[Chapter Size: 1500 Words.]
Third Person POV
Cintra, northern kingdoms.
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As Cirilla returned to the castle of Cintra, Madara moved silently through the dense forest, his scarlet eyes sweeping the area for signs of the monsters he was hunting. Having spent these months away from civilization, he had adapted to the rhythm of nature, learning to read the subtle signs that indicated the presence of dangerous creatures.
Even though it had been a few days since he found Cirilla and Geralt, he had not yet succeeded in his quest, only today he managed to find new tracks of a group of necrophages with his sharingan. He advanced cautiously, and when he finally encountered the necrophages, there were many bodies of dead people in the area, which they sought in the forest or killed, to turn them into these creatures, as they are creatures that arise from corpses.
Madara did not hesitate, he advanced to the nest and attacked with precision, throwing chakra-enhanced kunais before approaching for hand-to-hand combat. The fight was brutal, but Madara was prepared.
As soon as the creatures noticed his presence with the first necrophages falling to the ground with their faces hit, and they advanced towards Madara, he had already performed the hand seals and took a deep breath.
"Katon: Hōsenka no Jutsu." Fireballs rained down on the creatures as the nest and the corpses were all consumed by fire, some creatures managed to escape, and ran up to Madara running strangely, Madara used his small sword and skillfully dodged the claws while executing quick cuts of the creatures, although it was not a silver weapon to kill them, he still managed to tear off limbs, making it difficult to move, if someone was watching this fight closely, they would see a 6-year-old boy doing pirouettes and handling a sword that shone with the meeting of the sun in his movements while being surrounded by 6 leprous creatures making sounds of anger.
They would be even more alarmed seeing the boy winning as the monsters begin to lose their arms, heads, and legs, Madara after symbolizing all of them, he launched his fire jutsu again, ending the monsters.
"I guess with that, I won," Madara murmured seeing the place being consumed by the fire of his jutsu that began to spread through the place.
He had spent six months of intensive solitary training in the forest, achieving remarkable mastery over his current chakra, jutsu, and sharingan. His days were always consumed by a rigorous regime that alternated between deep meditation, jutsu practice, and hunting monsters that infested the darkest regions of the forest. This relentless routine refined his skills, making him a formidable hunter and a master in chakra manipulation among his current capabilities, he would say if he were to measure his current power, he would be at the level of Sasuke before the chunin exams.
Despite significant progress in his skills and an increase in his physical and mental strength, the system kept him at only 1% of the total power of the legendary Uchiha Madara. This restriction intrigued and frustrated him in equal measure, as he had no clue how to unlock more power from the system.
Madara often speculated about the workings of the system, pondering the actions or achievements he would need to accomplish to unlock more of his latent power. But in the end, his theory that he had to do something big was what he trusted most, despite that saving people from death, destroying a bandit camp, and hunting monster nests was never enough.
"My training ends here, as I'm not gaining anything more from this," Madara murmured, decided to return to the capital, Cintra.
He wanted to observe the lives of the people of this world more closely, understand more about this world, now that he had enough strength to protect it from almost any individual danger.
With the decision made, Madara bathed in a river before starting his journey back to civilization. He again began his journey that lasted a day as he jumped between trees, as he approached the city limits, Madara could see the city wall with the tip of the castle inside the city.
He approached the high walls of Cintra, he did not decide to enter through the gates as he had left, without much effort now, he channeled his chakra to his feet and accelerated, running towards the wall and continued vertically climbing the stone wall while running, his movements so quick and silent that even the leaves in the wind would make more noise.
Upon reaching the top of the wall, he noticed the sentinels positioned at regular intervals, their gazes turned outward, vigilant for external threats. Moving with the precision and grace of a feline, Madara slipped between the blind spots, passing by the sentinels without them noticing his presence.
With one last jump on the wall, he leaped directly into the city dozens of meters below without fear, "Hahaha! This is fun." He said softly with some adrenaline. Stepping on chimneys and ornate ledges, he landed gracefully without damaging anything, still atop the house he landed on, he looked out over the city, which stretched for miles in front of him with houses and streets running to the opposite side of the wall he had entered.
He did not waste any more time and began to jump between the houses heading for the heart of the capital, he used the rooftops of the houses and buildings as his path, leaping from one construction to another with superhuman agility. Below him, the streets of Cintra buzzed with city life; merchants making their last sales, citizens working and tending to their affairs, and watchmen making their routine rounds. However, no one looked up to see the figure moving above them like a swift shadow.
"I'm here now, what should I do? It would be good to get some money, I'm no longer in the forest where I could hunt animals to eat..." Madara thought as he leaped through the air.
He headed towards the city center, where commerce was most bustling, however, he changed his direction to the south where there was a less favored area, there was his old orphanage.
He found it, a 2-story building while he looked at the movement of it, many children were doing their chores and there was a woman taking care of them, someone Madara knew well since the last time he was here.
He looked at the children and noticed some new ones, which was normal in the orphanage, but he saw some that he remembered in his memories missing, imagining that either they would not be there or that someone had adopted them, but there was also a possibility of them being trafficked by the administrators of the place, Madara was not naive in knowing how these people were rotten, he jumped between the nearby houses and headed towards a boy ironically doing the same job he did before hitting his head, which was to fetch the bucket of water from the well.
With a silent landing, Madara approached the boy focused on his task while he had not even noticed Madara. "Hey." Madara greeted and the boy got a fright not seeing someone so close to him. "Who?! Hm, Madara?!" The boy spoke with a voice of childlike surprise.
"Hello Lucas, how are you?" Madara simply greeted him.
"I'm good... wait! You, you're alive? You disappeared and everyone said you had died, it's been months!" The boy spoke a bit shocked.
"I'm alive, just taking care of myself now, tell me something, did they throw my clothes away?" He asked.
"Yes, Sister Tunny burned everything," He said.
"I see... Where are the others, I don't see 3 of you." He asked about the boys he didn't see while he was studying the orphanage.
"Mery went to buy something at the fair, but Martuy and Julia were handed over to strange men during the night," He spoke hesitantly.
"What do you mean?" Madara raised an eyebrow.
"I saw, saw when Sister Tunny took them in the middle of the night and took them away, I went to the window and saw men who looked like they were from Fred's gang, taking them." He seemed very scared. "The next day, Sister Tunny had said that they were adopted without further explanations. But I saw Madara, I swear I saw that they were taken by force!" The boy trembled and cried.
"You didn't think to warn anyone about this?" Madara asked.
"What could I do? They would do something to me, I hate their whippings, I'm sure it would be worse," The boy spoke, and Madara sighed.
"I see, I'll look into this, how long ago?" Madara didn't fail to ask about this too, as it was quite important.
"2 months..." He said.
"Alright, I'll check this out, goodbye." Before Lucas could respond, Madara jumped so high that the boy was left open-mouthed as Madara leaped between buildings leaving him behind stunned.
Madara waited until dark before returning to the orphanage, he would find out how this disgusting scheme where the orphanage treated children as merchandise worked.