Chapter 1

"I'am. Who am I? Where am I. Me? What is this letter? Letter, what is it?" 

Irrelevant questions arose by themselves from a small blue-colored spark hovering a little away from the stream of souls. Each thought of the spark gave rise to a slight fluctuation in the intensity of its radiation. Simply put, the spark was sparkling. 

It so happened that in his lifetime, Sparkle was a lab technician studying teleportation in a secret scientific complex. Sparkle, who wore flesh-and-blood clothes at the time, liked to play computer games on a working supercomputer. It was worth guessing that Sparkle didn't need to run that toy that day, not at all, because on that day the calculations of quantum teleportation were being made. 

Let's not overload the story with scientific terms, but let's clarify that the artificial intelligence responsible for the calculation, somehow unknowingly considered the role-playing toy as a place to open a portal to. Nothing good came of it. 

Meteorite? No, not him. Nuclear war? No, not that either. Sun extinction? Wrong! The world was destroyed by a simple Russian gamer lab technician playing rpg on a supercomputer. A black hole sucked up the Earth and the entire universe. Eternity went on and at some point in the center of the black hole collected enough excess energy. There was an explosion, from which a new universe was born. Another leaf on the great tree of worlds sprouted from a bud. And this world possessed the laws of the invented in another universe game with an incomprehensible now name Neverwinter Knights 5 with mods for graphics ...

The souls took their places in the races born in the new universe. All but one. Sparkle had not earned forgiveness and was now floating far away from the river of reincarnation, carrying further into the void a piece of the world born from the game. 

The sparkle of the star dimmed with time, and it was about to extinguish. That about-to-go stretched for the sparkle for an eternity. 

The little soul flew past the leaf-worlds, moving farther and farther away from the tree, only to reach another tree after eternity and fly past it again. 

1% of probability that it will get to some world, 1% of this 1% that the spark will have enough spiritual potential to enter the seed and an infinitesimal % of probability that exactly the seed carrying this spark will get to the uterus and it will be born in a new world. 

The unluckiest spark in the Great Garden of Worlds fell under the gravitational pull of a sprout that sprouted from the chaos with only a few leaves, and only one of them was big enough for a full physical universe, but is there life there? 

Sparkle will soon discover the answer to this question, otherwise she will be atomized and the first protozoan living things will be born from her bits and pieces.  1% passed.

While the sparkle was touching the leaf made up of beautiful stars and galaxies, the sparkle sparkled for the penultimate time. It was this spiritual activity that saved it. 1% of 1% passed.

Sparkle was dragged along the liquid river of reincarnation straight into a spermatozoon.... 

And the race is on! 

They were pushing, they were crushing each other, and he, one of the last almost had no chance to win, but suddenly something happened in his soul. A particle of a completely different world affected the white lump, giving him 1 unit of each of the main characteristics. These characteristics did not violate the laws of the world, because otherwise the leafy world would have dried up, and since the tree sprout was still small, it would have dried up as well. In the physical world it would be a black hole in the womb of the young kunoichi, right next to the organ of the young shinobi. That would be trouble...

So why hasn't something like this happened? The answer was simple. As in all the first leaves of all the ancients, there was a higher energy in this one, which the local intelligences of this planet, and several others, called sen-chakra. This energy is a kind of mutagen, altering spirit and body according to the laws of the world. In our case, the spark got what is called a kekkei genkai - an enhanced genome. 

With such a cheat, the seed quickly overtook the other contenders. Former samurai, shinobi, even one chieftain and a mage, couldn't argue with the D&D rule-bearing sperm. 

The one from the animal world argued the longest for leadership. And if he won, he would absorb the child's physical body, thus taking a step on the path of evolution from beast to mind. Well, the kunoichi would miscarry, and she would not be able to have any more children. The young husband would leave her for someone else, and the girl would soon die, having burned to death on a mission in a renegade shinobi technique. 

But it's going to be different now. It's going to be different. 

Upon reaching her destination, Sparkle fell into slumber for nine months and three days. 

