As for the ability of his Mangekyō's right eye.
The corner of Takuno's mouth hooked into a meaningful arc, and within the Mangekyō Sharingan of his right eye, that Ouroboros pattern symbolizing eternal reincarnation abruptly accelerated its rotation.
With virtually zero delay, his figure instantly disappeared from the laboratory.
One moment, he was still situated inside that cold and silent laboratory in the desolate lands;
The next moment, a bone-chilling cold wind enveloped in ice crystals rushed straight at his face.
He was already standing commandingly amidst the ice and snow of the Land of Snow.
This was precisely the unique ability awakened by his right Mangekyō eye: Spatial Coordinate Reversal.
This ability allowed him to consume a small amount of eye power to instantly transfer himself to a specific spatial coordinate point that he had "once arrived at" in the past.
Crucially, through the test just now, Takuno clearly perceived that the eye power consumed by a single transfer was minuscule.
As long as he did not activate it with unbridled frequency like abusing ninjutsu, the burden this ability caused to his Mangekyō's vision was virtually negligible.
Even if he did not use Hashirama cells, he could still greatly delay the arrival speed of the curse of blindness; it could be rated as an extremely durable, strategic-grade means of movement.
And unlike his left eye's ability—which would reverse his own body's state simultaneously along with the reversal—"Spatial Coordinate Reversal" completely maintained the caster's real-time state during the transfer process.
Whatever posture or state he was in before the transfer, including ongoing movements or sustained damage, he would appear at the target location after the transfer without a single fraction of difference.
What satisfied Takuno even more was that the range of "visited" locations this ability could reverse back to was exceptionally broad.
It not only encompassed every single corner that Takuno's original body had set foot on since birth, but even extended to the trajectories walked by all of his clones.
Even for those locations that his original body had never personally set foot in, as long as a clone had once arrived there, they could entirely turn into coordinate points to which he could instantly leap!
This could not help but make one think of Obito Uchiha's famous spatial eye technique, Kamui.
The two did indeed share similarities in achieving the function of "fixed-point spatial leaping."
However, a defect that wasn't quite a defect existed in Takuno's ability: it did not come attached with an independent, alternate-dimension pocket similar to the "Kamui Dimension."
Furthermore, Kamui was unlike his ability where he could only transfer to places he had been; theoretically, it possessed the possibility of leaping directly to places "never visited before," though this often required the user to accurately grasp the spatial coordinates of the target point.
Therefore, even Obito himself usually only chose to leap to locations he had personally visited or those within his line of sight where the coordinates could be clearly locked onto during actual combat; he rarely took risks to blindly leap toward unknown coordinates.
Imagine if the drop point of a spatial transfer landed directly in the center of boiling lava—what a fatal and awkward plight that would be.
It could be said that the practicality of the "Kamui" ability was, to a large extent, bound to its supplementary "Kamui Dimension."
Intangibility was the instant concealment of body parts inside this safe space;
While spatial leaping utilized the characteristic that the "Kamui Dimension" itself had no fixed location yet could connect to all real-world spatial points, allowing a pathway leading to any arbitrary coordinate to be opened from within it.
Thinking up to this point, Takuno felt a bit of regret again; how wonderful it would be if he also possessed a similar Kamui Dimension.
Although he was considered satisfied with his own ability, if possible, he certainly still wanted to obtain more.
Of course, this was merely a sliver of regret; it wasn't to the extent of feeling un-reconciled, jealous, and so forth because of it.
However, this sliver of regret was rapidly replaced by a tactical concept.
In the future, if there was an opportunity, perhaps he could attempt to send a Shadow Clone into Obito Uchiha's "Kamui Dimension."
Supposing this Shadow Clone could successfully activate the "Spatial Coordinate Reversal" ability of my right eye inside that space to transfer itself out...
Then, cracking Obito Uchiha's near-unsolvable intangibility ability would no longer be an wild, unattainable dream.
Takuno murmured, and his eyes also lit up—perhaps it could work!
After finishing the testing of his right eye's ability effect, Takuno then utilized the Mangekyō's ability to return inside that laboratory.
The cold metal walls of the laboratory reflected Takuno's contemplative figure.
Having finished testing the Mangekyō's abilities and returning to this familiar space, a bit of perplexity welled up inside his heart.
His fingertips brushed past his eyelids, and the intrinsic nature of those newly awakened Mangekyō Sharingan's abilities was deduced repeatedly in his mind.
"Time..."
He communed with himself in a low voice, his voice stirring a slight echo inside the empty laboratory.
