…
Murakami turned the conversation he'd just had over on the walk home.
Hiyori's explanation had been the more immediately useful of the two. Training spiritual energy came down to pushing one's consciousness to the edge of its current limit without crossing it.
It was simple enough once stated, a principle that felt obvious in hindsight and wasn't until someone said it plainly.
What struck him was the familiarity of it.
The Spiritual Consciousness Inducement Technique, the technique he'd developed himself, the one that released his spiritual awareness outward to perceive the external world, was already doing exactly what Hiyori had described.
Every time he extended his consciousness beyond its comfortable range, held it at the furthest point it could reach without losing coherence, and then pulled back before it collapsed… that was the Yamanaka principle.
He'd arrived at it from a completely different direction, built it from scratch without the theoretical foundation the Yamanaka had spent generations developing, and landed in the same place.
He hadn't known it was correct methodology.
It had just been the logical expression of what the technique demanded.
He had categorized it as a normal technique and even had Hina, Aiko and Daichi learning it.
The Nara principle sat alongside it cleanly, holding more components simultaneously than the mind found comfortable.
The mental clone sessions were already that.
Every hour M-1 and M-2 trained added to his mental strain, forcing his spiritual reserves to adapt to a demand they hadn't faced before.
He'd been training his spiritual energy correctly from the beginning.
He just hadn't known why it was working. Knowing why changed the approach.
Not the method, the method was already right, but the intentionality behind it.
He could now deliberately push his conscious reach to its limit instead of waiting for it to happen naturally.
The Spiritual Consciousness Inducement Technique was no longer just a perception technique. When used with conscious intent, it became his most direct method of training spiritual energy.
He filed that away without ceremony and continued home. There was no self-congratulation in the realization; he'd been doing it right all along. Now he'd do it better.
…
Three days passed.
He ran mental clone sessions each night before sleeping; one clone assigned to the Mountain Embracing Technique's cascade refinement, the other cycling through Shockwave Jutsu variations at different split ratios.
He woke each morning at reduced capacity, ate enough to surprise any restaurant he visited, then spent the day pushing the Spiritual Consciousness Inducement Technique to its limit.
He stretched his conscious reach until strain became growth, then meditated to recover.
By the third morning, there was a slight but noticeable improvement; at least he no longer woke up feeling like a Nara.
In addition to that, Murakami received a message from Hina; Ryouta's delivery arrived on schedule.
…
The warehouse Hina had arranged sat in the commercial district's outer ring, it was a building used primarily for goods processing, chosen for its loading space and its distance from the kind of foot traffic that asked questions about unusual deliveries.
Murakami arrived in his older disguise, the charcoal outer layer and altered posture making him appear like someone with years of experience behind him.
He heard them before he saw them.
Three voices reached him from the open side entrance. Two were unfamiliar, their careless volume suggesting people accustomed to working outdoors.
He stepped inside.
Ryouta stood near the center of the warehouse floor, arms folded, wearing the same weathered composure he'd brought to the meeting room three days ago.
Beside him stood two roughly dressed men, each carrying the same field-worn quality as Ryouta but less polished.
Hunters, clearly, both of them. Murakami concluded.
The taller of the two, broad across the shoulders with a scar running from his jaw to his left ear, was in the middle of a sentence when Murakami entered.
The shorter one, compact and quick-eyed, noticed Murakami first and nudged the taller one into silence.
Against the warehouse's far wall, Hina stood with two escorts, a ledger scroll open in her hands. Her calm expression suggested she had been waiting for some time.
Her eyes found Murakami the moment he entered, then moved deliberately to the center of the warehouse floor.
Murakami caught and followed her gaze.
The beast was laid out on a wooden platform that had clearly been brought specifically for the purpose.
It was massive, nearly four meters from snout to tail, with a body built far denser than any ordinary animal. Its mottled grey hide was thick and weathered, carrying a faint sheen as it caught the warehouse light.
A boar variant, at its core. But a boar variant the way a boulder was a rock variant.
Murakami stopped a few feet from the platform and looked at it.
Even dead and laid out on a warehouse platform, the creature still carried a strange presence.
Not chakra, the refined energy of a shinobi, but something different and more instinctive.
The moment he stepped close enough, something felt off about the energy around it.
Not dangerous. Just... heavy. Like the beast was still somehow present despite being dead.
So this is a grade four beast…and definitely not the lower end of it.
"You made it," Ryouta said, by way of greeting.
"You said three days," Murakami raised his head towards him and replied. "It's the third day."
He saw no reason to elaborate; the agreement had been simple, and he had fulfilled his part.
"It is." Something in Ryouta's expression suggested he found this faintly satisfying.
He gestured toward the beast without ceremony. "Peak specimen. Took us into the deeper forest to find it, they don't come close to the usual hunting range at this size."
The taller hunter leaned forward.
"Three days and two nights," he said. "Name's Gorou, by the way. Ryouta's been my hunting partner for four years." He gestured toward the shorter man beside him. "That's Tetsu. He found it first, tracked it for six hours before we got eyes on it."
Tetsu, who appeared to operate on the principle that Gorou's words were sufficient for both of them, gave a short nod of confirmation.
"The track alone took half a day," Gorou continued. "Thing moves quieter than it has any right to for its size. We set up a perimeter at dusk on the second night, waited for it to come to the water source, and Ryouta took the first strike. Even then it took the three of us to bring it down cleanly." He paused, apparently for effect. "Didn't go quietly."
"They never do at this size," Ryouta said, with the flat matter-of-factness of someone who had made peace with that fact a long time ago.
Murakami examined the hide again. The faint sheen he noticed earlier was no longer a mystery, it was the visible result of years of accumulated vitality.
Whether that quality remained in the meat or faded after death was something that could only be investigated by eating it.
He suspected it carried through.
"Condition of the carcass?" he asked for confirmation.
"Clean," Ryouta said. "No contamination from the kill strikes, field-dressed within the hour. The cold kept it through transport." He met Murakami's eyes steadily. "It meets the commission terms."
Murakami looked at it for a long moment.
It met the commission terms and then some.
He turned and found Hina already moving toward him before he'd finished the gesture, scroll in hand.
"Settlement," Murakami said.
"Already prepared," Hina replied, pulling a second scroll from her sleeve and placing it on the platform between them. "Delivery confirmation, grade assessment, and the bonus column — which applies."
Murakami took the scroll, reviewed it once, and handed it to Ryouta.
Ryouta read through it carefully before looking up.
"The bonus column," he said.
"For exceeding base grade within the tier," Murakami confirmed. "As discussed."
Ryouta looked at the figure, 200,000 ryo, a full fifty thousand above the base delivery rate.
The difference wasn't arbitrary. A peak Grade Four specimen required significantly more preparation, time, and risk than a standard one.
Three hunters, two nights, deep forest tracking, that kind of hunt didn't price itself the same as an easier kill, and Murakami had no interest in pretending otherwise.
A supplier who felt fairly compensated came back. A supplier who felt squeezed found another client.
He'd rather pay correctly the first time.
Ryouta looked at him.
"Same terms for the next delivery?" he asked.
"Same terms," Murakami said. "And the same standard. We're not interested in anything below what's on that platform."
Gorou made a sound that might have been appreciation or the beginning of a comment, thought better of speaking, and settled for the appreciation.
Ryouta rolled the scroll and tucked it away.
"You'll have the next one within the week," he said.
Murakami nodded. "Understood."