The Uchiha’s grimoire guide to winning: chapter 9: A lesson about fire

"Never again."

"Oh, don't be like that, little Ren. It's always like that when you begin something new," the too bright and cheerful voice of my aunt said.

I was now sure of one thing. She was the greatest evil in this universe, not Madara or Black Zetsu or Kaguya, because what would be another reason for her to be so cheerful after she made me go through hell?

"There is a difference between training and 'I am going to turn my supposedly favourite nephew into cinders.' I know we're training so that I become stronger, so that we can explore my abilities and all of that, but it felt as if I was more a punching bag than anything else."

"More a chicken running from fire than a punching bag," she said before her eyes widened. "Oops, thought out loud."

Chicken? Seriously? Who was supposed to be the child between the two of us?

I don't know what expression I must have had on my face, but hers became apologetic.

The older Uchiha slid to my side and before I could ever blink, I found myself being moved so that my head was now laid on her lap.

"Better like this ain't it?" she said with a cheeky grin. "So many would kill to be at your place you know, a lap pillow from such a beautiful ninja like me."

I looked at her with a deadpan expression. "Firstly, you're my aunt so no. I am an Uchiha but not that much Uchiha. Secondly, you never had a boyfriend. You're always the one coming crying to me about how everyone is running from you when it comes to relationships."

"Running? That's an overexaggeration!" Fumiko protested. "I mean, look at me, I am the perfect cold beauty, you know, the kind of beautiful everyone in books can't help but pine for without daring to approach."

I gave her an even more unimpressed stare. "Auntie, that's real life we're talking about. You're not a book character. You just proved to me that it was worse than I thought. Now, thirdly, the behaviour is probably what makes them run."

I continued in fake concern, "At this rate, I fear that one fate will befall you, dear aunt, one worse than an old lonely bitter spinster with only cats."

Fumiko reacted as if she had been stabbed. "Spin-spinsters?!"

I nodded gravely. "Yes. You'll become a femcel." I said the word softly, as if it was a cursed word I didn't want to utter.

"Femcel?!" Fumiko said in outrage before pausing. "Huh? What's a femcel? It sounds kinda embarrassing but I don't know what that means," she said while rubbing the back of her head.

"Femcels are women who are unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one and prefer discussing and talking about the other gender in its entirety as the cause. But at least, it's better than the male version. Don't worry auntie." In a sign of comfort, I tapped on her arm. "No matter your sure future as a femcel, you'll always still have a tiny place in my heart and my future home."

"Ugh," Fumiko groaned, reacting as if she had been stabbed again.

After a moment, she said quietly, "Usually, I am the one bully-teasing you."

I looked at her even less impressed at her slip up. Bullying, I thought. So you know and still do it? You truly have no shame, auntie.

"You really didn't like the training session, did you?" Fumiko asked, her tone shifting to something more gentle.

I responded more seriously now. "I know it would not be easy and that because it was the first time, it probably was harder than ever, but it feels as if I had learned nothing, as if I had passed all my time running, fleeing and trying to dodge or deflect."

"That is training, Ren," Fumiko said, her voice taking on a weight I rarely heard from her. "Running, dodging and all of that, even if it's not funny or doesn't feel good. But all the right things rarely are." She paused, and when she continued, her voice was softer, more vulnerable. "You are special, Renny, and things, people that are special in this world are coveted. They are coveted and if they can't be obtained, can't be used, people try to destroy them, to ruin them. I don't want to lose you, to ever feel again what I felt when you were in that hospital, when we all thought, when I thought you would die."

Her hand moved to rest on my head, gentle in a way that contrasted sharply with the hellfire she'd subjected me to earlier.

"Do you know some of the clansmen who found you, who saw you while you were in the hospital unlocked their Sharingan or gained tomoe? We all love you, differently and we probably show it in different manners, but we're Uchihas. Even if the others would not like this description, we're yanderes at heart when it comes to family."