The results of the test were matchlessly clear: the ability of his right eye to reverse spatial coordinates, as well as the ability of his left eye to reverse his own personal time.
Their origin was not ordinary spatial folding or traversing, but rather stepping into that far more profound and unfathomable domain of "time."
Of course, within the terminology of the Naruto world, they might be broadly lumped into the category of "Space-Time Ninjutsu," but Takuno knew deeply that time and space were actually not the same.
But these were not the places where he was perplexed; rather, it was that these two types of abilities produced a subtle deviation from the form of power he had envisioned.
The Sharingan—this existence acclaimed as the eyes that reflect the heart—the awakening of its Mangekyō often reflected the deepest desires and obsessions inside the awakened person's heart.
Takuno was thoroughly aware of this.
He had always firmly believed that his pure desire for power would inevitably forge an eye technique that matched it.
A destructive black flame capable of burning all of creation to ashes, akin to the flames of Amaterasu, was his original thought.
However, reality presented a different picture.
Reversing one's own time? Spatial coordinate reversal? Are they powerful? Indubitably.
In actual combat, being able to perceive the first opportunities, reverse one's own disadvantageous states, and even evade fatal injuries was sufficient to allow him to occupy an unimaginable advantage in any confrontation.
But their intrinsic nature was more like support, just like the Flying Raijin Jutsu; they were exquisite tactical fulcrums rather than the definitive, all-destroying, and crushing destructive power itself.
This seemed to present an inexpressible rift with his ultimate pursuit of absolute power, which was near-obsessively branded into his very bones.
"Why is it like this?" Takuno murmured.
If he were allowed to choose, he would absolutely choose the current abilities rather than the flames of Amaterasu.
Because the phrase "output flows like water, but support stands firm as iron" was no joke.
Just like in the original work, although the Flying Raijin Jutsu became famous because of Minato Namikaze, Minato Namikaze's ability to reach that kind of height was also inseparable from the Flying Raijin Jutsu!
They could be considered to have achieved each other.
In addition, there was also Obito Uchiha's Kamui; aside from the offensive capability researched by Kakashi Hatake, its essence was also a type of supporting ability.
And as for how easy to use and how powerful Kamui was, it went without saying.
But this was not a reason for Takuno to give up contemplating its causes just because he had gotten a bargain at this time.
He wanted to know why he would awaken these two abilities.
To know the fact, but also to know the reason behind the fact!
Could it be that the process of awakening itself turned into an invisible hand shaping the abilities?
During this process, what he used the most was precisely that device for assisting eye-awakening; inside that cold machine, it was flooded with those "despair" experiences he used to stimulate the qualitative change of his eye power.
Although those experiences did not allow him to successfully open the Mangekyō Sharingan, and had even been forcibly deleted from his memory by him.
The subsequent influences caused by those "experiences" themselves perhaps still existed.
For example, even if he deleted those memories, the eye power amplification they brought along was retained continuously in a concrete manner.
They constituted the foundation stone of the Mangekyō's awakening, turning into the bedrock of this pair of Mangekyō Sharingan's eye power.
"Was it those memories forcibly deleted by me... that ultimately shaped the current Mangekyō's abilities?" Takuno speculated.
Even if the contents within those memories had been forcibly erased by him using mental means, he still remembered which people he had "played" and what vastly different life trajectories he had experienced.
If it truly was the residual will of these memories that influenced the generation of the abilities, then this ability itself... still seemed to carry a sliver of unexplainable "bizarreness."
Because regardless of what kind of despair was experienced, Takuno was exceptionally certain of one point.
He himself could not possibly have generated fear toward "death" itself!
Death was merely an obstacle or a terminal point on the road, rather than a shadow that needed to be escaped from.
This thought sliced through his mind like lightning; Takuno froze abruptly, followed by a sudden realization.
He raised his hand to massage the space between his brows heavily, a sliver of self-mockery passing across the deep recesses of his eyes.
"So that's how it is... I understood it erroneously right from the start." He murmured in a low voice.
The left eye's ability—reversing one's own time—on the surface did indeed possess an exquisite similarity to the reality-modifying life-saving effect of the forbidden jutsu Izanagi; its powerful "life-saving" characteristic caused him to subconsciously categorize it as a "defensive-type," "survival-type" eye technique.
But this was merely the surface appearance, one facet of the ability's application.
Its most core essence was the operation of "time" itself, the localized backward flow and modification directed at the timeline of "himself."
However, a new and deeper perplexity welled up inside his heart immediately afterward.
Merely reversing one's own time... what is the significance?
