After the Chunin Exams, Konoha's reconstruction entered full swing. The entire village looked like one enormous construction site, filled with clanging tools, shouting foremen, and shinobi rushing back and forth in clouds of dust.
Thanks to the decisive victory, Konoha's economy rebounded at a visible pace. Even the laborers on the construction sites—exhausted and covered in grime—would puff out their chests with pride when boasting that their village had killed the Third Kazekage who tried to start a war.
Unlike some so-called "empires on which the sun never sets," Hiroki could genuinely feel that life in Konoha was improving.
With the Chunin Exams concluded, Sunagakure's reparations arrived swiftly. Merchants flooded in, markets expanded overnight, and the mission desk at the Hokage Office was packed every single day.
Whether they were traveling traders or local vendors, everyone rushed to post missions—if only to show off.
Konoha was truly becoming rich.
Yet strangely enough, none of this prosperity seemed to have anything to do with Hiroki anymore.
Ever since the Nine-Tails transfer incident ended, he had slipped into a peculiar kind of "standby mode."
The Third Hokage assigned him no new missions, merely instructing him to "rest well" and to "spend more time with Kushina." Danzo had reportedly gone to the Land of Rain front and no longer had the leisure to bother him.
As for Orochimaru and the others, they still hadn't returned.
Thus, Hiroki's life abruptly shifted from a battlefield filled with danger and political whirlpools to an almost leisurely routine.
And he didn't mind it at all.
Since the Cloud Ninja incident, he'd been running nonstop—Jiraiya's test, Orochimaru's trial, Tsunade's probing, the assassination of Hanzo in the Land of Rain, and then straight into the Chunin Exams. There had been barely any room to breathe between events.
Now, at last, he had time to sit down and thoroughly all the Ninjutsu he'd copied since fighting Hanzo and during the Exams.
First came the foundation: Chakra.
Ever since activating the muscle auto-growth script, Hiroki's Chakra capacity had increased almost daily. It was now hovering around six thousand and still rising by roughly one hundred and fifty units per day.
Next were the copied Ninjutsu files.
There were so many that, during his fight with Rasa, he hadn't even had the chance to use most of them and had relied solely on familiar techniques. Now, he calmly added Water Release: Muddy Rain, Water Release: Infinite Toxic Swamp, and several others to his active list.
Next time, he figured, he'd give Rasa a proper surprise—
…Oh? Rasa was already dead?
Then forget it.
But digging him up and flogging the corpse wasn't entirely impossible. Who knew when some Edo Tensei user might crawl out of nowhere and drag Rasa back into the world?
As Hiroki sorted everything with meticulous focus, the chibi Nine-Tails icon—an orange pixelated blob in the lower-right corner of his "desktop"—rolled over in boredom.
Kurama: [Hey, brat, what're you doing? Is sorting trash files really that fun?]
A miniature floating window hovered beside the icon, displaying Hiroki's real-world view in real time: rows of monotonous bookshelves inside the archive room.
Because Hiroki sat perfectly still while mentally organizing his files, the Nine-Tails' view didn't change either.
It bored the beast senseless.
Hiroki ignored it.
Snorting, the Nine-Tails began amusing itself. It scurried across the desktop on four pixelated legs, occasionally head-butting the "My Computer" or "Recycle Bin" icons for fun.
Eventually, its gaze landed on the neatly arranged [Ninjutsu Backup] folder.
Curious, it leaned closer, sniffed, and then dove straight inside.
Kurama: [Fire Release? Sounds interesting—]
The [Fire Release] folder opened. The Nine-Tails selected Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique.ee, took a running start, and jumped in.
Hiroki frowned, but didn't stop it.
He wanted to see what the beast would do. It was a technique he rarely used anyway—if it broke, he could simply delete it.
The chibi Nine-Tails circled the file twice, then opened its tiny pixelated mouth.
"Fuu—"
A small pixel flame popped out, danced briefly on the blue desktop, then dissolved into a handful of pixels and vanished.
Kurama: [Hmph. That's it? Human Ninjutsu really is child's play.]
That contemptuous remark finally made Hiroki pause.
His mental cursor snapped beside the Nine-Tails icon.
"You can read it?" Hiroki asked, genuine surprise echoing through the mental space.
Those Ninjutsu files—though translated by the System into structures he could understand—were still fundamentally code.
This was an era without computers, let alone programming languages.
How could a Tailed Beast sealed for a century understand this?
[Read?] The Nine-Tails tilted its head. [Of course I can't read that messy junk.]
It tapped its pixelated body smugly.
[But this old man is basically made of pure Chakra.]
