During the last half year, neither Fugaku nor his clones had slacked off.
He never abandoned the original low-profile plan.
On ordinary workdays, a Shadow Clone sat in his Police office, handled reports, reviewed case files, signed paperwork, and behaved exactly as Fugaku normally would.
Meanwhile, the real Fugaku trained.
Physical conditioning, chakra control.
Genjutsu, Ninjutsu, Taijutsu.
Reviewing and practicing fuinjutsu and medical ninjutsu.
Sensory and counter-sensory skills.
Anything that could improve him.
He pushed hard enough that almost no chakra went unused by the end of the day.
There were exceptions.
A few times, a case genuinely required his personal presence in the field.
Whenever that happened, Fugaku stopped training and went himself.
A clone was fine inside the Police headquarters.
Outside was another matter.
Too many variables.
Too many eyes.
Better not to get clever when there was no need.
One of the first useful tricks Fugaku picked up during those months was chakra absorption.
He had been right.
The clan library had several basic methods related to it, none particularly restricted like his lineage's Plasma Release.
Once Fugaku studied the principle, he understood why.
At its simplest, chakra absorption was largely a matter of chakra control, something the Uchiha were particularly good at.
Use your own chakra to establish contact, seize control over part of another chakra flow, then draw it toward yourself.
Simple in theory.
Much less simple when the other person was trying to stab you.
That was probably why most high-level shinobi never built their combat style around such a basic method.
An enemy was not going to stand politely while you drained him.
Techniques like the Preta Path solved that problem through absurd dōjutsu power, while something like Samehada did it naturally as part of the mighty weapon itself.
Fugaku had much better options in an actual fight anyway.
That was not why he learned it.
He wanted complete control over his Shadow Clones for both the present day and the future.
Fugaku hated wasting his reserves on a clone whose only job was to sit behind a desk, for example.
With absorption and redistribution principles added into the process, he gradually learned how to manipulate the division much more precisely.
After all, his own clone was not going to fight him while he drained its chakra.
Even if the process took several minutes for now, it hardly mattered.
That was not a real fight or an urgent situation.
The office clone received only what it reasonably needed.
Training clones and his real body received more, depending on the situation.
And with his current, almost monstrous level of chakra control, the trick had not taken long to master.
His elemental training progressed even faster.
Lightning Release had started far behind Fire, but within months Fugaku pushed it to essentially the same level.
He learned several of the clan and family line's stronger Lightning techniques, including a few A-rank ones that had rarely been used publicly.
Once his control over the element became stable enough, Takehito finally began teaching him Plasma Release more seriously, his Mangekyo Sharingan copying the initial principles effortlessly.
But now, Fugaku's progress became much slower again.
As expected.
But by now, he had already crossed the threshold.
The bases of Lightning and Fire could fuse properly.
The plasma formed.
During those same months, Fugaku also experimented carefully with the Sharingan.
It did not take long for him to confirm something he had already suspected.
The Mangekyō was too taxing to train like an ordinary technique.
Eyes, nervous system, chakra pathways, even the rest of the body suffered under prolonged use.
Fugaku eventually settled on something closer to monthly testing than normal training.
Once every few weeks, he would activate the Mangekyō for a short period, test one of his two abilities, or bring out the beginnings of Susanoo with the smallest possible expenditure.
Just enough to become familiar with them.
No more.
In Fugaku's mind, the Mangekyō was almost like putting a racing engine inside a vehicle that had never been designed to withstand it.
An ancient Ōtsutsuki remnant.
A frightening concentration of Yin and spiritual power awakened through extreme shock in the rare mortal body capable of carrying it.
The problem was that the rest of the body was still mortal.
It was anything but a normal 'organ'. It functioned more like a peculiar biological chakra seal and generator than an ordinary eye.
Fortunately, Fugaku's physical foundation was unusually good, and he had spent the last half year improving it further.
That helped.
It did not make him immune.
Real familiarity with the Mangekyō would probably come only in genuine battle, when circumstances forced him to use it seriously, or when whatever he stood to gain was worth the accumulated damage to his eyes and body.
He certainly was not going to abuse it the way Itachi had.
That boy had practically worn his own body into the ground before reaching true adulthood.
Worse, much of that damage had probably been accumulated while acting as Konoha's weapon.
"A useful tool that rusted after barely hitting twenty."
Fugaku had no intention of following that example.
Fortunately, there was one field where awakening the Mangekyō had accelerated his progress without requiring him to constantly use it to its dangerous limits or at all.
Genjutsu.
Fugaku had already been excellent at it.
Now the gap had become ridiculous.