The weight of her words settled over me like a blanket. I'd known, intellectually, that my near-death experience had affected the clan. But hearing it stated so plainly, hearing the emotion barely restrained in my aunt's voice, made it real in a way my memories of the hospital couldn't.

Aunt Fumiko continued to speak, her tone shifting back to something more instructional, though the underlying care remained. "You may not see it, you may not feel it, but that training session was not in vain. It was just one and you became better. Do you know why I wanted you to keep your Sharingan activated all along?"

"I got an inkling of an idea but not really, to be honest," I admitted.

"You have a mature, three-tomoe Sharingan in both eyes," Fumiko began, settling into what I recognized as her teaching mode. "The Sharingan is not just a weapon, Ren. It's a tool for learning, for understanding, for becoming better. At its most basic level, the Sharingan grants enhanced perception. Your eyes can track movements that would be invisible to normal humans. You saw that today, didn't you? How you could follow the kunai, predict their trajectories, see the patterns in attacks that should have been overwhelming?"

I nodded. That much had been obvious during the training.

"But that's just the surface," she continued. "The Sharingan also grants you what we call the 'Eye of Insight.' With it, you can see chakra, distinguish between different types and qualities of chakra, and even perceive the flow of chakra within someone's body. This makes it incredibly difficult to fool a Sharingan user with genjutsu, because we can see the chakra disrupting the target's flow."

She held up a finger. "More than that, the Sharingan allows you to copy techniques. Not perfectly, not instantly at your level, but you can observe how chakra is molded, how hand seals flow together, how a technique is executed, and with practice, replicate it. That's why people call us the 'Copy Ninja Clan,' though most don't realize that copying is actually the least impressive aspect of our eyes."

"The most important feature, especially for training, is perfect recall," Fumiko said, her tone growing more intense. "Everything you see with your Sharingan active is recorded perfectly in your mind. Every. Single. Detail. The way an opponent shifts their weight before attacking. The micro-expressions that telegraph their intentions. The exact sequence of hand seals. The precise pattern of chakra flow."

She looked at me directly, making sure I understood. "In other words, it makes the Sharingan the perfect tool to learn very quickly. Our Dōjutsu allows you to never forget, which means all the errors you made today and you were punished for in the training session are ones you will never forget in the future. The Sharingan also allows you to see chakra, which means that it is a perfect tool to teach chakra nature transformation. You've seen me in our training session use Katon many times. I purposefully slowed my hand signs so that you could learn, analyze the way each of them helped in the variation of my katon attacks. You've seen the way I controlled it, the way chakra was manipulated and turned into fire chakra before being expelled, how I made it as hot as I did in our training session."

She looked me in the eyes, her Sharingan briefly flickering to life in a mirror of my own. "Of course, it doesn't mean that you're a master of fire chakra transformation. What you saw was me seriously holding myself back, and I think that me officially mastering fire chakra is false because I kinda think that I am barely adequate for an Uchiha Jonin at least. Still, the control I have over fire chakra means that I can walk through fire as long as I am not caught off guard and it doesn't go over the max temperature I am myself able to create."

As she spoke, flames began to bloom on the tips of her fingers without her using any hand sign. Just... appeared, as naturally as breathing.

The fire changed intensity and colors, shifting through a spectrum that shouldn't have been possible. At one moment, the flames burned so hot they seemed to warp the air around them, creating visible distortions in space itself. Then, in the next instant, they appeared almost cold, taking on a blue-white hue that paradoxically seemed to absorb heat rather than radiate it.

Then the fire left the tip of her fingers entirely and began to move by itself. It took the shape of a worm first, a sinuous curve of flame that writhed in the air. Then a rodent, compact and quick-moving. A hawk next, wings spread wide in flames. A cat, lithe and predatory. A tiger, massive and imposing. And finally, a dragon, growing bigger and bigger with each transformation until it dominated the space above us, a creature of pure fire that shouldn't exist but did because my aunt willed it so.