  *** 

- Oh, what a bad time, children, you decided to have children. What a bad time," the elderly man lamented. The man had a thin beard tied into a braid.

A young eighteen-year-old attractive girl, with clear green eyes and bright curly red hair, indignantly wanted to say something, but was stopped by her husband, a twenty-five-year-old large man, ordinary in everything except his unnaturally tall for the region and the color of his skin, which was swarthy. 

- Hotaru-chan, there's no need. Let's hear the yiryonin out," he put his hand on his wife's shoulder. Now the indignation was directed at him. 

For he admired the play of freckles on his pretty face, and almost smiled like a blessed man. He was saved by a grunt from the Irenean. 

- It's all right with you, you've succumbed to the general mood. It's a celebration of the end of the war and all that," Ibo's father, who had treated him, said with a wave of his hand. 

- That's right, Mr. Yiryonin. The end of a world war is a great reason to have a family and a baby.

- Okay, it's a young thing, but you're too young, Hotaru-chan! Didn't they tell you that it's advisable for a kunoichi to have a child from the age of twenty at the earliest? Otherwise, there's a possibility of abnormalities!

The redheaded Hotaru didn't hold back:

- In the days of the clan wars, they gave birth at thirteen and even twelve! 

- Hotaru! - The husband interrupted his wife threateningly.

- Child, this isn't the time of clan wars. And you shouldn't compare genome-enhanced clans with ordinary hereditary shinobi. What's permissible for them is not desirable for us ordinary shinobi. I see you've been carrying the baby for three months, so it's too late to remove the fetus. Let's go," the elderly irienin invited Hotaru into a room with a seal of incomprehensible symbols painted on a wide recliner. 

Without waiting for the medic's words, Hotaru stripped down to her underwear and lay down on the seal. She had been through this procedure more than once or twice, back at the academy.

Irenin placed his hand on the control loop of the fuin and activated the seal. Soon a paper with the exact fetal examination data came out of the special machine on the table in the corner. 

- Get dressed, Hotaru-chan, and wait a bit in the office, I'll decipher the result, - asked irienin young mother, and himself, taking out of the table a thick book, began to look in it to translate some of the symbols, which in his old age forgot (It should be said that the symbols were about fifteen thousand, and before he remembered them all).

As he deciphered, the man's hands began to shake. He double-checked the result a couple of times, but nothing changed. 

- I didn't have enough problems, and now this," the sharply aged irienin groaned. He was now faced with a moral choice: whether to act according to his conscience or according to the law. 

Pulling himself together, the irienin stepped out to the tense shinobi, who in his time would have been considered deep old men by now (especially Kumagai's son). 

- The fetus is developing normally and there are no negative abnormalities. I'm going to give you, Hotaru-chan, a special diet and a couple of medications to ease the burden on the hearth. You have a boy, and if you follow my prescription, nothing bad should happen....

Seeing the sincere happiness on the faces of the man and woman, Kayoshi could not, simply could not destroy that happiness. He decided not to write a report, as he was legally obliged to do. 

Abruptly releasing his bloodlust, he thus set the "young ones" in a businesslike mood. And he spoke seriously:

- There are no negative pathologies, but there are positive ones. Ibo-kun, Hotaru-chan, what I'm about to say must not leave this office unless you want your son taken away from you. The boy is exhibiting kekkei genkai of unknown nature. It's a new genkai genkai, the seal has produced a series of new symbols. Do you understand? A new kekkei genkai, the first in ten years. 

The newlyweds weren't stupid and realized immediately what that meant. Konoha is a good and bright place, but even in it there are shadows. They had only touched happiness, but they did not want to lose it to the will of the politicians and scientists who wanted to nurture a new "escape". 

- Irenin-dono, will the peculiarities be expressed physically? - Ibo seriously asked his uncle, not by blood, but by spirit. Ibo had known the old man since childhood and understood that he was breaking the law now only for the sake of his and Hotaru's happiness. 

