The current Ryusei never blamed his predecessor for not being stronger at the time of transmigration.
He considered it a blessing. If the boy had pushed even one notch beyond the strength Ryusei inherited, he felt that Konoha wouldn't have even temporarily tolerated it anymore; they would have erased him early, no matter the cost.
The balance he found himself in now was just right: not too little, a solid foundation, but not so much as to become a flashing target before he even did anything.
As for why the predecessor never advanced further, Ryusei didn't believe it was caution or fear of drawing attention. He simply couldn't.
The boy was convinced he had hidden his talent well, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
Konoha had countless ways to measure strength inside its walls.
Academy examinations, for one, gave plenty of data. But Ryusei suspected it went much further than that.
Hidden posts, perhaps Hyūga operatives watching with Byakugan, or specialized tools designed to mask themselves from crude sensory sweeps, like the one original owner awakened, while recording everything.
The predecessor had lived for years without ever once catching someone spying from a rooftop or lurking in alleys.
That wasn't because surveillance had stopped once his sensing matured, it was because their methods were better than anything he could notice.
That, Ryusei thought, was a far more believable explanation than the naive assumption that Konoha had simply lost interest in him.
But now that he was stepping into more dangerous missions, and with a full-scale shinobi war about to ignite, perhaps in a few months, Ryusei knew he had to grow stronger, and quickly.
Death could come from his own village's schemes just as easily as from enemy blades. He could be sent anywhere, into any battlefield, with no warning.
At the very least, he needed to push his strength higher and hold it steady until the war began, long enough to finalize his preparations and secure the power he needed.
The original owner had two nature affinities, fire and lightning. In this world, nearly everyone had at least one affinity.
Shinobi confirmed theirs through training or special chakra papers, while civilians often never tested it, but it was always there.
Chakra itself carried a "behavioral trait," shaped by subtle differences in a person's chakra system coils and the brain regions tied to chakra usage, unique for this world's humans.
Having two affinities was rare, limited to a small percentage of the most talented.
Three affinities were even rarer, so rare you could probably count such shinobi in history on two hands. Those few were regarded as monsters.
However, just because someone lacked a natural affinity for an element didn't mean they couldn't learn it.
With enough effort and practice, it was possible, but it was simply much harder than developing the elements you were born attuned to.
However, even with all of that, the predecessor could only be seen as an "ordinary genius of a great clan."
At best, he might have peaked at elite jōnin like his father and uncle, or, if given two more decades to reach his prime without interference, perhaps touched the edge of quasi-Kage level.
Without some special inheritance or unusually creative practice, it would have been impossible for the predecessor to ever reach true Kage level. His bloodline and natural comprehension alone weren't enough.
But that wasn't a slight against him, though. Despite how the original series portrayed things by focusing only on a handful of key figures, Kage-level shinobi weren't common; they were exactly what the name implied. Kage level meant, in theory, only one per village.
Konoha was the exception. As the strongest hidden village, with the power at times to rival all the others combined, it naturally produced more shinobi who stood at that level besides the official Hokage.
Sakumo Hatake, the White Fang, was one such figure in his time. The Sannin were others.
And the underworld wasn't just filled with small-time mercenaries either. Just because Ryusei's first B-rank mission had him facing little more than hired muscle didn't mean stronger predators didn't walk there as well.
Kakuzu was the perfect example, another shinobi who had touched Kage level, yet operated outside the system entirely.
Then there were the tailed beasts. Their very existence twisted the scale. Even with only basic control and cooperation, a jinchūriki could stand on equal ground with the strongest shinobi alive and reach a similar level. Ryusei knew that other villages had a few such people.
Ryusei knew he had to work with what he already possessed and squeeze every drop out of his bloodline gifts.
If he wanted to rise quickly, he needed sharper methods, ways to cut corners and gain twice the results for half the effort.
Sensing was useful, but only as auxiliary support in battle.
Advanced medical ninjutsu, which could be used in battles effectively, was the hardest, S-rank area, and while his natural Yang affinity gave him an edge, he decided not to waste years chasing mastery there.
For now, he would simply maintain and naturally grow his medical knowledge base, skill, and the Yang Release affinity when he had free time, until he had the chance to test his luck with a certain "hot teacher" named Tsunade for instructions.
As for fūinjutsu, he had nothing, but that was going to change.
It frustrated him to no end that the predecessor had been so ignorant in such a game-changing field.
Fūinjutsu alone could alter the flow of a fight. It could seal almost anything, and more importantly, it could store chakra.
Chakra was the single resource every shinobi lacked in the long run, and fūinjutsu provided ways to steal or stockpile it, from tailed beasts, from enemies, from anywhere.
For Ryusei, this made it one of his highest priorities.
And that was only the surface. Behind fūinjutsu lay the deeper study of jutsu-shiki, the formulaic language that didn't just seal, but rewrote the rules of reality itself.
Mastery there opened the door to the most advanced techniques, even space–time ninjutsu like the Flying Raijin.
Ninjutsu, on the other hand, he had to handle carefully. He already knew two B-rank techniques, but learning new ones too suddenly would only draw attention.
Ninjutsu was visible progress, easy for spies to track. What he needed instead was hidden progress.
For now, he planned to deepen his understanding of all five elemental natures, focusing first on his strongest two.
That way, when the war came, when Konoha's eyes were spread thin, he could accelerate into new elemental ninjutsu quickly, with his comprehension already primed.
To do that, he would need long hours of meditation, turning inward. He had to refine his perception of his own body, strengthen the connection between mind and flesh, calm his thoughts, and sharpen his control.
By doing so, he could gradually teach his chakra coils and the chakra-processing centers of his brain new "languages," until manipulating new elements became as natural as riding a bicycle.
Ryusei's strongest B-rank techniques combined both 'finesse' and 'mass'.
Large, single-burst jutsu were more trademark of the Uchiha, whose chakra quality allowed them to unleash overwhelming potency in an instant.
The Senju, by contrast, rarely matched that same explosive output.
Instead, they had developed methods to make their techniques more structured, better "programmed," in a sense.
The more mass a technique carried, the harder it was to control and vice versa.
That was why the original Ryusei, despite lacking the almost supernatural chakra control of top-level Uchiha geniuses, could still produce complex, highly manipulated techniques, with just his 'ordinary genius' territory chakra control.