Soon after meeting with Renjiro, Ryusei left a strong shadow clone behind to oversee that section and keep his sensory network running.
His real body, however, was already moving again, this time toward the farthest destination yet. The northwestern Iwa front, diagonal to his current position and across the continent.
That area now stretched deep into the Land of Earth itself.
After around a year of Konoha victories, since the war started, small and big, their forces had now pushed past the old Waterfall border, even capturing Takigakure entirely.
The fighting had spilled onto the Land of Earth's own soil.
Ryusei traveled along the outer edge of the Land of Fire and cut through neutral northern zones until he reached Waterfall Country and began entering Earth territory.
The trip took him only around two days, even though he had to restrain his speed mostly to avoid drawing attention.
If he moved at full pace, the sheer chakra turbulence would expose him despite all his advanced suppression techniques.
Still, his current stealth system and physical power were so refined that even holding back barely mattered; he was faster than most Kage could even perceive.
The reason for this trip was simple: he was going to steal again.
But this time, not dojutsu. Tailed beast chakra, again.
It had been half a year since he first siphoned chakra from the Three-Tails and Six-Tails during that encounter with the two Kirigakure jinchūriki.
He had stored the extracted essence inside several Katsuyu fragments, merging the samples together afterward after experiments.
Since then, he had used portions of that chakra in combat many times.
Also, the method he used back then initially was crude.
The small Katsuyu bodies acted as sponges, clinging to those two hosts and pulling out what they could, but the process was inefficient and unstable.
Much of the chakra was lost during collection and later fusion experiments and combat, and even more decayed over time.
Katsuyu tissue simply wasn't meant to contain that corrosive kind of chakra. It was definitely not the same as Tsunade's.
In other words, what had once been an incredible resource has now completely run out.
But now, things were different.
After months of learning from Ashina Uzumaki, the best fuinjutsu expert in existence, Ryusei's sealing and extraction techniques had become very advanced in the world, too.
Enough to steal tailed beast chakra properly this time, with fuinjutsu, in larger, cleaner quantities.
And he felt it was the right time to act.
Something in the air had shifted lately.
A storm was coming.
He didn't know from where, but his instincts screamed that every bit of power and preparation would soon decide survival once again.
That was why he needed more tailed beast chakra, as much as possible.
And this time, he'd chosen the farthest.
The Five-Tails—Kokuo.
Its jinchūriki, Han of Iwagakure, was famous in his past life's knowledge for one thing: Boil Release, Unrivaled Strength.
A power that allowed the user to superheat their chakra to boiling levels, releasing high-pressure steam that granted explosive bursts of physical strength and speed.
It vaporized water and ice on contact and turned the user's body into a living pressure engine.
It was the perfect match for Ryusei's current fighting style, taijutsu, close combat, and the Eight Gates.
Combined with Tsunade's chakra-enhanced techniques and regenerative vitality, the synergy was almost too perfect.
With that chakra added to his arsenal, his physicality would reach even more absurd levels.
"The more tails, the stronger the beast, a common knowledge in my past world, sure,"
Ryusei thought as he moved silently through the rocky valleys.
"But only up to a point. The difference doesn't really honestly matter that much until the Eight and especially Nine."
And those two were far too risky to target now.
The Five-Tails, however, was different. Manageable. Useful.
He smirked faintly under his breath as the wind whipped past him.
"Boil Release… steam and muscle. Perfect fuel for my body."
He was gone in the next instant, his mind already playing out the steps of the hunt to come.
Ryusei had already dispatched several sensory clones across the region, spreading them through what was left of the front lines to scour the terrain for any sign of Han's chakra.
As he slowly waited for the initial feedback from his sensory clones, Ryusei thought about why he was more confident than ever this time.
Han wasn't like the two Kirigakure jinchūriki he had stolen from before.
Those two had simply overextended, made themselves vulnerable, and paid the price.
Han, on the other hand, was one of Iwa's key elites, probably heavily guarded and rarely left without supervision.
This time, Ryusei would have to hunt him down entirely on his own.
But confidence wasn't the same as arrogance. He had reasons.
In the last six months, his progress had been enormous.
He could already open 5 of the 8 Gates.
It wasn't just willpower, talent, or endurance.
His Byakugan-based internal monitoring let him train smarter, not just harder, allowing him to passively refine his form, then actively control every cell, muscle fiber, and chakra coil in real time whenever he opened the gates.
The other key was the synergy between that system and Creation Rebirth, which he had completely mastered from Tsunade.
The technique not only allowed him to heal faster from the gates' strain and maintain them longer in actual combat with less mental exhaustion, too, but it also drastically shortened his training cycles, letting him recover fully and start again within just a few hours of heavy use.