The dragon of flame rushed toward Fumiko, and I tensed despite myself. But instead of consuming her, it wrapped around her head to form a crown of fire, perfectly controlled flames that danced without burning. The remaining fire coalesced in her hand, taking the solid shape of a katana with an edge that gleamed with heat.

"Touch it," she said to me, offering the blade. "It won't hurt you. I promise."

I hesitated. Not because I didn't trust her, I did, at least when it came to my well-being. But because touching fire went against every survival instinct I possessed, past life or current.

Still, I had discovered something after the clan meeting. Three new abilities, granted by something called the Celestial Grimoire. Powers that had simply... appeared in my mind, knowledge and capability blooming like flowers in previously barren soil.

The first ability, the one I'd internally labeled "Shape Mana," was a strange one. In my past life, I'd read enough fantasy novels to understand the concept of mana, of magical energy that permeated the world. But this wasn't quite that. Or rather, it was, but it worked with any form of supernatural energy.

In the Naruto world, that energy was chakra.

The ability allowed me to alter the flow of magical energy in an area, to redirect it, to shape its effects. It was like being given the ability to see and manipulate invisible currents in water. I could encourage chakra to flow in certain directions, could subtly influence how it manifested, could even, with enough focus and a ten-minute ritual, redirect what the knowledge in my head called "ley lines," the natural pathways that chakra followed through the environment.

The practical applications were limited at my current level. I couldn't, for instance, reach out and shut down someone's jutsu mid-cast. The ability was more subtle than that, more about environmental manipulation than direct intervention. But what I could do was influence probabilities.

By encouraging chakra to flow in beneficial patterns around me, by subtly redirecting the ambient energy to favor fortunate outcomes, I could make myself... luckier. Not in any obvious, reality-breaking way. I couldn't make kunai spontaneously miss me or cause my enemies to trip over their own feet. But I could make it slightly more likely that a deflected kunai would ricochet away from me rather than toward me. Could make it marginally more probable that I'd spot a trap before triggering it. Could nudge circumstances in my favor in ways too small and too numerous for anyone to consciously notice.

In a world with punch wizards, chakra kaiju, and gods walking among mortals, being lucky was the bare minimum required to survive. So I'd been maintaining a constant, low-level alteration of the chakra flow around me since I'd discovered the ability. A gentle nudge toward fortune, nothing more. But in a world where the difference between life and death could come down to being a centimeter to the left or arriving one second earlier, those small nudges could be the difference between dying and surviving.

The second ability was one I hadn't tested yet, though I desperately wanted to. Royal Jelly, the knowledge called it. The power to manifest a transparent, golden substance that could heal wounds and, more intriguingly, transform animals into "queen" variants of their species.

The healing aspect alone would have been valuable. The jelly could mend injuries without risk, could speed recovery, could potentially save lives in ways that even medical ninjutsu might struggle with. I'd felt like a giant bruise after today's training, and part of me wanted nothing more than to manifest some of that jelly and slather it all over my aching body.

But I hadn't. Couldn't, actually. Uncle Arashi, the clan head, had been very specific in his instructions. For the first use of my new abilities, I needed supervision. Five adult Uchihas minimum, three of them being my mother, my father, and my aunt. The other two needed to be Uchiha medic-nin, specialists who could intervene if something went wrong.

It was a sensible precaution, really. Unknown abilities in a world where power could corrupt, where kekkei genkai were coveted and stolen, where even allies might become enemies if they thought they could gain an advantage. The supervision served multiple purposes. The medics could act if the ability backfired. The other Uchihas could study my abilities with their Sharingan, documenting how they worked for clan records. And most importantly, it kept knowledge of my abilities within the clan, preventing Konoha's ANBU, the secret service, from learning about them before the clan or I deemed the time right.

But beyond the healing, it was the transformation aspect that truly fascinated me. The ability specified that it worked on "wild(ish) animals," whether sapient or non-sapient. Fed the jelly, they would transform into a "queen" version of their species, gaining enhanced intelligence, size, power, and charisma.

