"Hey, I'm talking to you. You've been working non-stop for three or four days now, haven't you? Aren't you planning to rest at all?"
In the maintenance room of the hangar on the fifth basement level of Hii Kōri's workshop, a—or rather, one—tanuki-style mechanical beast stood quite humanly on its hind legs on the railing, arms crossed as it complained to Hii Kōri, who was inspecting the condition of a large puppet.
Now sixteen years old, Hii Kōri was in his golden period for height growth, easily surpassing 170cm and heading toward 180cm. This growth rate often made his clothes no longer fit properly.
So for the last two years, his clothing style had become quite loose. Aside from that perpetually unchanged beige turtleneck, everything looked a size too large.
Whether it was the rolled-up pant cuffs and sleeves, or the white coat slightly too big in the shoulders, it all made the young man, who should have been quite tall, seems not so tall.
Add to that his half-length red, slightly curly hair that had been neglected for a long time and his glasses frame with mottled peeling paint, and he looked even more slovenly.
"Yeah, you're right. I'll rest once I'm done here."
Hii Kōri, with a lollipop in his mouth, casually brushed it off. Seeming a bit out of breath, he tugged at the collar of his perpetually unchanged beige turtleneck. Through the gap at the collar, layers of bandages wrapped around him could be seen.
Then, while lifting the mechanical beast that had climbed onto his white coat, he rapidly recorded the indices flashing on the glowing green screen.
"Eh... fine."
Unlike conventional puppets—whether the combat marionettes equipped with various devices or the autonomous puppets on Hii Kōri's factory assembly line that could act independently but had quite rigid movement logic—this mechanical tanuki was different.
This mechanical beast's movements were quite agile, and from its modulated "tone," one could judge that this "machine" possessed consciousness.
Of course, this didn't mean Hii Kōri had touched upon the highest realm of Yin Release—creating something from nothing. Actually, it was just a trivial little experiment on his part in the area of Yin Release.
As the beast's form suggested, the consciousness now housed within it belongs to Shukaku, the One-Tail.
By processing Shukaku's chakra into the permanent magnet cores used for autonomous puppets, and then using Yin Release to further establish a connection between this chakra and the original body, as long as it didn't exceed a certain distance, Shukaku could transfer his consciousness from within Bunpuku to this mechanical beast.
Of course, as price and insurance, within this puppet, Shukaku couldn't use any chakra. Moreover, when his consciousness first entered the mechanical beast, that botched control method made Shukaku hilariously fell over quite a bit.
But even so, Shukaku was still very happy.
Even though Bunpuku could move freely now, and Shukaku could see many things through his jinchūriki's eyes, the feeling of actually being able to grasp something tangible still made the long-sealed tailed beast quite pleased.
Of course, the fact that—even though the voice device had been modified and they publicly claimed this was a "living puppet" from a dying summoning beast—the Third Kazekage, who had actually seen Shukaku, nearly had a heart attack on the spot when he saw this thing—well, that didn't need mentioning.
Although Hii Kōri repeatedly emphasized that this technology wasn't specifically developed for Shukaku, that he was just using Shukaku's durability for experiments, the big-tailed tanuki still regarded him as one of the humans closest to him.
To be honest, this really wasn't Hii Kōri playing some game of retreating to advance.
Under normal circumstances, with chakra unable to be freely manipulated over extreme distances, creating autonomous puppets like Mechamaru's required other ways.
Besides consciousness transfer, he had also prepared plans to improve chakra threads, but the latter wasn't very feasible.
Materials science research was like that—even with a sufficiently solid foundation, it still felt like gambling.
But Shukaku didn't care about any of that. Like was like.
If you didn't treat them as monsters, didn't unilaterally exert meaningless pity, didn't control or use them from on high, tailed beasts were actually quite easy to coax.
Of course, if you could slap them until they cried, all the above conditions were bullshit. (×)
"Speaking of which, you still haven't learned Lightning Release?"
After a while, Shukaku, watching Hii Kōri paralysis in his chair putting eye drops in his eyes, asked this.
"Nope."
"What the hell. I really can't understand this at all. How the hell did you master Magnet Release while being unable to learn Lightning Release?"
Receiving the expected dry response, Shukaku looked speechless, jumped into Hii Kōri's arms, and lay down lazily.
Previously, after confirming that Hii Kōri's Magnet Release still hadn't progressed, Shukaku had simply asked Bunpuku to assist by giving Hii Kōri a large portion of his own chakra,
hoping to help him master Magnet Release this way.
After ingesting a certain amount of tailed beast chakra, although not as much as a jinchūriki, one could still achieve semi-tailed beast transformation. This was similar to how, after being incarnated by a cursed spirit, the cursed technique would also be inscribed on the person serving as the vessel.
Relying on this method, Hii Kōri could indeed master Shukaku's Magnet Release.
That this kid could maintain a quite stable mental state even while releasing a Tailed Beast Chakra Cloak, or even in semi-tailed beast transformation, was something Shukaku had long ceased to find surprising.
But... what did he mean by saying that during the brief semi-tailed beast transformation state, he had calculated the chakra ratio for his Magnet Release using approximate comparison, and then calculated three other different Magnet Release ratios?
Okay, okay, buddy. Your goddamn brain plus divided thinking really is overpowered, really something else. But when you've reached this point, why the hell can't you learn Lightning Release?
"This is completely unreasonable?!"
Shukaku, who had served as Hii Kōri's sparing partner within Bunpuku's consciousness space, had firsthand—and firsthand—experienced him gradually mastering Fire and Earth nature transformations. But when it came to Lightning Release, which should have been mastered due to Magnet Release's existence, Hii Kōri suddenly hit a wall.
To this, the big-tailed tanuki could only say, "I've really never seen this before."
"Mm... probably influenced by my spirit."
The red-haired young man closed his eyes, relieving the dryness, but actually understood this.
Due to having further reached the realm of "triple-layer" divided thinking, Hii Kōri's mental energy output and total volume had now even surpassed his life force, and his Yin Release intensity had surged accordingly.
To avoid upsetting the finally achieved yin-yang balance, he had been been consciously regulating his Yin and Yang cores. The bandages now wrapped around him existed for this purpose.
But even so, this spiritual power inevitably had some influence on him.
***
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