Book One: The Rise of the Blue-Haired Devil.

      I continued to walk at the very end of the convoy. The guard did not push us any more, seeing that we were not slowing down. It was very unpleasant to tread barefoot. The convoy was travelling along a rural road with a lot of small pebbles on it, which hurt our feet, but that was only part of the trouble. Apparently, wagons with glass were often travelling along this road, and sometimes the glass shards were broken and left on the surface of the ground. Here they were cutting the feet of all the men in our convoy, not counting the two guards, who are shod in sandals.       In the memories of the past body master I stayed long enough. I was seriously interested in this world. Many questions have arisen, the answers to which I will mine by any means necessary.       “What is a chakra?”, — this became the basic riddle to everything. Perhaps the first thought that visited my head was that chakra was a substitute for human blood. But I quickly rid myself of that foolishness by checking my pulse and also, seeing that my feet were already covered in a red liquid.       Also, the pain in this world felt different. Dulled. In my universe, I wouldn’t have been able to move around with such wounds on my legs.       My second guess about the chakra became a real theory. It started with the thought that in this world I had heard absolutely nothing about magic, but the kid’s father had told me quite a lot about chakra. That meant that it could be an analogue to magic in this world, but mine had been a very important opinion before Jace and I discovered Arcane.       It was that a person was given magical ability at birth. It was a gift and a curse at the same time. Arcane became the key to magic for inventors and scientists. According to my theory, which I developed in my prime years, the Arcane is merely a repository of magic. It’s a vessel that contains a tiny bit of magic. I also did not rule out the possibility that someone had encapsulated magic in such vessels. I realised that it was just a theory without any practical proof, but I couldn’t find any refutation for it either. Where did I get such a hypothesis from? Simple, one of the crystals was on Jace’s hand. My friend kept it as a reminder that magic had once saved his and his mother’s life. I’ve tested that crystal many times. It contained no magic, which means that crystals have their own magical reserve. This became an axiom for my theorem. After that, I pondered about magicians and how they control the power of magic.       Jace told me that the mage who’d saved him as a child had used magical runes to do it. Then I had an interesting idea: what if mages couldn’t use their powers without the help of special artefacts? It sounds strange, but the hypothesis could turn into a theorem if one could get a single irrefutable fact. What do I mean? Mages learnt to sense the magic around them, but to use it, they needed objects that could store and emit magic. Roughly speaking, a mage is a person who is a conduit of magic into the real world with the help of an artefact. The artefact itself cannot store magic, and the mage cannot emit it on his own. Anyway, based on theory and hypothesis, I was able to come up with an assumption: ninjas are local mages in this world. The local seals made by their hands are the magical runes necessary for the proper release of magic. In my world I can’t test all this, but in this world I can find out, refine and tweak my theory.       I was also interested in the structure of interaction in this universe. I understood from the words of the former body master’s father that all ninjas belong to a certain clan. Ordinary people can also become them, but for them there are serious obstacles in their development. The first such obstacle is a mentor. It is very difficult to find a ninja who is willing to train a person who does not have the potential to develop chakra.       The second obstacle is a person’s genes, which are almost impossible to defeat. This means that if all your ancestors knew how to use chakra, then your body is already adapted to use it. This is simply the result of normal human evolution. The stronger your ancestors were, the higher your potential ceiling is. The ceiling of strength is the pinnacle of your capabilities that you strive for. Once you reach it, your development will be severely stunted, but you can still break through the barrier if you try hard enough.       Ninjas are a profession in this world. They are unique soldiers capable of completing almost any mission. Ninja clans are formed based on some exceptional feature of each member that ninjas from other clans cannot possess. All of the land in this world is divided among the wealthy people. They are the rulers of the lands, you might say, but they are called differently here — daimae.       There are five largest countries: the Fire Country, the Wind Country, the Water Country, the Earth Country, and the Lightning Country. Each of them has several ninja clans constantly fighting each other. The strongest and most powerful get more missions than the rest. Thus, the strongest live in luxury and wealth, the weaker clans gradually die out, and the civilians starve, because their income is paltry compared to the ninja’s pay. This is general information from the lessons learnt from the child’s father.       I’ve read the history of my world. I remember from it that there was a similar situation in the past of my universe. Only it was a bit different: the countries were divided into those who were for and against wizards. The wealthy clans who had no spellcasting ability had to join forces against the wizards. They voluntarily left the lands where they were not welcome, after that natural disasters and cataclysms began to happen on such territories. People begged, calling on the magicians to return to them. The latter accepted the offers, returning to their native lands. Then a treaty was concluded, according to which the mages should monitor the world order, trying not to interfere in the affairs of ordinary people. Of course, some of them were against such a thing. They went against their fellow mages.       