Some time later
Another dead end. I set aside yet another fuinjutsu scroll and rubbed my temples in frustration.
That fuin I'd been working on myself, along with a bunch of my colleagues and Hiruzen… The complex seals that were supposed to give me permanent enhancement of my whole body, the ones I'd pinned a lot of hope on, turned out to be pretty much useless.
Sure, basic reinforcement or a temporary boost in stats—that worked. But together with my monstrous training regimen, it felt almost meaningless.
What I needed was a qualitative leap, a deep restructuring of the body… not this crap. My body was acting like it resisted any crude meddling, refusing to move from its "factory settings" to something that would let me drop jōnin with a twitch of my left tit.
"Sadly, not everything is that simple," I chuckled to myself. "This world is a cheapskate; it's not ready to hand out power that easily… Or rather, it is, just not every time."
In the bright room, my gaze fell on a stack of iryo-ninjutsu scrolls. That was where the key seemed to be hiding. My current "forays into genetic engineering," as I jokingly called them back at the academy, were far from actual genome editing, but the direction was similar. I was trying not just to heal but to… guide growth, modify existing structures.
Mystical Palm. At its core it just stimulated the body's natural processes. But what if those processes could not only be sped up, but also redirected? What if you could force cells to divide not how they usually did, but according to a new template I set? Densify muscle fibers, making them stronger and tougher than nature intended. Restructure the bone matrix, cranking its density up to insane levels. Improve the conductivity of neural pathways for lightning-fast reflexes.
This A‑rank technique, Mystical Palm, was actually kinda primitive.
Right now, a lot of medical-nin would be coughing up blood if they heard me thinking that.
But what if I changed the "emission spectrum," so to speak? That wouldn't be so primitive anymore—there'd no longer be the inherited affinity built up by all the generations that had used Mystical Palm before me. But it would be promising.
I'd done experiments on corpses, but they only gave a general picture—too many variables separated dead tissue from living. Every system, every organ needed its own unique approach, its own "command" transmitted through chakra. I didn't need one technique but a whole set, a ridiculously complex symphony of chakra and biology.
I sighed.
I looked down at my hands.
Control… It was growing, for sure. But for what I had in mind, it was still catastrophically low. It would take years to polish it to the point where I could safely and effectively meddle with my own body's functions on that deep a level. Years of study, experiments, trial and error.
The prospects… were as foggy as it's probably foggy in the Village Hidden in the Mist. But somewhere out there, behind that haze of uncertainty, there was the possibility of surpassing any known limits. To create a body that could withstand insane loads, regenerate at crazy speed, and conduct colossal amounts of energy. A body that could fight the monsters that would come to devour me and my new world.
Sometimes my shifts at the hospital slipped by under thoughts like these. Though rarely with quite this mood.
A month had passed since I joined the academy. In that time, I still hadn't managed to really dive into socializing with my classmates. To be honest, their company was almost never interesting to me, and I didn't always even show up to class. I'd only really talked to Ino a couple of times, when I told the girl about a method for growing some cool bush‑like herbs. They tasted pretty decent, though I know some people also smoke them.
From the "happened, but not that important" category: Hiruzen tried to give me some spiel about unreasonable spending, but I wasn't having it. Same way I failed, in that very conversation, to convince him that acting all flamboyant looks cool.
I did a couple of missions to clear my debt, and that was it—then I went back to my usual stuff.
Half a year went by in about the same way. Koharu didn't show herself at all, even though she'd supposedly said she'd surprise me. And things stayed like that until the Hokage got some weird idea that I should, you know, slowly start learning independence. On that note, they handed me a little apartment and basically went, "Here, live here now."
I didn't like the apartment. I mean, considering what architectural geniuses live here, the housing stock overall is above average. And better than a simple room in the hospital, sure. But the ugly-ass interior just murdered my sense of aesthetics.
So I started racking my brains about how to earn some "green" and buy myself a house more to my taste. Sadly, outright criminal methods were off the table—the old man wouldn't approve. I didn't want to sell my own original fuin either, because even though it would bring in a lot of money long-term, it'd limit my potential in fuinjutsu itself. I couldn't perform super‑complex operations at the hospital either, since I didn't have the control for that thanks to, again, the aggressive nature of my chakra. Missions weren't an option either—they weren't giving me the high‑paying ones that would let me earn enough for a decent mansion in a short time.
