At the same time, she used Body Flicker and, under cover of the smoke, Pakura led her student Maki and the remaining Sand shinobi away—vanishing into the night after only a few flashes.
Sensing Pakura's chakra receding, Tsunade finally let out a breath.
Standing here, she'd really only been able to pressure Pakura.
If she actually had to fight head-on… it would be hard.
Her eyes remained shut, face still pale. Shizune hurried to support her—she knew about Tsunade's hemophobia.
"Squads Two and One, pursue. Everyone else, hold position and reinforce the perimeter," Shirakumo ordered, clutching his burned arm.
Then he looked toward the distant Kiyohara, surprise and admiration clear in his gaze.
Kiyohara slowly released a breath, staring in the direction Pakura had disappeared.
He wasn't sure if this counted as fulfilling Magnet Kiyohara's second wish.
He'd only contributed part of the work—but in many cases, what mattered was the final blow.
He lowered his right hand, which was still trembling slightly.
Firing Electromagnetic Coin twice at full power had been a heavy drain on both chakra and mental focus.
Magnet Kiyohara withdrew his partial possession as well.
Kiyohara asked quietly, "Does this… count as done?"
Magnet Kiyohara's phantom looked as if a tremendous weight had been lifted. Already thin from repeated manifestations, he now became even more transparent.
"It counts. She used to keep me under her thumb—so seeing her look that miserable… that's enough," he said.
"I see," Kiyohara replied.
So in Magnet Kiyohara's timeline, Pakura hadn't been betrayed by Suna's leadership and killed by shuriken.
Or maybe he simply hadn't lived that long.
"I can feel some of the grudge easing—my obsession's fading a bit. Not completely, but you've met the requirement," Magnet Kiyohara said, spreading his hands.
A soft, pale light began to seep from him.
His facial features blurred rapidly; his voice grew airy and distant.
"Past me… I can tell you're not quite like me. But once you have enough strength, I want you to carry yourself the way a true strong one should."
To him, living meant obeying your own heart.
Even now, he didn't regret trying to challenge the Fourth Kazekage.
Suna needed absolute power, not weak compromise.
The only thing he regretted was being too weak to win.
So the last thing he left behind was simple:
"Remember—only speak your will when your strength is enough to back it."
His body dissolved into a skyful of motes, threads of white light flowing toward Kiyohara.
One larger mote slipped back into the urn in Kiyohara's mind.
The rest, like fledglings returning to a nest, sank lightly into the center of Kiyohara's brow.
Boom—
A cool, cleansing wave swept through Kiyohara's entire body.
He could feel it clearly: his mental energy surged again, massively.
His spiritual power exploded upward.
That cool, vast strength nourished his soul, pushing his thinking speed and focus to a new tier.
The surging mental energy fused seamlessly with his body's cellular vitality, mixing into chakra—and his total chakra reserve broke through the previous limit in one leap.
This feeling—
Kiyohara carefully sensed the torrent of chakra moving through him, far beyond what he'd had before.
My chakra is definitely over "two Kakashis"… and still rising. Once it settles, it'll probably land around 2.2, he calculated.
That meant more than twice a standard "Kakashi unit."
More chakra meant he could fight longer at higher intensity and cast stronger techniques more times.
Whether taijutsu or ninjutsu, chakra was the base requirement.
Without enough chakra, you didn't even qualify to be "background support" in a final battle.
You'd just get caught by Infinite Tsukuyomi and turned into a chakra battery.
Or, if you were lucky like Sakura, you'd stand between Naruto and Sasuke and say, "I finally caught up to them."
Whether she actually caught up… the answer was obvious.
Sakura was brilliant and had exceptional chakra control—better than Sasuke in many ways—but she was still civilian-born, with limited raw reserves.
Even Kakashi had far more chakra than her.
Beyond chakra reserves, Kiyohara could feel something else:
His affinity and control over Earth and Wind chakra had increased dramatically with the full Magnet Release inheritance.
Those two base natures, now strengthened, would make learning related techniques far faster.
Then he noticed another change.
His neural reaction speed had improved significantly.
Of course—
Many Magnet Release applications, especially high-speed attacks like railgun-style shots and future high-speed movement, demanded insane reflexes.
Magnet Kiyohara must have trained reaction speed relentlessly and possessed strong talent in that area.
It reminded Kiyohara of Kakashi's Chidori: too fast, requiring Sharingan assistance to control.
High-speed Magnet movement carried a similar drawback—but with his reflexes improved, he could offset some of the lack of special dynamic vision.
And finally—
His magnetic control itself had changed.
His perception and manipulation of magnetic force had leapt to a new level.
Before, controlling magnetism felt like swinging a heavy, awkward hammer.
Now, that "hammer" felt like an extension of his own arm—responsive, obedient.
He also inherited several more Magnet Release techniques:
Magnet Release: Iron Sand Wave,
Magnet Release: Iron Sand Wall,
and Magnet Release: Iron Sand Drizzle, among others.
Iron Sand Wave could create a wave of iron sand to block incoming attacks, then roll forward in dense surges to pursue targets—an excellent area-control jutsu.
Iron Sand Wall worked like Earth-Style Wall, raising a protective barrier made of iron sand.
Iron Sand Drizzle fired iron sand as high-speed pellets, hitting like a wide-area shotgun blast.
All of them were solid techniques—massively expanding Kiyohara's options.
"Kiyohara, that jutsu you just used—" Kurenai started, not even sure what to say.
"I've been thinking about it for a while, so I managed to pull it off," Kiyohara replied casually.
To outsiders, the inheritance looked like a blink-long pause.
The real change was the legacy continuing to reshape his body beneath the surface—until it reached its new ceiling.
~~~
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