The rooftop chat ended quickly.
Sarutobi Hiruzen pushed Haori back to the ward, soothed Naruto and Sasuke with a few words, then hurried away.
The village had just suffered an attack, and as Hokage he still had a mountain of things to deal with.
He had to visit injured students and teachers, comfort the families of those who had died, and provide financial compensation.
He had to calm the shaken villagers and talk up the students' bravery during the incident.
And finally, he had to demand accountability from Kumogakure.
The shinobi world had only enjoyed a short and fragile peace. No one truly wanted to spark a full-scale war.
So-called accountability was, in truth, mostly haggling and demanding reparations, plus some small retaliatory ANBU operations.
Assassinate one or two famous Kumogakure ninja.
Blow up a few of their key economic facilities.
That was about as far as it would go.
After all, Konoha's actual losses were not great.
Even if he had the mind to fan the flames of war, the villagers who had not personally suffered in this incident would not agree to marching into battle.
On all of that, Haori had no opinion.
And even if she did, it was not like anyone would listen.
She might be the one who had actually borne the brunt of the incident, and the key to resolving it, but the game between two great nations was not something a small piece like her could move.
Being able to walk away with the Lightning Release Chakra Mode already made her more than satisfied.
Yotsuki Isao had relied on the defense and reflexes of his Lightning Release Armor to bully her so hard she could not properly bring out any of her techniques. She had been coveting that power ever since.
After memorizing the training method for the Lightning Release Armor on the rooftop, her desire only grew stronger.
B-rank ninjutsu: Lightning Release Chakra Mode, also known as the Lightning Release Armor.
A secret technique of the Yotsuki clan in Kumogakure, originally developed by the Second Raikage, later completed and refined by the Third and Fourth Raikage into a terrifyingly powerful jutsu.
Yes. In its pure form, Lightning Release Chakra Mode was a ninjutsu, not taijutsu.
Only when combined with matching techniques like Hell Stab or Lightning Slicer Horizontal Thousand Blade Dance did it become nin-taijutsu.
Unfortunately.
Whether the Yamanaka clan ninja had lacked skill, or Yotsuki Isao's brain cells had simply died off, the key portions of those supporting nin-taijutsu were heavily damaged.
If she wanted to reconstruct them, the difficulty would be no different from developing a brand-new technique from scratch.
She could only give up on that for now.
Thankfully, Isao had spent many years cultivating the Lightning Armor itself, so that part had been preserved almost perfectly, allowing Haori to glimpse the essence of the Lightning Release Chakra Mode.
Lightning Release Chakra Mode completely overturned the traditional idea of Lightning Release. No longer was lightning simply fired outward to blow up the enemy. Instead, it was wrapped tightly around the body for defense.
A breakthrough ninjutsu.
The principle was to first convert chakra into Lightning Release, then repeatedly stimulate the body with that lightning. This strengthened the body while also building up resistance to lightning.
The greater your resistance to lightning, the more power you could circulate around your body without harming yourself.
In practice, this meant a full-spectrum boost to offense, speed, and defense.
In other words, it was a secret art that weaponized resistance.
It turned the Yotsuki clan's abnormal resistance to lightning into a complete physical buff through special methods, a jutsu tailored specifically to their unique bodies.
No matter how hard others tried, they would find it difficult to reach the heights of the Yotsuki.
If, during the initial stages of training, you misjudged even once and let your Lightning Release flow along your veins straight into your heart, death would be an instant matter, with no chance for rescue.
So the scroll that recorded the technique clearly stated: this secret art was borderline unusable. It was recommended for sealing into the Scroll of Seals, and any attempt to train it must be done under expert supervision, preferably with medical personnel present to prevent accidents.
The moment she read that line, Haori understood why Sarutobi Hiruzen had handed the technique over so easily.
Her body was tough enough to endure the assault of Lightning Release.
Put this in someone else's hands and not only would they fail to master it, they would probably die for their trouble. A total loss.
He might even be planning to use her as a test subject. Once she mastered it, they could let others follow the path she carved out.
But even if Haori saw straight through his scheme, there was no way she would let a secret technique like this sit and gather dust.
Sarutobi Hiruzen looked upright and righteous, but his methods were all "open schemes" you could not refute.
His words sounded impeccable.
"Old man did not pocket your spoils" left her with absolutely nothing to nitpick. If she had not seen through his intentions, she might even have felt a little grateful.
And that offer of apprenticeship was the sugar coating around the shell.
Using ninjutsu and power to tempt her, while actually preparing to bundle the full Will of Fire indoctrination package on top.