The question that had been gnawing at my mind since I'd discovered this power was simple but profound. What would happen if an Uchiha consumed the jelly?

After all, when you traced the bloodline back far enough, all Uchiha bullshit ultimately originated with alien bullshit. Indra Ōtsutsuki, the primogenitor of our clan, the son of the Sage of Six Paths himself, was a quarter alien. The Ōtsutsuki were the source of all chakra on this planet, beings from beyond who had seeded this world with the energy that shinobi now wielded.

So if an Uchiha consumed Royal Jelly, would it push them toward their Ōtsutsuki heritage? Would it make them more like Indra, or even more like Kaguya herself? Even if it only made an Uchiha half as capable as Indra, that would still be monumentally significant. Madara and Sasuke had demonstrated exactly how powerful being a reincarnation of Indra could make someone.

The thought both excited and terrified me. Power on that scale came with proportional risks. But in a world where godlike beings walked and wars could destroy nations overnight, having that kind of power might be the only way to ensure survival.

Still, I wasn't foolish enough to test it without proper precautions. That experiment would wait until I had my family's full support and supervision.

The third ability, however, I'd been using constantly since acquiring it. Witch Sight, drawn from a world I vaguely remembered from past-life gaming sessions, a dark fantasy setting where magic was dangerous and corruption lurked in every shadow.

The ability granted me the power to see magic in all its forms. In objects, yes. In people, certainly. But most importantly, in the air itself, in the very environment around me.

In the Naruto universe, magic was chakra. And with Witch Sight, I could now perceive chakra even without activating my Sharingan. Every person glowed with it, their chakra coils visible as networks of light running through their bodies. Objects imbued with chakra, like my aunt's fire blade, showed their nature clearly. Jutsu appeared as structures of shaped energy, their construction and weak points laid bare to my enhanced perception.

But there was one aspect of Witch Sight that made it truly invaluable, one application that had made me consider it the perfect complement to my Sharingan.

I could see nature chakra.

Natural energy, the third component necessary for Senjutsu, had been invisible to normal perception. Even the Sharingan couldn't perceive it directly, couldn't distinguish it from normal chakra without extensive training and knowledge. But with Witch Sight, nature chakra appeared as a distinct phenomenon, an ambient energy that permeated the world in ways that personal chakra did not.

Senjutsu. Sage techniques. The power that had allowed Naruto and Jiraiya to fight almost on equal ground with someone possessing the Rinnegan, the eyes of the Sage of Six Paths himself. The power that allowed Naruto to defeat the Nine-Tails' attempt to take control of his chakra. The power that gave Naruto sensory abilities so advanced he could perceive events happening countries away. The power that was the only thing capable of harming a Ten-Tails Jinchūriki like Obito.

Kabuto had become a snake sage and had been overpowering both Sasuke and Itachi combined, forcing Itachi to use a forbidden technique that literally sacrificed one of his Sharingan to defeat him. Hashirama Senju, the First Hokage, had used Senjutsu as part of his toolkit, and that alone spoke volumes about its importance and strength.

Of course, I wasn't crazy. I wasn't going to try using Senjutsu now, not without proper preparation and training. I didn't want to turn into stone or worse. Imperfect Sage Mode was a death sentence, and the requirements to achieve it safely were steep.

From what I remembered, successfully using Senjutsu required not just enormous chakra reserves but also exceptionally refined chakra control. You needed to perfectly balance your chakra in thirds, one-third physical energy, one-third spiritual energy, and one-third natural energy. The slightest imbalance could result in petrification or transformation into some kind of animal hybrid. Too much nature chakra and you'd become a stone statue. Too little and the technique wouldn't work at all.

But having the ability to see nature chakra, to perceive it clearly and track how it flowed and concentrated in different areas, that was an advantage that very few possessed. When the time came to learn Senjutsu properly, when I had the chakra reserves and control necessary to attempt it safely, Witch Sight would make the process infinitely easier.

And then, just as I was processing the implications of being able to see nature chakra, something shifted in my mind.

