…
Murakami's eyes fluttered open in the late afternoon.
He sat up slowly, blinking once, and ran his habitual inventory.
There was no mental lag, but something was off.
Not wrong, exactly, just... incomplete.
He turned his attention inward and found the moon at roughly seventy percent of its normal luminescence.
It was still recovering, but not recovered.
Then he found M-1 and M-2.
Both were still active and working.
He watched them for a moment.
M-1 was in the rocky terrain moving through the Mountain Embracing Technique's principles, and M-2 cycling through variations of the Shockwave Jutsu.
'So they're still going at it.'
The pieces assembled themselves quickly.
Mental clones were formed from spiritual energy, that much he'd established when he'd created them. But formation wasn't the only cost. Maintaining their existence cost energy. Their practice cost energy.
Every iteration M-1 ran on the Mountain Embracing Technique, every variation M-2 tested on the Shockwave Jutsu, drew incrementally against the same reserves the moon represented.
He recovered faster than they expended, hence seventy percent rather than zero, but their continuous consumption had established a ceiling his recovery couldn't breach while they remained active.
He'd be regenerating against a drain that never stopped.
He noted it without frustration.
It was useful data about his system's limits.
Clones sustained over long periods needed to be accounted for in the recovery calculation, not treated as a free parallel process.
He reached into the mindscape and dispelled them both.
And just as he did, the experience they had gathered over the hours hit him immediately, all at once.
M-1's accumulated iterations on the Mountain Embracing Technique arrived first.
The technique wasn't a single motion applied at scale.
That had been his fundamental mistake during the battle, he'd treated it as one large intention pushed into the ground all at once, which was why it had consumed everything he had.
M-1's repetitions had mapped something different: the technique was a cascade.
A sequence of smaller, interlocking intentions, each one triggering the next the way one falling stone dislodged another.
The first intention didn't need to move the mountain, it only needed to move enough to make the second intention easier, which made the third easier still, until the accumulated momentum did the work that brute force had nearly killed him to accomplish alone.
The chakra cost wasn't reduced, it was distributed across the sequence, no single moment demanding more than the pathway could sustain.
And the medium wasn't raw chakra output, it was the threads.
Each one a precise channel carrying a single intention directly into the earth's structure, passing the cascade cleanly rather than hemorrhaging force into the surrounding ground.
Another amazing aspect of the technique was that the cost of the technique wasn't fixed.
It scaled with how many threads he could engage simultaneously, and right now, he could create hundreds.
He could reproduce it now. Not perfectly. But with enough control that it wouldn't leave him on the ground afterward.
He didn't know what tier the technique was, but it definitely surpassed C-rank.
He quietly filed that away as the wave of experience continued.
M-2's findings carried a different quality, less like mapping and more like elimination.
The Shockwave Jutsu's inefficiency had been in its release point, exactly as he'd suspected, but M-2's iterations had found something he hadn't anticipated: the lateral dispersion wasn't entirely wasteful.
At the right angle, the bleed-off could be redirected, turning the technique's primary weakness into a secondary effect that operated simultaneously with the main release.
One chakra expenditure, two directional outputs.
The range tightened on the primary wave while the redirected dispersion created a wider, lower-force field that could disrupt footing and formation rather than causing direct damage.
Murakami opened his eyes. '...Have I finally found my unique cheat?'
The question sat there for a moment, turning over on its own.
Mental clones. Formed from spiritual energy. Capable of independent practice. Returning their accumulated experience on dispersal.
In the time it had taken him to sleep off a headache, M-1 and M-2 had run more iterations on those two techniques than he could have managed in a week of conventional training.
He was quiet for another moment.
'...Or was I a genius all along?'
He let that thought exist briefly, considered it with the same even attention he gave everything else, and then set it aside without answering it.
The distinction, he decided, could wait.
He had somewhere to be.
…
He slid the door open and stepped inside.
Hina's office had changed since the morning, the scrolls from earlier had been cleared to one side, replaced by a considerably more organized spread.
She looked up as he entered, this time without startlement.
"You're late," she said.
"By how much?"
She glanced at the window, where the last of the evening light was making its exit. "Twenty minutes."
Murakami settled into the chair across from her desk without comment. Twenty minutes past evening was still evening.
