Uchiha power in HxH world - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Neon City, The Waiter’s Knife, and the Awakening of the Red Eye

The Republic of Padokea’s crowning jewel was not its political infrastructure or its booming economy. It was the towering, monolithic spire of combat and capital that pierced the clouds: Heavens Arena.

Stepping off the family’s private zeppelin onto a high-altitude landing pad, I took my first real breath of un-filtered, non-assassin-estate air. It tasted like exhaust fumes, ozone, and the deep-fried street food of ten million busy citizens. It was absolutely magnificent.

The city stretching out beneath the arena was a sprawling, beautiful mess of neon lights, glass skyscrapers, and dense, interconnected commercial districts. It looked like the cyberpunk RPGs I used to play at 3 AM while eating cold pizza.

I glanced over my shoulder. “Alright, Varg, Lin. If we’re going to do this, I need to hit an ATM because Papa cut my allowance after I bought that limited-edition—”

I stopped.

The landing pad was completely empty. The zeppelin crew was already sealing the boarding ramp, and my two terrifying, suit-wearing babysitters had vanished into thin air.

I blinked, my newly minted 19 Perception frantically sweeping the tarmac, the shadows of the utility crates, and the stairwells. Nothing. I couldn’t hear a heartbeat, I couldn’t see a footprint, and I couldn’t sense a drop of aura.

“Great,” I muttered to the empty air, adjusting the collar of my designer trench coat. “Invisible babysitters. I’m sure they’re currently hanging upside down from a billboard a mile away, judging my posture. Whatever. I’m a tourist today.”

I wasn’t in a rush to commit a felony. The client had given a window, and the target wasn’t going anywhere. More importantly, I was a gamer who had just spawned into an open-world map. You don’t just rush the main quest objective; you do the side quests. You explore the hub city. You eat the consumables.

And so, for the first twelve hours, I completely ignored my assassination contract.

I hit the streets. Armed with my Zoldyck black card—which I was deeply thankful Papa hadn’t actually deactivated—I became a walking economic stimulus package for the local vendors. I ate everything. Skewered meats of questionable origin, deep-fried dough stuffed with sweet bean paste, noodles swimming in spicy red broth. Every time my stomach felt tight, I simply mentally commanded the System to convert the biomass.

‘Ding!’ [EXP +2]
‘Ding!’ [EXP +1]

It was the most enjoyable grinding session of my life.

By the afternoon, I found myself walking through the massive, vaulted archways of Heavens Arena itself. The sheer scale of the place was staggering. Millions of people filtered through the gates, screaming for blood and betting their life savings.

I bought a premium VIP ticket for the 50th-floor fights. I sat in a plush, cushioned seat with a massive bucket of buttered popcorn, and I watched the ‘NPCs’ beat the absolute tar out of each other.

It was fascinating. With my 18 Intelligence and 19 Perception, the fights looked entirely different than they would have on a screen. I could see the exact moment a fighter shifted their weight before a punch. I could read the micro-expressions of pain, the subtle tells of exhaustion.

I walked over to the betting windows and started throwing down chips. I didn’t use aura. I didn’t cheat. I just used basic deduction.

“Ten thousand on the guy with the blue shorts,” I told the teller smoothly.
“Sir, his opponent has a forty-pound weight advantage and a massive reach.”
“Yeah, but the big guy favors his left knee. It’s wrapped under his pants, and his stance is unbalanced. He’s going to gas out in two minutes. Blue shorts in round three.”

I was right. I won several matches, raking in a tidy pile of Zenni. I also deliberately lost a few, throwing money at terrible odds just to avoid looking suspicious. By the time the sun set, painting the city in vibrant shades of violet and orange, I had thoroughly satisfied my otaku wanderlust.

The fun was over. It was time to go to work.

—

The target’s location was nestled deep in the city’s underbelly, a stark contrast to the polished glamour of the Arena district. The neon lights here flickered with failing bulbs, and the air smelled heavily of stale beer, cheap perfume, and desperation.