At the same time, he could monitor the growth of her strength from start to finish.
If she ever showed signs of slipping out of his control, or displayed any behavior contrary to that so-called Will of Fire, his attitude would likely turn much colder.
In just a few short exchanges on the rooftop, the traps had been layered one over another.
The most terrifying part was that there was no malice in the emotions above his head.
That was what truly made her uneasy.
It meant these methods were already etched into his bones. They did not generate malice because planning all this was as natural and casual to him as eating a small piece of bread for breakfast.
Even Haori had been fooled at first.
When she saw his bright, sincere goodwill, she had briefly entertained the stupid idea of revealing her Byakugan to prove her identity.
The instant that thought surfaced, she jolted awake.
Only then did she peel back the logic behind every "kind" gesture Hiruzen had shown her.
Once she realized that even the Nine Tails' ability was not omnipotent, Haori decided to go with the flow.
She pretended to be nothing more than a slightly precocious child and happily swallowed down the sugar coating the Hokage offered.
As for the heavy shell hidden underneath.
The root of all these problems was lack of strength.
And violence was the simplest way to solve problems.
As long as she forged her body to the point where an artillery shell exploding inside her stomach could not hurt her, then no matter how many sugar-coated shells Hiruzen fired, they would all turn into nourishment for her growth.
Now the Lightning Release Chakra Mode was in hand.
The nature transformation of Lightning Release was a field she had never touched before.
After wind and water, she was about to begin training in a third chakra nature.
Fortunately, she would soon have a Kage-level teacher on hand, and she could get training methods for Lightning Release directly from the Third Hokage.
She could even knock out the remaining fire and earth natures along the way.
Thinking of that.
This sugar coating really was sweet.
Very soon.
The third day after the Kumogakure attack arrived.
Ward 203.
Sasuke sat curled up near the head of his bed, locked in his own world.
On the next bed, Naruto was full of energy, standing in a horse stance on the mattress, throwing air punches at Sasuke's backside.
Haori sat cross-legged on her bed, eyes closed, quietly sensing her own body.
Thump.
Thump.
Thick crimson veins bulged and twisted. Her fist-sized heart beat heavily and slowly.
Each powerful contraction gave Haori an inexplicable sense of tension.
It felt like an invisible hand had wrapped around her heart and was determined to squeeze out every last drop of blood and chakra from within.
Deep in the organ lay a seed of chakra, like a shard of precious amethyst. With each beat of her heart, it flickered bright and dim, radiating a mysterious violet glow.
After devouring the Nine Tails' chakra that night, her chakra had undergone a complete transformation. The chakra core that had once been a deep ocean blue had become a noble, enigmatic violet.
The changes in both quantity and quality were even more striking.
Before, her chakra reserves were around the level of an ordinary jonin.
Now, her normal chakra volume was only slightly lower than the aged Yotsuki Isao's, roughly equivalent to a somewhat weaker elite jonin.
The quality, however, had soared far beyond his.
Using the Byakugan, she did a few simple tests and discovered that when she performed Wind Release nature transformation with this new chakra, the power was more than double the old version.
If she counted each thread of chakra fired from a single tenketsu during Rotation as one unit, then previously, one unit of Wind Release chakra could reach a little over three meters.
Now, with the newborn chakra, that same unit could reach nearly eight meters.
Its destructive force had increased as well, but that was less practical than the added range.
For tough opponents with strong defenses, a single thread of chakra would struggle to pierce them, even if its power doubled.
For weaker targets, human flesh was fragile to begin with. Whether the power increased or not, a clean cut was a clean cut.
At the same time.
The Nine Tails was known for its "infinite chakra" not only because of its vast reserves, but also its astonishing regeneration.
The amethyst-like chakra core within her heart might have inherited some of those traits.
The speed at which it produced chakra was terrifying.
The chakra she spent activating the Byakugan was not even enough to offset what the core regenerated each second.
If she kept the power of her techniques at their previous level, her sustained combat duration would increase three to four times.
If she were dropped into Training Field Zero again now, even if she slaughtered every beast in the entire area, she would not run out of chakra.
If she had used this new chakra to unleash Void-Cutting that night, Yotsuki Isao would not even have had the chance for a last counterattack. He would have been shredded to pieces by the storm raging inside his body.
Beyond changes in quantity and quality, her chakra had gained a new function: healing.
Over the course of a day and two nights, combined with Shikotsumyaku, it had dragged her from the brink of death back to peak condition.
