The Journey — (Naruto x Solo Leveling Fanfiction)

I don't own solo leveling or Naruto

Warning! Explicit descriptions of self-harm.

Other than that, you enjoy it ;)

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Sasuke accepted the old man's hand when he discovered his name to be Go Gun-hee. The way he carried himself seemed reminiscent of the late 3rd Hokage, how they projected this grandfatherly aura but having the unmistakable power brimming just beneath the surface. It was familiar in a way he couldn't explain.

He's never been one to trust so easily but with this man he felt very easy. Maybe that's why he seemed to relax slightly once he was face to face with his imposing figure; he just gave off an aura of kindness. A familiar kindness.

"I'm sorry to gain your audience like this but your caretaker wasn't really playing nice with my subordinates you see," he explained with a warm smile.

He frowned, "My caretaker?"

"Oh, my bad, I meant Choi Jong-In. Is he not your guardian?"

"Hn." Sasuke nodded, picturing that mischievous coy expression on Choi's face. "I can see that… He's quite difficult."

Gun-hee blinked and then was quick to replace his surprise with another warm smile, "Haha, yes, very much so! Choi Jong-In has been quite the unique development for us these past years, especially for our Monitoring Division."

"You know who I am?"

Sasuke decided to cut straight into the meat and potatoes of this meeting, he was never one to beat around the bush and being direct had always been his way of addressing an issue.

Gun-hee confirmed his suspicion not a moment later, "Yes and considering how direct you're being there's no point in deliberation."

Go Gun-hee cleared his throat and started to become more serious, "You see child, this country like many others in the world are rapidly moving away from being run by a traditional government but rather the hunters who protect society from monsters. And the ones currently above them are us, The Hunter Association."

'What does this have to do with me?' Sasuke wondered, deciding to let the old man continue without interruption.

"Tell me are you aware of the top 5 guilds?" he posed the question but Sasuke remained silent.

"Oi, brat! You should answer the chairman, you know!" Tae Shik's voice irritably reverberated from where he was in the front to the back of the car. Sasuke widened his eyes, "You're the chairman?" he questioned. Go Gun-hee sighed slightly annoyed by his subordinates' impromptu exclamation but gathered himself promising internally to talk to the agent about knowing his place. "Yes I am, child. But this does not change much, does it?"

Sasuke pondered on that. On the one hand it would have been nice to know the status of the man he was meeting, but on the other he would have been forced into this situation regardless, simply based on Go Gun-hee's barely hidden power alone.

"No, I suppose not." his reply was muted.

"Good! Back on the topic of the 5 guilds… They hold the balance of the country due to their sheer power and influence, but it's getting more and more difficult to hold this balance together. So much so that if another generational prodigy like Cha Hae-In were to emerge and join any of these guilds then they would throw everything into chaos."

Sasuke didn't really get the political landscape of this country or the world currently but he did sort of get the chairman implying a shift in the balance of power if any of these guilds were to gain more power. He thought back to his sword instructor Hae-In, he hadn't even seen the full scope of her ability or anything but he could tell that she was far greater than Choi who was powerful in his own right.

If there was to be another person to be even remotely close to those two then…

"You're saying that the risk of these guilds gaining such powers would undermine the authority of the Hunter Association? Am I correct?" Sasuke deduced.

"You are quite sharp, child." Go Gun-hee complimented, "So, you must have come to understand why it's important to maintain the balance. Even in my short absence your caretaker has abused his significant power to prevent this meeting between you and the Association."

Sasuke grimaced, "Why such interest in me? What are you telling all of this to me for?" he challenged, curious on what he had to offer in this situation.

The chairman started to chuckle which confused the teenager, "I'm sorry, you would be correct in assuming that you have no consequence in this but the opposite is true. For it is your mere existence that captivates our interest," he explained. However, it still wasn't clear to Sasuke what he was rambling about so the chairman clarified, "You were a ghost until a few months ago. No family records, no government records to speak of. You just appeared one day in a hospital and immediately under the care of our most prominent hunters, Choi Jong-In. That was enough for my right hand to look into you."

Sasuke huffed, tilting his head back to look over the front seat, "You mean that eggplant in the front?" he quipped, poking fun at Tae Shik's hair colour.

"I heard that!"

"Do something about it then!"

"Oh, you really want to get on my nerves, huh?"

"As if I would waste time in my day to pester you!"

"Both of you enough!" Go Gun-hee commanded firmly, releasing a bit of that massive pressure on the two of them. "You should be more disciplined than this, Tae Shik. I'm disappointed."

Tae Shik had the decency to look remorseful about his behaviour and muttered a muted apology. Sasuke had a look of smug satisfaction at seeing Tae Shik get reprimanded.