After weighing it this way and that, I came to the conclusion that buying my own mansion would come out too expensive anyway. And why bother, if I could just rent? With those criteria, missions could easily cover rent—housing here is relatively cheap.
But relying on a single source of income is kinda crappy. So, after going over my abilities again and deciding my strongest side was fuinjutsu, I decided to try making some kind of fuin anyway. Not an original one, but something built from the existing fuin "alphabet." And in principle, I did get something to work. Just not what I'd originally been aiming for.
For that, I analyzed the market and also questioned a lot of shinobi: what they were lacking, how their normal day looked, what their time on missions was like. All that, just to find out they didn't really need anything—everything was "fine enough" already. Either none of the people I asked had any imagination, or I was a crappy sociologist, but I ended up with the conclusion that all the obvious niches were taken, or I just didn't know about the empty ones. So I thought about what knowledge I had from my previous world and dragged out a few ideas from there. Obviously, there wasn't much aimed specifically at shinobi, but that wasn't a bad thing—on the contrary, there are way more regular people in this world, and way more money in their hands.
So I made a few puzzle prototypes, patented them, and over a couple of months invested money into their production at several firms. I couldn't sell them all right away; a few thousand units moved purely because niche stores were literally buying up everything, mine included, just to diversify the assortment.
But that was only the beginning. It was time to start hyping my products.
To do that, I started holding tournaments using those very puzzles, shamelessly exploiting shadow clones. At first, thanks to cheap, small‑scale ads, not many people came to gawk, and most of those who did were just passersby who'd stopped out of curiosity, since the tournaments were held in open city squares.
Good thing I didn't have to pay for the space, and the tournament prize pool—with its "cash prizes"—was completely fake. The clones, who Hiruzen let out of the village without a problem on the condition they stayed under Transformation, handled everything just fine.
In just a month, my fake identity—the only illegal thing I was using (not without some grumbling from the old man, of course)—became known in certain circles and started drawing in investors. The Rubik's Cube tournament was especially popular—may Rubik forgive me, whose creation I straight‑up ripped off.
After the tournaments, popularity jumped nicely, to the point some particularly slick businessmen were offering me a few hundred thousand ryō for the patent so they could start raking in cash off what looked like a promising business. But I fought for my shares like a lion and, like the slipperiest snake, talked them into investing in my venture with no right to equity, instead writing in a fixed payout amount that was supposed to hit in a couple of quarters. Collateral, contracts, loans—I managed to sign everything through the fake identity a clone was playing.
In the respectable banks where I handled business with investors—even ones far from the Hidden Leaf—there were shinobi on staff, often experienced chūnin, who weren't supposed to let other especially savvy shinobi like me pass themselves off as someone they weren't. But I wasn't born yesterday; my teachers were no joke, and my control over energies was just as good. So I managed to fool those ninja with the Transformation Technique. Though honestly, it didn't require anything too advanced (even though I had that too), because those hired hands weren't exactly killing themselves at work. So in the end, my fake identity worked just fine.
Next came putting the money I'd gotten into circulation, a few weeks of actively selling puzzles, and parallel PR—first through my fake tournaments, and then through other people's real tournaments run by newly emerged fans, whose free work boosted my product's popularity and, personally, my income.
The business started growing like crazy, and I had to pull in a lot of clones to control it. That brought plenty of problems—a constant flow of outside data at night when the clones dispelled, which I then had to process, then build sales and PR strategies, plus lines of behavior with current investors and ways to attract new ones. Because of my inexperience, all that started eating up a lot of time, so I had to cut back some of my training and other projects. And that part I didn't like at all… But I had my own plan, and I wanted to see it through.
The fortune of several million ryō that piled up over three months didn't go to my head. And not just because I couldn't pull that money out of the business yet and didn't physically have it in my hands. I needed to get stronger. A solid financial cushion wasn't going to help with that much, since my projects at the hospital, like a lot of other stuff, were funded by the coffers of Konoha and the Land of Fire. Although, again, a bit of independence, now and in the future, definitely wouldn't hurt.
Because of all that, I decided my business projects would live another three months. In that time I'd try to squeeze all the money I could out of them, then dump them.
I stuck to that plan, which was relatively easy—no board of directors, and the whole "company" that had formed, whose office nobody knew the location of, still consisted entirely of my shadow clones.
