Mizuki accepted the small scroll from Uchiha Souji with visible confusion on his face. He turned it over in his hands, as if trying to guess its contents just from the feel of the paper alone. Before he could ask anything, Souji placed a hand on his shoulder with a strangely complicated sigh.
"Inside this," Souji said, "is a business plan, and some ideas I've written down. It can help you stand more firmly in the Land of Wind. If you learn it properly, it's not impossible for you to become a rich man there."
He gave a faint smile.
"As long as you follow it step by step, you can live well. That's good enough, don't you think?"
To Souji, this was his last kindness.
A quiet compensation for sending this man to dig sand for the rest of his life.
But to Mizuki, the meaning twisted instantly.
His eyes widened, then burned with emotion. He suddenly clenched the scroll tightly against his chest, as if it were some divine decree.
"Souji-sama!" he blurted out, face full of fire. "This subordinate will definitely bring back the Dragon Veins! I will never disappoint the hope you placed in me!"
Souji's smile froze.
He had just gently given this man an exit.
A graceful path to a peaceful life as a desert merchant.
If Mizuki had simply said, "I'll do my best to survive," Souji would have given him a quiet hint before he left, telling him:
> "You don't actually need to find the Dragon Veins. Just live."
But now?
Now this idiot had proudly thrown that chance away with both hands.
Souji stared at him in disbelief.
You're stupid. You're so stupid it's almost impressive.
In that moment, Souji's last bit of goodwill evaporated.
"Fine," he thought. "If you insist on being like this, then go dig sand for the rest of your life."
Out loud, he just waved his hand irritably.
"Go, go. Go early and come back early."
Mizuki, not hearing the annoyance at all, nodded gratefully and carefully tucked the business scroll into his robes. Souji watched that movement and almost laughed.
"Sure enough," he thought, "what the great philosopher Jiraiya once said was right—
'Sometimes, people only realize the truth after they eat it themselves.'"
Or in simpler terms:
The Law of True Fragrance is eternal.
You can tell someone where safety is, but they'll still happily sprint into danger.
---
Mizuki didn't say goodbye to anyone else.
He left quietly, like a man going on a pilgrimage.
On the way out of the Uchiha compound, he happened to run into Uchiha Fugaku.
Fugaku frowned slightly when he saw Mizuki carrying travel gear and looking ready to leave the village.
"You seem to be preparing for a long trip," Fugaku said. "Did Souji give you some special mission?"
Mizuki nodded seriously.
"Yes. Souji-sama has… long-term plans. And some tasks must be done by someone. I am honored he chose me."
He spoke with a proud smile, as if being sent to wander the desert was the greatest luck of his life.
Fugaku scratched the back of his head. He didn't know what exactly Souji was planning, but he trusted the boy's intelligence more than most adults in the village.
Without asking further, Fugaku reached into his robes and pulled out another scroll, this one heavier and sealed differently.
"Take this," Fugaku said, handing it over. "Inside is money. I don't know what Souji intends, but if this helps you even a little, that's good."
Mizuki stared at him, stunned, then bowed deeply.
"Thank you, Uchiha-sama!"
---
That very night, Mizuki slipped out of Konoha through a secret passage belonging to the Uchiha clan. The tunnel was dark, cool, and quiet. As he walked, he clutched Souji's business scroll and Fugaku's money scroll tightly against his chest.
He had no idea how long he would be gone.
A year?
Five years?
Ten?
He didn't know.
But Uchiha Souji had a rough idea.
Or rather—
He didn't believe Mizuki would ever come back.
If Mizuki somehow did return, Souji felt it would probably be because Uzumaki Naruto dragged him back from some time-related mess in Loulan, just to complete one of those strange fated events.
By then, ten or more years would have passed.
Souji thought:
> "If I can't plan a perfect escape from this village in ten years…
Then I deserve to become Hokage."
Because if ten years of preparation wasn't enough to leave this cursed place, then clearly, he was too attached. And if someone loves Konoha that much…
Well, that's what Hokage is made of.
The thought made the corners of Souji's mouth curl upward in a sad, mocking smile.
He felt great.
After sending away this walking disaster named Mizuki, Souji's heart felt lighter. His plans—especially escape plans—felt cleaner now, free from random backstab noise.
His preparations had always been extremely thorough. If something went wrong, the cause was often that one unstable factor.
And that factor now…
was marching straight into the desert.
---
Time flowed on.
Days passed one after another.
In the blink of an eye, a full week had gone by.
---
The training grounds of the Uchiha clan were quiet except for the sound of wind and soft footsteps on dirt. In the middle of the field, Uchiha Souji stood with Third Generation Onitoru in his left hand, and a glowing sphere of chakra in his right.
But this chakra sphere wasn't just a normal ball.
It was constantly changing shape.
From the number one…
to two…
to three…
up to nine…
The numbers twisted, folded, sharpened, and rounded themselves in a smooth, seamless flow, all following the image in Souji's mind.
Hidden not far away, Kakashi watched silently, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed.
He smacked his lips.
Only seven days had passed since Souji received the scroll about chakra nature transformation and form manipulation. And now, the boy was already shaping chakra into precise numbers without any obvious instability.