"I apologise for him; he's quite new to the organisation. But please let's get back on topic young man," the chairman said after settling the two's flaring tempers.

"The topic of me being a ghost?"

"Yes, because you see as the monitoring division it's our job to be aware of the capabilities and capacity of all hunters in our country. Call it national security."

Sasuke nodded because that made sense to him, "I'm just a B-rank hunter, what trouble could I pose to you or the country?"

Go Gun-hee sighed, "Yes, that's true. However, you are strange in the fact that you have the unyielding support of our country's most prominent hunter, Choi Jong-In and it is for one of those facts that you continue to retain our suspicion. The other from a report from our gentleman in the front whom you raided with not long ago."

Sasuke perked up at the mention of Tae Shik and glanced in his direction.

"So, what happens now?"

"I'm glad you asked! You see it's quite simple really, you come with us to our headquarters for a second evaluation so that we could comprise a detailed file on your true capabilities. From there we will send you on your way." he explained.

"And if I refuse?"

Tae Shik started to giggle from his spot in the front seat, "What a great joke! To refuse a request of the chairman with your level of strength! Truly amusing!"

"What was that?"

Sasuke shot him an irritated look. The most powerful man in the car cleared his throat and that brought the attention back to him. He was giving him an intense, scrutinising look with his voice soft.

"I'm sorry young man. I know it's sudden but this is a simple request that I hope you will heed."

Sasuke then felt again for the second time, that power hidden beneath the surface. A power he couldn't ignore or defy. He released a wordless breath from his mouth and stared out the window.

"Fine. I'll show you just what I can do."

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"Well, this is certainly unfortunate. Jin Chul really grew tired of our little game and called 'Dad'. That little tattle tale!" Choi whined childishly, splaying his arms in arm very animatedly.

He watched as droves and droves of his men cycled in and out of the gate. They came out with cartloads of mana crystals and monster corpses to sell and repurpose.

"It was bound to happen, Master Choi. Mr. Jin Chul is a very serious man, is he not?" Hae-In commented, next to him.

This time she had elected against staying behind to watch over the collection teams because the mana in the dungeon was starting to make her nausea from its terrible smell.

"Yeah, you're right. It's just been getting a little boring nowadays. After you joined our guild Hae-In things have gotten stale lately."

"You were bored, Master Choi?" she questioned incredulously. Although she shouldn't have been surprised. She knew that the serious and sly aura he showed to the public was an act. Underneath all of that he was very childish she discovered after being around him for long enough.

"Yeah but it looks like the fun is over. Now that chairman Go Gun-hee is intervening there's really not much I can do. They'll discover his secret soon enough."

He looked up to the sky with a pensive expression leaving her to wonder what he was thinking about.

"Secret?"

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It was an impressively large training facility that the headquarters of the monitoring division had. It was a separate building from the usual office building that all employees went to for work. There were all kinds of gym equipment in one area of the warehouse-like structure, bright limousine lights overhead that chased away the shadows, and built on the finest magic resistant materials in the country, enough to contain a spar between S-rank hunters as assured to him by Go Gun-hee.

He released a breath putting his hands on his hips, waiting for the next test they had for him. Chief Woo Jin Chul and agent Tae Shik stood along either side of the chairman as they observed the three C-grade training dummies engulfed in the flames of what they believed to be the boy's fire magic.

"Well?" Sasuke grunted, glaring at the adults looking down on him from the long interior balcony of the facility. "Is that it for your tests? You already know that I use lightning and fire."

"So far everything about the boy's abilities check out from your report, Tae Shik. I don't know if I said it before but good work," Jin Chul complemented the purple-haired man who spared him a glance and a nod.

"Yes, however, he has more than that under his selves. An eye technique that we don't fully know the capabilities of and a beast transformation that he used back in that dungeon."

"Eye technique? The red eyes that he had during our conversation in the car? Are they not part of his beast transformation like master of the White Tiger guild Baek Yoonho," The chairman intoned.

Tae Shik hummed, "Yes, sir. There's something really creepy about those eyes. They make my skin crawl."

Jin Chul cut in, "Whatever they may be we must do what we can to ensure that we discover the true extent of his capacity."

"How do you suggest we don't do that, sir?" Tae Shik questioned his superior. 'The kid's getting really agitated.' he thought. It didn't take a genius to decipher when the boy was becoming disgruntled or moody the agent was figuring out.

The shades obscured Tae Shik from getting a good read on his expression but his smirk didn't give him comfort, "Why don't you force it out of him, huh?" The chief offered.

"Tch! I ain't fighting a kid."

"What? Are you scared you'll get beat up by a kid?"

"What are you, sir, 12? I'm not scared of anyone let alone that kid!" Tae Shik denied vehemently.