Uchiha-style genjutsu was fundamentally different from the more delicate methods most ordinary shinobi relied upon.
A conventional genjutsu user often had to establish their Yin chakra carefully, exploit the environment, disguise the trigger, and slip interference into the target's chakra network before manipulating the senses.
The Sharingan was much more direct.
Eye contact itself became the medium.
Then came an overwhelming Yin Release intrusion capable of attacking perception, thought, and the target's entire internal sense of reality almost at once.
That was why genjutsu was one of the Sharingan's most natural abilities.
The other was pattern recognition.
Reading movement.
Anticipating attacks.
Understanding chakra flow.
Targeting blind spots.
Learning techniques faster.
Copying.
Both abilities improved together as the Sharingan matured, ultimately culminating in the Mangekyō.
But awakening the Mangekyō had not merely strengthened Fugaku's ocular genjutsu.
His general Yin Release talent had risen with it once again.
That opened other possibilities.
One technique Fugaku developed during those months was something he eventually called Yin Art: Guiding Finger.
It worked on the same basic principle as the finger genjutsu Itachi would one day use.
Instead of requiring direct eye contact, Fugaku used his fingers as the medium through which he projected Yin chakra.
If an opponent's attention settled on the hand, even briefly, the technique could catch.
That mattered against experienced shinobi.
Veterans who knew they were fighting an Uchiha often avoided looking directly into the eyes, sacrificing some awareness of the upper body in exchange for protection from ocular genjutsu.
Guiding Finger punished that habit.
Look at the hands instead?
That could become a problem too.
The effect was weaker than direct Sharingan eye contact.
But with Fugaku's current level of Yin Release, weaker was still dangerous.
Against an ordinary shinobi, it could completely overwhelm them.
Even against a capable jōnin, Fugaku expected at minimum a moment of disorientation or hesitation.
And one moment was enough for the current him to literally finish what the genjutsu started.
More importantly, Fugaku had practiced the method until it no longer required an obvious gesture or deliberate setup, probably bringing it even further than Itachi would in the future.
He could weave it naturally into ordinary movement during combat.
A raised hand.
A pointing finger.
A seal beginning to form.
The opponent looked for half a second.
That was enough.
Still, the most dramatic progress of the last six months had not come from Plasma Release or even genjutsu.
It had come from the two subjects Fugaku had originally known the least about.
Medical ninjutsu and fūinjutsu.
Plasma Release had been difficult, but Fugaku had entered it with enormous advantages.
He already possessed strong Fire Release.
His Lightning Release had rapidly caught up.
His family line had a hereditary compatibility with the combination.
Takehito had personally prepared notes and visual examples, even personal guidance.
Medicine and sealing were different.
There, Fugaku had essentially started from the beginning.
The original Fugaku had certainly not been ignorant.
As the patriarch's heir and a Police officer, he knew battlefield first aid, basic anatomy, how to recognize common poisons and injuries, and enough sealing theory to understand the ordinary seals and fuinjutsu gadgets a shinobi might encounter.
But that was practical competence.
Not mastery.
He had never seriously studied either field.
Back then, he simply had not possessed the current Fugaku's combination of discipline, urgency, foresight, intelligence, and frankly obsessive drive.
Now he did.
Fortunately, both subjects were unusually suited to Shadow Clone study.
Especially at the beginning.
Reading medical texts required almost no chakra.
Neither did memorizing anatomy diagrams, studying chakra pathways, learning pharmacology, or working through theoretical exercises.
Fūinjutsu was similar.
Most early progress consisted of understanding symbols, structures, formulas, chakra pathways, interactions between inscriptions, and the logic behind seal construction.
Fugaku could divide that work among clones almost indefinitely.
His improved chakra absorption trick made the system even more efficient.
Eventually, he discovered a useful routine for nighttime study.
Before sleeping, Fugaku would pull almost all excess chakra out of the clones he intended to keep active.
Enough that maintaining them barely affected his own recovery.
The clones would then spend the night reading, copying diagrams, memorizing texts, or practicing low-cost theoretical exercises.
In the morning, Fugaku dispelled them and inherited the accumulated experience.
Few shinobi bothered with something like that.
Most lacked either the chakra control, the clone capacity, or the sheer willingness to turn sleep into another training resource.
Fugaku had all three.
Six months of that added up quickly.
He was still nowhere near a true master in either discipline.
He knew that.
But he had moved far beyond beginner territory.
With his improved cognition, constant clone study, and access to some of the best medical and sealing resources accumulated by one of Konoha's oldest clans, Fugaku had already built a surprisingly solid foundation in both.