The underground lab echoed with a low hum of chakra-infused machinery. Dim blue seals etched into the stone walls flickered like restless flames, casting eerie shadows across glass tubes filled with suspended, motionless bodies. The faint scent of iron and chemicals lingered heavily in the air.
Kirito stood in the center, his cloak brushing against the cold floor as he approached a stone table. Upon it lay the lifeless body of a Hyūga shinobi, eyes carefully preserved in a crystal container glowing faintly with chakra. He placed a hand on the container, smirking faintly.
"Byakugan… the Eye that sees everything. And yet, its wielders remain chained by tradition and weakness. Pathetic."
He lifted one of the preserved eyes with surgical precision, chakra threads extending from his fingertips. As the threads pulsed, he began weaving his own chakra into the delicate tissue. The eye twitched unnaturally, resonating with the ambient chakra of the lab.
With careful motions, Kirito pressed the eye against an artificial vessel of flesh—one of his failed clones. The body convulsed, veins around the temple bulging as the Byakugan opened suddenly, scanning the chamber in all directions. A surge of vision, raw and unrefined, erupted from it.
"Good…" Kirito whispered, jotting notes with his free hand. "Even without a true Hyūga body, the Byakugan retains its strength. But to merge it with another lineage… perhaps Uchiha, perhaps Senju… then the true evolution begins."
He moved toward another experiment—a hybrid clone stitched with Hyūga DNA. The veins around its temples were faintly visible, though the eyes remained shut. Kirito fed it chakra through a seal array. The body spasmed violently, then its eyes snapped open—Byakugan active, veins surging as they strained against the skull. The clone screamed, chakra bursting uncontrolled, before collapsing into silence.
Kirito didn't flinch. He merely smiled.
"Failure is progress. Each corpse teaches me more than the living ever could."
From the shadows, one of his chakra-thread puppets dragged another preserved Hyūga body onto the operating table. Kirito's eyes glimmered with cruel determination.
"The Hyūga clan believes their eyes are divine gifts… I will prove they are nothing but raw material."
He turned his gaze toward a wall where several jars contained blood samples labeled Hyūga, Senju, Uchiha, and even one marked Unknown Experimental.
As his hands moved to draw seals across the floor, he whispered:
"With Byakugan's all-seeing eye, Uchiha's Sharingan, and Senju's vitality… I will surpass gods themselves. The shinobi world will no longer bow to the Will of Fire… but to the Will of Evolution."
The room trembled as Kirito activated the array, and the Byakugan clone's veins began glowing faintly with unnatural chakra—something beyond Hyūga purity, something twisted and new