He then further used many shadow clones daily to accelerate the process, dissecting and re-experiencing every gate activation from multiple perspectives.
Combined with Tsunade's encyclopedic medical and anatomical knowledge and the analytical instruments he had in his and Kanae's laboratory, to test literally anything he ever wanted, Ryusei was practically training like a scientist, always experimenting on himself.
That was why he reached the fifth gate so fast, and with far greater stability than Guy and Duy ever had when around their use.
Still, he hadn't felt the need to create new taijutsu moves yet.
The techniques he already had scaled perfectly with each gate, and it was only from the sixth onward that the exponential power curve truly began.
That was when he would start developing his own advanced gate techniques, perhaps based on Asakujaku and Hirudora, or completely new variations tailored to his creativity and the rest of his arsenal.
Actually, the Yin Seal and Creation Rebirth combination would only grow more terrifyingly effective in the higher stages of the Gates.
In the future, it could allow Ryusei to achieve what Guy, Duy, and Lee never could: extend the duration of the Eighth Gate, or even allow him to keep his life after using it.
Right now, he could already remain in his best, Fifth Gate for as long as his chakra reserves boosted with the Yin Seal allowed, since Creation Rebirth could heal the damage in real time.
It also drastically reduced the recovery "payback" time afterward, leaving only minimal fatigue once the process ended.
This was the "hax" synergy Ryusei had envisioned from the very beginning, the perfect, almost unfair, and otherworldly blend he'd planned since the moment he transmigrated.
The reason he knew, right away, that Tsunade's techniques and the Eight Gates would be one of the biggest ultimate keys to climbing to the top.
He still wasn't sure whether, in the future, he could survive the full opening of the Eighth Gate. Theoretically, it was possible, maybe a fifty-fifty chance, but he wasn't reckless enough to try and ever hope for it blindly.
He would only perhaps test it slowly once he reached the Seventh Gate under the precise control of his Byakugan's internal vision; however, even that had limits, and he would never force it fully or more unless his life was in danger from some external enemy attackers.
The mental model was simple.
The higher the gate, the greater the tearing of the body in that instant.
Each one inflicted catastrophic strain, bones cracking, muscles tearing, nerves burning from the inside out.
The pain alone made it impossible for normal humans to think clearly, let alone fight efficiently.
For the best users, the first few gates could be held for hours, the later ones only minutes, before the body completely broke down.
Recovery afterward took hours or days, leaving most users weaker and perhaps bedridden.
Ryusei could now stretch that time drastically.
He could endure the pain longer, stay lucid, and move freely even under extreme strain.
Therefore, squeeze more performance out of any opening.
A gate that Lee or Guy could maintain for a few minutes, Ryusei could potentially hold for dozens, what they could hold on for hours, he could for entire days, fueled by the Yin Seal's chakra and the continuous regeneration of Creation Rebirth.
And beyond endurance, there was control.
With his Byakugan constantly analyzing every chakra coil, every cell, every tendon, he could maintain fine control even while his body burned under the Gates.
Unlike others, he could still use ninjutsu, something traditionally impossible, since the Gates distorted the inner network so violently that external chakra release became unstable.
The true difference Ryusei aimed for, however, was even greater.
He wanted to make the Eighth Gate not a one-time suicide power, but a reusable trump card, a controlled inferno that he could enter and survive repeatedly.
That was his ultimate vision, the final cheat.
Still, he knew better than to treat it as a natural power-up. Even Creation Rebirth wasn't free.
Every use accelerated cellular division, shortening his lifespan.
Without evolving his essence, he would simply burn through his years faster and die younger.
And surviving the Eighth Gate, if it was even possible, would demand more chakra than anything else in existence.
It would almost certainly drain near the entire Yin Seal, if he even had enough, and force his cells into rapid division, and age him decades in minutes.
That was why Ryusei saw the Gates not as strength, but as his final fallback, his least-worst option if ever trapped by overwhelming enemies.
Even the Seventh Gate, beyond safe and more natural limits, carried enough danger to give him those same problems to a bit lesser effect.
In the end, he viewed them as the same as every other tool in his arsenal, something to exploit only when survival demanded it.
Especially the envisioned final Inner Gate itself.
He would only ever use it if cornered with no other way out, when death was already certain.
In that kind of situation, burning everything for one last chance was simply the better, or way worse, alternative.
That alone would have been enough to always make him more confident nowadays, but there was even more.
During this same period, he had also made immense progress in elemental control.
Thanks to his transmigration, he always possessed the potential for two advanced releases beyond one kekkei genkai, one kekkei tōta.
After months of study using his Byakugan and soul-seeking techniques, he had finally discovered what they were more precisely.
He couldn't use them yet in combat, only observe their structure and flow, but what he saw was beyond anything known in the world, and far more powerful than he'd imagined.