The war between the mages led to the loss of five great artefacts that had fallen into human hands. And a terrible thing began to happen… Humans began to use the Five World Runes for their own purposes. According to legend, these runes are the ones that created my world. They are the original sources of magic. Humans gained power over it. They used what they could not control. This led to rune warfare. Entire settlements were destroyed in the blink of an eye. It was a terrible time. What stopped it all was an unknown mage who began collecting these runes. All possessors of great power frightened him, hiding world runes in the most secret corners of the world. It is said that this magician is still in search. Afterwards, the transformation began. People had a realisation. They became afraid of war. To protect themselves and their loved ones, clans and mages signed various treaties, creating large cities in the process. I think this world will also come to a transformation.       Sooner or later, clans will start to unite into large villages so that all ninjas can earn a good income and ordinary people will be protected by chakra users. The parents of the person in this body before me told of only two clans. My mother told of the Hugo clan, which was very cruel. The clan had unique eyes, the Byakugan. Mother also talked about dojutsu. These are unique eyes whose wielders can use outstanding techniques and sharpen their vision.       Byakugan was one of the dojutsu, but it was not the only one in the world. He never got to the other dojutsu, but his mother had talked about Byakugan’s abilities: the first was that the user could see three hundred and fifty-nine degrees around him. I thought that was an incredible ability, because it would be impossible to take an opponent by surprise with such a vision; the second ability allowed the user to see several kilometres in any direction, and not just to see, but to examine objects in detail. The third was the ability to see the chakra in other people, and the third was the ability to see the chakra in other people. The power of the Byakugan simply amazed me. In my world, a person with those eyes would be considered a mage or a seer. There was another clan my father had told me about.       The Shirogane Clan was a clan that was able to emerge from practically ordinary people who couldn’t use chakra perfectly. Their main feature was that they skilfully used puppets in battle. Marionettes are puppets stuffed with various types of cold weapons and poisons. Every part of such a puppet was a dangerous weapon. The members of the Shirogane clan didn’t have large reserves of chakra, so their techniques couldn’t be very destructive. Their melee fighting style lost heavily to the other clans. All of this was the reason for the appearance of puppeteers in this world. A puppeteer was a ninja who could control a puppet at a short distance. They used a unique technique called chakra threads. Chakra threads allowed them to control the actions of the puppets by connecting to the parts of the puppet by chakra. This connection was a small, barely visible, thread composed of chakra, stretching from the puppeteer to the puppet. At first glance, when reviewing the memories of the body’s past master, I thought that this ability was nothing outstanding, but I quickly changed my mind when I learnt that a skilled puppeteer could control more than a dozen puppets at once. A good puppeteer could fight an entire army single-handedly, and still survive or even win. To be honest, this world was surprising me more and more. But before I could explore it, I would have to escape the shackles of the slave traders.       I was the furthest back in the caravan. Next to me was an old man who was clearly on his last legs. He was over six decades old. He was wearing torn trousers and a grey jumper, with bits of mud on it in places. His hair was grey and his face was covered with wrinkles from old age. His gaze was fixed on a single point, as if he were not in this world. I didn’t pay attention to where his eyes were directed at first, but after a while I accidentally stumbled my gaze on the connecting knot of the metal chain that held us. Thanks to it it was possible to free from these shackles at least partially, because each future slave had a lock that fixed the chain on his legs. I glanced round quickly to see what the guard following me was doing. The man was whistling a song, enjoying the scenery around us. He didn’t pay any attention to the prisoners. I quickly picked up the chain dangling on the ground beside me with my foot and tossed it up, catching it with my hands.       - Boy, don’t do it! Come to your senses! You can’t escape from these people. They’re ninjas! — The old man said quietly with panic in his voice as he watched my actions.       - They’re ninjas? — I asked in surprise.       - Yes, yes. You don’t have to do that. — He added, probably thinking it scared me. In fact, I was very curious. I wanted to see what these ninjas could do. I don’t know why, but I smiled, realising what I was going to do next. Apparently my smile was more like a grin, because the old man shrieked in horror when he saw the look on my face.       The guard immediately ran over to the man, who was having a panic attack. I managed to discreetly remove the chains before the man approached us. The guard apparently didn’t think anyone would be able to free himself from the chains, so he missed my unexpected lunge. I’d never been much into fights, because I had no way of winning them, so I decided to use the kid’s memory, using the patterns he’d learnt in training. I threw a series of three punches: the first was a right hook that hit the man’s temple. I had to jump to reach my enemy’s face with this attack; the second was a continuation of the first. It was an elbow strike with the same arm on the ninja’s nose; the third one I made by inertia. Making a turn round my axis in flight, I attacked the man’s head with my foot. The guard fell on his back from the final blow. I was surprised that I was able to defeat a ninja so easily, though I had doubts in my mind that the man was a ninja at all. I wanted to go to the front of the convoy to deal with the second one, but behind me someone shouted.       - Lightning element, lightning strike! — shouted the second guard, in whose hand appeared a clot consisting of lightning. The man pointed his hand at me, after which the technique rushed towards me at an unthinkable speed. I managed to step back a little, but I was hit by the lightning. I was on the ground. My whole body was shaking, and small charges were travelling across my skin. I was immobilised. Any movement was painful throughout my body. Now I’m sure that there is such a thing as chakra in this world, because I felt its power with all my body.       - You little bastard! How dare you hit me! — shouted someone from behind. This person was clearly angry. He just kicked me on the head with his foot, after which the world around me turned dark colours. I lost consciousness.