"I... I believe you. But for our village leader's safety, I need to test it myself before letting her train or spreading it throughout Nadeshiko Village."
Tokiwa gripped the scroll tightly, absolute determination written across her face.
As far as she was concerned, Jiraiya had given her such an easy way to verify whether the method was genuine that it simply had to be real.
Otherwise, she could expose the lie instantly just by asking Nagato or Konan.
There was no need to go back and bother them again.
Because of Jiraiya, she had already left a terrible first impression on Amegakure's senior leadership.
The best thing she could do now was reduce her presence as much as possible and hope they eventually forgot everything that happened today.
"Good luck. And remember, don't let the existence of a shortcut make you careless. If you don't complete the physical requirements properly, absorbing natural energy is extremely dangerous—especially on your first attempt."
After giving her one final, serious warning, Jiraiya stood up and prepared to leave.
Tokiwa did not stop him this time.
Once Jiraiya was gone, she jumped down from the rooftop, found an inn, and prepared to test the method herself.
She had to confirm she could actually learn it before daring to take it back to the village.
As for how she would perform the physical "shortcut"?
Please.
How many years had she been single?
She lived in Nadeshiko Village, a place populated entirely by women.
Did anyone seriously think she was unfamiliar with masturbating?
...
Elsewhere, after leaving the command tower, Makoto headed straight to Orochimaru's underground laboratory complex.
Orochimaru had already received the forwarded contents of the scroll and begun analyzing them.
By the time Makoto arrived, the Sannin was ready to present his conclusions.
"Konohamaru's ability to extend Frog Kata has nothing to do with Enra's ability to transform into an extending staff. At its core, it's simply another application of natural energy," Orochimaru explained, his eyes gleaming with academic interest.
"Jiraiya practices Mount Myōboku's Sage Mode, and so does Naruto. However, Naruto's shortcut strips away most of the biological traits unique to Mount Myōboku's senjutsu. Konohamaru and Kakashi, who learned it from Naruto, have diluted those specific traits even further.
Senjutsu should function exactly like ninjutsu.
Senjutsu uses natural energy, while ninjutsu uses chakra. There can be different elemental categories, but there shouldn't truly be separate, isolated 'schools.' At their core, every path reaches the exact same destination.
In my view, Makoto-kun, the pure, unfiltered use of natural energy demonstrated by you and the Sage of Six Paths is what Sage Mode should truly be. Konohamaru's extended Frog Kata is fundamentally similar to Ryūchi Cave's Inorganic Reanimation.
He has unknowingly merged Frog Kata's blunt-force principles with Inorganic Reanimation, directly animating and controlling the natural energy around him. The boy has both impressive talent and exceptional luck."
Orochimaru paused, a faint smirk crossing his pale face. "Even so, I don't believe this represents the final stage of Sage Mode."
"Oh? If that still isn't the endpoint, do you believe my brother's Sage Mode is?" Senju Tobirama interjected from a nearby workstation.
Although Tobirama could not use Sage Mode himself, he was a genius research ninja who had engineered countless forbidden techniques.
His mechanical understanding of senjutsu's principles was extremely thorough.
"No. Do you remember that Sasuke from the future?" Orochimaru gently shook his head. "Even Inorganic Reanimation requires the user to absorb natural energy, refine it into senjutsu chakra, and then consume that chakra to produce an effect.
That future Sasuke's Kirin was different. At the time, he possessed even less chakra than Kakashi, yet he used a microscopic amount of his own chakra to guide the natural lightning already present in the atmosphere, producing devastating power.
In my opinion, that is the ultimate destination of the Sage Mode concept—using minimal personal energy to command nature itself to attack. In other words, directly weaponizing the limitless natural energy that exists everywhere throughout the world."
As he finished his lecture, Orochimaru's gaze returned to Makoto.
Orochimaru had never personally witnessed the apocalyptic power of the stones Makoto had given to Mei Terumī and Kurotsuchi.
But he had seen Tsunade's.