Under the hospital gown, bandages still wrapped tightly across her chest, but the skin beneath had completely healed. There was not even a trace of a scar on the pale flesh.
She had not removed the bandages yet, worried that such a shocking recovery speed would frighten the doctors and nurses who cared for her.
She planned to wait until she was home.
Her chakra had changed drastically. Her body had not been idle either.
Haori kept her eyes shut.
Her ocular power flowed throughout her body.
Her flesh sang with joy as always, but the bones that supported it now felt faintly dead.
She focused her vision on her skeleton.
The once healthy, ivory-white bones now bore ring upon ring of ashen markings.
They looked like ancient bones dug from a long-dead corpse, completely lacking the subtle vitality a living body should have.
Their weight was ridiculous.
Her bones had always been unusually dense, weighing seven to eight times more than normal bones of the same size. Now their weight had increased again. Their density and hardness surpassed steel of the same mass.
She did not have a scale, so she did not know exactly how much heavier she had become. But the weight of her bones alone would not be less than two hundred kilograms.
She had already broken the wheelchair Hiruzen had borrowed for her from the hospital.
She had asked a nurse about it. Those standard medical wheelchairs could normally bear up to one hundred and fifty kilograms.
Right now.
The blood vessels and muscles attached to her bones no longer clung tightly to them.
Under the stimulation of her ocular power, the living muscle fibers shrank away from the gray bones like weeds shriveling under a powerful herbicide.
It was the instinctive terror of prey facing a natural enemy.
"So this is Ashen Killing Bone?"
Haori frowned.
This was not good news.
The first stage of Shikotsumyaku was simply controlling the body, but nowhere near as strong as hers. It could boost adrenaline, suppress pain, and provide a bit of self-healing.
That stage of Shikotsumyaku was nearly harmless, so long as you did not let yourself get injured too badly and burn away your life force.
The second stage was her and Kimimaro's current state.
There was already a risk of the bloodline disease bursting out of control.
Judging from the combined observations of Byakugan and Shikotsumyaku, she guessed:
Perhaps the bloodline's strain and damage to the body was immense, requiring a Rikudō-tier, life-saturated physique to use safely.
Just like how the Mangekyou Sharingan needed Hashirama's cells to mitigate the ocular damage from each use.
Now, things were changing again.
The amount of Nine Tails chakra that had entered her body had been too great, far surpassing her own reserves.
If she had tried to swallow it all, the imbalance would have forced her chakra to morph into that of a tailed beast.
She had done some rough calculations of her safe limit.
The formula was something like this: the total amount of tailed beast chakra inside her could not exceed her own chakra volume.
In other words, the mixed chakra of Three Tails and Nine Tails combined could only account for up to fifty percent of her overall chakra.
The excess had been expelled from the core.
As a result, most of the Nine Tails chakra brimming with life force had been devoured by Shikotsumyaku instead.
Under the relentless stimulus of that chakra, her Shikotsumyaku might already be evolving toward a higher stage.
The more it evolved, the higher the demand on her life force would become.
Could her body truly withstand such a powerful bloodline?
Worried, Haori opened her eyes.
Konoha Hospital was crowded, and too many eyes were about.
It was not the right place to investigate Shikotsumyaku's evolution in depth. That could wait until after she was discharged.
Besides.
Her Byakugan had already seen a crowd headed toward their ward.
"Hsss… hsssss…"
On the side, Naruto was drenched in sweat, breathing hard through his nose as he stamped on the mattress and hammered the air with punches.
His fists left afterimages.
"Enough training. I have something to tell you."
Haori waved him over, halting his exercise.
He dropped his stance, wiped his forehead, and his damp blond hair drooped down in a crooked fringe.
"What is it?"
"What you saw that night, you are not allowed to tell anyone."
As the ward's only "third party," Sasuke quietly held his breath and pricked up his ears beneath his blanket.
"Why?"
"No reason."
Haori raised a fist.
"If you talk, I will beat you up."
Remembering Haori's terrifying appearance that night, her face twisted, her mouth bloody, devouring flesh like a beast, Naruto's neck shrank.
"I… I get it!"
Tap tap tap.
A confusing mix of footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, soon drowned out by lively voices.
Knock knock knock.
The door rattled.
Click.
All three of them turned toward the entrance.
They saw the Ino–Shika–Cho trio, Kiba, Shino, Hinata, and Sakura at the head of an entire Sasuke support battalion, a whole crowd of more than ten kids pouring in.
Their arms were full of fruit and flower baskets.
The spacious ward suddenly felt packed.
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