Three days later, Hatake Kakashi finally woke up from his coma. Even so, his entire body ached, and he couldn't move.
This battle had severely overdrawn both his body and his spirit. He still needed several more days of rest before he could truly recover.
Clearly, outside of wartime, the frequency of clashes between jonin dropped significantly. As a result, Kakashi's combat conditioning had noticeably declined. He was no longer accustomed to high-intensity battles.
"Thank you," Hatake Kakashi said, lying in bed with a blanket over him as he spoke to Kaede Kitahara beside him. "I heard you taught them quite a few jutsu."
That responsibility should have belonged to the team's instructor. Kaede Kitahara had stepped in to fulfill that role in his place, and Kakashi was genuinely grateful.
At the same time, he was deeply curious.
According to official records, Kaede Kitahara looked like nothing more than an ordinary, disposable chunin. Yet the moment Kakashi woke up, Uzumaki Naruto and Sakura, who had stayed behind, told him exactly how Kaede Kitahara had defeated two enemy ninja.
Even without seeing it himself, Kakashi could roughly judge from their descriptions.
Kaede Kitahara's strength was absolutely not that of an ordinary chunin. He wasn't even just an elite chunin. He unquestionably possessed jonin-level combat power.
As for whether he was an average jonin or an elite jonin, Kakashi couldn't say. He hadn't witnessed Kaede Kitahara fight firsthand.
Even so, it was already astonishing.
Going from genin to chunin wasn't particularly difficult. Many genin already had chunin-level strength, but lacked leadership ability, so they never got promoted.
However, advancing from chunin to jonin was an entirely different matter. Strength alone stopped the vast majority of people. Most chunin hit a ceiling at elite chunin. Even reaching tokubetsu jonin was rare.
As for jonin, or elite jonin, those were even rarer still.
The fact that Kaede Kitahara already possessed jonin-level combat power was itself extremely abnormal.
But then Kakashi thought of something Kaede Kitahara had written in the diary about awakening the Sharingan. Clearly, Kaede Kitahara carried Uchiha blood. With the awakening of the Sharingan, his strength would naturally surge in a short period of time.
This was actually quite common within the Uchiha Clan. In fact, it was common among most clans with a kekkei genkai. Once the bloodline awakened, both physical strength and chakra reserves would experience a massive boost.
After that, there would be a brief period of rapid growth as the body adapted to the kekkei genkai.
That was the theory.
The problem was that Kaede Kitahara's rise was far too fast.
Had it even been two months?
In just two months, he had reached this level. Even within the Uchiha Clan, that was exceedingly rare.
Within the clan, awakening the Sharingan itself was uncommon. Awakening the three-tomoe Sharingan was rarer still. And anyone who reached three tomoe had both body and mind developed to a very high level. At minimum, they possessed jonin-level combat power.
"It was nothing special. They're all very talented," Kaede Kitahara said with a slight smile.
I'll be relying on them to fight in the Fourth Great Ninja War, and whatever alien Otsutsuki show up after that. If they don't fight, am I supposed to?
Kaede Kitahara had always been clear about his own position. If he could lie low, he would. Even if he somehow reached Six Paths level, so what? In his previous life, he had followed both the anime and the manga, and neither showed any sign of ending.
That legendary Otsutsuki God who supposedly ascended in broad daylight, who knew if he would come back?
Given how the manga tended to go, it was only a matter of time.
In the eyes of ordinary people, reaching jonin meant stepping into the ranks of true experts. But in Kaede Kitahara's eyes, jonin were barely qualified cannon fodder. Anyone below jonin wouldn't even be worth calculating in the future.
Kage Level was just a nameless NPC. Above Kage Level at least looked respectable. Only at Six Paths level did one truly qualify to participate in the final decisive battle.
Six Paths level could even reverse life and death, reviving someone on the brink of dying in an instant. Yet the Otsutsuki Clan had who knew how many monsters like that.
Judging from the performances of so many Otsutsuki, not every one of them was that terrifying, but even the weakest should at least be above Kage Level.
Under those circumstances, Kaede Kitahara, who hadn't even reached Kage Level yet, naturally had nothing to be proud of.
"No matter what, thank you," Hatake Kakashi said.
He had already decided that once he recovered, he would teach the kids several jutsu himself. No need to wait any longer.
He could tell that Kaede Kitahara wanted to strengthen the three of them as much as possible. Although Kakashi didn't know the reason, it certainly wasn't a bad thing for him.
After chatting with Kakashi for a while, Kaede Kitahara left and told him to rest properly.
