Uchiha power in HxH world - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The Calculus of Agony and the Chunin’s Ascent

Deep within the cavernous, dimly lit heart of the Zoldyck estate, far removed from the screaming and the smell of ozone in the ‘Heavens Step’ chamber, Zeno Zoldyck walked silently into his private study.

The room was austere, lined with ancient texts on assassination techniques, regional poisons, and Nen theory. Standing by the large, reinforced window that overlooked the fog-covered valley was a man whose presence was as overwhelming as a physical landslide.

Silva Zoldyck, the current Patriarch of the family, turned around. His massive, muscular frame was barely contained by his flowing white robes, and his long, wild blonde hair framed a face that looked carved from granite.

“Well?” Silva’s voice rumbled, deep and resonant. “Did Milluki say anything?”

Zeno walked over to a heavy oak chair and sat down, smoothing the fabric of his uniform. He let out a dry, amused chuckle.

“He didn’t confess to anything,” Zeno said, his eyes glinting in the low light. “Instead, he had the sheer audacity to recite the family code at me. Section four, paragraph two. The rule against disclosing the nature of one’s abilities.”

A slow, terrifying smile spread across Silva’s stoic face. “He cited the code. He is smart.”

“Smarter than we gave him credit for,” Zeno agreed, steepling his fingers. “He is hiding something profound.”

Silva walked away from the window, his heavy footsteps thudding softly against the carpet. “The reports from Gotoh and the surveillance teams are staggering. He dropped nearly two hundred kilograms of pure fat in a matter of weeks. His physical strength has increased exponentially without any traditional weight training. And the aura he is radiating… it is dense, chaotic, and growing at a rate that defies logical progression. What are the reasons for such a drastic change in his behavior and power?”

Zeno leaned back, closing his eyes in thought. “I have a theory. It is possible that before Killua attacked him, or perhaps shortly after, Milluki asked a wish from Alluka.”

Silva’s brow furrowed slightly. Alluka Zoldyck. The youngest child, possessed by a dark, reality-warping entity from the Dark Continent known as Nanika. Nanika could grant any wish, provided the requester fulfilled three of her increasingly twisted ‘requests’ first.

“He has used her before for selfish reasons,” Zeno continued. “To kill targets without leaving his room, to acquire technology. It is entirely possible he wished to become stronger at an accelerated rate.”

“But the problem with Nanika is the equivalent exchange,” Silva countered, his voice hard. “The bigger the wish, the higher the price the next person must pay. And there is no wish that allows a person to ‘constantly’ grow stronger without end. A one-time boost in strength? Yes. But an infinite, compounding growth curve? No. Nanika alters reality; she does not break the fundamental laws of energy conservation.”

Silva paused, his eyes narrowing. “Furthermore, the operatives in Yorknew City reported an anomaly during his assassination contract. When Milluki engaged the target’s guards, his eyes changed color. They turned blood red, with a distinct, spinning pattern. It sounds almost like the Kurta clan, whose eyes transform under emotional duress, but our bloodline carries no such mutation.”

Zeno nodded slowly. “Indeed. Which leads me to my second theory. It might be possible that his wish to Nanika was not for raw power, but for a specific type of ‘Nen’ ability. A specialist ability that allows him to grow stronger by fulfilling specific, hidden conditions.”

Silva cracked his knuckles, the sound like breaking stones. “An ability that mimics infinite growth. If that is true, it is incredibly dangerous. Should we capture him and interrogate him in the lower levels to extract the exact mechanics of this ability?”

It was a monstrous suggestion for a father to make about his son. But in the Zoldyck family, sentimentality was a weakness that got you killed. If a family member possessed a potentially reality-breaking ability, it was the Patriarch’s duty to understand and control it.

Zeno, however, shook his head.

“That is not necessary, Silva. Not yet,” Zeno said calmly. “If we press him too hard, he may rebel, or worse, the condition of his ability might trigger a self-destructive backlash. Let the training regimen continue. We will observe him under extreme duress and gather more data.”

—

On the other side of the estate, entirely unaware that my father and grandfather had just casually debated vivisecting my soul, I lay sprawled on my bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

My entire body felt like it had been run through a meat grinder, set on fire, and then thrown off a cliff.

