Kiyohara didn't linger. He turned and headed back to the temporary tent assigned to him inside the outpost, determined to spend every spare minute digging into the Lightning Release technique he'd just acquired.
A few days later, once the rotation orders came down, Kiyohara's squad left the front where they'd been facing off against the Land of Earth and returned to garrison duty along the southeast coast of the Land of Fire.
The atmosphere here was getting heavier by the day. You could already see shinobi wrapped in white bandages, their faces dark and hollow-eyed. Everyone else was fully geared—ninja swords on their backs, giant Fūma shuriken slung over their shoulders, or their summoned beasts on a leash—moving as if a single lapse would get them killed.
Everything pointed to the same conclusion: the war was closing in.
It wasn't just the adults, either. There were newly graduated genin—shorter than Kiyohara and his peers by a head—hauling supplies and helping build military works.
Normally, fresh genin were funneled into logistics. Only hardened "old hands" ended up on the front lines. Kiyohara had been that kind of genin back then.
"I wonder when the Mist will invade," Rin sighed.
Every shinobi knew the enemy was across the sea and could strike at any moment. All they could do was hold.
If this line broke, the war would spill inland—and then the real slaughter would begin.
"Who knows?" Kiyohara shook his head.
One thing he was sure about: if events followed the original timeline, this coastline was supposed to fall.
The reason Fugaku took three- or four-year-old Itachi to "experience the battlefield" was inland, in the Land of Fire. That was where Itachi's mind began to twist.
It wasn't the Warring States era anymore, but Fugaku's obsession with raising a prodigy meant he dumped pressure on Itachi early, forcing him to become the "ideal shinobi" as quickly as possible.
A father with something wrong in his head raised a son with something wrong in his head. Maybe the only reason Sasuke ended up remotely normal was because he took after Mikoto more.
"Let's go hand over the mission," Kiyohara said.
Footsteps, low murmurs, the scrape of someone oiling a weapon—everything mingled with the salty stink of seawater in his ears.
The war's peak was approaching fast.
Once this line failed, Madara would move.
Then the inland fracturing would begin. Aside from Iwa—already showing fatigue—Suna, Kiri, and Kumo would all tear chunks out of the Land of Fire like starving animals.
"Move," Kakashi's expression had hardened.
Those newly graduated genin were basically still kids.
But… this was war.
Kiyohara pushed through the crowd and completed the handover.
When it was done, he said goodbye to Kakashi and Rin and used his free rest time to learn Lightning Release: Furious Thunder Arrow as soon as possible.
Kiyohara already had jōnin-level combat strength. With his stacked talents on top of that, mastering a jōnin-level jutsu shouldn't take more than a few days.
It always came back to the same point: what truly shackled a shinobi was the limit of the body.
If you had Naruto's body and chakra capacity, you could crank out thousands of shadow clones day and night and speedrun any technique.
After inheriting several futures, Kiyohara's physical bottlenecks and restraints were being smashed one after another, letting him climb higher and higher.
For the next few days, to focus on training, he even told Kurenai not to come looking for him. He shut the world out and drilled nonstop.
"Lightning Release—!"
Kiyohara formed seals. Chakra surged through his body along the pathways described in the scroll, converging in his right palm.
Blue lightning crackled and popped, slowly condensing into several sharp arrow-like bolts.
He thrust his palm forward. The lightning arrows shot out with a piercing whine and slammed into a rock ten meters away.
Boom!
Several scorched craters blasted into the surface and fragments rained down—but the arrows' penetration still felt slightly lacking. Mid-flight, some of the power bled off before it could fully punch through solid stone.
"The chakra compression needs to be faster. The shape transformation isn't stable enough. The nature transformation isn't sharp enough…" Kiyohara panted, wiping sweat from his brow—sweat born from extreme focus.
He realized something: as his mental energy rose, his chakra control rose with it.
And if you wanted to learn jutsu quickly, you couldn't escape chakra control.
Fine control like this demanded one thing above all—concentration.
"A few more runs and I should have it," he thought.
Steel Release Kiyohara's condition was simply "learn a B-rank Lightning jutsu." There was no requirement that he reach some perfect mastery. If he could reliably cast it, that counted.
That afternoon, Kiyohara trained deep in the woods without stopping.
From time to time, Steel Release Kiyohara's phantom drifted out to watch, nodding slightly.
Kiyohara had both effort and talent. He'd bloom in this war before long—his own light.
By the time dusk draped the forest in a gauzy haze—
"Lightning Release: Furious Thunder Arrow!"
Kiyohara formed seals.
This time, several razor-condensed blue lightning arrows sprang from his palm and streaked out.
Szzzt—szzzt—szzzt!
The battered rock—already riddled with holes—instantly gained several more clean, smooth-edged tunnels, so deep you couldn't see the end. Tiny lightning snakes still flickered at the rim, crackling faintly.
He did it.
Kiyohara's heart leapt.
The overlap between his own Lightning talent and the one he'd inherited from Rogue Kiyohara was excellent. Combined with mental energy far beyond normal shinobi, he'd mastered a jōnin-level Lightning technique in just a few days.
"You improved faster than I expected," Steel Release Kiyohara said.
A faint light gathered within his phantom form, forming a glowing orb that drifted to Kiyohara and sank into his forehead without a sound.
Kiyohara shuddered—not in pain, but in a sense of fullness, like parched earth finally drinking rain. His mind felt clearer.
His mental energy rose again—
And he felt his affinity for Earth and Yang chakra surge. Techniques he'd struggled to understand—Earth Release and medical ninjutsu alike—suddenly became straightforward, like someone had handed him the solution key.
More than that, a warm flood swept through his limbs, nourishing muscle and bone.
"Another Yang boost," Kiyohara muttered.