Goran “The Butcher” Vane operated out of a massive, multi-level underground gambling den. It was a front, obviously, but a highly profitable one.

Before approaching the neon-lit entrance, I stopped in a dark alleyway. I took a deep breath and splashed a generous amount of cheap, highly pungent grain alcohol over the lapels of my coat. I ruffled my perfectly styled hair until it looked like a bird’s nest, slumped my shoulders, and dragged my feet.

The transformation from ‘elite assassin’ to ‘degenerate gambler on a losing streak’ was flawless. I stumbled out of the alley, practically leaning on the brick wall for support as I approached the heavy, reinforced doors of the casino.

Two massive bouncers with cybernetic eye-implants crossed their arms, blocking my path.

“‘Scuse me, gentlemen,” I slurred, perfectly modulating my voice to sound thick and heavy. “Need to… I need to win my wife’s car back. Step aside.”

One of the bouncers sneered, looking at my expensive, albeit rumpled, clothes. “Cover charge is fifty thousand Zenni, pal. No credit.”

I fumbled in my pocket, pulling out a thick wad of the cash I had won at the Arena, and slapped it against the bouncer’s chest. “Keep the change. Buy yourself a better dress, you look like shit.”

They let me in.

The interior of the casino was a sensory overload of ringing slot machines, cigar smoke, and the frantic, desperate chatter of addicts. I wandered the floor, playing the part. I sat at a blackjack table, lost a few hands, swore loudly, and moved on. I played the slots. I drank watered-down whiskey.

But beneath the drunken facade, my mind was operating at maximum capacity. My eyes darted across the room, analyzing the security patterns. I noted the blind spots in the camera coverage. I tracked the rotation of the armed guards wearing earpieces.

It didn’t take long to find the real objective.

Tucked away behind a bank of high-limit roulette tables was a heavy, unmarked steel door. It wasn’t advertised. There were no signs. But the bouncers guarding it were different. They weren’t just big; they moved with the lethal, fluid grace of men who killed for a living.

I watched out of the corner of my eye as a man in a bespoke tuxedo approached the door. He didn’t speak. He simply flashed a sleek, matte-black keycard with a golden insignia. The bouncers nodded and swiped it, and the heavy door hissed open, revealing a dimly lit, carpeted hallway before shutting securely.

‘VIP access only,’ I thought, taking another sip of my terrible whiskey. ‘I need a pass.’

I tracked the movement of the staff. The waitresses in the skimpy outfits didn’t go near the door. But the senior waitstaff—the men in the crisp white shirts, black bowties, and carrying silver trays of high-end champagne—they went in and out.

I waited until one of the senior waiters, a tall, thin man with a sharp nose, picked up a fresh tray of drinks and headed toward the restroom corridor. I immediately abandoned my slot machine and stumbled after him.

The restroom was opulent, all black marble and gold fixtures. The waiter set his tray down on the marble counter to check his reflection in the mirror.

I locked the door behind me with a soft ‘click’.

The waiter turned around, his brow furrowing. “Excuse me, sir, the stalls are—”

I didn’t let him finish. I didn’t use a weapon. I simply closed the distance in a fraction of a second, relying entirely on my agility. Before his brain could even register that I had moved, my hand chopped out in a precise, brutally efficient arc, striking the carotid artery on the side of his neck.

My Strength—nearly ten tons of raw force—had to be heavily reigned in to avoid taking his head off completely. Still, the impact was devastating. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he crumpled toward the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. I caught him before he made a sound, dragging his limp body into the furthest handicap stall.

“Sorry, pal,” I whispered, stripping his vest, bowtie, and the black keycard clipped to his belt. “Take a nap. You’re off the clock.”

I left him propped up on the toilet and stood in front of the mirror.

Now came the real test. I raised my hands, my fingers flying through the complex sequence the System had permanently burned into my muscle memory.

‘Dog. Boar. Ram.’

“Henge,” I breathed, pushing my chakra outward.

