Three years slipped by like mist.
Kimimaro was ten now.
His days were a rhythm carved into stone.
When he wasn't sweating through various kinds of training, he was hunting or fishing in the nearby river and forest, in his spare time, often using nothing but his own sharpened bone spikes to make the kill.
He not only ate what he caught, but also trained his Yang Release on it, already very proficient in the Mystical Palm Technique.
It was a very delicate process to begin with.
Yang Release applied to living tissue was always a double-edged blade.
The same force that could stimulate growth positively could just as easily produce overgrowth.
Healing arts overall had always worked that way.
Try to perform a surgery on anyone without perfect control, as well, and you could end up doing more harm than the original wound, severing or disturbing structures your chakra had no business touching there.
Which was precisely why pure chakra control mattered more to medical ninja than raw power ever could.
But much of his time was also spent among the ruins.
As Ashina's seal steadily drank in Kimimaro's chakra, it grew more stable, restoring some of its old functions.
It pulsed like a living thing now, able to sense the surroundings as it once did in life, and to speak to Kimimaro more fluently.
It covered nearly the entire range of these central ruins with its telephatical reach, which was good, since Kimimaro didn't need to constantly hold his hand on that stone in order to talk.
At times now, it felt less like talking to a ghost and more like having a second, unseen teacher leaning over his shoulder.
That assistance was invaluable
Kimimaro himself made his own quiet evaluations.
By his reckoning, his current strength was already on par with a Low Jonin. At ten.
However, if he cast aside caution, if he decided to push his bones without restraint, he could probably unleash even more terrifying power in a short burst.
He never tested how much. He didn't need to. The thought alone was enough.
"Short-term fireworks are for fools," he thought. "A candle that burns at both ends doesn't make the night brighter. It just dies faster."
What he had done in those three years was mostly about setting the foundation.
He wasn't chasing flashy results or desperate bursts of strength.
That was what the old Kimimaro had done: burn his body out for temporary glory under Orochimaru's leash.
No, this time was different.
Every exercise, every meditation, every experiment with bone and chakra was a brick laid for something greater.
He wanted a base strong enough to support explosive growth later, the kind of growth that would allow him to touch the heights of legends.
He understood it clearly: in this world, short-term power meant nothing.
What mattered was raising the ceiling, stretching his upper limit as far as it could go.
Only then would those grand goals of his, those ambitions that even Ashina flinched at when he voiced them, ever be within reach.
And at least for now, survival wasn't even a concern.
The growth in his strength didn't come only from his body hardening and his will sharpening. It was also from the many new techniques and applications he had mastered in these years.
Kimimaro himself was taller now, his frame no longer the frail silhouette of a caged child.
The difference was stark between being malnourished and in those prisons, and now, where he was finally reaching his natural physical potential.
Hunting, fishing, and eating freely on this island had filled him out.
He fed himself on meat and fish he caught with his own bone weapons, protein-packed meals that gave him what his clan had never provided: the fuel to grow strong.
The summer sun bore down heavily that day, its heat clinging even inside the shadow of the ruined walls.
Kimimaro walked toward the seal chamber, his steps light, his expression as calm as ever.
He found Ashina's presence waiting for him, as always, like a flame tethered to the stone.
Their relationship had shifted over the past three years.
Ashina no longer looked at him as just a child stumbling in the dark, but as a strange prodigy whose insolence was almost natural.
Kimimaro never bowed, never softened his tongue, even when addressing a man over a century his elder.
But Ashina had stopped bristling at it long ago.
Perhaps because he, too, knew, this boy wasn't human in the way others were.
He was a monster, just like himself now.
Today, Ashina's tone carried a faint humor.
"Your birthday was only a few days ago. Ten years old, and still sulking on this island. What will you do, boy, sit here until you're as old as me? Turn into a ghost that waits and waits until the world forgets your name, too?"
Kimimaro's lips curled faintly. "Ghosts don't sulk. They haunt."
Ashina chuckled dryly but pressed on, voice hardening.
"You dream big, then you'll need more than meditation in ruins and blood on your hands from rabbits and deer. Without allies, without influence, all your ambitions will be smoke. Go out there. Build ties, even if they're only ropes to strangle later."
Kimimaro didn't flinch at the provocation. His reply came smoothly, dismissive.
"Nothing stays stable. Not people, not promises. Still… you can't move a mountain with bare hands. Sometimes you use the crowd as leverage. If I need leverage, I'll take it."
Outwardly, he played it off with his usual cold confidence.
But inwardly, his thoughts ticked faster.
He knew the timeline of this world better than anyone.
Around this time, perhaps soon after, Itachi would slaughter the Uchiha clan.
The chain of events that led to the beginning of the original story was already unfolding.
That gave him five years.
Five years to grow much stronger, to gather power, to lay foundations for the future.