"If this is what he calls 'poor ninja talent'…" Kakashi thought dryly, "…then more than ninety percent of Konoha's shinobi should jump off the Hokage Rock."
He felt like he had been scammed.
"This brat," Kakashi muttered under his breath, "was definitely playing me."
Next to him, Uchiha Fugaku was also watching. His eyebrows slowly climbed higher.
He had seen many talented shinobi.
He had seen clan prodigies.
He had even seen Tsunade's legendary chakra control.
But what Souji was doing now…
Even Tsunade had never shown this kind of extremely detailed shape control with raw chakra alone.
"How on earth is he doing this?" Fugaku wondered.
---
The answer was simple.
Uchiha Souji was cheating.
Inside his mind, he was constantly giving silent commands:
> "Onitoru, change it to 3."
"Now make it 7."
"Now stretch it into 9, then compress into 2."
It wasn't Souji's raw control alone.
It was the demon blade spirit's control.
Third Generation Onitoru, a pure spiritual being, could easily manipulate the chakra flowing through Souji's body. Being a soul, Onitoru had a natural advantage at handling energy. Where humans needed years of training, Onitoru could do it like breathing.
Numbers?
Shapes?
Patterns?
All child's play for a pure spiritual life form.
If Souji had enough chakra, Onitoru could probably write an entire novel in the air with chakra strokes.
The only reason he didn't… was because that would be a waste of his ghostly effort.
And because he was being forced to work.
---
Onitoru was furious.
Not only did he have to learn to control Souji's chakra, he also had to sit through nightly sessions where Souji shoved math and physics concepts into their shared training time.
"This is clearly YOUR work," Onitoru complained silently. "Why am I, a respectable demon blade, stuck doing all this?"
He felt abused. Exploited. Overworked.
He wanted to strike.
He wanted to unionize.
But he was a sword. So he couldn't.
Souji, on the other hand, was fully focused. Even though Onitoru was the one guiding the chakra, Souji's body was performing every action.
His nerves, his muscles, his joints—
They were all moving under Onitoru's control.
Souji was quietly memorizing every sensation.
How much chakra flowed at each moment.
How tight the fingers should be.
How the chakra should feel as it bent.
How his arm should adjust to keep balance.
If he wrote it down, it would look like a scientific thesis.
But for now, all of it was being carved into his muscle memory.
Because Souji had a long-term goal:
Even if he lost Third Generation Onitoru one day, he wanted to be able to reproduce all of this on his own.
---
Of course, there was a serious weakness.
Until all this control became instinctive and natural, Souji could not function at full strength without the sword in his hand.
If he dropped the blade now, his combat strength would probably fall by 80–90% in an instant.
That was dangerous.
But Souji knew:
Power and risk always come together.
You couldn't gain something for free.
You couldn't reach higher without paying some kind of price.
"If you want strength," he thought, "you must be willing to accept some weakness."
And this weakness at least had a time limit.
If he trained consistently for four or five years, all these borrowed skills would truly become his own.
That was the whole point.
---
As Onitoru continued to shape the chakra into numbers, he complained in a low, grumbling tone only Souji could hear:
"Kid… it's not that I want to be lazy. But only strength gained by yourself is true strength. If you rely on me too much, you'll pay the price one day."
He wasn't saying this because he cared about human growth.
He just didn't want to work.
This wasn't the first time he'd tried to persuade Souji to let him rest. He tried often, with different lines:
"You need independence."
"You're stunting your growth."
"This isn't healthy for your mind."
But deep down, it always meant:
"Stop making me do your job."
Souji didn't even look bothered.
"It's fine," he said casually. "I'm just using four or five years of future training results in advance."
He smirked slightly.
"In my previous life, this was called an interest-free loan."
He spoke very calmly, but inside he felt proud.
What he and Onitoru were doing now—the level of chakra control they achieved together—was the equivalent of what Souji would've had after four or five years of intense, focused training.
By using this cooperation, he was borrowing that future strength today.
With that power, he could learn Chidori much earlier than normal.
The strength technically belonged to both of them. If you removed either Souji or Onitoru from the equation, neither would be able to fully reproduce it in combat.
But Souji had already thought ahead:
"As long as I don't slack off during these four or five years, this won't be a problem. Eventually, my body will absorb all these patterns. Even if I lose the sword later, I'll still be able to use Chidori."
And it didn't even have to take the full four or five years.
He could repay the "loan" early by training harder and faster.
"This," he thought, "is installment repayment on an interest-free loan from my future self."
Use future growth now.
Pay it back slowly with training.
In financial terms:
He was both borrowing capital and acting like a shameless debtor.
Onitoru understood all of this perfectly.
He sighed heavily at the boy's thoughts.
"Hell is empty," the demon blade muttered, "because the demons are all walking among humans. Only a human could come up with such a flashy and shameless plan to squeeze his partner like this."
Souji touched his chin thoughtfully and replied:
"You don't get it. This isn't squeezing. This is mutual cooperation and interdependence."
He grinned.
"This is what a real partnership looks like."
Onitoru wanted to cry.
But he had no eyes.
So he continued working.
And the chakra in Souji's hand smoothly changed from one…
to two…
to three…
under the control of a demon sword and a boy who thought like a future loan shark of his own strength.
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