A puff of white smoke engulfed me, smelling faintly of ozone. When it cleared, the reflection staring back at me wasn’t Milluki Zoldyck. It was the tall, thin waiter with the sharp nose. The illusion was perfect. I touched my face; it felt real, the chakra creating a physical, tactile barrier that mirrored my new dimensions.

I adjusted my bowtie, picked up the silver tray of champagne, and walked out of the restroom, leaving my drunkenness behind.

—

I approached the heavy steel door, my heart maintaining a steady, cold rhythm. I held out the black keycard. The bouncer swiped it without a second glance. The light turned green, and the door hissed open.

I stepped into the hallway and followed it down a flight of carpeted stairs. The air grew significantly cooler, and the scent of the casino above faded, replaced by something entirely different.

It smelled like expensive perfume, sweat, copper, and profound, suffocating fear.

The hallway opened up into a massive, subterranean amphitheater. The lighting was dramatic, focused heavily on a raised central stage. The seats surrounding the stage were filled with Yorknew City’s elite—politicians, mafia bosses, and wealthy deviants wearing masquerade masks, sipping champagne and holding bidding paddles.

But it was what was on the stage, and in the reinforced cages lining the walls, that made my stomach churn.

It was a slave market.

Men, women, and children of varying ages were chained to the floor. But it wasn’t just humans. There were exotic, humanoid magical beasts. There were people with strange, colorful mutations that likely made their organs incredibly valuable on the black market. They looked hollowed out, their eyes vacant and terrified as a charismatic auctioneer in a top hat listed their physical attributes and starting bids over a microphone.

‘Dark humor is my coping mechanism,’ I thought, my knuckles turning white beneath the tray. ‘But there is absolutely nothing funny about this. And I thought my family was a nightmare. The Zoldycks kill people quickly and professionally. These guys are monetizing human misery without even trying to make it look cool.’

I moved through the crowd, offering champagne to the masked bidders, my eyes scanning the room.

It didn’t take long to spot him.

Sitting in a private, elevated VIP booth overlooking the stage was Goran “The Butcher” Vane. The dossier photo hadn’t done his ugliness justice. He was a massive, incredibly obese man with a face that looked like it had been run through a meat grinder and poorly stitched back together. He was laughing uproariously at something one of his sycophants had said, an enormous cigar clamped between his teeth.

Four heavily armed guards, wearing tactical body armor and carrying suppressed submachine guns, flanked his booth.

‘Alright,’ I told myself, the cold, clinical logic of a gamer executing a boss-fight strategy taking over. ‘No monologue. No dramatic entrance. Stealth kill, grab the loot—or in this case, just verify the kill—and log off.’

I approached the VIP booth, keeping my posture perfectly submissive. I kept my eyes lowered, holding the tray of drinks steady. Tucked discreetly beneath a white linen napkin on the tray was an eight-inch, carbon-steel kitchen knife I had swiped from a busboy station upstairs.

“Fresh champagne for Mr. Vane,” I said smoothly to the guards at the base of the booth’s stairs.

One of the guards patted me down quickly. His hands passed right through the illusionary fabric of my waiter outfit, feeling the real trench coat beneath, but before his brain could process the discrepancy, the other guard waved me through. “Go on. He’s thirsty.”

I walked up the short flight of stairs and stepped into the booth.

Goran Vane didn’t even look at me. He was too busy leaning over the railing, shouting a bid for a young girl with silver hair in the cage below.

“Two hundred million!” Goran roared, his voice like grinding gravel. “I want those eyes for my collection!”

I stepped up right behind his chair.

“Your drink, sir,” I said.

My voice wasn’t the submissive tone of the waiter. It was the smooth, cold, slightly arrogant voice of Milluki Zoldyck.

Goran frowned, pausing his laughter, and began to turn his massive, scarred head toward me. “What did you just—”

He never finished the sentence.

