new story: Tokyo Relics: Only I Can See the Abnormal Equipment
Full story on Patreon: belamy20
Right in the dead center of Moonlight Island's open ground.
Seimei's figure just pops into existence, like he owned the damn place.
He chills for a second, letting the burns and bruises from that hellhole volcano knit themselves back together, then cancels the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu with a snap.
Boom. Every single clone, both on the island and scattered outside, explodes into smoke and vanishes.
The next instant, a fucking tsunami of memories, plus fat chunks of chakra and natural energy, slams back into his body all at once.
Like always, he sorts the chakra and sage juice into their proper tanks first, then starts digging through the memory dump.
Almost a thousand clones' worth of recollections hit him at the same time. Even with his jacked-up spirit energy, it still gives him a splitting migraine.
Took him a solid while to sift through the whole mess.
But when he's finally done… his face looks like someone just pissed in his ramen.
Why?
Simple. The haul was trash compared to what he expected.
The nine hundred clones sucking up natural energy? Whatever. Their memories are all the same boring crap—just slightly sharper control over sage power. Big whoop.
The real kick in the nuts came from the three hundred clones he had high hopes for—the ones grinding away at developing his Blood Succession Net.
He thought tripling or even doubling that number would skyrocket his progress.
Reality check: yeah, progress went up… by a pathetic thirty percent tops.
For the insane amount of chakra and brainpower he burned? Total garbage return on investment.
"What the actual fuck is going on?" he mutters under his breath.
He forces himself to calm down, dives back in, and starts rewinding through those three hundred clones' memories frame by frame, hunting for whatever screwed him.
Minutes bleed away.
At first—nothing looks off.
Then, after dissecting a handful of them, he spots it.
Compared to before, every single one of those clones—after training the exact same hour—was walking away with way less experience in fusing the seven chakra natures.
One or two duds? Fine, maybe they took a wrong turn, no big deal.
But every single damn clone he checked showed the same drop?
That's not a mistake. That's a systemic fuck-up.
To double-check, he pulls a few more memories at random.
Same shit.
His whole approach was broken.
So what the hell went wrong?
Seimei zeroes in, combing through all three hundred clones' memories like a man possessed.
A couple minutes later, his eyes go wide and he actually blurts out loud:
"You gotta be shitting me!"
No time to waste. He rips open his ninja pouch, grabs a handful of supercharged soldier pills, and crams them into his mouth. Crunch, swallow—boom, energy topped off.
Hands fly into seals, and he pops Multi-Shadow Clone again.
First batch: still nine hundred clones. Packs them up, seals them, hands them off to his wood clone to haul back to that primeval forest in northeast Fire Country. Keep slurping that sweet natural energy.
Second batch: only two hundred fifty this time for Blood Succession Net research.
Yeah, he cut the numbers.
And the reason ties right back to what he just figured out.
Those three hundred clones? When they were trying to fuse all seven nature transformations, they were barely scratching the surface. Couldn't go deeper.
Not because they were slacking—nah, each clone just didn't have enough chakra juice in the tank to push the experiments further.
Spread the chakra too thin → every clone learns less → total gains stay dogshit even when you throw more bodies at it.
So he slashes the count.
Now each remaining clone gets a fatter chakra pool, meaning they can actually dig deep, run wild experiments, and bring back real progress.
Honestly, this isn't the first time he's had to do this. Way back, he already shifted from "quantity" to "quality" once before and never forgot the chakra bottleneck.
But lately his chakra reserves have been growing faster than his spirit energy, so every time he bumped the clone count, nothing screamed red flags.
He got cocky. Forgot to keep watching that gauge.
Then boom—he nearly doubles the R&D team overnight, and suddenly every clone is choking for gas. Critical limit breached. Wake-up call delivered.
Thinking about the monster spirit energy boost he just got, Seimei can already see the future:
From now on, the bottleneck won't be mental strength anymore—it'll be how fast his raw chakra cap can climb.
Not exactly a disaster, though.
Because compared to spirit energy, chakra totals level up way quicker.
Meaning he can keep cranking the clone count higher and higher, jacking up Blood Succession Net progress without hitting a wall.
Thoughts flashing lightning-fast, he watches the two hundred fifty clones scatter, then—flash—activates Flying Thunder God and teleports straight into the magma chamber beneath the island.
Blood Succession crap can wait.
Right now, every second counts. He needs to hammer his body into something that can keep up with his busted spirit energy.
Gotta finish the physical transformation, pump that "Physique" stat sky-high, and bring everything back into balance before his own power rips him apart.
With that fire in his gut, Seimei kills all stray thoughts, fuses chakra and natural energy into sage chakra, and slips into Sage Mode in a heartbeat.
Then he starts spamming Body Extreme—pushing his flesh to the absolute limit, over and over.
Time drips by.
Another hour gone in a blink.
He stops the body forging, Flying Thunder Gods back topside to the island surface.
Now comes the moment of truth—checking exactly how much juice those two hundred fifty clones squeezed out this round.
Then he'll keep tweaking the numbers—up, down, whatever—until he finds the sweet spot where efficiency is absolutely maxed.
No compromises. No excuses.
Just cold, hard, relentless optimization.
Believe it.