…
Six Months Later.
You'd think getting poisoned every morning would get old.
It doesn't.
The body builds tolerance. The mind builds paranoia. And I build stronger tea.
Still, I call it progress.
Six months had passed since we opened the institute for the orphans of the orphanage.
Enough time for the future Sanin trio to settle into their Genin lives. They were fourteen now. I was seventeen.
The second great war felt both far away and annoyingly close. Well, I can only blame myself for knowing it was coming.
Breakfast arrived on schedule, Daichi's grade four nourishing dish and Aiko's enhanced poisons.
A very charming domestic collaboration that could kill a weaker man or in my case, strengthen one.
I washed soreness from my mouth with tea, then reviewed the scrolls I'd stashed under the table.
The Lotus Stores' transactions, courier schedules, supplier disputes, and a half-sketched design for a chakra-cooled storage seal.
Hina's neat handwriting was absent.
She was still in the Fire Capital, managing the Lotus Pavilion. It had been close to a year since she left, and not a day passed without me feeling the difference.
The main store maintained a steady stream under Natsu's supervision. She was one of Hina's closest aids.
A personal assistant or secretary for lack of better words, and while I sat in the big chair, she handled the managerial duties.
The life of a young master, am I right?
The west and north district stores also maintained a steady stream though I had to visit them every once in a while to keep them on their toes.
So I ran them all myself now. Konoha's entire Lotus presence.
Joy.
The institute ran smoothly. Dai, Ren, Daisuke, Tenma, and Sagara handled the kids like professionals. Aiko's medical wing functioned better than some clinics Konoha had to offer.
Daichi took the food seriously.
And the kids? They were growing stronger, sharper, and hungrier.
I knew this because I always had one of my clone stay in institute. So I receive daily update on the kids.
My Shadow Clone technique still wasn't perfect, but six months had made a considerable difference.
When I first developed the method of converting a dispelled clone's returning chakra into spiritual energy, I could comfortably manage three clones at once. The mental clone that appeared in my mindscape allowed me to examine their experiences and take only what I needed, instead of being forced to relive everything they had experienced.
That alone had changed how I used the technique.
Now, three clones barely required my attention.
I could maintain them for much longer periods, and cycling them throughout the day had become considerably easier. The faint ache that once accompanied their return had almost disappeared unless several clones dispersed together.
More importantly, I could maintain more than three.
Four was comfortable, five required more chakra and concentration, but remained manageable. Six was where things began to become noticeably difficult.
The problem wasn't simply creating them. Each clone carried a portion of my chakra, and every additional clone increased the amount I had to maintain.
Their activities also mattered.
A clone spending hours performing ordinary tasks was considerably easier to sustain than one constantly expending chakra on combat or training.
I had learned to account for that, and my clones had gradually become part of my daily routine.
One clone remained at the Lotus Institute, effectively serving as its headmaster in my absence. It handled the instructors, dealt with problems among the children, reviewed lessons, and made sure the institute continued running as I intended.
Another moved between the West and North Districts whenever necessary.
The Lotus Store in the West District usually needed more attention, but the northern branch had its own demands, and having a clone available allowed me to deal with both without constantly running between them myself.
The remaining clones were usually devoted to my own work when necessary.
Training, fūinjutsu, yeoui and the countless smaller projects that seemed to multiply whenever I finished one.
The mental clones made that workload considerably more manageable. Whenever a Shadow Clone dispersed, its returning chakra was converted into spiritual energy and manifested within my mindscape as a mental clone carrying its experiences. I could examine what it had learned and take only the information I needed before dismissing it.
Six months of refinement had made the process almost effortless.
The same was true of my communication system.
The short-range ChakraLink network I had developed months ago had eventually evolved into something far more useful.
I had eventually replaced the ordinary material I'd been using with a thin layer of chakra-conductive metal embedded within each piece of green jade.
The metal carried chakra far more efficiently, allowing the seal formula to transmit a written message with considerably less loss.
Relay seals placed throughout the village received the signal and passed it onward until it reached its destination.
The difficult part had been maintaining the connection over such a large distance without the signal weakening beyond usefulness.
I solved that by placing relay seals at key points throughout Konoha. Each relay received the signal, strengthened it, and passed it onward until it reached the intended jade.
The result was simple enough for anyone to understand.
Write a message on the jade, send chakra through the seal, and the message appeared on the corresponding jade at its destination.
It could now transmit written information across the entire village.
It wasn't perfect, and it certainly wasn't something I would trust with sensitive information yet, but it was a considerable improvement over what I had started with.
Six months had changed more than my Shadow Clone technique. My skills had grown, my projects had advanced, and some of the ideas that once existed only on scrolls were finally beginning to take shape.
There was still plenty left to do.
There always was.
And speaking of project, the Yeoui.
The staff had become more than a project, it was practically my partner now, I wore it slung around my neck in plain sight, disguised as a long, lacquered calligraphy brush.
The transformation was maintained by a chakra camouflage seal I'd refined with Mito-sama's guidance. When inactive, the staff simply remained in its disguised form, once I passed chakra through the seal, its shape would change according to the form I had chosen.
After months of painstaking negotiation and parting with an obscene amount of ryo, I'd finally secured three tons of chakra ore from the Land of Iron, paying twelve million ryo for the shipment.
