Chapter 106 (Patreon)

To understand how Mihawk had unlocked his second template, one had to go back to his battle against Pain.

[You defeated the Asura Path and gained 1.1% template progress.]

[You defeated the Human Path and gained 1.1% template progress.]

[You defeated the Animal Path and gained 1.2% template progress.]

[You defeated the Preta Path and gained 1.2% template progress.]

[You defeated the Deva Path and gained 2.4% template progress.]

[Your Hawkeye template has reached 92%.]

As the six notifications sounded in his mind, Mihawk was briefly surprised.

When he fought Kakuzu, the system had awarded him progress for destroying the black masked creatures. However, each of those creatures carried one of Kakuzu’s stolen hearts. In a sense, they could still be regarded as separate lives.

The Five Paths of Pain were different.

They were nothing more than corpses controlled by chakra, without any genuine life force of their own.

Perhaps it had something to do with the Rinnegan. Each body represented one of its Six Paths and possessed its own abilities, so the system might have recognized them as separate existences.

Mihawk had no interest in dwelling on the exact reason.

He was simply glad the system had rewarded him with such a large amount of progress.

More importantly, his Hawkeye template had now reached ninety-two percent.

Only eight percent remained before the template would be fully unlocked.

Once that happened, the true changes within the Strongest Template System would finally be revealed.

Would his second template appear?

Mihawk did not have to wait long for an answer.

Not long after the Five Paths were defeated, another notification sounded in his mind.

[You defeated Nagato and gained 8% template progress.]

[Your Hawkeye template has reached 100%.]

The moment the final eight percent was added, several new messages appeared before him in rapid succession.

[Ding! You have successfully unlocked your first template to 100%.]

[The presence of Hawkeye, Dracule Mihawk, within your spiritual world will disappear in fifteen days.]

[A new template is currently being generated. Please wait patiently.]

[Ding! Congratulations on fully unlocking your first template.]

[You have earned a valuable reward. It will be issued in fifteen days. Please wait patiently.]

The notifications echoed clearly in Mihawk’s mind as Nagato’s life came to an end.

They reminded him of the system messages he had received when his beginner’s gift package was first issued.

However, the contents of these notifications only left him even more curious.

Both the new template and the reward would remain hidden for another fifteen days.

The deliberate delay made it difficult not to wonder what the system was preparing.

At the same time, the messages confirmed Mihawk’s earlier guess.

Reaching one hundred percent with the Hawkeye template was not the end.

A second template would indeed follow.

Mihawk lowered his gaze slightly, a trace of anticipation appearing in his eyes.

“I wonder who the next template will be.”

After saying that, Mihawk temporarily put the matter out of his mind.

The more he thought about it, the slower those fifteen days would seem to pass. It would be better to continue with his usual routine and let the time pass naturally.

Before long, half a month had gone by.

That afternoon, Mihawk sat beneath the shade of several tall trees, his katana resting across his legs.

His eyes were closed as he maintained his sword meditation, while his Observation Haki spread through the surrounding area.

The rustling of leaves, the swaying branches, the insects crawling beneath the grass, and the faint movements of people in the distance all reached him clearly.

Then, without warning, a system notification thundered through his mind.

[Ding! Your second template has been randomly generated.]

Before Mihawk could react, a terrifying force struck his consciousness.

It felt as though something had seized his very soul and dragged it from his body.

Mihawk remained seated beneath the tree, still maintaining his meditative posture.

However, his calm breathing quickly became rapid and uneven, as though he were enduring an intense battle.

Cold sweat formed across his forehead and ran down his chin.

The veins at his temples bulged, and his teeth sank into his lower lip as a sharp pain tore through his mind.

The pain did not come from his body.

It came from somewhere deeper—from his consciousness itself, as though his brain were being forced to process something it had never been meant to perceive.

The agony continued for what felt like a long time before finally beginning to fade.

Mihawk’s consciousness, which had seemed to fall into a bottomless abyss, gradually returned to his body.

His eyelids trembled before slowly opening.

At first, everything around him was blurred.

Then his vision sharpened.

It became clearer than it had ever been before.

However, what he saw was no longer a single, complete image.

The world had become fragmented.

It resembled a mirror that had fallen to the ground and shattered, with each broken piece reflecting a different section of the same scene.

Dark, ink-like lines covered everything in his sight.

Some were thin, while others were thick and uneven, dividing the world before him into countless separate pieces.

The ground beneath him appeared split apart.

The tree trunks, branches, leaves, stones, and even the clouds in the sky were covered in the same strange lines.

Everything seemed as though it had been broken into pieces and then carelessly fitted back together.