Go Gun-hee smiled softly at their bickering. Jin Chul was a very serious man and although more lighthearted it wasn't very often that Tae Shik would stoop to being childish, but it seemed that this side of them was bound to come out whenever they were together.

He coughed to get the two to stop bickering, "Enough the both of you," he commanded calmly. "Tae Shik, you are the one most familiar with the way he does battle, but you are right. Fighting the child will not be of benefit to us. I say we just ask him to explain his abilities," he said much to the annoyance of his subordinate.

"He could just lie about them." Tae Shik replied.

The chairman nodded, "Very true, which is why you will continue to observe him and he will be placed in our anomaly class files." the two perked up at the mention of those files. During the early conception of the Monitoring division those files were all reserved for the S-rank hunters in the country before S-rank hunters were even an official, they were usually referred to as abnormalities and then left at that. There has never been a case that has placed a hunter of low power compared to those powerhouses placed in the anomaly files, but rather they were placed on the watch list to make sure that they weren't doing anything illegal during raids or abusing their power over citizens they were meant to protect.

Jin chul furrowed his brow at the chairman's suggestion,"Is that warranted, sir? He is still a child and of relatively low standing in the grand scheme of things." He was a pragmatic person at heart and could quickly grasp the workings of a situation at a glance and come up with a response. He knew the chairman was a kind man at heart so when he made a decision like this Jin Chul was never one to take it lightly, not that he would ever take any of his orders lightly.

Tae-Shik scoffed right beside him, shaking his head, "Uchiha is a rare breed even among the freaks of this world. He can use two elemental magics, has a sort of beast transformation that I saw with my own two eyes, an eye technique, and is extremely adept at combat. Most hunters only have one of these traits depending on the class, but he could fit in multiple categories… It's very puzzling." Go Gun-hee hummed at his assessment, his noise of approval. "Quite. Young Sasuke certainly is a strange case with him having appeared out of nowhere with such abilities and powers, under the protection of Choi Jong-in no less. Although, it troubles me to be suspicious of one so young we must not take potential threats to the system lightly."

Jin Chul nodded, "I understand, sir. I'll make sure Min-soo gets started on the file and-"

"No need." He was cut off by the chairman. "Tae-Shik, I seem to remember you were assigned to watch over the Uchiha, correct." The purple haired agent gave his superior a nod. "Well, you will build the file and continue to observe his movements. Whenever he enters a gate, whenever he buys a new weapon, or if anything happens at that school he attends I want it on that file." he commanded firmly.

Tae-Shik once again gave a firm nod but no verbal reply, perhaps too afraid to let the annoyance drip from his voice, knowing how Jin Chul took any slight against authority of the old man next to him. Did they already forget that something about Uchiha made his skin crawl, especially considering what he did to that little assistant girl of his or was it his caretaker? 'Who gives a fuck? I can't be bothered to remember weaklings.'

After a few minutes of discussing the channels in the Association he would go through to further expand his surveillance of the Uchiha he was dismissed by the chairman.

"What now?" Sasuke sighed as he was gestured up to the balcony by a stern shades wearing man. He crossed the distance in a single bound and it didn't go unnoticed by Go Gun-hee how silent his footfalls were.

"What is?" he asked, voice dripping with irritation. Jin Chul clearly didn't take too kindly to his tone or attitude. "Watch your tone, boy. This is the chairman you're talking to."

Sasuke spared him a brief glance, his gaze determining if he was worth responding to or not. Clearly he didn't pass whatever arbitrary test the Uchiha had thought of as he only addressed the chairman in that same clipped and irritated tone of voice.

"Where'd that eggplant run off to?"

"None of your concern." Jin Chul replied, a frown barely discernible if one wasn't paying attention. Sasuke continued to ignore him which got on his nerves even though he didn't let it show. "What now? I've shown you all my abilities. Can I leave now?" he tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. The chairman maintained a calm demeanour, not missing his emphasis on all, as he considered his next course of action. "Chief Woo Jin Chul will escort you off the premises, but I do have a few queries for you if you don't mind staying a little bit longer." he explained.

Sasuke raised a brow but then closed his eyes with a shrug, "Sure I'll play along, chairman." Go Gun-hee smiled that grandfatherly smile asking the young man to follow him to a secluded office space in the large building.

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"Hey, what's up doc!" Dal quipped as he perused his way through the lab. I had come a long way from the abandoned warehouse docking yard it was weeks ago. It was always great to have such hardworking fellows that executed your every instruction with quick efficiency. The lab was out of sight as the docking yard served as another one of his fronts becoming a newly opened fish market. He grinned as Dr. Kyo Min-Jae approached his call.

