth, drawing breath.

I knew the signs. Knew the sequence. My father had taught me this technique not a long time ago. The Uchiha clan's signature fire jutsu, the one every member learned as children.

Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu.

The Great Fireball Technique. Simple. Basic. Entry-level fire manipulation. A large ball of flames that traveled forward, impressive to look at but ultimately straightforward in its application. My father's demonstration had been controlled, measured, the kind of display meant to teach rather than destroy.

What came out of Aunt Fumiko's mouth bore no resemblance to my father's teaching demonstration.

The flames weren't red. They didn't form a neat sphere. What erupted from her lips was a cone of white-blue plasma that expanded outward like the breath of an angry god.

Trees didn't catch fire. They exploded. Moisture inside the wood flash-boiled so fast that the trunks burst outward, showering the area with burning splinters. The undergrowth beneath the flames didn't ignite, it vaporized, organic matter reduced to component molecules before combustion could even begin.

The grass turned to ash. Then the ash turned to nothing. The topsoil beneath blackened and cracked and began to glow, superheated earth radiating visible light.

Through my animal network, I felt the wall of heat approaching. Felt it as a physical force that pushed against the air itself. The creatures closest to the flames registered one instant of searing-wrong-pain-ERROR before their nervous systems overloaded and shut down completely.

I severed the connections. Cut the psychic links before the backlash could reach me. Felt it anyway, a spike of phantom agony that made my vision white out for half a second.

When sight returned, the forest was gone. Not burning. Gone. A semicircle of absolute devastation stretched out from where Aunt Fumiko stood. Twenty meters of woodland reduced to scorched earth and glowing embers. The air above the destruction rippled with heat distortion, creating a mirage-like shimmer that made it hard to focus.

And through that shimmer, through the smoke and heat and ash, Aunt Fumiko walked.

Not quickly. Not urgently. Just... walked. Like someone taking an evening stroll through a park rather than standing at ground zero of localized apocalypse.

The flames parted around her. The heat that would cook human flesh in seconds seemed to caress her skin like a pleasant breeze. Her clothes, standard Jonin uniform that should have ignited immediately, showed not even a scorch mark.

She emerged from the inferno looking exactly as she had before, except for her expression. The excitement had intensified. Her pupils were dilated. Her breathing was faster, deeper. She looked almost drunk on the destruction she'd just unleashed.

High. She looked genuinely high on violence.

"How?" The word came out before I could stop it. My voice stayed steady despite the primal fear making my hands tremble. "My fireball doesn't look like that. When Dad taught me, it was impressive but it wasn't... it wasn't that."

Aunt Fumiko's grin widened impossibly further. She tilted her head like a predator examining interesting prey.

"Simple," she said. Her voice had changed. Less the fun aunt who snuck me sweets and ruffled my hair. More the veteran shinobi who'd survived two wars by being very, very good at killing things. "Your father was teaching you, showing you the technique. Nothing more, nothing less. He wasn't trying to kill you. Wasn't even trying to hurt you. Just... demonstrate."

She held up one finger.

"Second." She raised a second finger. "You're talented, Ren. Very talented and special. If given enough time, you'll probably reach heights that Madara and Hashirama themselves would be proud of." Her smile softened briefly, showing a glimpse of genuine affection beneath the battle-hunger. "But right now? Right now you're just an Academy student. Sure, you jumped grades. Sure, you're quite a special not beyond ten years old yet. But there's a difference between potential and power."

I wanted to argue. Wanted to point out that I had Sharingan, that I had memories of a past life, that I had abilities no one, well, most didn’t know about with me revealing my abilities to the leadership of the clan. But she wasn't finished.

"Normally," Aunt Fumiko continued, starting to walk toward me with slow, deliberate steps, "a good Genin-level shinobi should be able to handle a hundred fresh Academy graduates without breaking a sweat. Not because of fancy jutsu or overwhelming power, just experience, training, and genuine understanding of how to fight."

I thought about that. Tried to picture one skilled Genin against a hundred Academy students. At first it seemed impossible. Then I remembered the gap. Remembered that Genin weren't just "Academy students who graduated." They were shinobi who'd survived their first real missions. Who'd fought. Who'd killed.

A hundred children with basic kunai skills against one trained killer. Put that way, it almost seemed unfair to the Genin, too many targets cluttering the battlefield.

"Even what I just did?" Aunt Fumiko gestured casually at the devastation behind her. "The fireball that probably looked apocalyptic from your perspective? That should be doable for an average Chunin with a fire nature affinity. Maybe a very, very good Genin who's specialized in fire jutsu and has perfect chakra control."