He gazed intently at the empty void, as if conversing with his own eye power.
If the surrounding world and the events that had deterministically occurred did not reverse synchronously, then his personal backward flow of time—aside from repairing his own injuries and resetting his own state—how much fundamental influence would it have toward altering "facts" that had already been forged?
"Or perhaps..."
The crimson light within Takuno's eyes flickered dangerously for a moment, and an even more astonishing conjecture emerged.
"The 'reversing one'ed time' I currently display is merely the tip of the iceberg of my left eye's true grand power? Is it the shallowest application I can barely touch, being limited by my current eye power?"
This thought did not come out of thin air.
Merely reversing his own time consumed an astonishing amount of eye power every single time it was activated.
Estimating with his currently affluent Mangekyō eye power, the limit could only sustain two to three instances of such an operation.
Then, if the ability needed to be extended to reverse himself while simultaneously bringing along an influence on the surrounding space, or even disturbing the causal lines of the entire world to make them return together to a certain past node... what kind of astronomical figure would the required eye power be?
That majestic energy consumption—even if this pair of newborn Mangekyō was squeezed completely dry—it would be impossible to accomplish!
"Even if the conjecture is true..." The sharp light inside Takuno's eyes gradually faded into hiding, replaced by a sliver of deep helplessness.
"That level of power is also absolutely not a price that the current me can touch and pay."
Takuno shook his head slowly, dispelling the cluttered thoughts inside his mind.
Right now he already understood why this pair of Mangekyō Sharingan of his would awaken the grand power to manipulate "time," and this was already enough.
Even if these thoughts could at most only count as his speculations, it was still so.
Because this conjecture only needed to convince himself, and that was enough.
As for that deeply engraved memory belonging to a different trajectory of his life that he experienced when finally opening the Mangekyō, thinking about it now, it actually presented a marvelous resonance with the ability he grasped right now.
Every single time, when the fragments of memory flashed back in his mind, they always pointed toward the most desperate abyss;
Yet immediately following that, the ending seemed to be quietly erased by an invisible hand; time acted just like a backward-flowing hourglass, and everything inconceivably returned to a certain crucial node, ultimately leading toward a completely different path that could be rated as "perfect."
A thought sliced through Takuno's mind like lightning: was the presentation format itself of that life experience of his—which was exactly like continuously "trying errors and correcting them"—precisely the influence quietly exerted by this power of "time"?
Perhaps the essence of this pair of eyes had already long since been engraved with the branding of "time," and what was lacking was merely an opportunity to thoroughly awaken it.
Everything he actively or passively experienced in order to open the Mangekyō—those cycling, repeating agonies and unwillingness—happened to perfectly fit the needs of this hidden power, turning into the firewood that ignited it.
Under this kind of thinking, an inexpressible sense of destiny quietly permeated his heart.
This was not a simple coincidence; it resembled more a closed loop of fate that had already been written down long ago.
Did the ability shape the experience, or did the experience ultimately draw out the ability?
The two had already become intertwined and tangled, making it difficult to distinguish one from the other, forming a deep and subtle ring of cause and effect.
Just like...
Takuno looked at that circulating Ouroboros within his Mangekyō.
Who could truly distinguish clearly which side was the head and which side was the tail after all?
Takuno stretched his muscles and bones lazily.
The very last ability test of the Mangekyō Sharingan was precisely the ultimate power that existed in every single pair of Mangekyō: Susanoo.
To ensure absolute safety against any failure, his thoughts moved slightly and his right eye's power circulated; there wasn't even a single sliver of spatial fluctuation, yet Takuno's figure had already disappeared from within the laboratory.
The next moment, his figure was already situated within a desolate and vast uninhabited area.
Beneath his feet was cracked, parched earth, and in the distance were wind-eroded and exfoliated rocky mountains; all around was lonely and silent, with only the howling wind and sand sweeping past.
Testing here basically removed any worry about being discovered by things like White Zetsu, allowing unnecessary trouble to be avoided.
In fact, even if he did not search for this kind of location, it wouldn't matter too much.
With the Mind's Eye of Kagura he currently grasped—its capability increasing along with the amplification of Sage Mode—he believed that even a White Zetsu could not possibly conceal themselves from him.
Those estimated to truly possess the capability to conceal themselves from his Mind's Eye of Kagura were only Six Paths level existences and... Black Zetsu.
Takuno swept through everything in the surroundings with his Mind's Eye of Kagura; after confirming there were no problems, he took a deep breath.
The next moment, that pair of Mangekyō Sharingan containing mysterious power burst forth with a light that captured people's souls.