The torture in the ‘Heavens Step’ chamber was something else entirely. The sheer, unadulterated agony of 5,000 volts of electricity locking every single muscle fiber in my body was a trauma I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

“How does a normal human survive in this family?” I wheezed, my throat still raw from screaming. “No wonder Killua stabbed Mama and ran away. If I had to deal with this when I was 3 years old, I would have burned this mountain down.”

But I had survived. The healer had reset my physical tissue perfectly, leaving no scars, but my mind was completely exhausted.

Before passing out, I weakly willed my system panel to open, just to check the damage.

A new, glowing notification was pulsing at the top of the screen.

‘Ding!’
[Repeated exposure to high-voltage electrical trauma detected.]
[System Adaptation Protocol Initiated.]
[Hidden Affinity Unlocked: Lightning Lv1]

My brow wrinkled. I stared at the text through half-open, exhausted eyes.

“Lightning affinity?” I mumbled. “From getting tortured? This system is a masochist.”

I didn’t have the mental energy to care about the implications. I let the panel fade away, closed my eyes, and instantly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

—

The next day, the cycle began anew.

I woke up, ate a massive breakfast of Class-B Magical Beast meat, converted the calories, and gained enough EXP to trigger another level up.

I didn’t even hesitate. I dumped every single free stat point directly into Vitality.

—

Name: Milluki Zoldyck

Bloodline: Uchiha Lv1 (72%)

Level: 25 (4/351)

Affinity: Fire Lv3, Yin Lv5, Yang Lv2, Lightning Lv1

…

Health: 270/270 [Recovers 0.2% per minute]

Chakra: 220/220 [Recovers 0.2% per minute]

Fatigue: 0%

…

STR: 29

AGI: 41

VIT: 29

INT: 20

PER: 19

…

Skill: Sharingan Lv1, Chakra Control Lv3 (32%), Transformation Lv1 (12%), Clones Lv1 (0%), Body Flicker Lv1 (19%)

…

[Library]

—

As my Vitality hit 29, a new notification popped up, informing me that I had unlocked passive health regeneration. 0.2% of my maximum health per minute. It wasn’t Wolverine-level healing, but it meant I wouldn’t bleed to death from minor cuts anymore.

More importantly, I noticed the percentage next to my Bloodline. The Uchiha bloodline was sitting at 72%. The intense, near-death experiences of the electrical torture had violently stressed my genetic code, forcing the bloodline to adapt and accrue EXP at an alarming rate.

“I can feel it,” I muttered, clenching my fist. The dense, thrumming power inside me was undeniable. “I am getting significantly stronger.”

An hour later, Varg arrived at my door.

I didn’t complain. I didn’t whine. I just walked with him down to ‘Heavens Step’.

Today, they didn’t strap me to the chair with the copper pads. Today, Varg simply handed me a small, crystal glass filled with a viscous, purple liquid that smelled faintly of almonds and death.

“Drink, Master Milluki,” Varg commanded.

It was poison. Neurotoxins, hemotoxins, things designed to cause the human body to violently reject its own existence.

I drank it.

The torture was different from the electricity, but no less agonizing. The electricity was a violent, external assault. The poison was an insidious, internal betrayal. I lay on the cold concrete floor, violently vomiting blood, my internal organs feeling like they were dissolving into acid.

When my Health dropped into the single digits and my vision faded to black, Varg administered the antidote, and the healer stepped forward with her green Nen.

Then, they handed me another glass.

We repeated the process ten times. By the end of it, my body had violently adapted.

‘Ding!’
[Ability Unlocked: Poison Resistance Lv1]

The next day, there were no electrodes. There were no poison vials. There was only Varg, stripping off his suit jacket, rolling up his sleeves, and beating me with his bare hands.

Varg was a Nen user. His punches carried the force of a wrecking ball. He broke my ribs, shattered my collarbone, and ruptured my spleen.

But this time, I didn’t just take it. I focused my mind, ignoring the searing pain, and pulled my Chakra to the surface of my skin. I maintained ‘Ten’, creating a shroud of energy to blunt the impact. And then, as Varg threw a particularly devastating hook, I pushed harder, transitioning into ‘Ken’—the advanced technique of maintaining a prolonged state of ‘Ren’ over the entire body for defense.

