System in Assassin's Creed

Chapter 376: Chapter 375: The Celestial Gaze and the Keep

---Previously---

’Oh, I actually thought something dramatic was going to ha—’

”AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

The scream tore from Alaric’s throat with a primal, horrific violence that shattered the tranquility of the morning sky.

It was not a shout of surprise; it was the raw, unrestrained agony of a mortal vessel being forcefully, biologically rewritten by the absolute genetic pinnacle of the Otsutsuki clan. Deep within his skull, his optic nerves ignited as if injected with liquid magma. The pain was blinding, white-hot, and absolute, severing his concentration and sending the anomaly of two worlds plummeting blindly toward the city below, screaming into the void.

---Now---

[Balance Remaining: $646,286,331.31]

The Skies Above Philadelphia - Holy Commonwealth of Pennmere

He was plummeting toward the earth at a terrifying, terminal velocity, his physical form tearing through the dense, clinging morning fog of Philadelphia while every single nerve ending in his body screamed in absolute, white-hot agony.

The System had not merely deposited a pair of eyes into his skull; it had initiated a violent, forceful biological rewrite at the most fundamental genetic level. It felt as though molten iron had been injected directly into his optic nerves, surging backward to aggressively rewire the architecture of his brain.

”UGHHH...!”

Alaric Jonathan Kenway grunted, a harsh, guttural sound torn from his throat as he grabbed the sides of his head with both hands. He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached, fighting a desperate, losing battle against the encroaching darkness of unconsciousness. The heavy fabric of his olive-green flak jacket fluttered violently, snapping like a ship’s sail caught in a hurricane as the wind resistance battered against his falling form.

He genuinely didn’t care if he lost consciousness and ultimately hit the ground hard enough to splatter. Thanks to the absolute, infallible nature of the Phoenix Rebirth, death by impact was little more than a temporary, bloody inconvenience.

But he couldn’t allow himself to fall freely.

His analytical mind, fighting through the searing pain, mapped the trajectory of his descent. He was currently positioned directly over the busy, densely populated urban sprawl of Pennmere’s capital. If a man weighing over two hundred pounds, possessing bone and muscle density far beyond that of a normal human, struck a commercial district or a residential street at Mach speed, the resulting kinetic shockwave would level city blocks. He would survive, but hundreds of innocent civilians he had sworn to protect would be instantly pulverized.

He had to stay awake. He had to regain control.

Beneath his tightly squeezed eyelids, the transformation commenced.

Alaric’s normal, electric-blue eyes snapped open, instantly bleeding into the familiar, complex geometric pinwheels of his Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan. The crimson patterns spun like a furious blur, desperately attempting to process and regulate his violently fluctuating internal network. His chakra was going completely haywire, thrashing against his coils like a caged leviathan, but he forced his will upon it, fighting to wrestle the raging storm back into submission.

Then, the true evolution took hold.

The strict, biological separation between his white sclera and his crimson irises began to dissolve, blurring together until his entire eye was flooded with a deep, sovereign metallic purple. From the center of his pupils, dark, concentric rings began to ripple outward, carving their flawless, ripple-like patterns into the violet void. He possessed the legendary Rinnegan for exactly one fraction of a heartbeat.

The mutation pushed further.

Along the concentric rings, tiny, pitch-black magatamas began to form, embedding themselves into the circular pathways. And finally, as the absolute apex of ocular prowess was achieved, the metallic purple was violently consumed by a deep, luminescent crimson red, completing the terrifying evolution of Alaric’s eyes into the mythic Rinne-Sharingan.

Alaric’s newly forged eyes finally widened to their absolute limits, the crimson rings glowing with a faint, divine luminescence in the misty morning air.

Instantly, the fundamental laws of gravity surrendered to his authority.

His catastrophic descent literally paused in a single, physics-defying microsecond. There was no gradual deceleration, no lingering momentum. He simply ceased to fall, hovering suspended in the damp fog miles above the city, held aloft by the innate, god-like gravitational dominance granted by his new sight.

