…
The forest above the Hokage Mountain was exactly what he'd expected.
Dense and undisturbed, the kind of growth that accumulated over decades without anyone finding reason to clear it.
Murakami found a natural clearing where the tree line thinned enough to give him room to work without immediately destroying anything he wasn't intending to.
He stood at its center for a moment and took in a deep breath.
Nature's air was fresh as always, the morning light was crisp on the skim, his chakra was in full reserves and there were no time constraints.
These were good conditions.
Without hesitation, he started with the Shockwave Jutsu.
In its original form, the technique was simple, a concentrated burst of compressed chakra released from his palm, expanding outward.
The problem has always been the waste of chakra. Too much of the force bled sideways, losing itself in directions that served no purpose.
And the further the target, the weaker the effect.
That has always been the technique's weak point. No matter how much he improved it, he still couldn't bring its destructive effect beyond a few meters.
M-2 had found the fix.
Murakami raised his right hand, palm forward, and built the charge the way he always had.
Chakra pooled at the center of his palm, compressing as the pressure built.
Then he applied the adjustment.
At the moment of release, instead of letting the force go all at once, he split it with the larger portion driving straight forward, the smaller portion redirected deliberately outward in a wide arc rather than allowed to bleed away uselessly.
He released both at the same time.
The larger burst drove forward in a tighter, denser line than anything the original technique had managed.
It covered roughly thirty meters before its force finally gave out, hitting the tree line at the clearing's far edge with a crack loud enough to send birds scattering in every direction.
Two mid-sized trees leaned hard, roots partially torn from the soil.
The smaller portion's effect swept outward a moment later, wider but softer. It was not destructive on its own but enough to flatten the undergrowth in a ring around him and strip leaves from the nearest branches.
Murakami took in the sight with noticeable excitement in his eyes. He had managed to create two outcomes from one use of chakra.
He lowered his hand and immediately schooled his expression back to neutral.
He turned away from the damage before it could develop into anything more undignified than that.
The primary burst had more range than before, significantly more. The secondary sweep had done exactly what M-2 had mapped out. Not damage, but disruption.
It had the kind of effect that changed the shape of a fight without ending it.
He ran it twice more, adjusting the split slightly each time, reading how the force changed with each variation.
By the third attempt, the balance felt right.
Above C-rank now, but not yet B, just sitting somewhere in between, which was exactly where M-2's findings had suggested it would land with the right adjustment.
He turned the implications over methodically.
At point blank, the refined burst carried enough concentrated force to shatter bone outright.
A civilian or academy student hit with it directly would be launched off their feet and unlikely to get back up without significant medical attention.
Against a fresh genin with no physical reinforcement to speak of, the result would be similar, the body simply didn't have the conditioning to absorb that kind of impact without consequence.
Older, more experienced genin were a different calculation.
Someone who'd been training seriously for two to three years, with decent chakra circulation through their body, might take it and stay conscious… hurt badly, arm broken if they blocked, ribs cracked if they didn't.
It was manageable damage for someone with real physical conditioning. Definitely fight-altering, even if not fight-ending.
Chunin were where it started to get complicated.
A chunin who saw it coming had enough chakra control to reinforce their footing and brace, which meant the impact would hurt rather than launch.
At close range, a physically capable chunin could potentially push through it.
At point blank, even a chunin would feel it in a way they wouldn't enjoy.
Jonin were the honest ceiling.
Anyone at that level with active chakra reinforcement running through their body would take the hit, absorb the worst of it, and keep moving.
It would definitely register as damage but it wouldn't stop them.
Which meant the technique's value at its current level was exactly what it had always been; anti-personnel, most effective against opponents at or below his own tier, and reliable as an opener or a finisher rather than a standalone solution against serious threats.
The secondary sweep complicated that calculation slightly in his favor.
A jonin could take the primary burst and keep moving.
A jonin who'd just had their footing disrupted by the secondary arc while simultaneously processing the primary hit was a jonin operating on a narrower set of options than they'd started with.
That gap, however small it was, was something he could work with.
He filed the ratio away and turned his attention to the ground.
The Mountain Embracing Technique was a different matter entirely.
He crouched and pressed his fingertips against the earth.