Ashina was right; he couldn't afford to wait here forever.
Some opportunities were beyond these ruins, scattered across the continent.
Just as his instincts had led him to Uzushiogakure's remains, perhaps another place could offer fruits just as rich.
Still, his body was his greatest limiter.
He was ten, and though he had the mind of an adult, his frame was still developing.
Chakra, after all, was not only a discipline but an age.
Both spiritual and physical energies grew with time, with experience, with natural maturation.
That was why shinobi truly peaked between their mid-thirties and mid-forties, if they lived long enough to see it.
Most didn't. Extremely high mortality rates decimated generations before they reached their summit in this world.
So Kimimaro decided. He would leave. But not yet.
Perhaps one or two more years here, growing stronger under Ashina's watch, would sharpen his blade further.
After that, he would step into the world.
And then, then his plans would truly begin.
At that moment, Kimimaro's thoughts drifted strangely to Konoha.
The most important place in this world.
To that so-called famous pair.
Sasuke, heir of a clan soon to be erased, and Naruto, the legendary peanut brain ninja, the other "reincarnators" and the "chosen ones" of this world.
He almost laughed aloud.
"While they're still over there pulling weeds and practicing how to not stab themselves with kunai, I'm here building perhaps one of the most complete shinobi foundations in history."
Konoha's academy had softened into something resembling an actual school. A place for children to play soldiers, a daycare with headbands as graduation gifts. Nothing like the old wars, when academies were conveyor belts spitting out half-trained killers by the dozen.
No, this was luxury. This was comfort. A school life fit for clan heirs and prodigies.
He could picture Sasuke frowning over target practice, Naruto pouting in the corner.
Meanwhile, Kimimaro thought, he was dissecting the nature of chakra, breaking his body into pieces and reforging it day after day.
Still, he wasn't foolish enough to underestimate them.
Sasuke and Naruto, no matter how absurd it sounded, were the "chosen" children of this world. Their power didn't bend to the same logic as everyone else's.
It didn't matter how hard they trained or how cleverly they built their foundations.
Their strength came from entirely different sources.
Sasuke's was carved into his eyes, his cursed gift of the Sharingan. It bloomed, evolved, sharpened, not through study, not through sweat, but through emotions. Hatred, grief, obsession. His power scaled not with discipline, but with his ability to spiral downward.
Naruto, meanwhile, had the most generous benefactor in the world, his domesticated demon. Or better said, his real father. Literally.
After all, the kid popped out straight with those unsightly whisker marks, like Kurama had left a biological autograph on him, perhaps after soaking him in chakra inside Kushina's belly.
Maybe that's why the big fox was always so unnaturally soft and cooperative with him, the entire time.
Hard to bully your own accidental kid.
Hard to ignore or yell at your own biological side project.
Hence, a bottomless well of chakra to drown in whenever he screamed loud enough about "friendship".
So, his "growth" definitely wasn't tied to logic either; it was tied to how much Kurama decided to "loan" him, often for no reason whatsoever.
And that wasn't all.
They weren't just heirs to clans.
They carried inside them sons and later were also given the literal gifts of the Sage of Six Paths, as if all that wasn't enough, truly handpicked by the world's mythology to succeed for some reason as well.
They were the ultimate nepotism babies of this plane.
Kimimaro smirked faintly at the thought. "Born with more cheat codes than I could count, and people call them 'underdogs'."
But if they were destined to stand on the summit by birthright, then he would carve his own staircase, one bone at a time.
...
However, Kimimaro's focus eventually snapped back from his wandering thoughts when the air shifted.
A ripple of intent, sharp and cold, brushed against his senses.
Not the clumsy warmth of some fisherman straying too close to the ruins.
This was different.
Potent. Refined.
A shinobi.
And not a weak one either.
The chakra was steady, sharp-edged, and in some ways heavier than his own.
Not in the sheer chakra amount, but perhaps in the amount of bloodline essence already awakened.
Perhaps, a few years older, female, but carrying something jagged in its flow, like blood still drying on steel.
His lips curled slightly.
He didn't waste words, just flicked his eyes toward the seal pulsing faintly with Ashina's presence like always.
"We have a visitor."
Ashina's spectral voice rumbled from the ruins, low and alert. "From the sea side?"
Kimimaro nodded once. "Yes. I didn't notice her on the island before. Land of Water's edge. Shinobi level. Cold aura. A bit broken. Like something cracked her just before she got here."
Ashina's tone sharpened, the way it always did when danger touched the edges of his seal.
"No one has approached these ruins for years. If a shinobi is here now, it's not by chance."
Kimimaro smirked faintly, though his eyes stayed narrowed toward the treeline.
"Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. A storm always finds the rocks."
"Let's see if this one comes begging, or biting."