He'd inherited Yang once before from Young Kiyohara, so the sensation was familiar—but this time, it felt like it crossed a threshold. His body changed in a deeper way.
All this time, his mental energy—stacked again and again—had far outpaced his physical energy. They could blend into chakra, sure, but he couldn't fully exploit all that surplus mental power.
Now, Yang's enormous life force surged through every cell. Muscle fibers became denser and springier. His blood ran hotter, packed with vitality.
His physical energy spiked at an unprecedented speed, finally catching up enough to mix properly with his overflowing mental energy—
And in that moment, chakra didn't just increase in quantity, it improved in quality too.
Three times. At least three times Kakashi's chakra.
"That much…?" Kiyohara almost didn't believe it.
He'd jumped straight from around 2.2 "Kakashi units" to 3.
"If I fully fuse later… how much more will I gain?" The thought made his pulse quicken.
Completing the second wish and fully fusing should grant even more—both mental energy and the Yang-driven physical energy would rise again.
He couldn't help wondering which clan really had more raw chakra: the Uzumaki or the Senju.
If he could roll either bloodline someday…
In canon, the argument over how many times Naruto's own chakra exceeded Kakashi's never truly died.
The anime claimed Naruto had four times Kakashi's chakra while suppressing the Nine-Tails, and a hundred times without suppression.
The manga implied most of that "extra" was Kurama's overflow.
"But Naruto can't be only four," Kiyohara thought. "There's no way that supports that kind of spending."
Just "Naruto Two Thousand Combo" would mean a thousand clones, each throwing punches in parallel. The chakra shown was Naruto's own blue chakra.
If Kurama only contributed ninety-six times a jōnin, Naruto couldn't power an entire allied army's chakra and casually fire off Tailed Beast Bombs in later arcs.
"Of course," he admitted, "a normal Uzumaki isn't Naruto."
Naruto was the reincarnation of the Sage's son, carried Asura's chakra, and Minato left a "backdoor" in the Eight Trigrams Seal so Kurama's chakra could leak, be filtered, and be converted into Naruto's own over time.
A standard Uzumaki wouldn't compare.
As for Naruto's "pure" chakra without any of those conditions—Kiyohara honestly didn't know.
Either way, if it were truly only four, calling it "massive" would be a joke.
"Long road ahead," Kiyohara murmured. "I still need more chakra."
He wanted "jutsu freedom."
One Kakashi unit gave you four Chidori. Three units gave you twelve.
Compared to Naruto's "thousands of clones, each with a Rasengan," that was still nowhere close.
"Don't underestimate it," Steel Release Kiyohara said, reading his thoughts. "Your chakra already exceeds what I had while alive."
In the shinobi world, there were basically only three ways to raise chakra in bulk: drugs or secret medicine, body modification, or sealing a tailed beast.
Or you could count Edo Tensei, which effectively came with infinite chakra.
"I know," Kiyohara nodded, clenching his fist. He could feel the solidity of power inside him.
Cheaters were rare—but he could admit it now: he'd opened the door a crack.
In his generation, almost no one his age could beat him anymore.
As the surge settled and stabilized, Kiyohara focused on the new techniques that had appeared in his mind.
Like Earth Release: Earth Spear, which hardened the body—essentially a lesser substitute for Steel Release.
Earth Release: Rock Thief Staff, which formed hard stone batons from the ground for mid-range strikes.
And the classic defensive staple, Earth Release: Earth Wall.
Kiyohara exhaled slowly.
After scanning to confirm no one was watching, he moved to a more secluded spot—he didn't want anyone noticing Steel Release.
Then he raised his hand.
Two different chakra types flowed through his meridian system and merged into a new, special chakra.
Steel Release.
At his right index fingertip, a gray-brown, stone-like layer appeared. Then it deepened into a dull, metallic sheen—his fingertip looked like forged steel.
"So this is Steel Release… the fusion of Earth and Yang?" Kiyohara stared at his fingertip. It felt hard and cold, but it didn't weigh much more.
It reminded him, absurdly, of "Armament Haki" from some other world. Visually, it really was similar.
He drew his ninja sword with his left hand and—without hesitation—slashed down at his hardened right index finger.
Clang!
He controlled the force so he didn't actually cut his own finger off.
Still, the strike rang with a clear metal impact.
The blade stopped cleanly against the steel-hardened skin. Not even a white scratch.
He felt a solid rebound—no pain.
"It works," he murmured. "How far can it spread?"
His chakra surged outward.
His entire right hand—wrist and forearm included—instantly took on that dark metallic sheen. Even swinging his arm felt heavier, the air splitting with a denser whoosh.
He tried more: chest, back, legs—the steel spread like flowing water.
He tested everything. Small… and large. Every "part."
But when he tried routing the transformation to his eyes, a sharp sting and resistance flared. His eyeballs felt fragile, rejecting the hardening.
Kiyohara immediately stopped.
"So… the eyes can't be covered."
He felt chakra draining rapidly, so he released most of the steel layer, keeping only his right arm as a test.
He stepped to a boulder, clenched his steel-hardened fist, and—without using Magnet Release acceleration—punched.
Thud!
A deep crater sank into the rock.
It wasn't a full breakthrough, but he was satisfied. If he'd punched barehanded, without any protective field, he'd have shredded his own flesh.
"Exceptional physical resistance. Extremely strong against blunt and cutting attacks. Conductivity might change how it interacts with Lightning—needs testing. Heat, acid, and other special attacks are unknown…" he muttered, already thinking like a field researcher.
He refined the hardening to smaller zones: single fingers, nose, neck, elbow—learning to apply it locally rather than across the whole body.
But the conclusion was obvious.
In real combat, Kiyohara's survivability had just jumped again.
~~~
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