The punch landed, but my ribs didn’t break. The blue chakra flared, absorbing the kinetic energy.

Varg stopped, stepping back. A rare, genuine smile touched the corners of his stoic mouth.

“Excellent, Master Milluki,” Varg praised. “You are utilizing ‘Ken’ defensively. Your control has improved significantly.”

‘Ding!’
[Chakra Control reached Level 4!]

I gasped for air, keeping the blue aura flared around my body. “Thanks… Varg.”

“However,” Varg said, his smile vanishing instantly, replaced by the cold, dead-eyed stare of a Zoldyck butler. “The objective of this exercise is not merely defense. It is endurance. I wish to see precisely how long you can maintain ‘Ken’ before your aura reserves are completely depleted.”

My heart sank. I didn’t have an infinite amount of Chakra. Maintaining ‘Ken’ was an incredibly draining technique.

“Begin,” Varg said, stepping forward.

He didn’t stop punching. I held the aura as long as I could, watching my CP gauge plummet. When I finally hit zero, the blue shroud vanished, and Varg’s fists hit flesh and bone once again. He beat me to near death. The healer fixed me. He beat me again.

Ten times.

‘Ding!’
[Ability Unlocked: Pain Tolerance Lv1]

This was my life now. The cycle of three days, repeating endlessly with no rest days in between. Electricity. Poison. Blunt force trauma.

But the system, glorious and broken as it was, turned the suffering into raw numbers. The constant, extreme physical trauma forced my stats and abilities to skyrocket. My Vitality allowed me to endure longer. My passive regenerations kept me from permanently breaking.

Weeks bled into a month.

The torture stopped feeling like torture. It became routine. A normal physical attack no longer registered as debilitating pain. I could sit in the iron chair and take half a million volts of electricity without screaming; my Lightning affinity dampening the neurological shock. Varg’s standard poisons tasted like slightly bitter tea.

After a month of this hellish crucible, I was summoned back to the Mission Room to fulfill my next quota.

I took a C-Rank mission. It involved taking out a heavily armed syndicate boss in a neighboring city.

It was almost insultingly easy.

I didn’t even bother with the Henge no Jutsu this time. I just used the Body Flicker technique to bypass his entire security detail, appeared behind him, and snapped his neck. I was back at the estate in time for dinner.

I sat in my room, chewing on a piece of premium Class-A Magical Beast meat that Grandpa Zeno had apparently authorized for my dietary plan, and pulled up my master status panel.

—

Name: Milluki Zoldyck

Bloodline: Uchiha Lv3 (8%)

Level: 41 (344/903)

Affinity: Fire Lv3, Yin Lv5, Yang Lv2, Lightning Lv3

…

Health: 490/490 [Recovers 0.8% per minute]

Chakra: 545/545 [Recovers 0.2% per minute]

Fatigue: 0%

…

STR: 29

AGI: 70

VIT: 80

INT: 20

PER: 19

…

Skill: Sharingan Lv3, Chakra Control Lv4 (82%), Transformation Lv1 (12%), Clones Lv1 (0%), Body Flicker Lv1 (19%)

Ability: Poison Resistance Lv3 (57%), Pain Tolerance Lv2 (83%)

…

[Library]

—

I stared at the numbers, a slow, satisfied grin spreading across my face.

Level 41. I had officially broken out of the Genin tier and entered the Chunin ranks.

The math of my growth was staggering. Based purely on the volume of my Chakra, I was currently sitting at 545 units. If I equated that to the standard ‘Hunter x Hunter’ power scaling, I was roughly equivalent to a Level 10 Nen Master.

In context, that meant I was currently holding the same raw aura capacity as Gon Freecss and Killua Zoldyck right at the moment they finished their grueling training arc on Greed Island.

I knew some might look at my progress and think it was slow. A month of literal torture and non-stop eating just to reach the baseline of two 13-year-olds?

But they didn’t understand the system’s scaling. A normal Nen Master’s progress was linear. They trained for a year, they gained a set amount of aura.

My progress was exponential.

When I was between Level 1 and 20, I gained 5 Chakra points per level.
When I hit Genin (Level 21 to 40), it jumped to 20 Chakra points per level.
Now that I was in the Chunin bracket (Level 41 to 60), every single level up granted me a massive 25 Chakra points.

