In the next three weeks, Ryusei kept to the same routine.
The days blurred until the appointed date for the mission arrived.
That morning, he pulled on his favorite combat uniform, checked every pouch of kunai and tags, then slipped the master scroll back into its hidden seam.
His reflection in the small, cracked mirror was sharper than before.
His complexion no longer carried that pale, sickly shade from injuries and overusing Yang Palm.
His posture was straight, his steps steady, no limp or hidden weakness left.
When he stepped outside, the early sun painted the narrow street in warm tones.
A few neighbors were already sweeping dust from their porches. One granny leaned on her broom and gave him a squinting smile.
"Off to another mission, finally, Ryusei-kun?" she asked.
"Yes, Granny Hisa. I'll be careful," he replied, bowing slightly as the original Ryusei always did.
Another elderly man watering his doorstep nodded to him.
Ryusei returned the gesture with polite calm, the kind of small courtesies that kept suspicions low.
He had learned well how the old Ryusei had lived here, and how to maintain the same surface.
He moved on toward the Mission Desk inside the Hokage building, the most important administrative building and the great looming structure at the center of the village.
His team would already be gathering there.
As he walked, he couldn't help but think about how much, yet how little, had changed in only a month.
A month after he had initially taken over this body, he officially transmigrated into this world with a living vessel.
The wounds and internal damage from the last B-rank mission were gone now.
Yang Palm's reckless overuse had scarred him for weeks, but steady recovery and his natural vitality had erased it all.
More importantly, in that time, he had gradually, completely absorbed the remnants of the original Ryusei's soul.
Every skill, every memory, every habit, all integrated without losing his own personality and reasoning.
Yet was it perfect? Not entirely.
Some of the original owner's strongest emotions had bled into him, lingering like faint stains in his soul.
The burning grudge against the Third Hokage and his faction for murdering his parents.
The deep yearning to restore the Senju name.
These impulses now sat at the base of Ryusei's own priorities, beneath only survival and power.
He could not separate himself from them anymore, nor did he try.
For the first time, he felt no dissonance with his body.
No sense of being a foreign intruder or a guest.
It was wholly his now, and he was wholly part of this world.
The villagers he passed weren't background characters.
They were people, with their own small lives intersecting his.
The fusion had given him something close to an awakening, an acceptance that he was not two souls forced together anymore, but one entity, integrated and stable.
And with that came mastery. His control over this body was now complete.
Every technique, every movement that the original Ryusei had once struggled to refine was now at his fingertips.
He had tested it thoroughly over the past weeks. His strength was back. His high-chūnin-level power was fully restored.
He had also perfectly integrated the two knowledge streams he carried, one from his past life, where this place had only been a fantasy world on paper, and the other from this world itself, the firsthand records and truths he had studied these past weeks.
Fantasy and reality would always be different.
Reality would always be more complete, more complicated, full of holes and contradictions.
But back on Earth, when all this had been fiction, it had been endlessly written about, argued over, and dissected by countless neutral observers. That outside perspective had its own value.
So Ryusei used both. From Earth, he drew vague connections, identified recurring patterns, and borrowed the broad outlines of what mattered most.
From this world's archives, he filled in details, corrected errors, and checked which gaps were real and which were manipulated.
Piece by piece, he felt he was assembling something closer to the truth than either perspective could give him alone.
Looking back, many of the ideas he had in those first days, about how to grow stronger, what to chase, what shortcuts to take, really were too cartoonish.
Too much the product of Earth's fan theories, not fit for a place where blood spilled for real.
At the same time, he realized how flawed and inconsistent this world's written history was.
Many "official" records contradicted each other, and plenty of facts had clearly been twisted by politics.
Strangely enough, some of the interpretations he remembered from Earth actually explained things better.
So while his combat power hadn't grown much this month, Ryusei still felt stronger.
He had reconciled his soul. He had reconciled two knowledge systems.
He knew himself better, and he knew this world and its history better. And sometimes, just that much was enough to count as progress.
Yet even though his soul was reconciled with itself, it still wasn't reconciled with this body.
His soul and his DNA existed on different planes. They only interacted through the brain, which served as the bridge between them. That was why there were no direct problems.
His body continued to function as it always had, and his soul's excess weight didn't damage the vessel.
Still, once this final reconciliation happened, Ryusei knew his combat power would rise sharply, even without further training.
Take the chakra, for example. Chakra was the mixture of physical energy and spiritual energy.
Normally, physical energy was like the baseline current of electricity, while spiritual energy was the spark that ignited it and decided how potent that current could be.
Every shinobi had their own balance, depending on body condition and soul strength.
Together, the amount they could sustain was called chakra stamina, or chakra reserves.
Think of it like a well. Physical energy was the water in the well, while spiritual energy was the size of the bucket used to scoop it up.
A larger bucket meant each draw gave more potent chakra, and more powerful techniques could be fired off in a single instance.
Ryusei's problem now was simple.
His soul mass had grown far beyond what this body had originally held, but his body was still accustomed to the old amounts.
The new spiritual energy couldn't be converted into chakra yet. It was sitting idle, locked away, waiting for the body to catch up.
And there was the brain. Spiritual energy always enriched the brain first, since the brain was the interface between the soul and the body.
Until his nervous system fully adapted to the increased flow, Ryusei couldn't tap the full benefits.
But once adaptation was done, his brainpower itself would leap.
Faster processing power and speed. Sharper memory and recollection. Stronger willpower and alertness.
Shorter time needed to learn and solidify new skills. Most importantly, chakra control, since shaping chakra, its density, and its form always starts in the brain.
That was why he was confident that even if he did nothing else for the next few months, when this mostly adaptation finished, his strength would cross into Jōnin level on its own.
He thought of it like this: Senju meeting Uchiha inside one body.
His bloodline already gave him the natural stamina, vitality, and Yang Release talent of the Senju.
Now his soul growth was pushing him toward the other side of the coin, the powerful Yin affinity that Uchiha had always embodied.
No, he would never awaken a dōjutsu; there was no genetic basis for it in his DNA.
But his Yin Release talent could very well rise to match his already strong Yang.
That wouldn't make him more talented than monsters like Itachi, who was Kage-level at 13, or legends like Hashirama and Madara, who each stood unrivaled despite only having one half of the equation from their bloodline branches.
But it would make him something they weren't, complete.
A shinobi with balance in both Yin and Yang, whose foundation was wider than theirs.
Yes, they probably grew stronger in their opposite aspects later in life, too, not just in their main gifts, after all, bodies and souls both deepen with decades for every shinobi naturally.
However, Ryusei's focus was on the foundation he already possessed at 12, the base completeness and harmony that would set him apart from the start.
Barring the Ōtsutsuki, he might one day be the most complete shinobi in the world.
'It's a pity I haven't had the time to start any of the major training I planned yet this time… Most of my days have been eaten up by recovery, tending to injuries, rebuilding my body, and meditating to stabilize my soul. Until those were sorted out, all I could really do in my spare time was read. Well, I just hope nothing goes wrong with this mission....', Ryusei thought.
Once this was over, he would finally have the chance to put some of his ideas, the methods he'd brainstormed for the fastest path to strength in this world from his position, into practice. But that would have to wait until his return.
He was certain the next B-rank mission would be harsher than the last. After failing once, his enemies would only raise the stakes. So he planned not to waste any time after he got back.