It wasn't painful. Wasn't dramatic. It was more like... a door opening in a room I'd been living in my whole life, a door I'd never noticed was there. And through that door came understanding.

Telepathy.

Another gift from the Grimoire, manifesting at what felt like the perfect moment. Or perhaps not so perfect, perhaps orchestrated by whatever mechanism governed these abilities.

The knowledge settled into my brain like it had always been there. I understood, instinctively, that I could now reach out with my mind to touch the thoughts of others. Not deeply, not invasively, not yet. The ability was nascent, undeveloped, like my Animal Psychic powers had been when they first appeared.

But I could read surface thoughts. The immediate, unguarded mental chatter that everyone maintained, the internal monologue that ran parallel to spoken words. I could sense the general emotional state of those nearby, could pick up on strong feelings and immediate reactions.

More than that, I could project simple concepts directly into someone's mind. A single word. A basic idea. An image. Nothing complex, nothing that would require sentences or explanations, but enough to communicate in situations where speech might be impossible or inadvisable.

And perhaps most intriguingly, I could influence. Could suggest a single, simple action to someone, plant the idea so subtly that they'd think it was their own impulse. Nothing they were fundamentally opposed to, nothing that would endanger them, but small things. Look left. Take a step back. Reach for that kunai instead of this one.

The tactical applications made my mind race even as I lay there on my aunt's lap, pretending to simply rest. In a fight, I could read what my opponent was planning to do, not just predict from body language and combat patterns. I'd know if they were about to use a substitution jutsu, if they were reaching for an explosive tag, if they were preparing a specific hand seal sequence. The Sharingan let me see movements and chakra flow, but this... this would truly instead of cold reading let me see intent.

Even better, I could potentially disrupt that intent. Make them hesitate at a critical moment with a projected thought. Suggest they dodge left when right would have saved them. In the split-second decisions that determined victory or death in shinobi combat, that edge could be insurmountable.

And the control aspect, subtle as it was, opened even more possibilities. Make a guard turn their head at the wrong moment. Convince someone to take one more step into a trap. During interrogations, I could plant suggestions that made subjects more compliant, more willing to speak. Nothing as crude as full mind control, but gentle nudges that accumulated into significant advantages.

Combined with my Animal Psychic abilities, I could coordinate attacks from multiple vectors simultaneously. Animals responding to my mental commands while I read the enemy's thoughts and fed them subtle misdirections. The Yamanaka clan had built their entire combat doctrine around mental techniques, and they were respected enough that most villages had countermeasures specifically for them.

Now I had something similar, but different enough that those countermeasures might not apply. Mental barriers designed to stop Yamanaka jutsu might not even register my telepathy as a threat since it worked on completely different principles.

The synergy with Witch Sight was particularly elegant. I could see someone's chakra signature, read their surface thoughts, and understand both what they were doing physically and what they intended to do next. The combination would make me incredibly difficult to surprise or outmaneuver well unless my opponent was full of bullshit like some of the top tiers of this universe were.

Of course, I'd need to be careful. Accidentally reading the wrong person's thoughts could expose secrets I wasn't meant to know like said cousin like another cousin maybe too much to be healthy secret if you see what I l mean. And if I projected something inappropriate into someone's mind, or got caught influencing someone's actions, the consequences could be severe.

Konoha had literal laws about mental manipulation. The Yamanaka operated under strict oversight specifically because their techniques could so easily be abused. I don’t think anyone would be happy with living in their vicinity without said laws. Having similar abilities appear in an Uchiha would raise questions, suspicions. I'd need to test this carefully, probably with family supervision like the Royal Jelly, and I'd need to develop a cover story for how an Uchiha developed telepathic abilities.

I will probably use the Yin imbalance excuse most of my clan seem to think as sufficient.

Maybe I could claim it was an unusual evolution of the Sharingan? The Sharingan's genjutsu capabilities already involved mental influence. If I framed the telepathy as an extension of that, as my eyes developing in an unconventional direction, it might be believable enough to deflect deeper scrutiny.