As my level increased, the sheer volume of power I gained per level multiplied. The gap between my Ninja level and my equivalent Nen Master level was going to violently shrink the higher I climbed. I was a snowball rolling down a very steep mountain.

But the raw numbers weren’t even the best part. I looked down at the Skill section of my panel.

Sharingan Lv3.

The Third Tomoe. The fully matured basic Sharingan.

I closed my eyes, pooling my chakra into my optic nerves. I didn’t need to look in a mirror; I could feel the three black commas spinning rapidly in the blood-red sea of my irises before locking into place.

With the Third Tomoe, my kinetic perception was practically absolute. But more importantly, I had unlocked the true terror of the Uchiha clan: Genjutsu.

Visual Hypnosis. A Manipulation-type Nen ability that required absolutely no physical contact.

The condition to activate it was terrifyingly simple: The target merely had to look into my eyes.

However, because the activation condition was so laughably easy to meet, the System had imposed a brutal restriction on the Chakra cost. It was a binding vow dictated by mathematics.

The consumption rate was calculated by a specific formula: ‘(Target’s Equivalent Level – User’s Level) x 10’.

I ran the numbers in my head. If I wanted to trap Grandpa Zeno in an illusion—assuming his equivalent Ninja level was around 90, and my current level was 41—the initial cast would cost me 490 units of Chakra instantly. Furthermore, to maintain the illusion against a target that strong, I would have to constantly feed 49 units of Chakra ‘per second’ into the technique.

With my current max Chakra at 545, I could trap Zeno in an illusion for exactly one second before completely burning out my reserves and collapsing.

“Costly,” I murmured, deactivating the red eyes. “But fair. It’s a one-shot kill ability. If I use it on someone my own level, it costs zero initial CP. I just need to keep grinding.”

The real goal, the ultimate prize, was pushing the bloodline further. I couldn’t wait for my Sharingan to evolve into the Mangekyō Sharingan. Once I hit that tier, I would unlock my own unique ocular ability, and the ultimate defense: Susanoo. The giant, impenetrable avatar of chakra.

Once I had Susanoo, the entire Zoldyck family could line up and take their best shots, and I’d just sit inside my glowing ribcage and play video games.

A soft knock on my heavy steel door pulled me out of my power fantasy.

“Master Milluki,” Kasuga’s voice filtered through the intercom.

“What is it?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.

“I have a situational update from the main house. Master Killua has returned to the estate.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Killua came back? Voluntarily?”

“Negative. He was apprehended during the Hunter Exam. He is currently being held in the solitary confinement sector of ‘Heavens Step’ as punishment for his previous transgressions against you and Lady Kikyo.”

The timeline clicked perfectly into place. The Hunter Exam was officially over. Killua had killed Bodoro under Illumi’s hypnotic influence, failed the exam, and come back to the mountain to accept his punishment.

Which meant that very soon, a loud, incredibly stubborn kid with spiky green hair named Gon Freecss was going to show up at the front gates, demanding to see his best friend.

A part of me—the spiteful, original Milluki part—wanted to march down to ‘Heavens Step’, walk into Killua’s cell, and beat some sense into him. It would be incredibly satisfying payback for the slash wound he gave me.

I stood up, adjusting my shirt, actually contemplating the trip down to the dungeons.

Then, I stopped.

I remembered the rules of surviving a shonen anime universe as a transmigrated side character.

‘Rule Number One: Never, under any circumstances, mess with the primary protagonist or their direct emotional anchor.’

If I beat up Killua, Gon would eventually find out. Gon was a creature of pure, terrifying instinct. He didn’t care about logic, he didn’t care about power levels, and he certainly wouldn’t care that I was Killua’s older brother. If I became an antagonist in Gon’s story, I would eventually find myself on the receiving end of a Jajanken punch that defied all mathematical probability.

“Never mind, Kasuga,” I called out, sitting back down at my computer desk and booting up my customized rig. “Tell Papa I’m busy optimizing my code. I don’t care what happens to the brat.”

I had my own path to Godhood to walk. I didn’t need to get tangled up in the main plot just yet. Let Gon deal with the Testing Gates. Let Illumi be the bad guy.

I pulled out a fresh, glowing steak of Class-A Magical Beast meat from my mini-fridge.

I had EXP to farm.