It was notoriously difficult to obtain, especially for civilians, and the price reflected that. But the metal's responsiveness to chakra manipulation was second to none.
I wasn't planning to waste it.
It held fūinjutsu arrays without degradation, conducted elemental chakra like a tuning fork, and even reinforced itself under duress thanks to its earth-nature resonance.
Worth every penny…or ryo.
Forging the staff had required more than fūinjutsu.
I had spent a month learning the fundamentals of blacksmithing from a local smith whose family had been working metal for generations.
I had a suspicion that he might be Tenten's great-grandfather, though I had no proof. The resemblance in his temperament alone was enough to make me wonder.
With my mental clones, I could easily digest the days lessons and have him teach me more. With the money I offered as tuition, he had no reason to hold back.
Once I understood the basics, I built a small forge in the space behind my house.
I modified it with a few seals to regulate the heat, maintain a steady airflow, and improve the precision of the tools. It wasn't anything particularly sophisticated, but it allowed me to work at a consistency that would have been difficult to achieve by hand alone.
Even then, shaping the chakra-conductive alloy into the staff had taken time.
Even with my physical strength, the material was stubborn, and every mistake cost me more than ordinary steel would have. I had to repeatedly heat, shape, cool, and inspect each section before I was satisfied with it.
But eventually, the pieces came together.
I'd stabilized the extension seals, allowing it to shift from one meter to over six in an instant. It wasn't a divine weapon that could reach the heavens yet, but it could demolish a building if I willed it.
The weight-adjustment seal was much more stable now. Yeoui normally weighed around twenty kilograms, but I could increase it to eighty kilograms without disrupting the seal formula or the flow of chakra through the weapon.
The result was... considerable. I tested it against a tree roughly my size.
With its normal weight, a single swing was enough to snap the trunk cleanly.
I increased the weight and the difference was immediate.
At four times its normal weight, Yeoui struck with enough force to shatter a much thicker tree, roughly three times the size of the first.
The weight adjustment was only one part of what I'd managed to accomplish.
The remote recall seal beneath my wrist was fully functional as well. Yeoui responded to my chakra signature and returned to me when called, even across considerable distances as long my chakra can reach there.
I had tested the range several times already, and each attempt had gone exactly as intended.
Mostly.
During one test in the woods, the staff tore through three thick branches before smashing directly into a bird's nest.
I stared at the scattered feathers floating in the air for a moment.
Not exactly elegant but still efficient.
The floating seal panels had also become considerably more useful. Each could now hold multiple prepared tags, allowing me to carry flash, smoke, binding, and even chakra disrupting seals without having to reach for them individually.
I'd also begun experimenting with elemental chakra.
Wind and lightning were the most promising.
Wind could be compressed around Yeoui's strikes, adding slicing pressure to the impact, while lightning introduced a more disruptive force that interfered with an opponent's chakra.
That development had been somewhat unexpected.
As you may have guessed, I had discovered that I possessed a minor lightning affinity.
It hadn't been easy to develop, but the relationship between wind and lightning had given me an interesting direction to explore. Under sufficient compression and with the right chakra conditions, wind chakra could generate electrical discharge.
Who would have thought?
I certainly hadn't expected that particular discovery when I started.
My latest experiment had been considerably more deliberate.
I'd embedded a chakra-sensitive seal into Yeoui that reacted whenever someone with hostile intent tried to seize the weapon.
The result was surprisingly effective.
The moment an unfamiliar chakra signature triggered the seal, Yeoui released a sudden, high-voltage electrical discharge through the grip.
The would-be thief immediately let go.
Tsunade tried once…she hadn't tried again.
Speaking of her, the future Sannin were regular faces at the Lotus Institute these days.
Tsunade often came by to bicker with Aiko over medicinal theory, usually leaving with one of them insisting that the other had misunderstood something.
Orochimaru was quieter, but surprisingly comfortable around the children. He would sit nearby and watch their lessons with genuine curiosity, occasionally answering a question when one of the children approached him. The kids seemed to like him.
Jiraiya, meanwhile, flirted with every older girl he encountered and got punted out of the building just as regularly.
I wondered if these girls had hidden reserves of physical strength or kekkai genkai that enhanced their physical strength whenever I saw him flying through the sky.
They were skilled, no doubt, confident as hell and brash.
They reminded me of myself three years ago. Before I left for the war. Before the weight of decisions started piling behind my eyes.
Nah… who am I kidding. I doubt konoha would ever witness a kid like me.
Then again, I'm forced to remember that their future isn't exactly sunshine and rainbows.
Mito-sama still summoned me regularly for lessons in fūinjutsu.
She taught me as much as she believed I was capable of understanding, patiently guiding me through knowledge that had taken her a lifetime to master.
I had grown considerably under her guidance.
Not simply because I had learned more, but because I was beginning to understand fūinjutsu on a deeper level.
The progress was slow, but steady.
And the days kept moving.
…
A/N: They're basically Master and Student at this point and I'm thinking of extending that to Kushina. What'd you all think? Making him Kushina's Sensei when she comes to Konoha and takes on the Jinchuriki status.
Like it? Read up to chapter 90 on [email protected]/This_Young_Lord