That was precisely the kind of Sage Mode Orochimaru was describing—one powered by an effectively inexhaustible, external supply of natural energy.
The laboratory fell silent.
After a while, Orochimaru returned to his senses and smiled toward Amado, who had remained quiet while diligently working at his own station.
"Still, my understanding of senjutsu has advanced another level today. I should now be able to begin artificially adding a senjutsu 'trait' to a subject. I wonder whether anyone might need one?"
"What? You can really do it?" Amado finally lost his cool composure.
As a scientist from the Boruto era, Amado was an intensely practical man.
Had he been someone ruled entirely by emotion, his attempt to clone his late daughter would not have failed so disastrously.
Even if the clone was technically an independent life-form, she wouldn't have become someone as vicious and foul-tempered as Delta.
The problem was that Amado understood exactly how dangerous the shinobi world was.
Even if he successfully resurrected his daughter, without sufficient combat strength, she could still die violently in some future disaster.
That was why he added countless combat-related genes to Delta's blueprint.
Using Orochimaru and Makoto's current terminology, those genetic modifications could be called "combat traits."
The result was that his once-kind daughter became someone with the exact opposite personality—a domineering, sadistic woman who enjoyed grinding men beneath her heel.
Amado created Delta before he created Koji Kashin.
Even after developing a flawless understanding of senjutsu while engineering Koji, he could no longer retroactively add it to Delta.
Besides, given Delta's twisted personality, Amado could no longer truly regard her as his daughter.
Even if it became scientifically possible to add traits directly to a living person—creating something like an advanced version of Sage Kabuto—Amado still wouldn't do it to her.
In any case, Amado was a realist who understood his current situation clearly.
When his real daughter, Akebi, was terminally ill and near death, his only wish had been for her to survive and recover.
But Akebi was now actively undergoing treatment.
With successful precedents like Ameyuri Ringo and Kimimaro Kaguya—patients with similarly incurable illnesses who were completely cured—Amado no longer needed to worry about her basic survival.
What he had to worry about next was the ambient danger of the shinobi world itself. And, more importantly, the looming threat of the Ōtsutsuki.
Naturally, Amado's strategic thinking began to align with that of his future self from the Boruto era, back when he still worked for Kara.
However, cultivating an entirely new artificial human in a vat and adding traits from the very beginning was relatively simple.
Adding them directly to an already living person was on an entirely different level of difficulty and danger.
Yakushi Kabuto's monstrous transformation in the original timeline could only be described as doing everything humanly possible and leaving the rest to blind luck.
Kabuto had foundational medical knowledge, but claiming he had fully mastered the genetic principles of transplanting another person's cells, perfectly acquiring their abilities, and adding new biological traits would be absurd.
He hadn't even used anesthesia during his fusion process.
He deliberately relied on the agonizing pain to remain conscious so he could react immediately if his body started breaking down.
The current Kabuto had not transplanted any cells, but the underlying biological principles remained the same. E
veryone present in the lab understood that bottleneck.
Yet Orochimaru suddenly announced he could bypass it entirely. No wonder Amado was overjoyed.
"Cursed seals, Hashirama cells, and everything else—we've researched so many foundational principles here. Why is it surprising that they've finally borne fruit and produced something entirely new?" Orochimaru shook his head at Amado's visible excitement.
Then he remembered that Amado had only joined their team recently.
It was natural the man didn't fully grasp the scope of their progress yet.
From this moment onward, the shinobi world officially possessed three—or perhaps four—entirely different evolutionary paths for Sage Mode.
First: The Orthodox Method.
The traditional, nature-based Sage Modes taught exclusively at Mount Myōboku and Ryūchi Cave.
Second: The Shortcut Method.
Naruto's degenerate, biologically modified version of the orthodox path.
Third: The Technological Method.
Orochimaru's scientific Sage Mode, surpassing the original cursed-seal system through direct genetic modification and cellular transplantation.
Fourth: Makoto's Sage Mode.
Also universally known as the Shameless Cheating Method.