Ryshaw's chest tightened.
That's odd, I'm not a cruel person but don't I barely know this little girl.
His body seemed to be resonating with the little girl, taking on a life of its own. A girl who he barely knew was causing his heart to stir up with affection.
More of his memories began to surface. He remembered the caretakers of this place. A man and a woman, who were both past middle age. They had the look of people who had once cared about something and then slowly stopped.
Initially, they had been kind, using the orphanage money to feed the orphans and look after them, but once the war started it was like they had become two completely different people.
Where food had once been on the table they now echoed the message resources are tight, we're doing the best we can and war has made everything difficult. Ryshaw could remember, with a clarity that felt borrowed and was no less real for it, the sound of their plates being scraped clean every evening while the children ate half portions.
He remembered one of the older boys — someone who'd since been taken by a passing clan as a labourer — whispering that the caretakers had a locked pantry.
He remembered believing it.
One of the younger kids spoke up from the back of the group, voice very quiet.
"They said we don't get breakfast today. Because we already ate yesterday."
The sentence sat in the room like a stone in still water. Nobody adding to it. This was just a fact of life. If they said there was going to be no food today then that was it. There would be no meal for today.
Ryshaw said nothing for a long moment.
When the game said that this was going to be real, I didn't take it literally.
He reached beside his mattress and picked up the cloth bundle he already knew was there.
Inside was a single loaf of hard bread that had been hidden. Coarse flour, baked dense and dry so it would last. The kind of thing that tasted like nothing and sat in your stomach like gravel and was better than the alternative.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
Then he broke it apart.
Piece by piece, giving it to the smallest kids first. The larger pieces went to the ones who looked like they'd been running on less. He was methodical about it. Not generous, exactly, as he didn't have enough to spare. Instead, dishing it out carefully. This was a resource allocation problem, and every piece needed to go somewhere it would count.
When it was done, one small piece remained in his palm.
He ate it. It tasted like sawdust and mildew. If he were in his original body , he would have thrown up. But here, this was something he was used too. Perhaps that is what caused his iron stomach. The food quieted the hollow ache behind his ribs, doing its job to alleviate his hunger.
Around him, the children ate in silence, nibbling at the pieces like they were something precious. A few of them didn't look up from what they had.
Ryshaw leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling.
What have I got myself into.
He'd told himself that already, but there was a difference between knowing something intellectually and letting it settle all the way through you. The hunger he'd just eaten around was real. The cold in the air was real. The particular moldy smell of the room and old cloth was more real than anything he could have invented. You couldn't render smell in a game. Not like this.
Outside the building, distant yet so close there were probably ninjas battling right at that moment.
The Warring States Era. A setting that was no longer fiction, something that had become an ongoing reality. A world where there were no laws that couldn't be overruled by the clan with the stronger shinobi. Where children were trained to kill before they had finished growing.
Where the difference between a village that survived the week and one that burned overnight was often a single powerful clan making a single decision.
Ryshaw looked at the children around him.
Ten of them. Ranging from maybe five years old to somewhere around twelve. None of them were shinobi. None of them with clan ties or fighting ability or any protection that mattered in this world. Just small people in a collapsing building eating stale bread and trusting him because there was no one else to trust.
The little village that they lived in only hosted around 500 people. It was very small and luckily quite a distance away from the main battlefield of the war. However, day by day the war was coming closer towards them as the fighting spread.
He understood, with a clarity that was bleak and simple and completely free of self-delusion, exactly what happened to children like this in eras like this.
They starved or they were taken. Right now the outskirt villages had started developing an army for the inevitable time that battling would occur. All it would take was one wrong clan coming through in the middle of a campaign and their lives would be destroyed.
He clenched his fist.
"I need power," he said quietly.
Basic strength alone wouldn't suffice. Strength was cheap in this world, the Senju had more of it than he'd ever see in a lifetime. What mattered alongside it was influence, credibility, power and decision making. The kind of reputation that made people calculate twice before they started trouble.
And in this world, there was only one path to achieve that.
He needed to become a shinobi. As the thought barely finished forming, a sound came.
Ping.
A translucent blue panel had appeared in the air directly in front of him. Suspended at eye level, visible only to him. He could tell by the way none of the children reacted. The text on it was crisp and clean, formatted exactly the way he remembered from the character creation menu.
SHINOBI SYSTEM ACTIVATED
Custom Bloodline Confirmed: Petragon Eye
He stared at it for a full five seconds.
Then he laughed, quiet, and humourless. Just a short exhale through his nose.
"No way," he said softly.
The system didn't bother responding to his skepticism. A new line appeared.
FIRST MISSION AVAILABLE
MISSION: First Step Into the Shinobi World
Objective: Begin training to become a shinobi.
Requirements:
Successfully circulate chakra for the first time
Complete 1 hour of physical training
Reward:
50 Shinobi Points
Basic Chakra Control Technique
Ryshaw read it twice, then looked slowly around the room again. At the peeling walls, the hungry children, and grey morning pressing through the gaps in the window screen.
He thought about everything the original Ryshaw had experienced in this body. The hunger and fear that lived constantly in the background. A fate that only ended in destruction. He could change it and make something for himself.
Then he thought about what he knew. What he'd brought here from the other side of that white flash.
The structure of chakra and how it moved through the body. The theory behind basic ninjutsu. The history of this era. Who rose, who fell, what decisions had consequences that lasted centuries. Knowledge that was just lore and trivia where he'd come from. Here, it was a map.
A slow grin crept across his face.
If this system was real and if it grew with him the way systems in every game he'd ever played grew — then this wasn't just survival.
It was a foundation.
He stood up.
The children looked up at him. The little girl was still holding her piece of bread in both hands like a small ceremony.
"Finish eating," he said. His voice was calm and steadier than it had been before. He'd learned a long time ago that tone mattered as much as content when you were talking to someone who needed to feel like someone was in charge. "After that, I want all of you outside."
The first boy blinked. "Outside?"
"To do what?" asked one of the older girls.
Ryshaw stretched his shoulders and tilted his neck until it cracked. He looked down at the mission prompt still floating in his peripheral vision, blue, patient and waiting.
"Training," he said.
The system panel pulsed once.
MISSION STARTED
He walked to the door.
Outside, the grey morning stretched over a world that had no intention of being kind to anyone who wasn't strong enough to make it.
It was fine though. He'd learn to be strong enough.