Super Shenron's divine power caused the "Time Power" dormant in Ino's bloodline to fully manifest. Alongside Wind, Lightning, Earth, Water, Fire, Yin, Yang, and God Power — the ninth element, Time Power, had now been completely woven into her Kekkei Mora.
Becoming a Supreme Kai. Manifesting the Time Power. These were the two prerequisites for becoming the Supreme Kai of Time — but they were not the deciding factor.
Ino looked at the metal token that had appeared in her hand out of thin air.
As she channeled her Time Power into it, a single large character — "Time" — surfaced upon its face.
This was the true key to competing for the position of Supreme Kai of Time. It was a token forged from the most precious Time Sand in existence; every single grain represented three thousand years in the lifespan of a thriving civilization. Normal civilizations rarely survived three thousand years — and if a dynasty changed hands, the clock reset and the count had to start over.
The Time Token granted by Super Shenron was simply not something that could be collected through conventional means. It was impossible by any ordinary method.
Ino closed her eyes. Through the token, she caught a glimpse of two blurred, indistinct figures — her competitors.
Through the long river of time, they saw her too.
There was only one seat. To claim it for herself, she would have to push the others out.
The token pointed toward a specific moment in time, seventy-five million years in the past. In practical terms, that timestamp held no meaning for ordinary people.
Because it was the moment the previous Supreme Kai of Time had stepped down and the current one had taken the throne. That point had been excised from the normal flow of time. Only someone holding a Time Token could travel there — to participate in the competition for the position of Supreme Kai of Time.
Time was fair to everyone. And yet, within that fairness, lay a profound inequality.
Super Shenron vanished. The seven Super Dragon Balls scattered once more, dispersing back across the Sixth and Seventh Universes. Ino memorized the trajectory of the Six-Star Ball that Auta Magetta needed, intending to locate that planet again later and make the proper arrangements before returning it to the big metal man.
The void of cosmic space settled back into complete stillness. Ino took a moment to feel the power flowing through her body, gently tracing the patterns carved into the Time Token with her fingertips. After carefully confirming the process of the competition, her body dissolved into a streak of flowing light — and she was gone.
...
The Time Nest. Seventy-five million years in the past.
This place existed outside and apart from the twelve multiverses. Grand Zeno could erase any universe within his domain at will — but he could not erase time itself. And in turn, time could reach into a new timeline and pull forth a brand-new Grand Zeno.
Ino arrived here, Time Token in hand.
The dense temporal barrier did not reject her. On the contrary, it parted wide open, greeting her with what felt almost like a welcoming gesture.
"Thank you," Ino said, being perfectly polite — even though she knew there was no one in the air to hear her, she said it anyway.
Against a backdrop of brilliant, star-filled space, staircase after staircase materialized from nothing as she arrived. The steps appeared to be made of some kind of stone — plain in design, suspended in mid-air, with no support above, below, or to either side.
She carefully set a foot on the first step, and found it remarkably solid. Standing on it, she looked up toward the top.
The Time Nest reminded her a little of Kami's Lookout back on Earth — shaped something like a bowl, hanging at the very peak of the void.
"That's... really high," Ino murmured. She tried to fly up — and the energy that had been so welcoming moments ago abruptly turned crushing and oppressive. She rose less than ten meters before it slammed her back down.
Nothing to be done about it. She'd have to climb.
The journey reminded her of Snake Way from the time she had gone to visit North Kai — though Snake Way had at least been more or less flat, with opportunities to sleep and rest along the way. These sheer vertical stone stairs offered no such comfort.
Fortunately, Ino was no longer the same person she had once been. She steadied her breathing, kept herself calm, and climbed one step at a time, neither rushing nor hesitating.
After more than a thousand steps, the Time Nest still looked impossibly far away. Were it not for the faint, barely perceptible changes in her field of vision, she might have suspected she was stuck in an infinite loop inside some time fragment.
"Hm?" She stopped and looked around, and that was when she noticed something strange.
Her normal age was thirty-two. In practice, because of how often she traveled through time — frequently staying for extended periods at points in the past or future — her body's physical age had long since crossed forty. But even setting aside the Supreme Kai's lifespan, her Otsutsuki heritage alone granted her over a thousand years. Against such a span, the difference between thirty and forty was essentially nothing.
In daily life, Ino kept her appearance fixed at around twenty years old, occasionally applying a bit of the Transformation Technique to look slightly older when the situation called for it. Anyone who didn't know her well enough would never notice the subtle shifts in her face.
But now, after climbing more than a thousand steps, she stared in startled disbelief — she had grown younger. More than that, her height had inexplicably dropped by two centimeters.
What was happening?
She waited in place for a moment. Her internal sense of time showed no change.
She climbed again. After another thousand-plus steps, she looked a year younger still, and had lost another centimeter of height.
It wasn't the time within this space that was the problem. It was the time embedded in the stone stairs themselves.
There was no turning back now. The arrow was already nocked. She could only keep going up.
Ino unleashed the full force of her energy, pushing back against the temporal effects of the stairs. By the time she had climbed past the halfway point — drawing closer and closer to the Time Nest — she realized with a start that her body had already reverted to the state it had been in at age ten.
Her figure was gone. She was a full head shorter. Even her hair had gotten shorter.
Was this change permanent? If she returned to Konoha looking like this... what would Hinata think when she saw her?
Would she end up standing at the same height as Himawari and Kale? Where would her dignity be then?!
A single black expletive — "GRASS!!!" — detonated in Ino's mind. All pretense of elegance and composure went straight out the window. She went at it on all fours, clawing her way upward with absolutely no regard for appearances.
She threw the Rinnegan wide open — Time Deceleration, time delay, time segmentation — every technique she had, she piled onto herself at once, trying to resist the temporal erosion eating away at her.
Her Time Power helped push back against the encroachment somewhat, but it burned through terrifyingly fast. In the blink of an eye, a full tenth of it was gone.
By the time her body had regressed to seven years old, she finally stumbled forward on her little short legs, crossed the final step, grabbed the edge of the Time Nest with both hands, threw her weight into it from her core, and vaulted herself up and over.
The moment she officially set foot inside the Time Nest, the temporal erosion vanished completely.
"Hah — hah — hah — I'm gonna die—" Ino collapsed onto the floor, gasping for breath, sweat dripping from her forehead and the back of her neck. Exhaustion was part of it — but honestly, a bigger part was just sheer terror.
She was now extremely worried about how she was going to explain this when she got back. Hinata, please, just listen — I'm not Ino. I'm a friend of Ino's.
"You're so weak, junior. Much weaker than I expected." A big loli with a golden crown and short blue hair stood with both hands on her hips, looking down at her with absolutely insufferable smugness.
Ino brushed the dust off herself and stood up with practiced composure, tilting her head up to meet the blue-haired big loli's gaze.
Impressive. Truly impressive.
Her own body was, at most, seven years old right now. This person in front of her looked to be pushing nine.
The absolute nerve.
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