"Good day, Mr. Dal. How has your day been?" Min-Jae greeted, his voice devoid of life. Dal picked up on this and had a feeling as to what he had the doc so down, "Oh no, don't tell me that another subject croaked?" he cried, feigning concern, as he put a hand on the doctor's shoulder. "What did I say about progress, doctor?" he shook his head, as his laughter became scornful. The doctor held the clipboard closer to his chest and turned to the operating table in the corner silently whilst shrugging off his hand. It was marked by the blood of test subject 8.

"I wouldn't dream of it, sir. I have collected valuable Intel from his failure and my own apparent transform weeks ago. Your thugs are certainly a very great helping hand in this massive space." Dal smiled, "Don't let them hear you say something like that about them, doc." His comment managed to force a dry chuckle from the doctor's throat.

"The serum seems to last in the body for more than 15 minutes now, but the explosion of mana is too much for the body to contain so it ends up tearing the person apart from the inside out." the doctor explained. The serum had progressed to a stage where the experimentation on people was producing promising results, but it seemed that they had run into another stumbling block. "So, I imagine that you're the one who was able to survive because of your newly awakened healing magic?" he surmised. When initial experiments were being conducted weeks ago and such failures were occurring but even worse than currently he wondered as to how the doctor himself survived the serum. As it turned out that the serum had awakened his hidden potential and spurred forth his healing abilities, particularly powerful healing too.

"To transfer abilities to another awakened being is a relatively unexplored field of mana science. The only thing close to what we wish to accomplish with that would be a support type hunters' ability to grant boosts and buffs during battle but even that is not permanent." the doctor lamented as he jotted down more notes on his clipboard. "That is certainly a roadblock for you, doctor. But like I told you before I don't want beasts that I can't control so figure it out doctor." he smirked, leaving the doctor with a pat on the shoulder. He hoped that the doctor would be able to crack the case to this stumbling block because he'd put in too many resources for this project to produce half-assed products and with this Sook character sniveling around and disrupting his operations, he needed an even bigger win than just progress.

The doctor was left to his lonesome once Dal left the lab. It had become a regular occurrence for the main man to meet up with him and check on his progress especially after what happened with Jin-sae. Mr. Dal wanted to personally make sure his operation was most certainly not being interfered with, which is why he hasn't been allowed to leave or have any contact with the outside world for weeks. He's just been stuck in this lab conducting experiments.

As he sauntered back to his office/bedroom combination he couldn't help the that came to him whenever he thought about the depraved things he's had to do for this up until this point. 'Human experiments.' They went against every moral and ethical principle that was instilled in him by his father, a medical professional of high esteem, and as his profession as a doctor. However, he was working for a gang leader so what ethics could he cling to at this stage, blood would be on his hands no matter what.

He opened up the shelf on his desk and pulled out the knife from underneath the discarded papers. He went to sit down on his bed in the corner as he played with the knife in his hands. "It's certainly convenient that I got these healing powers." He muttered, dragging the tip of the blade along his arm as a red line began to take form. This had become a sort of routine for him every night, a sort of punishment for himself to make himself feel even a fraction of the pain he caused his victims. He never got to know any of their names either but maybe that was a small relief.

'If they stayed faceless I could pretend that they weren't people or that they didn't have lives before their grisly demise.' he thought as he dragged the blade deeper into his skin forming a new more aggressive, red line. He glared at his bleeding arm as he carved into his skin some more. He moaned in pain but tried to stifle it as much as possible. His face grew pale as blood continued to rapidly leave his body. He didn't know why he was getting so worked up today, he was never this aggressive in the past, excluding the first time he started cutting himself. But the more he thought about it there was this cruel, selfish, disgusting part of him that actually enjoyed what he was doing, that wanted to see what he was doing through to the end, maybe that's the part that was making him wake up every morning despite every fibre in his being wanting to vanish from the earth.

He desperately wants to deny this part of himself that gets excited and jots down notes so happily at a new discovery or seeing something that confirms a theory of his. He gripped the blade harder as he stabbed into his forearm with fierce venom and hatred in his eyes. He felt and watched as the knife sinked all the way through his forearm as the sharpness of the blade was visible on the other side.

He sighed, positioning himself on the bed so that his forehead hung off the side of the bed as he laid down staring at the ceiling. Blood permuted the room as blood dripped on the hardwood floor. It was a good thing that nobody entered this room so that he wouldn't have to explain all the dried blood near his bed. He closed his eyes going to sleep knowing that he'd at least successfully killed that part of him for a moment. A temporary reprieve from the screams and shouts of anguish from all his victims.

The wounds stitched themselves up quickly the moment he left consciousness, leaving only clear, smooth skin as the blade remained lodged deep inside his forearm.

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Enjoy this chapter after Christmas when I meant to get it out on Christmas. I'm really enjoying writing on Dr. Kyo Min-Jae and I hope you are enjoying him too. To a Happy New Year!