I dropped the silver tray. In the split second it took for the tray to begin its descent to the floor, my hand whipped out from beneath the napkin, gripping the handle of the kitchen knife.

I didn’t slash wildly. I targeted the exact space between the cervical vertebrae. Guided by my Perception and fueled by nearly ten tons of physical Strength, the kitchen knife didn’t just cut; it sheared through skin, muscle, thick fat, and bone like a laser through wet tissue paper.

There was a sickening, wet ‘shuck’ sound.

The blade passed cleanly out the other side of his neck. Goran’s massive head detached from his shoulders, hanging in the air for a fraction of a second before gravity took hold. A geyser of dark, arterial blood erupted toward the ceiling, painting the plush velvet of the VIP booth in a violent crimson.

The heavy silver tray finally hit the floor with a loud, ringing ‘CLANG’.

For a terrifying, silent second, the booth was frozen in time. Goran’s headless body slumped forward over the railing, raining blood down onto the horrified bidders below.

Then, the four heavily armed guards reacted.

“Boss!” one of them screamed, his submachine gun snapping up, the barrel leveling directly at my chest. The other three were already drawing their weapons, their faces contorted in shock and rage.

In a normal world, I would be dead. Bullets travel faster than human thought. Even with my superhuman stats, dodging four automatic weapons at point-blank range in a confined space was mathematically impossible.

But I didn’t need to dodge. I needed to see.

I forcefully pulled the chakra from my core, channeling it directly into my optic nerves.

“Activate.”

A sharp, electric heat flooded my eyes. The world around me violently shifted. The dim, yellow lighting of the auction house vanished, replaced by an overwhelming, saturated hue of blood red.

My vision split. The single black tomoe materialized in my irises, spinning frantically before locking into place.

The effect was instantaneous and utterly mind-bending.

Time didn’t stop, but it crawled. The world slowed down to an agonizing, molasses-thick crawl. I could see the sweat forming on the guard’s forehead. I could see the muscles in his forearms tensing as his finger began to depress the trigger. I could see the spark of the firing pin striking the primer.

‘Sharingan.’ The eye that reflects the heart.

The first bullet erupted from the muzzle. To a normal person, it was a blur of lethal speed. To my red eyes, augmented by the 2x Perception multiplier, the bullet was a slow-moving, glowing streak of hot lead. I could perfectly calculate its trajectory. It was aimed at my left lung.

I simply leaned two inches to the right.

The bullet tore through the empty space where my chest had been a millisecond prior, shattering the glass of the VIP booth behind me.

“Too slow,” I whispered.

I moved. With the world trapped in slow motion, I stepped inside the guard’s guard. The kitchen knife, already slick with Goran’s blood, flashed out in a tight, efficient arc. I dragged the blade across the guard’s throat, severing his windpipe and carotid artery in a single, fluid motion.

I didn’t stop. I spun on my heel, my trench coat flaring within the illusion of the waiter’s uniform.

The second guard was adjusting his aim, his eyes wide with panic as his comrade fell. I stepped under the barrel of his gun, driving the hilt of the knife violently into his sternum to shatter his ribs, then brought the blade up under his chin, piercing straight into his brain stem.

The third and fourth guards began firing wildly in my direction, but their movements were telegraphed miles in advance. The Sharingan predicted their muscle twitches before they even fully committed to the action. I ducked a burst of suppressing fire, grabbed the falling body of the second guard, and used him as a meat shield.

The bullets tore into the dead guard’s Kevlar. I pushed the heavy corpse forward, knocking the third guard off balance. As he stumbled back, I threw the kitchen knife.

It spun through the air, burying itself to the hilt directly between the third guard’s eyes.

The fourth guard froze. His boss was decapitated. Three of his elite squadmates were dead in the span of four seconds. He looked at the waiter standing amidst the carnage, whose eyes were currently glowing a demonic, swirling red.

He dropped his gun and ran.

I let him go. I let the chakra drop from my eyes, the red hue fading back to normal lighting. The sudden rush of real-time speed made me slightly nauseous, and my CP gauge flickered, having drained three points for the brief activation.