Each fragment trembled faintly, giving Mihawk the unsettling impression that any one of them could fall away from the whole at any moment.

The fractured images and countless black lines overwhelmed his vision, causing a powerful wave of nausea to rise from his stomach.

For a rare moment, Mihawk nearly vomited.

However, the shock of what he was seeing suppressed even that feeling.

As information about the new template entered his mind, Mihawk finally understood.

There was nothing wrong with his eyes.

He was simply seeing something that had always existed, yet remained invisible to ordinary people.

The inevitable end shared by both living beings and inanimate objects.

Death.

From another person’s perspective, Mihawk’s eyes had also changed.

His normally red pupils were gone, replaced by a pair of ice-blue eyes filled with faint, multicolored spiral patterns.

Several seconds passed before Mihawk finally spoke, his usually steady voice trembling slightly.

“The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception…”

...

Hanabi’s voice pulled Mihawk out of his thoughts.

“Mihawk-nii… what’s wrong with you today?”

She looked up at him worriedly.

“Did something happen during your sword training?”

“Something like that.”

Mihawk rested his head on one hand while gently stroking Hanabi’s hair with the other. A complicated smile appeared on his face, caught somewhere between bitterness and excitement.

“I gained something today that made all the effort I’ve put into training over the past few years feel almost meaningless. I’m still having trouble accepting it.”

“Don’t be sad, Mihawk-nii.”

Hanabi did not ask what he had gained.

Instead, she moved closer and gently patted him.

“If you’re feeling bad, then you can—”

A quiet laugh escaped Mihawk.

He pinched her cheek lightly.

“Whatever disappointment I felt is already gone thanks to you.”

His expression softened.

“Besides, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even if this power makes years of my training seem insignificant, it has also made me much stronger.”

“Now I’ll be able to protect you and your sister even better.”

“Mm…”

Hanabi’s eyelids were already growing heavy.

“I’m glad…”

She closed her eyes and settled against Mihawk, preparing to sleep.

Mihawk gently patted her back, but a trace of apology appeared in his eyes.

As Hanabi’s breathing gradually became slow and steady, he stared at the ceiling.

The scene from several hours earlier surfaced in his mind once again.

He had held an ordinary knife in his hand.

Without putting any real strength into the movement, he had pressed its edge against one of the wooden training posts.

The blade had followed one of the dark lines he could now see.

With only a gentle pull, the knife traced an arc across the wood.

The next instant, the entire training post collapsed into more than a dozen pieces.

Mihawk had trained with a sword for over a year before he first grasped the Breath of All Things.

Only after learning to sense the breath of wood had he become capable of cutting through it cleanly.

Yet now, a single pair of eyes allowed him to destroy wood, stone, walls, and even entire buildings without effort.

Compared to that ability, the Breath of All Things suddenly seemed almost insignificant.

It was as though these eyes granted him an unavoidable slash.

No...

Calling it a slash was not accurate.

He was not cutting those objects.

He was killing them.

The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

An ability originating from the Type-Moon world.

It was a supernatural power capable of perceiving the death of all things and bringing that death into reality.

The ability did not require mana, chakra, or any other form of energy.

Strictly speaking, it was not even a dōjutsu.

Even if someone removed Mihawk’s eyes and transplanted them into another person, they would receive nothing more than a pair of ordinary eyes.

The true source of the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception was the brain.

The eyes merely displayed the information that the brain had received.

They transformed the concept of death into visible lines and points.

Using the ability consumed no energy.

Instead, the burden fell entirely upon the brain.

The deeper one’s understanding of death became, the more terrifying the Mystic Eyes would become.

“If it has life, even a god can be killed.”

Those words belonged to Ryougi Shiki, the owner of Mihawk’s second template.

This template was both incredibly powerful and extremely unusual.

Its power came from the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

Its unusual nature came from the possibility that, much like his first template, Mihawk might never be able to surpass its original owner in certain areas.

However, that was not the truly strange part.

What made this template special was that, in one aspect, Mihawk might never surpass Ryougi Shiki.

Yet in another aspect, he might have already gone beyond her.

Both differences concerned the same thing.

Their understanding of death.

The reason was simple.

The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception were an ability born from the laws of the Type-Moon world.

At the foundation of that world existed the Root.

Everything originated from the Root.

The birth of all things was recorded there, as was their eventual death.

Ryougi Shiki’s connection to the Root allowed her Mystic Eyes to perceive and kill more than physical objects or living beings.

Concepts, futures, memories, and other intangible existences could also be given death.

Because her body was directly connected to the Root, she could wield that power without suffering the same limitations as an ordinary person.

It was an ability that should never have appeared in a world outside the Type-Moon universe.

After all, the shinobi world had no Root.