“Everyday-use pills, emergency-use pills… a genuinely sensible split.
Chiba came up with all of this on his own?”
Hiruzen looked up from the report, faintly disbelieving.
“He did.
The rest of us only helped where we could,” Kitayama Sho said with a nod.
“The everyday type gets taken during ordinary missions.
The emergency type restores stamina quickly after intense combat but suppresses hunger less and puts less strain on the body.”
“Get it into circulation as soon as possible.”
Hiruzen exhaled, a faint smile touching his face.
Kitayama Sho bowed and took her leave.
“Kakashi.
What do you make of it?”
A moment later, a figure materialized in the room.
“You mean him, or this report?”
Kakashi looked up.
“Both.”
Hiruzen drew on his pipe, his expression lost somewhere in the haze of smoke.
Kakashi thought it over for a couple of seconds.
“Not being able to manage nature transformation doesn’t tell you much about a person.
As for the soldier pills—splitting them makes plenty of sense once you see it laid out.
Missions should end up costing shinobi a third less, easily, once this goes into use.”
“Three days.”
Hiruzen let out a long breath.
Three days.
From first exposure to full mastery to a working redesign—that kind of aptitude was almost unbelievable.
And as he recalled, the boy had only gone to the medical division to study ninjutsu principles and medical knowledge in the first place.
Which meant, in that child’s eyes, the soldier pill breakthrough had probably been little more than a passing diversion.
“Any interest in taking him on?”
“Ah—Lord Third, forgive me, but I’d rather wait a while longer.”
Kakashi paused for a beat before turning the offer down.
He didn’t think he was the right teacher for this particular student.
“I think Lady Tsunade or Lord Jiraiya would suit him best.”
As if Hiruzen didn’t know that already.
But neither of them was in Konoha anymore.
The room went quiet for a moment.
“Whatever the case, I’ll keep an eye on the boy for you until he’s assigned a team instructor.
But taking him on as my own student—that’s not something I’m willing to do.”
Kakashi gave a small bow, picked up his book, and left.
Hiruzen didn’t try to stop him.
An elite jōnin of Kakashi’s caliber commanded respect even from the Hokage, and Kakashi’s refusal to take on a genin team had more to do with the Fourth Hokage’s son than with anything else.
Hiruzen lit his pipe in silence.
Huh?
What’s this?
Chiba lay resting during his lunch break at the hospital, letting his mind settle as he sorted through what he’d learned so far, when the familiar sphere of light surfaced in his awareness of its own accord.
What caught him off guard was this—
The sphere seemed smaller than before.
No.
Not smaller, exactly—more like it had condensed.
Its glow had drawn inward, and now its surface showed an uneven texture, ridges of light and shadow that formed something like an intricate, unfamiliar pattern.
Wait.
That pattern, that shape—he’d seen something like it before.
Chiba went still, straining to place where.
He dug through his memories from his old life for a long while before it finally came to him.
Before he’d transmigrated, he’d owned a bodhi seed.
The pattern on the sphere matched it exactly.
This was that seed.
Chiba’s eyes went wide with disbelief.
Then, just as quickly, he forced himself calm.
Now wasn’t the time to puzzle over where it had come from.
Bodhi seed or sphere of light, whatever name fit it, this thing was without question the foundation of everything he had going for him in this world.
If it had just changed, there had to be a reason.
He had no interest in resting anymore.
He sat up, grabbed pen and paper, and started scribbling half-consciously as he thought it through.
A few minutes passed.
Thunk.
The pen tip drove straight into the paper.
The soldier pills.
He’d redesigned them a few days ago, and today he’d finished and submitted the report—which meant it had probably already gone public.
I study, I understand something new, and then I pass what I’ve worked out on to other people.
That’s what triggers the change in the seed and reflects back onto me.
But what did I actually get out of it this time?
The sphere had manifested the bodhi seed’s pattern, which meant he’d gained some kind of benefit from it.
Chiba ran a few tests.
Before long, he was fairly certain what he’d gained this time was a sharper sense of perception—not the ordinary kind.
Beyond chakra, he now seemed able to sense being watched.
Like right now, for instance.
Someone was watching him.
He didn’t turn to look right away.
Instead, he used the excuse of getting up to swap books as cover for a glance.
Whoever it was moved fast.
He caught only a glimpse—the edge of a pair of glasses, a flash of silver hair.
Kabuto Yakushi?
Chiba turned the possibility over for a moment and settled on it as the likeliest suspect.
There was really no one else it could be.
Not that it was much of a surprise.
His own instructor was Mizuki, so it made sense that Kabuto would take an interest in him too.
No point stirring things up unnecessarily.
Who knew—there might even be room to work together someday.
He walked, unhurried, toward Kitayama Sho’s office.
The door was unlocked, but Kitayama Sho was asleep inside.
Chiba slipped in quietly, meaning to swap out his book and leave.
Then his eyes caught something out of the corner of his vision.
Ah.
Sensei…
An adult reading something a little racy wasn’t exactly shocking.
But she really could have shut the door first.
He turned to go without a word.
Just as he was about to leave, a startled gasp sounded behind him.
Then came the rustle of books being hastily rearranged, and before Chiba could even turn around, Kitayama Sho stammered out an explanation.
“Ahem—Chiba, here to borrow a book, are you?
Finished the last one already?”
“Yes.
I was thinking of looking into something on the nervous system next.”
Chiba nodded.
Kitayama Sho’s face had gone faintly red.
She nodded back.
“Good, good, go right ahead.
If it’s too noisy out there, feel free to read in here.”
“That’s all right.
Actually, sensei—could I start learning the chakra scalpel early?”
“That technique’s still fairly—ah, forget it.
Here, take it.”
She’d meant to point out that it was an A-rank technique, brutally difficult—but then she remembered this was the same boy who’d already mastered something on par with the Fourth Hokage’s Rasengan, and worked it out on his own besides.
Comparing herself to him was pointless.
It would only give her a headache.
“Thank you, sensei.”
Just as he’d expected—when someone was busy dying of embarrassment, the odds of them agreeing to whatever you asked went up considerably.
Chiba read through the material once, then handed it straight back.
Once Chiba had gone, Kitayama Sho buried her face in her hands and screamed silently.
He definitely saw it.
She could only hope he hadn’t recognized what it was.
Otherwise—she had absolutely no dignity left as a teacher.
Chiba stepped out of the office, reading as he walked, forming seals under his breath to try casting the chakra scalpel.
First attempt: failure.
Byakusō, who had been quietly keeping watch since he’d left the office, let out a soft breath of relief at the sight.
Good.
Not quite that ridiculous, then—
Second attempt: success.
Huh.
She rose without a word and decided to go rest somewhere else instead.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Chiba, oblivious to any of this, was absorbed in testing out the scalpel’s effect.
No wonder it was rated a B-rank technique—mastering it in two tries was no small thing.
No wonder so few people used it in actual combat.
After all.
For an ordinary shinobi, simply sustaining the technique took real effort, and holding it steady through the chaos of a real fight demanded an extraordinary level of chakra control.
Anyone capable of that kind of control usually had more efficient ways to hurt someone—Tsunade’s monstrous strength technique, Granny Chiyo’s puppetry.
Someone like Kabuto was very much the exception.
But.
For Chiba, this was a genuinely useful technique.
He thought it over and began experimenting with modifications—compressing the chakra down, narrowing the blade until it was no wider than a dagger.
Not much use like this in real combat.
Still, working through the seals and the way I’m channeling chakra here—it’s actually given me an idea for compressing chakra into needles.