I looked at the destruction. At the circle of scorched earth. At trees reduced to ash and soil turned to glass.

Average Chunin.

The implications hit me like a physical blow. If that was average for Chunin level...

"How many?" I asked, voice barely above a whisper. "How many Genin could an average Chunin defeat?"

Aunt Fumiko's predatory grin returned.

"Think about what you just saw. A Genin might create a fireball the size of a person, something that could roast an opponent if it hit directly. What I just did would have incinerated fifty people standing in that area without them having time to scream." She paused, letting me process. "Now multiply that principle across every technique, every skill, every advantage. A Chunin isn't twice as strong as a Genin. The gap is..." She made an expansive gesture. "Vast."

I did rough math in my head. Based on what the original Ren knew about his family, what the part of me that was from another world knew, if a Genin could handle a hundred Academy students, and a Chunin was to a Genin as a Genin was to an Academy student...

"Ten thousand?" I guessed. It sounded insane. "No, that's... that can't be right."

"Scale doesn't work linearly," Aunt Fumiko said. "Combat isn't simple multiplication. But yes, a skilled Chunin could probably eliminate fifty Genin, maybe more depending on terrain and preparation. Area-effect techniques like what I just showed you change the math dramatically."

Fifty. Fifty skilled shinobi, each one capable of defeating a hundred Academy students. And that was just Chunin.

"What about Jonin?" I asked, dreading the answer.

Her expression shifted. The manic excitement faded slightly, replaced by something colder. More professional.

"Jonin-level shinobi like me?" She paused, calculating. "We should be able to handle... probably between five hundred and a thousand Chunin-level opponents. Maybe more if the situation favors us."

The number didn't make sense. Couldn't make sense. A thousand Chunin. Each one capable of that fireball technique. All attacking simultaneously. And she was saying she could win that fight?

"What about Kages?" The question slipped out before I could stop it.

Aunt Fumiko stopped walking entirely. Her expression went completely serious, the excitement draining away like water through a sieve.

"Kages?" She shook her head slowly. "You don't fight Kages, Ren. Not unless you're on their level. You don't challenge them. You don't try to overwhelm them with numbers."

She met my eyes directly, and for a moment I saw something almost like fear in her gaze.

"You survive them. That's all. That's the only goal that matters. Because Kages aren't ninjas who got promoted to a fancy title.  They are Gods and Demons and Monsters. They're natural catastrophes wearing human skin. They're what happens when you concentrate so much destructive power into a single person that the world starts bending."

I thought about the Kages I knew from the manga. Hiruzen with his mastery of thousands of jutsu. The Third and Fourth Raikage, moving faster than lightning, their bodies wrapped in chakra cloaks that could shatter mountains. Tsunade punching the ground hard enough to split the earth for kilometers. Gaara controlling enough sand to bury entire armies. Minato being flight on sight. Gengutsu Hozuki literally guiding the ninja of the alliance Shinobi to help defeat him and even then, it was clear that even though he had to fight them, he was going easy on them. The Tsuchikages with their fuck you and everything in this direction disintegration beams. Tobirama who no matter how much I disliked him was still Tobirama.

"They're army killers," Aunt Fumiko continued, her voice quiet but intense. "Country killers. You don't defeat them. You don't even slow them down. You just hope they have bigger concerns than erasing you from existence like another Kage. Because that's what they do. They don't just defeat you. They erase you. Your whole squad. Your whole battalion. Your whole village if they feel like it."

The weight of those words settled over me like a burial shroud. The power scales in this world weren't just steep, they were exponential. Vertical. Every rank up represented a gap so vast it might as well be infinite to someone on the lower level.

I was Academy student level. Maybe low Genin with my Sharingan and extra abilities. Aunt Fumiko was Jonin. The gap between us was measured in orders of magnitude. And above even Jonin stood the Kages, so far beyond normal shinobi that they might as well be a different species entirely.

This world was a xianxia world in disguise wasn’t it? This would explain a lot.

Then Aunt Fumiko's manic grin came roaring back, bright and terrible and absolutely terrifying.

"But enough heavy talk!" she announced, her whole demeanor shifting back to predatory excitement. "That was just the warm-up! I haven't even shown you my good stuff yet!"

Oh no.

"Wait, Aunt Fumiko, I think maybe we should—"

"Ren!" She was already moving, hands already forming seals. "Did you really think we'd stop after one technique? We haven't even gotten to the fun part!"

I ran.

Behind me, I heard her laughter, bright and delighted and absolutely unhinged.