Hina let it go and reached for a scroll at the top of the stack.
"Hunter tiers first." She set it in front of him. "The classification system isn't official, it's more of a practical ranking that developed organically among hunting communities over time."
"Five tiers in total."
Murakami nodded and picked up the scroll.
"Tier One hunters take small game and docile beasts. Nothing that fights back with any real intent." She moved through the explanation with the tone of someone who had already processed the information once and was now simply transmitting it.
"Tier Two handles mid-sized predators like wolves, bear variants, the kind of beast that requires preparation and some skill to bring down cleanly."
"Tier Three?" Murakami asked as he glanced through the details of the scroll.
"Large predators."
"They are territorial beasts with enough strength and aggression to kill an unprepared shinobi. These hunters operate in teams more often than alone and have enough experience to read beast behavior before it becomes a problem."
"Tier Four." Murakami nodded and rolled the scroll and placed it back on the table.
"Rare."
"Hunters at this level take on beasts that most shinobi would consider mission targets rather than quarry. Chakra-sensitive creatures, armored variants, beasts with natural abilities that require specific counters." She paused.
"There are perhaps a dozen operating in the Land of Fire at any given time."
"And Tier Five?" Murakami found this information quite interesting.
Like many other things he has to discover by himself, things like these weren't mentioned in the original work as they were irrelevant to the main story.
Hina was quiet for a moment. "Theoretical, mostly. The classification exists but confirmed Tier Five hunters are almost impossible to verify because the beasts they'd need to take down consistently to qualify are the kind most villages assign full squads to handle." She looked at him evenly. "I mention it for completeness."
Murakami nodded once. "Beast grades."
He wasn't about to be in awe of hunters of that tier. Anyone with such capabilities would be Kage level by Shinobi standards.
Definitely not what could be found just by looking.
She swapped the scroll for the next one. "Six grades, ascending. Grade One through Three cover everything a Tier One or Two hunters would target, ranging from small game to mid-range predators, nothing with notable physical qualities beyond what any healthy wild animal possesses."
She tapped the lower half of the page. "Grade Four is where it becomes relevant to what you're looking for. Grade Four beasts have physical qualities that distinguish them from normal specimens."
"Oh?" Murakami raised a brow at that.
Hina nodded and continued. "They possess denser muscle structure, higher natural vitality, occasionally rudimentary chakra sensitivity."
"The meat carries a measurably higher nutritional density than anything below it."
Murakami's interest was fully piqued now. "Grade Five?"
"Beasts with active physical adaptations like natural armor, enhanced regeneration, and chakra-infused biology in some cases."
"The nutritional quality is significantly higher, but procurement is considerably more dangerous." She set the document down.
"Grade Six is the upper limit of the natural food chain outside of tailed beasts and their immediate relatives. Hunters who can take Grade Six quarry consistently don't exist below Tier Four."
Murakami was quiet for a moment, turning the entire framework over.
Grade Four was the minimum threshold worth pursuing if he wanted results, anything below it would offer no meaningful improvement over what he was already eating.
Grade Five would be the real target once a stable supply line was established.
Grade Six was a future consideration, not a current one.
"The hunter contact," he said.
Hina reached for a third scroll, smaller than the others and unfurled it. On the scroll was a name, a rough operating territory, and a brief description.
"His name is Ryouta. A tier three hunter, operating primarily in the forests northeast of Konoha. He has a reputation for taking commissions at the upper end of his tier and delivering consistently." She paused. "He's not Tier Four. But he's the most capable Tier Three contact I could locate on short notice, and he has experience with Grade Four quarry."
"Can he move to Grade Five?"
Hina paused for a moment as she gave it some thought.
"Possibly, on a good hunt and with the right preparation. However, I wouldn't make it a standing expectation yet." She looked at him. "He's available for a meeting. I can arrange it for whenever suits you."
"Tomorrow morning." Murakami said immediately.
Hina made a note. "I'll send word tonight." She set her brush down and looked at him. "Is there anything else?"
Murakami glanced at the cleared scrolls stacked to one side, then back at her.
"You need an assistant," he said.
The look Hina gave him suggested this observation was neither new nor welcome.
"Goodnight, Murakami."
He stood. "I'm serious."
"Goodnight."
He sighed, then turned and left.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
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