Whether Pairo's eyes would matter, Ronin did not know.
The next step was turning the Mangekyō into the Eternal Mangekyō. Once that landed, burning the eyes until they went dark would stop being a problem.
On paper the gain looked thin.
What he actually wanted sat behind the evolution. Eyes that had finished that step might push Susanoo up one stage. Maybe two. Then he would have the complete Gundam, not a half-built frame.
The fight with Netero had made the point. Susanoo was the real piece. Even if all it did was stand there and take hits, the man inside it bought first-move windows by the handful. The defense bothered almost everyone. Ordinary Nen users breaking it was a fairy tale. Netero himself could not crack it in one stroke. Franklin had spent his life to blow a hole in it.
A tool like that earned the hope he was putting on it.
Eyes and armor were not the only lever. Enhancement still had room.
He had built it wide. Whole-body. General output. Healing had crossed his mind and then gone quiet, because the Strength of a Hundred already covered the job. No reason to stretch a second system over the same ground.
Push healing to its limit and he still would not crawl out of a smear of blood. Best case, a limb grew back. The Strength of a Hundred already lived in that neighborhood.
After watching Netero's extreme of speed, he did not know what to put the work on.
Speed, the way Netero had? He liked the feeling of running a man down at a sprint.
Enhancement plus Lightning Style Chakra Mode already did a lot of that.
Power, then.
He thought of Gon. Long hair. Vow and restriction. A charged burst with no ceiling anyone could see.
That road had no gate for him. No difficulty.
He did not like it. It was someone else's shape. Super Destruction Punch had been the same. Once he had better mechanics and a cleaner way to put taijutsu through a hit, the raw punch went on the shelf.
If he took Gon's track, the real question was how to seat the burst in his body. Tsunade's monstrous strength. The Eight Inner Gates—
His brow ticked.
What if he only pushed healing, then ran that healing under the Eight Gates?
Would opening the Gate of Death stop being a death sentence?
No.
Regeneration.
If a limb could grow back, could a discarded eye?
Izanagi, Enhancement healing, the Eight Gates. Open the eighth. Kick. Izanagi puts him back on his feet. Healing grows the blinded eye.
If Enhancement could not do that work, the Dark Continent still had a cure-all herb. Greed Island still had Angel's Breath. Worst case, he went looking for an Unknown. He had two eyes. Spend one for a single opening of the eighth gate. The trade was clean.
The longer he sat with it, the less it looked like a wrong turn.
He had walked a circle and landed where he started. Healing Enhancement was still the best value on the board.
How far it went, he would have to find out by doing it.
If he had to, he could put a vow and a restriction on it and force an ultimate healing Hatsu into existence.
The fight with Netero had pointed. Next time he would leave Susanoo in the dark and try the Eight Gates under the Sharingan. Whether that burst could close on Netero through the 100-Type was a later question.
No hurry.
He would challenge the man again. He only hoped neither of them ended up in Beyond's hands first.
Netero sneezed into his tea.
The fight came back whether he asked for it or not. If Ronin stripped the circus off and lived in Enhancement and taijutsu, the experience would be perfect. The circus was fine too. Fresh tricks kept a fight from going stale.
Beans had been standing there long enough.
"Chairman. You're just going to watch him slip across?"
"I don't know if he makes it," Netero said. "I know that when I decided to hand him the route, the one in hiding should start to itch."
Beyond.
They had not stood in the same room since the pact. More than thirty years. The ambition had not died. The man was stacking power so he could walk back into that country.
And the Association already had Beyond's eyes sitting in a chair, watching Netero.
Pariston. The one who put rocks in his shoes for sport. Adorable.
Take Pariston out of the building and half the fun went with him. Whether the man actually wanted the Dark Continent, or just wanted to stand on Beyond's dream and snap it at the last step, Netero would not pretend to know.
He knew Pariston.
Pariston liked other people's dreams. He liked killing them at the joint that mattered.
Beans did not add anything.
At the door he took out his phone and scrolled to a number he knew and had never called.
The text went out encrypted.
The name on the other end was one character.
Ging.