The Dark Laboratory

Drip.

The sound of water echoed through the dim passageway, and Naoki Hyuga instinctively pulled his robe tighter around himself.

He hated this place.

The pitch-black corridor ahead looked like it led straight into hell, the kind of darkness that invited every ugly thought his mind could summon. If not for the one-eyed viper perched on his shoulder, he might have turned around and left.

Not that he had that choice.

At the end of the passage, he pushed open a heavy door. Beyond it waited a fully equipped laboratory, and a single figure stood inside.

The figure turned.

"Ah. Naoki-kun."

That hoarse voice sent a shiver through Naoki's chest. He lowered his head at once.

"Lord Orochimaru."

Orochimaru watched him in thoughtful silence for a long while before speaking.

"This laboratory is yours from now on."

Naoki felt Orochimaru's gaze press down on him like a physical weight. He didn't dare let his thoughts wander. Bowing, he answered at once, "Rest assured, Lord Orochimaru. I'll work even harder."

Orochimaru looked away and slowly swept his gaze around the laboratory. For a moment, something almost like melancholy surfaced in his eyes.

"I may be leaving the village soon. From now on, you'll have to secure your own specimens."

"Yes."

He nodded with practiced respect and not the slightest hesitation. On his shoulder, the one-eyed viper lazily flicked its crimson tongue.

Orochimaru glanced at him one last time. Then, without another word, he vanished with a Body Flicker.

Only after Orochimaru left did the vast, oppressive chakra filling the laboratory slowly recede.

Naoki exhaled softly.

Lately, Orochimaru's presence had been growing colder by the day. There was almost a blood-soaked edge to it now. Even reporting experimental progress from a distance was enough to leave Naoki deeply uneasy.

Thankfully, that misery finally seemed close to ending.

Then again, the thought made him pause.

According to the hazy memories from his previous life, Orochimaru should have been caught red-handed when the Third Hokage led a raid on his secret laboratory. That was what forced him to defect.

But judging from what Naoki had just seen, Orochimaru had clearly finished making his preparations. He could defect at any moment.

'Where did things go off track? Why is Orochimaru choosing to defect on his own? Is it because of me?'

He carefully went over everything that had happened, but no answer came to him. In the end, Orochimaru's defection was good news for him. The reason no longer mattered enough to keep digging.

His feelings toward Orochimaru were complicated.

Without Orochimaru's protection, Naoki knew he would never have come through the war this cleanly. Most of the classmates from his year were already dead, seven or eight out of every ten lost on the battlefield.

Even a genius like Kakashi had nearly lost his life in the war. Back at the Academy, Naoki had never been able to last even a single exchange against him during group sparring.

In this world, weakness itself was a sin.

It had been more than ten years since Naoki had arrived here, but even now, he had never truly adapted to a ninja world steeped in killing. That was one of the reasons he had sought out Orochimaru himself. When it came to combat talent, he lagged far behind others his age. In the split second between life and death, his reactions were always just a little slower than everyone else's.

Sometimes, he honestly admired the shinobi of this world.

Many of them had learned how to kill by the time they were six or seven. Going to war around the age of ten was nothing unusual. Some, like Kakashi, had become jonin at twelve after cutting down more enemies than most adults would ever face.

Naoki did not have that kind of talent.

Fortunately, he had been born into the Hyuga clan and possessed the Byakugan from birth. With the Byakugan's help, he had survived lethal situations on the battlefield more than once.

But luck would not always favor him.

After watching one classmate after another die in battle, Naoki had made his decision and cast his lot with Orochimaru.

First, he had to survive.

Nothing mattered more than staying alive.

He did have advantages of his own. The education from his previous life let him grasp and process information far better than most shinobi his age. Combined with the natural advantage of the Byakugan, he quickly distinguished himself in Orochimaru's laboratory. Before long, he became one of Orochimaru's more important research assistants and learned a great deal about genetic research directly from him.

Perhaps Orochimaru had seen too much death. By the later stages of the war, he had become obsessed with the mysteries of life.

The clearest sign was that he no longer feared the Third Hokage and no longer bothered clinging to the thin moral line he had once pretended to respect. He began conducting brutal, bloody human experiments on a massive scale.

His interest naturally extended to kekkei genkai such as Wood Release, the Byakugan, and the Sharingan.

Naoki's willing cooperation made it much easier for Orochimaru to study the secrets of the Byakugan. Because of that, Orochimaru had put real effort into teaching him.

Their arrangement worked for both of them. That was what had led to this moment.

Of course, he had dared to approach Orochimaru only because he knew the man's attention would soon be drawn toward forbidden techniques hidden within the village, such as Edo Tensei and the Eight Branches Technique. On top of that, he had the protection of the Caged Bird Seal, so he was not especially afraid of being dragged onto an operating table himself.

Yes. At his current level, the Caged Bird Seal truly was a form of protection.

Or, more accurately, for any weak Hyuga clan member merely struggling to survive, the Caged Bird Seal was not only a shackle. It was also a shield. Its existence kept the Hyuga branch family beneath the notice of many people, both inside the village and beyond it, who would otherwise covet their eyes.

The other reason he had chosen Orochimaru was the Tenseigan.

Given his mediocre talent, the Tenseigan was the only path he could see that might let him overturn his fate and take his life into his own hands.

Senjutsu was even less realistic. If even Orochimaru struggled to master it, Naoki had no reason to imagine he could do better.

In fact, even Neji Hyuga, the Hyuga genius from Naoki's memories of the original story, had been sidelined for most of the story and died a baffling, tragic death in the end.

The Byakugan did give the Hyuga clan an unparalleled advantage at the genin, chunin, and even jonin stages.

But once battles rose to Kage level, or even beyond it, that advantage became far less obvious. For a clan that specialized almost entirely in the Gentle Fist, palm strikes alone were not enough against Susanoo users, jinchuriki, Sage Body-level opponents, and monsters of that class.

The Tenseigan was practically the only hope the Hyuga clan had of entering battles beyond the Kage level.

That was the obsession Naoki had carried from the moment he arrived in this world.

But turning the Byakugan into the Tenseigan was no simple matter. He had almost no foundation in the study of kekkei genkai.

If he wanted to reach that goal, then the only person in all of Konoha who could help him was its own research-obsessed madman: Orochimaru.

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