- No, I have some experience in deciphering, but you see, it's all at the level of mystery. My advice is to buy a plot of land on the outskirts of Konoha, build a house with a deep basement, and if the child has physically pronounced changes, raise him at home until he reaches his first adulthood. It'll be hard, but at least that way the kid will have a childhood. Do you have enough money? Don't worry, if you need help, I'm ready to lend it to you," the shinobi offered. 

- No, I have an inheritance from my father, who was an arms dealer in the capital after he was wounded. I think that's enough savings. Thank you, irienin-dono, for all you do for us. 

- Come on, I'm past my prime. I'm in my seventh decade. Well, go on, I've got a lot of work to do, I've got new cases to fill in. Come back tomorrow, I'll write a full prescription for medication and vitamins, and now go, go, go. 

The newlyweds took turns bowing to the old man and left the office, leaving him alone with a stack of files from his new patients, the Uzumaki, a clan that had decided to increase its numbers in Konoha due to the escalating situation in the Uzushiogakure region 

*** 

My consciousness slowly floated in the depths of apathy, only occasionally awakened by bright good feelings slowly disappearing into the void. I was and was not at the same time. Rare snippets of some events occasionally showed someone else's life, perhaps even mine. But am I there? 

At one point I had a dream. In it, I was running, trying to outrun a lot of people and animals, but I wasn't human and I was human at the same time. It's hard to explain, and is it worth trying? In this dream I was one of the last and I realized I couldn't win, but later some numbers gave me strength. That's just stupid. But that's how it was in this dream. The numbers meant something, but I don't remember what. Thanks to their help I won, took a comfortable seat and fell asleep. 

  Calm and silence, broken only by the measured beating of someone's heart. My consciousness was separated from my physical body and I couldn't think in a structured way, only simple one-syllable thoughts-images. 

The memories of my past lives were fading away, only those of my previous incarnation were imprinted into my essence, and not all of them. I didn't remember much of my life, only the most vivid memories. I remembered a beautiful and not so beautiful woman, I remembered a young and an old man, growing old in the course of my memories. Some events and names slipped through sometimes, but I couldn't quite make sense of them. 

*Du-dun* - the heartbeat of something native and light, soothing and hopeful. 

As time passed, my consciousness faded less and less, and one day I realized I was in a warm liquid covering absolutely everything around me. 

"Am I a baby in the womb? I shouldn't be thinking, it's too early. I have nothing to think about," the thoughts arose by themselves, coming not from my head, but, as before, from somewhere deep within me. From the soul? 

Time passed, and soon I began to hear my mother's muffled voice, sometimes singing to me, sometimes her joyful laughter. At such moments, it was as if the sun appeared from behind the clouds, and my soul was filled with happiness. With each passing moment my consciousness became more and more firmly fixed in the body. At some point, the process stopped. I became dual. I-body, with no clear thoughts, only hints of desires, and I-spirit, a cluster of thoughts and images, with no basis in emotion. The two parts were steadily moving toward each other, and when they merged, I would have full access to the body, but that would not happen soon enough, most likely when the brain had developed sufficiently. 

Floating in the waters. My spirit-mind's thoughts are sluggish and slow. If I focus my attention on me-body, I see, and even though I see vaguely, after so many cycles of being in nothingness, even such underdeveloped vision is a joy. Joy is expressed by pushing my mother from within. 

The time passes, I gradually get used to my existence, no, to life, better and better. I notice some strange things about myself, but I can't make out what they are. Strangely, the oddities appeared quite recently, they were expressed rather by an additional, unfamiliar from the memories of my past life, sensation. I felt something in myself, but I couldn't make out what it was. And it was growing. 

I fell asleep and woke up, it's hard for me to tell how much time passed, but one day I felt a growing pressure in the chest of my me-body, and then it was as if something clicked inside. Some part of me had finally formed. And in that instant, the world lost its colors, I-consciousness began to think incredibly clearly. Every memory from my former life revealed my past to me, and then I matured, no, there is no word to describe it. But if you try hard enough, I sort of realized the words and numbers. If I simplify even more, it was as if an interface appeared in front of my eyes, but it was not distracting, rather my brain is trying to pick up an image and the first thing that comes to mind is a game interface.