Time passed, the business expanded. Bigger and bigger sharks started paying attention, offering more and more for a full buyout, but I kept up my "not for sale" policy. At the same time, I didn't stop pulling in investor money in other ways, promising I'd pay it all back later. Some tournaments started drawing crowds of several thousand people, while the whole business hit a valuation of a hundred million ryō.
By the end of the period I'd set for myself, I did everything I could to push my puzzles and the Rubik's Cube to the peak of their popularity. Not that I really pulled it off… Let's just say the business was successful, but nowhere near world‑class. Some of the high nobility were interested, but most were just watching from the sidelines. I was trying to attract that one rich guy who wouldn't just wait and see, but would also offer a more serious sum. I actually managed to hook several, and they fought pretty hard over my business.
Even with all the debts, my alter ego still managed to sell the whole thing along with a small office, which by then I'd set up so it could take over part of the clones' duties and, of course, create the impression my firm was reliable. A solid share of the tournaments was organized through that office. Same with a lot of other financial operations.
The final sum was fairly solid—four hundred million ryō. After pocketing it, my now‑multimillionaire fake identity went off to travel the world and stopped showing up in public. From now on, if I have any personal projects, that fake persona will resurface and become my investor.
Those six months were exhausting. For better or worse, I managed to put an end to that whole puzzle and Rubik's Cube saga. On the plus side, I suddenly had a lot of free time again, even with all my old training and projects back in full swing. On the minus side, I probably could've pushed the business even harder and squeezed more than a billion out of it, maybe even a few dozen billion of the local currency. But that would've been a level of money where just moving it around would seriously affect the whole country.
People way more important would've taken an interest—like the daimyo, other Kage, or shinobi clans—and I wouldn't have been able to stand against them without throwing in even more effort. The business would've sucked me in and put a ton of responsibility on every move I made. So, before the train picked up too much speed, I jumped off, to focus on something that was much more likely to help me in the future—self‑improvement.
The funds I already had would be enough for long‑term funding, and, if needed (which I don't), for hiring very sharp specialists—who, in Konoha, mostly already work with me basically for free anyway. For consumables, or if I suddenly need to put up a building or two, four hundred million will definitely be enough, with a lot left over. So if I regret not becoming a billionaire, it's not by much. And in any case, if I suddenly desperately need money, with multimillion‑ryō starting capital I could spin up something even bigger than this business in just a few months.
The puzzle business—the one that was no longer mine—collapsed pretty quickly afterward. Heh. A big chunk of the hyped tournaments the brand's fame was built on just shut down without my clones. The clones, by the way, for the sake of a good cover story, staged a protest over the sale of all the patents and how they didn't like the new boss, then all quit together and scattered. By the time that little aristocrat got moving and squeezed out the other tournaments, the hype had already died. He'll be lucky if, in a few years, he even makes back what he put in.
But I didn't care anymore. The staff who actually worked for the firm had good contracts. And if they get organized, they'll be able to squeeze their salaries and then some out of the new employer without much trouble if he gets too cocky.
It might seem like I have a bit of contempt for the guy I squeezed four hundred million out of. And yeah, that's not exactly wrong. The world of the village, which had seemed pretty kind up till then, showed its dirty side. The side things foul‑smelling run down.
"Foul‑smelling" was exactly how you could describe the buyer of my company, because—as my alter ego learned from various sources—his family used to be in the racketeering business, is probably running some criminal operations even now, and definitely provides pretty crap working conditions at their own factories. And I'm sure that if I started digging into that aristocrat, I'd find not just a bad smell but straight‑up shit.
It's not like that made me furious—"oh no, someone out there is a criminal." It just killed any sympathy.
Anyway, that doesn't matter anymore.
After that, like I mentioned earlier, I went back to my own stuff. I rented myself a nice little mansion with decent renovations (no damn pipes on the roof!), four bedrooms on the second floor, and a big basement. Too bad the owner, the bastard, didn't want to sell. "The rental business is more important," you see. And I wasn't about to offer him several times what the place was worth, so he can go wipe his nose; renting it suits me just fine.
Hm… what does that remind me of? Whatever.
The time that followed was sometimes even boring. And a bit later—even sad… Because I found out about what looked like the beginning of some kind of Uchiha coup. And another piece of news—Shisui's death…
But I wasn't allowed to mull it over while nursing a beer mug full of milk. A certain inventive old woman noticed my gloom. And she decided that moment was the perfect time to slightly change our training approach.
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