Down below, the auction house was in absolute bedlam. The attendees were screaming, trampling each other to reach the heavy steel doors. The auctioneer had abandoned his podium, diving for cover.

I had completed the mission. I needed to leave before the casino’s main security force flooded the basement.

I stepped over Goran’s body, walking back to the top of the stairs. But as I looked down at the chaos, my eyes locked onto the cages. The slaves were cowering in the corners of their iron prisons, terrified of the gunfire and the screaming mob.

‘I am a Zoldyck. I am a professional. I shouldn’t get involved.’

I scoffed, cracking my knuckles. “Yeah, well, I’m also an otaku who hates badly written villains. And Silas Vance, the client who ordered this hit, wanted Goran dead so he could take over this exact slave market.”

I smiled, a dark, incredibly petty grin. “I think I’ll ruin Silas’s investment portfolio.”

I sprinted down the VIP stairs, leaping over the railing and landing gracefully on the main stage, the hardwood splintering slightly under my boosted agility.

The main control panel for the electronic cages was situated behind the auctioneer’s podium. I ripped the plastic casing off with my bare hands. I didn’t bother trying to hack it; I wasn’t the original Milluki.

Instead, I raised my foot and stomped my heel directly into the motherboard, shattering the circuits.

A loud, electronic buzzing filled the room, followed by the synchronized ‘CLACK’ of fifty heavy iron doors simultaneously unlocking.

“The doors are open!” I yelled over the din, my voice booming through the amphitheater. “Run, you idiots! Cause a riot! Burn this place down!”

They didn’t need to be told twice. The slaves—humans and magical beasts alike—poured out of the cages. The fear in their eyes was quickly replaced by feral desperation. They flooded the main floor, overwhelming the few remaining security guards, grabbing dropped weapons, and violently clearing their own path to the exit.

The chaos was total. It was beautiful.

I stepped back into the shadows of the stage. I raised my hands, quickly forming the seals.

‘Dog. Boar. Ram.’

The waiter vanished in a puff of smoke. In his place stood a perfect replica of Goran Vane’s fourth guard—the one who had dropped his gun and run away. I picked up a discarded submachine gun, slung it over my shoulder, and seamlessly blended into the fleeing crowd of panicking elites and rioting prisoners.

I rode the wave of bodies up the stairs, through the casino floor, and out into the cool, neon-lit night air of Yorknew City. Police sirens were already wailing in the distance, converging on the club.

I slipped into a dark alleyway two blocks down, releasing the Henge no Jutsu. The guard vanished, and I was Milluki Zoldyck once again, standing in my tailored trench coat.

I pulled out my phone, dialing the secure line to the family’s Mission Room.

“Mission Desk,” the receptionist answered smoothly.

“It’s Milluki,” I said, leaning against the damp brick wall and looking up at the glowing spire of Heavens Arena. “Target is neutralized. Beheading. Confirmed kill.”

“Excellent work, Master Milluki. That was incredibly efficient,” she said, typing on her keyboard. “I will inform the Patriarchy that your quota is fulfilled, and initiate the transfer of funds from the client, Mr. Vance.”

“Oh, about that,” I said, unable to keep the amusement out of my voice. “You might want to hold off on congratulating the client. It seems the target’s merchandise… mysteriously escaped during the chaos. The entire stock is gone. Tragic, really.”

There was a brief pause on the line.

“I see,” the receptionist said, and I could almost hear the faint smirk in her professional tone. “An unforeseen complication in the local market. The client will be highly displeased with the loss of assets, but the assassination parameters were met. Well done, Master.”

“I’ll be home in a few hours. Have Kasuga prep a Class-B steak.”

I hung up the phone, slipping it into my pocket.

My first assassination was in the books. I had unlocked the Sharingan. And I had completely derailed a human trafficking ring just out of spite.

“Not bad for a shut-in,” I chuckled, walking off into the neon glow of the city.