Waking up didn't mean he was recovered. He was still exhausted and couldn't hold on for long.
That night, Hatake Kakashi leaned against the wall, reading through the diary's records.
After resting for a full day since waking up, his stamina had finally recovered enough for him to sit up and do some light activities.
As he read through the diary entries he had missed while unconscious, his heart filled with shock.
"So my Sharingan is actually a Mangekyo, and I just didn't know it?"
Kakashi stared at the diary's records about his own eyes.
A Mangekyo Sharingan called Kamui. An ability that combined offense and defense.
Yet he had no clue at all. He had never known that his Sharingan had already surpassed the three-tomoe stage and reached the Mangekyo level.
How was that even possible?
He had never heard of a Sharingan evolving within a non-Uchiha.
Even among the Uchiha Clan itself, awakening the Mangekyo Sharingan was exceedingly rare. Often, an entire era would pass without a single one appearing. And now an outsider?
"Obito's Sharingan is really that incredible? It can evolve on its own?" Hatake Kakashi muttered.
He had his doubts, but since it was written by Kaede Kitahara, he could only accept it.
Still, logically speaking, if he had truly awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan, there was no way he wouldn't have noticed. Unless it happened while he was unconscious.
He began calculating all the times he had been knocked out over the years, trying to pinpoint when the Mangekyo might have awakened.
He had learned this logic from Uchiha Sasuke.
According to Kaede Kitahara, Sasuke had awakened a one-tomoe Sharingan in a moment of rage without even realizing it. Later, Sasuke seemed to have found a way to reopen that hidden tomoe.
So did he have a way to do the same? A way to awaken the Mangekyo?
He had already planned to pick up his father's Hatake Kenjutsu again, hoping to find a path toward breaking into Kage Level through that route.
But there was never only one path to Kage Level.
If he could awaken the Mangekyo Sharingan within him, the boost to his combat power would be unimaginable.
Uchiha Itachi had awakened the Mangekyo at a very young age, enough to carry out the massacre of his entire clan. Regardless of how many hidden truths lay behind it, one thing was certain. With the strength of so many elite Uchiha jonin, Itachi had to have possessed solid Kage Level power to kill them all.
There was also Uchiha Sasuke.
Before awakening the Mangekyo Sharingan, White Robe Sasuke was probably at the peak of elite jonin. He wasn't necessarily much stronger than Kakashi himself.
But the moment Sasuke awakened the Mangekyo, he immediately stepped into Kage Level.
There was no gradual transition between elite jonin and Kage Level. It was a single leap. Make the leap, and you were a Kage Level powerhouse. Fail, and you were an elite jonin for life.
This leap followed almost no consistent rules. Aside from stable breakthroughs like evolving the Sharingan into the Mangekyo, other methods each followed their own path.
Right now, the only path Kakashi could reasonably reference was his father's swordsmanship.
And yet, he still had no clear direction.
If he could awaken Obito's Mangekyo, Kamui, then the chances of breaking into Kage Level would be extremely high.
In Kaede Kitahara's eyes, Kage Level might be nothing special. But to ordinary people in the ninja world, Kage Level unquestionably stood at the very peak, a realm incredibly difficult to cross.
"Kamui… Obito, just what kind of treasure did you leave me?" Hatake Kakashi murmured. "I'll use the treasure you left behind to protect Konoha from countless enemies. If you can see this from the afterlife, you'd probably be happy too."
Just defeating Momochi Zabuza before had already drained him completely. If there had been another expert present, he would have died on the spot.
That battle had deeply impressed upon him just how lacking his own strength was.
He recalled a scene from one of the diary's visions. A member of the Akatsuki flying into the air and wiping out the entire village of Konoha with a single move.
He didn't dare imagine how he would accept it if that really happened.
He quickly flipped through the diary again. When he saw the record stating that Uchiha Fugaku had also possessed a pair of Mangekyo Sharingan, he didn't doubt it. He was simply stunned.
That family's bloodline was absurd.
Terrifyingly strong.
And if you added the future girl named Uchiha Sarada, that would be three generations and four pairs of Mangekyo Sharingan.
The talent density was horrifying.
If the Uchiha Clan hadn't been wiped out, wouldn't Konoha have ended up completely under their control?
Suddenly, Kakashi understood why Konoha's upper echelon had been so wary back then.
The Uchiha Clan's potential was vast beyond imagination. If someone could systematically draw it out, they could continuously produce Kage Level powerhouses.
That was terrifying.