The chibi Nine-Tails lifted its chin arrogantly.
[I can't read, but I can feel it. Every file is like a recipe—telling me how Chakra flows, how its nature changes. If I let my body follow that feeling instinctively, I can perform it. Simple, right?]
Hiroki froze.
The mental space fell into a long, stunned silence.
Then—
A jolt of electricity shot through his thoughts.
He understood.
Completely.
He'd been agonizing over how to teach his copied Ninjutsu to Kushina—how to let her bypass complex theory and endless training. His previous plan had been to implant a "muscle automation script," forcibly strengthening her from the outside.
But that was only treating symptoms.
It couldn't truly let others share his Golden Finger.
What Hiroki really wanted was for others to use Ninjutsu through his Golden Finger. Once people realized he could grant them techniques, they'd beg him to implant all kinds of "soft bodies."
At that point, slipping in backdoors or hidden exploits would be child's play.
Control the techniques.
Control the users.
Reshape the shinobi world.
He'd been racking his brain over how to do it—
And Kurama had just handed him the answer.
If he could replicate what the Nine-Tails had done—
If he could let people feel a jutsu—
Then—
Before long, he wouldn't just be strong.
He'd be a god.
But before his excitement could fully bloom, Kurama scowled.
Nine-Tails icon (annoyed): "Oi, brat Hiroki! Your malice stinks—your mental swamp's about to reek like a sewer!"
Nine-Tails icon (disgusted): "Rein it in! That's my innate talent—humans can't pull it off!"
Then it grinned slyly.
Nine-Tails icon: "Still, Hiroki brat~ Let's keep trading. I'll help tidy those jutsu into human-usable forms, and in return—you take me out for a few strolls, deal?"
—
At the same time, at the Hyuga training grounds—
Bang!
Hyuga Shu's body flew like a torn sack and slammed into the hard earth. Skin scraped from his elbows and knees, pain flaring sharply.
"Trash stays trash." A main-house youth, half a head taller, withdrew his leg and looked down at him with contempt. "Your father was at least a Jonin. How did he sire someone who can't even perform a proper Gentle Fist straight punch?"
Around them, branch-house boys and girls folded their arms and laughed openly.
"Shu, give it up," someone whispered. "You can't beat Lord Hiashi."
Hyuga Shu bit his lip, ignored the plea, and forced himself upright. Wiping blood from his mouth, he assumed the Gentle Fist stance once more.
His pale Byakugan eyes locked onto the main-house youth—Hyuga Hiashi.
Six months ago, before his father died on a dangerous mission, Hiashi had acted like a kindly elder brother.
After that death, he never once showed Shu kindness again.
His mother, a mere Genin, was forced to take exhausting D-rank jobs just to survive—pulling weeds, finding cats, even standing in line to buy groceries for clients.
Yet the Hyuga elders called such work a disgrace and forbade her from taking them.
As for his father's pension, the main house swallowed it whole, claiming branch Jonin were "clan investments" and that dying for the village was simply a loss on their end.
Hyuga Shu wanted to roar.
But he dared not.
Bullying and discrimination gnawed into his bones.
Last week, his exhausted mother had been a moment too slow to kneel when the clan head's retinue passed and was publicly scolded.
"As branch, you forget your place! Your husband's death is the shame brought by disobedient branches—foolishly trying to break the Caged Bird by joining Hanzo's assassination!"
"Yet he actually succeeded. Such branches need harsher lessons!"
She was beaten afterward and left without money for medicine.
And yet—
Wasn't Konoha supposed to be equal?
Dying for the village—how was that different from dying for the clan?
Why was it called shame?
All because of the cursed Caged Bird Seal carved into their foreheads?
"Still not giving up?" Hiashi said coolly. "Such eyes don't belong to the branch house."
"I do this for your own good. If the elders saw that hatred, your fate would be grim. Accept reality—the gap between main and branch is that between birds in the sky and chickens scratching the dirt."
"Know your future."
In the next instant, Hiashi vanished.
Shu's Byakugan caught the motion—Chakra gathered at the palm!
A tenketsu strike!
He tried to dodge, but his body couldn't keep up with his eyes.
Damn—
He was sent flying once more.
Maybe he really was just a mediocre branch Hyuga.
But when he thought of his injured mother, the resentment burned uncontrollably.
Who could help him?
—
Sawada Hiroki.
As he stared up at the sky, Shu's Byakugan caught sight of a familiar figure strolling leisurely down the street.
The classmate who'd graduated early.
The genius who'd shone in the Chunin Exams.
Would Hiroki even remember him?
And even if he did—
Would he care about something as filthy as clan affairs?