”Haaaa...!”

Alaric panted heavily, his chest heaving as he hovered in the silence of the sky. Everything surrounding his eyes burned with a fierce, lingering heat, as if he had stared directly into the core of the sun. He could distinctly feel massive, hungry pulses of chakra being routed directly to his optic nerves... a passive, continuous consumption rate that was at least five times faster than the minimum requirement needed to sustain his Eternal Mangekyō.

For a normal shinobi, or even a Kage, such a parasitic drain would have emptied their reserves in minutes, leaving them a desiccated husk.

But Alaric was far from normal. A few tense seconds passed as the absolute, limitless vitality of his Phoenix Sage body registered the new biological demand. His cells hummed, his passive regeneration seamlessly ramping up its output to flawlessly adapt to the staggering chakra consumption of the Rinne-Sharingan. The burning ache slowly cooled into a dull throb, and finally, his breathing stabilized, returning to its usual, measured rhythm.

”What the hell was that...” Alaric murmured, his voice raspy as he held his palms up in front of his face, clenching and unclenching his fingers.

He closed his crimson eyes, turning his heightened perception entirely inward to sense everything that had fundamentally changed within his biology.

’Hmm...’ Alaric analyzed, mapping his vast, oceanic coils. ’Other than a slight, measurable boost in my overall maximum chakra reserves... nothing much else happened to my physical body. No spontaneous horns, no sudden pigmentation shifts.’

His chakra control stayed exactly the same, functioning at the absolute pinnacle of efficiency. But that hardly mattered; his control was already so absurdly refined that he only required a single, lazy hand seal to execute massive, S-rank jutsu that would normally demand extensive, exhausting sequences and crippling amounts of chakra from lesser mortals.

As he hung suspended in the sky, a profound, instinctive wave of knowledge washed over his mind. During the agonizing process of his EMS mutating into the Rinne-Sharingan, the system had automatically downloaded the esoteric mechanics of the eyes directly into his cerebral cortex. It felt organic, like a muscle memory he had possessed since birth. Much like Madara Uchiha in the anime, Alaric instinctively knew that he could fluidly cycle his dojutsu at will... shifting seamlessly from his normal blue eyes, to the Eternal Mangekyō, to the purple Rinnegan, and finally, to the crimson Rinne-Sharingan, depending entirely on the specific tactical requirement of the moment.

The sheer versatility of his arsenal was staggering.

His Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan primarily granted him his three signature, unique abilities. First was Eros, the absolute restorative power that allowed him to heal himself to peak, unblemished form instantly, curing any wound or fatal disease in exchange for exactly ten percent of his remaining chakra. Second was Vulcan, the terrifying magnetic dominance that granted him the ability to create, shape, and manipulate any type of metal within a massive, ten-kilometer radius. Third was Cronos, the temporal disruption that allowed him to completely stop time for exactly ten seconds, creating a localized vacuum where only he could move and strike. He still didn’t know if a being of sufficiently god-like power could theoretically bypass the frozen time of Cronos, but it was a bridge he would cross when he got there.

Coupled with those personal miracles, the additional abilities he had previously purchased from the system meant that, through his EMS, he could also effortlessly unleash Hagoromo’s mountainous Complete Susanoo, twist reality with Kamui, and rewrite a target’s free will using Kotoamatsukami.

Shifting his focus to his newly acquired Rinnegan, Alaric noted that it granted him flawless access to the gravitational mastery of the Deva Path, the soul-rending extraction of the Human Path, and the absolute ninjutsu nullification of the Preta Path. He didn’t have the six paths that Nagato had, but it didn’t bother him in the slightest. A weapon, after all, was only ever as good as the person wielding it, and Alaric’s combat intelligence and raw chakra capacity more than compensated for any marginal dip in base output.