Threads shot out instantly, hundreds of them, spreading through the soil in every direction like cracks through glass, each one like a live wire carrying his intent pushing deeper, further, wider than the last.
He found his limit in seconds, then he pulled and the ground trembled and rose.
It was slow at first, a wide section of the surface, broader than what he'd raised on the mountain pass but lower and more controlled.
The earth surged upward in a wide formation, stone and soil climbing over each other as the ground folded itself into a compact hill that hadn't existed thirty seconds ago.
Trees rode the rising earth partway before snapping and toppling sideways and roots tore free from the ground.
The formation settled with a deep, grinding finality, a solid mass of compressed earth and broken stone standing roughly five meters at its peak and spanning nearly twenty meters across.
Smaller than what he'd raised on the mountain pass in a blind and genius discovery.
But that one had cost him everything he had.
This one hadn't.
He released the threads and straightened.
He checked his reserves.
His chakra reserves were down significantly at roughly sixty percent remaining.
He had enough left to fight if he needed to but not enough to use the technique again without rest.
His spiritual energy was the heavier cost. The moon sat at just above forty percent.
More than half gone on a single use.
He straightened slowly, breathing measured, and looked at the formation with the focused attention of someone taking honest stock rather than admiring their own work.
He straightened slowly and looked at the formation.
The first time he'd used this technique, one use had emptied him completely and left him unconscious down on a battlefield.
Today, it had taken roughly half his spiritual reserves for a more controlled but wider result.
Still expensive but survivable and usable.
He turned the combat implications over methodically.
Against civilians and academy students, the Mountain Embracing Technique was essentially a finishing move that didn't need to be finished.
Anyone caught within its range who wasn't actively reinforcing their body with chakra would be buried under rising earth and crushed by the weight of the formation closing above them.
There was no getting out of it if you didn't see it coming.
Fresh genin were a similar story.
The earth didn't care how fast you were or how good your taijutsu was.
If the ground rose beneath you without warning, your options reduced to one: get out of the range before it closed.
A genin who hadn't developed strong chakra sensing wouldn't feel the threads spreading through the soil until it was already too late.
Older, more experienced genin complicated things slightly.
Someone with decent chakra control and enough situational awareness might feel the ground shift in the technique's early stages and react in time.
Keyword; Might.
The window between the first tremble and the earth fully rising was somewhere between five to eight seconds, enough for someone fast, alert and already moving to get out of range.
Not enough for someone who hesitated even for a moment or hadn't developed the instinct to read the ground beneath their feet as a potential threat.
Chunin were where the technique's current limits started showing.
A chunin with strong earth or water affinity might counter the rising formation with their own technique before it fully developed.
A physically capable chunin with good chakra reinforcement could potentially break through a section of the formation before it consolidated, buying an escape route.
The technique was still dangerous to them, being partially caught in a rising earth formation was never a comfortable position regardless of rank, but a skilled chunin wasn't helpless against it.
Jonin were the honest ceiling, same as the Shockwave Jutsu. A jonin with earth affinity could counter it outright.
A jonin with strong enough chakra reinforcement could physically force their way out of a partially formed structure before it consolidated.
The technique's value against jonin-level opponents wasn't in direct capture, it was in terrain control.
Raising a formation mid-fight changed the geometry of the engagement, cutting sightlines, creating obstacles, or forcing repositioning.
Against a jonin, that was the realistic application. Not burial but disruption.
He stood quietly for a moment longer, looking at the five meter formation standing where flat ground had been sixty seconds ago.
A-rank by any honest measure.
Possibly the only A-rank technique in existence created and first used by a twelve year old genin in the middle of a battlefield, with no prior training, against a jōnin-equivalent target.
And the cost reflected that.
Over half his spiritual reserves and a significant chunk of his chakra on a single use. It was not something he could throw around freely in a prolonged engagement.
One clean, decisive use per fight was the realistic ceiling at this stage, which meant the technique needed to matter when he used it, placed where it counted, against a target that couldn't simply walk away from it.
He noted that, filed it away, and turned toward the path back down.
He did spare one glance back at the disrupted forest above the carved stone faces.
That was going to take a while to look natural again.
-_-_-_-_-_
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