"What's even written here…?"
I stepped closer, brushing dust off the half-rotted stone tablet. The text was ancient—cracked, weathered, barely hanging on. But the moment I read the first line, every hair on my neck stood up.
"Long ago, the Goddess descended upon the world. With limitless power, she was named the Divine Mother by mankind.
The Goddess of the Sacred Tree bore two sons: Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo and Ōtsutsuki Hamura—"
My stomach dropped.
Ōtsutsuki.
Kaguya.
Her story.
Here. Buried under a shrine nobody cared about.
I kept reading.
"But the Goddess changed. The fruit of the Sacred Tree twisted her heart, and she sought to rule the world.
Her two sons rose against her. After a great struggle, they sealed her upon the moon and restored peace."
Then:
"The elder son, Hamura, used the power of the Rinnegan to create the shinobi arts and preach the path of peace.
Thus the name of the shinobi spread across the world."
I blinked.
"…What?"
This tablet was wrong.
Backward.
Mixed up.
Hagoromo was the Sage. Hamura stayed on the moon.
But the core events…?
Exactly what I knew from my previous life.
I read on.
"The younger son, Hagoromo, journeyed to the moon to watch over the seal, guarding the earth from afar."
That flipped their roles entirely.
"Though the brothers were mighty, they could not escape death. And with their passing, no trace of the Ōtsutsuki remained in this world."
I exhaled slowly.
Not because it shocked me—but because this tablet proved something I'd been trying very, very hard not to think about.
If someone recorded this, if a shrine built a barrier around it…
Then the Ōtsutsuki didn't just leave behind myths.
They left breadcrumbs.
And someone—maybe several someones—knew they weren't gone.
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
"Great. Exactly what I needed. An eldritch space clan with a GPS route back to earth."
Kaguya wasn't the endgame.
She was the tutorial boss.
In my old world, the Ōtsutsuki kept showing up every few decades like cosmic debt collectors, each stronger than the last.
Here?
If they still had a passage, a method, a route to get back…
"That means they could return. Anytime."
My teeth clenched.
Rinnegan or not, I wasn't ready to fight aliens who ate planets like snacks.
Against Kaguya?
Dead.
Against anyone else from her clan?
Maybe fifty–fifty. On a good day. If they tripped.
And I already had Black Zetsu breathing down the world's neck, and the tailed beasts waiting to explode like political landmines.
I memorized the tablet's every word, checked the chamber twice more, then climbed back through the ruins. Nothing else. No second tablet. No hidden chamber. Just one cosmic headache.
When I returned to the surface, the Anbu were waiting where I left them—silent, wary, confused. I didn't explain. I didn't want to say the words out loud. Not yet.
"Let's move. We're heading back to the village."
While I traveled south, dealing with legendary swords and tailed beast hunting, something else moved through the far north—a place buried in ice and silence.
A black figure pushed against the snow, gliding like a stain across the world.
Black Zetsu.
He reached a collapsed ruin and smiled, that cold, ancient smile of his.
Before he could take another step—
A whooshing crack split the air.
A massive shape landed beside the ruins, the snow exploding outward. The figure stood like a puppet carved from ice and flesh—tall, inhumanly rigid.
And in its skull…
A pair of scarlet Rinnegan.
The puppet-man scanned the area, searching for the intruder.
Too late.
Black Zetsu melted underground, slipping past him like oil.
The puppet-man prowled, searching—but found nothing.
Then—
Crack.
He whipped around.
Black Zetsu stood at the entrance of the ancient shrine, pushing open the frozen doors.
The puppet-man roared—raw, animalistic, definitely not human anymore.
Up close, the truth was obvious.
That Rinnegan…
That chakra…
He wasn't alive.
He was a vessel.
A shell.
Black Zetsu looked back once, smirking, then stepped into the ruins.
His voice echoed faintly.
"Finally… I find you."
He walked to a huge altar deep inside, moving with a familiarity that made my skin crawl. He pulled a small stone from his chest, its chakra swirling like a meteor crashing through the sky.
He placed it on the altar.
The moment it touched—
Light erupted.
Power surged.
The puppet-man burst into the chamber, roaring with fury.
Black Zetsu vanished into the ground, his laughter fading.
The puppet-man staggered as the altar ignited, sucking chakra out of him like a starving beast.
He clawed at the air.
The Rinnegan in his eyes dimmed—
Cracked—
Vanished.
His body shriveled, crumpling like dried paper.
In the end, he wasn't a man.
He wasn't alive.
He was a puppet brought home to feed its master.
The altar pulsed again—bright, hungry, awake.