Finally, his mind touched upon the apex of his purchase: the Rinne-Sharingan.

The crimson eye allowed him the theoretical capacity to cast the apocalyptic Infinite Tsukuyomi... though he would never actually use it, finding the concept of trapping the world in a dream to be a tedious, incredibly boring solution to life’s problems. Far more useful was the ability to cast Amenominaka, granting him the power to instantly rewrite the physical dimensions around him, shifting himself and his enemies into varying elemental realms of lava, ice, or acid at will.

However, as he sifted through the instinctive knowledge, a subtle frown touched his lips. While he now possessed both the Rinnegan and the Rinne-Sharingan, the instinct to summon the husk of the Ten-Tails... the Gedo Mazo... was completely absent.

The reason quickly became apparent. His dojutsu wasn’t the result of an organic, millennial-long cultivation of alien DNA connected to the divine tree; it was a detached, sterilized product purchased from a cosmic storefront. The eyes possessed the power, but they lacked the specific, biological tether to the beast itself.

”Maybe because it’s sourced purely from the system...?” Alaric murmured aloud, piecing the logic together.

He raised a platinum-blonde brow, actively trying to search his mind for any hidden sub-routines or dormant summoning contracts, before finally nodding his head in quiet understanding. He felt like the Rinne-Sharingan, for what it was theoretically worth in the deepest lore of the shinobi world, was quite lacking without the apocalyptic backup of the Ten-Tails.

However, that minor disappointment didn’t mean he disliked his new toys. In fact, as he looked down at his hands, feeling the thrum of absolute, gravitational authority at his fingertips, a sharp, genuinely elated smirk broke across his face. Who wouldn’t want a Rinnegan? He was essentially a walking pantheon now.

Having finally had enough of scanning his own biology, Alaric mentally cycled his eyes back to their natural, electric blue, preferring the unassuming look for casual interactions.

He willed gravity to release its total hold, allowing himself to descend smoothly through the dense cloud layer, drifting past the bustling urban center of Philadelphia and heading toward the rugged, secluded mountain range situated within the city’s expansive borders.

Nestled perfectly into the stone of the mountain, surrounded by dense, untouchable wilderness and heavily fortified by the Vanguard’s most elite operatives, was the Kenway Keep. It was the heavily militarized, hyper-secure fortress that served as the nerve center for the Vanguard and a secondary, impregnable retreat for his family.

Even with his eyes returned to their normal state, the lingering, passive benefits of his newly evolved visual cortex were astounding. He didn’t even need to actively mold chakra to cast the Mind’s Eye of the Kagura; he could simply feel and perceive the exact location, emotional state, and chakra signature of every single guard patrolling the stone battlements and every servant moving through the Keep’s interior halls. The sensory clarity was absolute.

’I should probably go see Kassandra,’ Alaric thought, tracking a specific, brilliantly powerful Isu signature located deep within the highest levels of the fortress. ’She’s currently stationed in my private office here in the Keep.’

As he drifted closer to the imposing stone balconies of the mountain fortress, a sudden wave of profound curiosity washed over him. He was deeply intrigued to know exactly what had transpired in this world during the incredibly short amount of time that had passed here, compared to the grueling, eventful years he had spent operating in the shadows of the Naruto world.

He adjusted his descent, angling his trajectory toward the grand, jutting stone balcony that connected directly to his private, fortified study.

His black boots touched down silently on the polished marble of the balcony. Alaric took a moment to look out over the breathtaking view of the foggy, sprawling expanse of Philadelphia far below, the white stone of William Penn’s palace barely visible through the morning mist. It was a kingdom that thrived under his invisible hand.

With a soft, contented sigh, he turned his back on the view and walked toward the heavy, iron-reinforced oak door that led inside. He didn’t phase through it with Kamui, nor did he blast it open.

He simply raised his knuckles, rapping lightly against the thick wood with a cheerful, rhythmic beat.

”Knock knock!”

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