Both were entirely original, abilities that had never appeared in the history of shinobi.
His spatial techniques had also reached new heights.
He had completely mastered the "Slug Flying Raijin," allowing him to instantly teleport through Katsuyu's linked clones.
Actually, his cooperation technique with Katsuyu, their version of instant teleportation, was, in Ryusei's opinion, far from being comparable to the actual Flying Raijin. It worked, yes, but it was slower and less reliable.
There was always a delay. To activate it, Ryusei first had to sensory locate and telepathically signal a specific Katsuyu fragment, then wait for her to perform the reverse summoning.
That sequence alone created a noticeable lag of up to a few seconds, depending on the distance, and that was the key in higher-level battles against Kage-level opponents.
The concept was similar to Minato's in principle: both relied on pre-placed points.
Minato spread his markings with kunai, potentially using clones to do it even faster, across the battlefield, while Ryusei summoned one large Katsuyu, which then divided into countless smaller fragments that dispersed across the terrain.
In that sense, his setup efficiency was comparable, maybe even better, since the slugs were also completely autonomous, very durable, fast, and covert.
But the disadvantage appeared during use. Minato's Flying Raijin was instantaneous, one seal, one thought, and he was there.
Ryusei's version required the slug's cooperation, which meant reaction time, signaling delay, and chakra synchronization.
That made short-range combat use nearly impossible against a high-speed opponent like Minato himself, for example.
The real limitation, however, came with duration and scale.
Minato's seals lasted indefinitely, and not many things could seemingly destroy them.
Once marked, a location stayed marked forever unless removed directly by Minato.
Minato could easily leave such spells on the opponent's body in order to carry out close-range sneak attacks later, such as during the battle against the A and B brothers.
Katsuyu's fragments, on the other hand, couldn't survive long away from the main body.
They would naturally dissolve or disperse after a while, Ryusei learned eventually, while being disappointed.
Ryusei confirmed this directly from Katsuyu herself.
It also meant that he couldn't just scatter fragments across the world and teleport anywhere at will.
The fragments simply couldn't endure isolation long enough.
So, they also weren't suitable as warning or alarm systems like his suppressed clones; they decayed too fast to serve as stable sensors.
He had already accepted that there was simply no way to telepathically contact them across such vast distances.
In fact, he couldn't even leave them behind with preset instructions or autonomous triggers to summon him as an early warning system, because they would dissolve long before any signal could ever reach him.
That was why, for instance, around the Daimyō palace, he left his own hidden clones as a failsafe to summon his real body, alongside Pakura there, instead of a slug fragment.
There were other clear, crucial differences, too. Minato could teleport anything, people, weapons, even Tailed Beast Bombs, because his seals created stable dimensional anchors.
Katsuyu's teleportation was just an advanced form of reverse summoning, a contract technique at its core.
It could move Ryusei, yes, but not external mass or energy projectiles.
Maybe it could summon people, too, Ryusei had once asked her about that.
Katsuyu had explained that it was technically possible, but only under rare conditions, when both chakras were perfectly synchronized and they were in direct physical contact at the moment of activation. In such a state, the summoning contract could be "tricked" into treating them as a single entity.
Even then, the process was slower, less precise, and far riskier than Minato's seals. It could also only transport them to wherever the connected, distant main fragment resided, deep within Katsuyu's Sage Region.
Useful as a last-resort escape method, maybe, but hardly practical for coordinated maneuvers or combat strategies with elite allies like Minato's Flying Raijin allowed.
Overall, it was a clever and important workaround, a creative use of an ancient summoning system, but it wasn't Flying Raijin.
Yet, if he managed to absorb Kokuō's chakra, Ryusei was still certain he would cement the High Kage level, if he already hadn't, or even more, despite turning only fourteen recently.
However, he also knew that the remaining three gates would take much longer to master than the first five, since they were such game-changers, bordering on the suicidal for most.
However, Ryusei was already preparing, brainstorming possible techniques, even their names, that he could develop once he broke through to those levels.
Meanwhile, his Yin Seal had also matured beautifully.
It now served not only as a chakra reservoir but as a combat tool, usable for micro healing, deep ninjutsu chakra reserves, or amplifying his taijutsu thanks to more chakra enhancement potential, as well as the aforementioned constant healing cycles.
His chakra-enhanced strength, Tsunade's signature style, was already nearly perfected, and his Creation Rebirth was mastered fully, functioning at her level in both efficiency and control.
In short, Ryusei's confidence didn't come from his mindset or the memories of his past life.
It came from reality.
At his age, with his speed of growth and depth of planning, there were already none in the world who could stand equal to him.
Yet that was precisely why he kept pushing forward, because true strength was never enough, and the moment he stopped seeking more, someone else would catch up.