The Naka River did not roar in the hours following the retreat; it groaned. The water was clogged with the pulverized remains of Hashirama's forest—grey, fibrous sludge that smelled of open wounds and stagnant sap. I sat on a limestone shelf three miles downstream, my back against a jagged spur of rock that vibrated with a frequency of exactly 4Hz. It was a soothing, low-frequency thrum that helped mask the persistent, high-pitched ringing in my inner ear.
Status Report:
Neurological Load: 72% (Decreasing).
Chakra Pathways: 14% Integrity (Severe nature-energy scouring).
Optical Buffer: Three Tomoe Manifested. Processing Window: 450ms.
My right eye was a hollow of agony. It felt as if someone had driven a heated copper needle through the optic nerve and twisted it. Every time I blinked, the world stuttered. The three tomoe were no longer just symbols; they were physical weights within my iris, drawing spirit-energy with a voracious, uncontrolled hunger. In my old life, I'd seen high-end hardware melt because the cooling system couldn't keep up with the overclock. My brain was currently that hardware.
"Kaito."
I didn't open my eyes. I didn't need to. Through the thin skin of my eyelids, the thermal signature of Madara Uchiha was a brilliant, oscillating core of heat. He moved with a 12-degree tilt to his left hip—an injury sustained during the final exchange when a branch had nearly impaled his femoral artery.
"The Clan Head is calling for a summary, Madara-sama," I said, my voice sounding like gravel grinding in a jar. I could taste the iron of my own blood coating the back of my throat. "Tell him the retreat was the only variable that prevented a total system deletion. Hashirama Senju is not a man. He is a biological singularity."
"He's a monster," Madara spat, the sound of his sandals on the silt shifting as he sat beside me. I heard the sharp clack of his sword hilt hitting the stone. "My father says he cannot be killed. That his wood is 'divine'."
"There is nothing divine about cellular mitosis accelerated by spiritual energy, Madara-sama," I replied, finally opening my eyes. Through the red-tinted lens of the three tomoe, the world was a high-definition vector map. I saw the way the wind-shear affected the moisture on Madara's forehead. I saw the 0.02mm tremors in his fingertips. "He is simply efficient. He draws nature-energy to fuel his mitosis, bypassing the standard energy-conversion losses of molded chakra. To kill him, we do not need bigger fireballs. We need to introduce a mechanical failure into his regeneration."
Madara looked at my eyes, and for a moment, his own two-tomoe flickered in a pattern of pure, unadulterated shock. "You... you awakened them. Both of them. At your age?"
"Data saturation," I said, reaching up to wipe a fresh trickle of blood from my cheek. "The brain built a better processor to handle the input. It wasn't 'hatred' that did this, Madara-sama. It was the sheer volume of technical errors I had to correct in real-time. My soul didn't burn; it optimized. The 'Curse' the elders speak of is merely a neurological response to high-stress data throughput."
I stood up, my joints making a series of sharp, clinical clicks. The pain was a 6-on-the-scale now—manageable through shallow, rhythmic breathing. I reached into my pack and pulled out the shattered remains of the Resonance Spanner. The iron was warped, the molecular lattice twisted by the sheer pressure of the nature-energy it had channeled.
"The spanner failed because the conductor's resistance was too high," I muttered, analyzing the crystalline fracture at the base of the tool. "I need spirit-iron. Pure, low-carbon alloy that can handle nature-energy without undergoing thermal expansion. I need to reprogram the metallurgy of our forges."
"My father will not let you back into the forges if he thinks you are ignoring the 'Fire of the Heart'," Madara said, standing as well. "The elders are already whispering. They say you are 'hollow'. That you have the eyes but not the spirit."
"A 'spirit' is a liability in a war of attrition," I said, turning to look at the smoke rising from the Uchiha compound in the distance. The smell of cedar smoke was heavy on the breeze, mixed with the damp, rotting scent of the river. "Tell Tajima-sama that if he wants to win the North, he needs to stop treating warfare like a ritual and start treating it like a machine. And a machine requires a lead engineer."
I took a step, and my fractured rib sent a jagged spike of 8-on-the-pain-scale through my chest. I didn't flinch. I simply adjusted my gait by 3 degrees to minimize the intercostal tension.
System Log: Level 2 Optimization Complete. Objective: Data Retrieval on the God of Shinobi - Success. Survival Probability: 14%. Physical Degradation: 38%.
The Naka River continued to flow, carrying the sawdust of a dead forest toward the sea. But in my mind, the first blueprints for a Senju-killer were already being etched into the silicon.