But those were concerns for worst cases and later. For now, I simply let the knowledge settle, integrated it into my understanding of my own capabilities, and began mentally cataloging how I could use this in training, in combat, in daily life.

The ability to know what others were thinking, to subtly guide their actions, to communicate silently across distances. Combined with everything else the Grimoire had given me, I was becoming busted as hell wasn’t I.

I was becoming dangerous in ways that wouldn't be obvious until it was far too late for my enemies to counter.

Perfect thing to be to live long in this world. I’ll try exploring it more later.

For now, though, I used the sight to observe my aunt and the way she controlled her chakra. The connection between her and the fire blade she offered me was clearly visible, a thread of chakra that maintained the fire's shape and temperature. I could see how she was actively preventing the flames from burning at their natural intensity, how she was constraining and controlling every aspect of the fire down to the molecular level.

The sight reassured me. But even without that reassurance, I think I still would have touched the blade. After all, I trusted my aunt, at least when it came to my well-being.

I reached out and grasped the katana's hilt. "It feels cold," I said, surprised.

"Yep," Fumiko confirmed with a pleased smile. "Normally, when it comes to training fire nature, you first begin by learning to generate heat and ignite materials with chakra alone. You probably realized it already, but the characteristic of fire chakra is that it is supposed to be compressed and heated within the body before release. It's supposed to take days to weeks for a successful ignition. It took someone I know that is not bad with fire chakra four days."

She gestured with her free hand, creating small sparks that danced between her fingers. "The second phase is to create and maintain a stable stream of fire. You're usually supposed to do so by practicing exhaling continuous flames of increasing size and duration, by learning to control the intensity and temperature by adjusting chakra kneading, by practicing shaping flames into specific forms like waves, orbs or streams. Remind you of something?"

It did remind me of something. My eyes widened. "The Great Fireball Jutsu!"

"Exactly!" Fumiko said enthusiastically. "We Uchiha go directly to the second phase in order to be recognized as, quote-unquote, 'adults.' It usually takes months or a year for those who aren't us, at least."

She paused, letting that sink in. The fact that the Uchiha coming-of-age test was something that took normal shinobi months or years to accomplish spoke volumes about both our clan's natural affinity for fire and the expectations placed upon us from a young age.

"After that," Fumiko continued, "there is what most call, think of as the last stage, and this is where I am at. The goal at that third stage is to increase flame temperature and destructive power, and you do so by training to create flames hot enough to overcome Water Release techniques, practice creating larger-scale fire techniques, and by larger, I mean much more large than what I did in your training, and making fires that continue burning and are hard to extinguish after release."

I caught something in her phrasing. "Auntie, you said that this is the stage what most think is the last, which means you don't think it is the case."

Fumiko looked at me with an approving smile. "Of course, you caught that. Indeed, there is one more stage, but it is one only us Uchihas have been able to reach, a stage no non-Uchiha has achieved, a stage that even amongst us is hard to reach, one I wish to reach."

Her voice took on an almost reverent quality. "I'm talking about flames said to be hotter than the inside of the sun, flames that can't be extinguished even days after burning, blazing forever more, flames that can swallow and eat anything, that can't be stopped, only avoided, run away from, flames so voracious that they become as dark as the space between the stars."

She met my eyes, her own Sharingan spinning slowly. "In some of the clan texts I read, it is called Blaze Release. But in most of them, that flame is known by another name."

The fire blade in my hand flickered, as if responding to her words.

"The divine flames of Amaterasu."

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Perk gained this chapter:
Perk Name: Psychic Abilities - Telepathy (Two Dots)

Source: World of Darkness: Sorcerer

Cost: 100 CP

Description: Telepaths can speak to the minds of and alter the memories of other sapient beings. It primarily affects those that the telepath can sense, but can also affect those who are nearby, so long as the telepath knows where they are.

At Two Dots, the telepath may now read the surface thoughts of their target, or induce them to make a single motion, or otherwise project a single word or idea to another person.