Chapter 245: Emotional Amplification

Chapter 245: Chapter 245: Emotional Amplification

Inside the secret laboratory.

"Whew..."

As his soul returned to his original Yin Release body, Hyuga Kagami let out a long breath. His entire body immediately felt much lighter, as though even his soul itself had become livelier.

He turned his gaze toward the clone lying on the operating table, a thoughtful expression appearing on his face.

Over the past several days of using the Mangekyo Sharingan, he had gained a profound understanding of the differences between the Sharingan and the Byakugan. At the same time, he had also personally experienced just how great a burden the Mangekyo Sharingan placed on its user.

"Kakashi really doesn’t have it easy..."

After sighing softly, he took out his experimental records and began carefully recording the various data from the badly damaged clone.

He then compared the newly recorded data with the clone’s readings from when it had still been inside the nutrient tank and discovered that the most severely damaged part of the clone was actually its nervous system.

Of all the damage, the cranial nerves and optic nerves had suffered the worst.

Worse still, all of it was irreversible damage that could never recover.

"Why did this happen?"

While using the Mangekyo Sharingan, Hyuga Kagami had noticed that his emotions fluctuated greatly.

At first, he thought the Mangekyo Sharingan was manipulating his emotions. But after carefully analyzing his experiences, he gradually came to feel that the Mangekyo Sharingan wasn’t actually controlling his emotions at all.

Instead, it was amplifying the emotions he already possessed.

"Emotional amplification may have something to do with the damage to the cranial nerves. Perhaps it’s precisely because the Mangekyo Sharingan continuously stimulates the cranial nerves that its wielder’s emotions become amplified, while at the same time making those nerves more susceptible to fatigue and damage!"

After summarizing his own experiences, Hyuga Kagami arrived at a conclusion that was still somewhat preliminary.

Once someone possessed the Mangekyo Sharingan, those consumed by despair would become even more despairing, those consumed by anger would become even angrier, those filled with compassion would become even more compassionate, and those capable of enduring would become even more enduring!

Obito could be classified as belonging to the despairing type. Aside from Kakashi, he no longer cared about anything else in the entire world.

Hideki and Ryota could more or less be classified as the angry type.

Shisui and Itachi could be classified as the compassionate type. One of them, for the sake of peace, had his eye stolen from him, yet not only did he refuse to retaliate, he even chose to commit suicide in order to quell the conflict. The other, also for the sake of peace in the village, killed his father, killed his mother, and slaughtered his entire clan.

Madara and Fugaku could more or less be classified as the enduring type.

After losing to the First Hokage, Madara endured in silence for several decades. All the way until his death, he never again showed himself in the shinobi world.

As for Fugaku in the original timeline, he endured all the way to the very end. Ultimately, he chose to bare his neck and accept death rather than rise up and make one final attempt to resist.

After recording his insights and analysis regarding the Mangekyo Sharingan in his experimental notes, Hyuga Kagami removed Uchiha Ryota’s Mangekyo Sharingan from the clone’s eye sockets and destroyed the clone.

With that, the entire Stimulation Experiment officially came to an end.

Over the course of the experiment, including the two clones of the Uchiha brothers, the clone he had deliberately allowed Uchiha Ryota to kill, and the badly damaged clone he had just destroyed, Hyuga Kagami had used up a total of four clones.

Cultivating those four clones had consumed an enormous amount of nutrient solution. Even counting only the cost of the medicinal ingredients and excluding equipment wear and tear, the four clones had cost nearly thirty million ryō.

If the wear and tear on the equipment, the construction costs of the secret prison, and the cost of all the various tools and instruments were included, then the total expenditure for this experiment had definitely exceeded fifty million ryō.

That was why, whenever it came to high-end experiments involving biological cloning, only the major hidden villages could truly afford them.

Even powerful shinobi like Hyuga Kagami and Orochimaru, both of whom possessed extraordinary money-making capabilities, often found themselves constrained by financial problems when conducting experiments on their own.

While disposing of the damaged clone, Hyuga Kagami couldn’t help but recall his earlier brief clash with Kumogakure’s A–B Combo.

In the original timeline, the Fourth Raikage didn’t have many notable battle records, but several of his fights were extremely representative and offered valuable points of reference.

His clash with Sasuke during the Five Kage Summit was especially noteworthy, displaying his speed and strength to their absolute limits. While using his Lightning Release Chakra Mode, he had even managed to evade Sasuke’s Amaterasu, which was cast directly through his line of sight. It was truly astonishing.

If the Fourth Raikage had shown enough restraint at the time, or if he had had a shinobi specializing in sealing techniques by his side, he could have completely taken down Sasuke, who had already awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan, without suffering any injuries himself.

It could be said that the Fourth Raikage losing his arm was entirely the result of his own mistake.

After all, Sasuke had not only been maintaining his Susanoo at the time, but also Amaterasu and Kagutsuchi, the technique used to manipulate and transform the shape of the black flames.

Maintaining three Mangekyo Sharingan ocular techniques simultaneously placed an unimaginably heavy burden on Sasuke, even with his Uchiha bloodline. If the fight had turned into a battle of endurance, there was no way he could have outlasted the Fourth Raikage.

As for Killer B, the Eight-Tails jinchūriki, he had single-handedly fought Sasuke’s entire Team Taka and had likewise come extremely close to killing Sasuke even after Sasuke had awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan.

From those two representative battles, it was easy to see that both the Fourth Raikage and Killer B, the Eight-Tails jinchūriki, possessed combat strength that surpassed that of an ordinary Mangekyo Sharingan wielder.

So the fact that Hyuga Kagami had managed to escape from Kumogakure’s A–B Combo this time was already quite an achievement.

Pulling his thoughts back, Hyuga Kagami mused to himself, "After causing such a huge commotion this time, the suspicion surrounding Shisui should have been cleared by now."

Once Shisui was cleared of suspicion, Hyuga Kagami could calmly proceed with the fusion of the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan and the cultivation of an Uchiha-bloodline clone.

To fuse an Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, however, Hyuga Kagami first needed to learn the Uchiha clan’s Transcription Seal, and for that, he could only rely on Shisui to find a way.

That was because Hyuga Kagami estimated that even Konoha’s secret ninjutsu archives probably didn’t contain a scroll for the Transcription Seal.

In all likelihood, the Transcription Seal, just like the Uchiha clan’s secret techniques Izanagi and Izanami, was kept in the custody of the Uchiha clan head.

As for cultivating an Uchiha-bloodline clone, Hyuga Kagami was still somewhat conflicted.

The choice of whose cells to use as the sample was extremely important to the resulting clone, and right now, Hyuga Kagami simply had too many candidates to choose from.

Aside from the Uchiha brothers Hideki and Ryota, who were already in his hands, he could also choose Shisui, Itachi, or even Sasuke.

Rubbing his chin, Hyuga Kagami muttered, "Better forget about Sasuke. Who knows what kind of weird marks the Sage of Six Paths might have left on him."

At present, no one could say whether the Sage of Six Paths, whose soul wandered the shinobi world, was constantly watching Sasuke and Naruto—the reincarnations of his two sons.

So rashly making a move on Sasuke was hardly a wise choice.

Moreover, Indra’s chakra might affect the balance between Hyuga Kagami’s Fire Release clone and his other clones, introducing uncontrollable risks into his Kekkei Mora experiment.

So when it came to variables like this, Hyuga Kagami would avoid them whenever possible.

With Sasuke eliminated as a candidate, only four choices remained: Uchiha Hideki, Uchiha Ryota, Shisui, and Itachi...