When the light faded, only a dim spark remained. It drifted into the urn in Kiyohara's mind and disappeared inside it.
He tried tapping the urn with his thoughts, but nothing answered him.
The rogue-nin Kiyohara had said he would slowly dissipate over time. As for how long that would take, nobody knew.
Kiyohara let the matter go for now and drew his attention back to the outside world.
The fusion had felt long, almost solemn, but in truth less than a second had passed.
When Kiyohara opened his eyes again, there was a subtle change in him.
The examiner, who had just been about to turn away, paused and looked back with faint confusion. For the briefest instant, he had sensed something shift in Kiyohara.
Then the feeling vanished as quickly as it had come. Kiyohara still stood there where he had been, steady and quiet, as if nothing had happened at all.
Just my imagination?
The examiner chuckled to himself and shook his head.
For a ninja, an increase in spiritual strength came from tempering the will and sharpening the mind. After a fierce battle, after a breakthrough, after the emotional jolt of being promoted, it was only natural for someone's chakra to rise a little.
He chose not to dwell on it and turned away to handle the rest of the ceremony.
Kiyohara did the same. He stepped down from the ring and made his way toward the audience seats.
By then, the crowd had already begun to thin. Spectators were filing out in waves, voices fading into the halls, while Kurenai Yuhi and Genma Shiranui came down from the stands to meet him.
"Was this selection specially arranged?" Kurenai asked as they walked.
The Chunin selection usually happened on a fixed schedule every year. This one, however, had clearly been pulled together in a hurry.
"No idea," Kiyohara said, shaking his head. He had only just stopped being a genin. There was no way a newly promoted chunin like him would know what Konoha's higher-ups were thinking.
"Then shouldn't you treat us to a meal to celebrate?" Genma asked, shifting the senbon in his mouth with a grin that was half teasing and half sincere.
He really was happy for him.
"After I pay back my loan," Kiyohara replied at once.
Kurenai's eyes widened. "You're still in debt?"
She sounded genuinely shocked. She had never met a ninja who lived like that.
"Yeah. I had to prepare a lot of things before the mission," Kiyohara said with a small shrug.
Most of the money had gone into the forbidden medicine. At one point, he had considered selling the formula under the name of a family secret remedy, but the effect was just too good. If the wrong people noticed it, he would only be asking for trouble.
Shimura Danzo and Orochimaru had once managed to conduct human experiments right under Hiruzen Sarutobi's nose in pursuit of greater power. If people like that learned he possessed something this effective, they would not politely ask where it had come from. They would seize it.
Kiyohara had no intention of crossing paths with Danzo that early. There was no benefit in taking a risk that stupid.
For now, the safest way to make money was still the battlefield: missions, merit, and the occasional unattended corpse bag.
Once he was stronger, then maybe he could think about turning the formula into profit.
Kurenai looked at him for a long moment, her expression complicated.
Only now did she fully understand how little faith he must have had in the Kannabi Bridge mission. He had prepared so thoroughly that he had even borrowed money before setting out, as though he had expected death from the very beginning.
"All right," she said at last.
If he still had debt hanging over him, then there was no point forcing a celebration on him.
After chatting a little longer, Kiyohara left them with the excuse that he needed more training before his next deployment. Then he headed back alone toward his old house on the edge of the village.
Once he returned to the familiar, cramped, shabby little place, he did not linger. He went straight to the tiny courtyard behind it.
The last light of the day painted everything in gold, but it did nothing to hide how poor the place really was.
Kiyohara did not care. Right now, all he wanted to know was exactly how much he had improved.
This time he had not inherited new ninjutsu. What he had inherited was talent—raw, foundational ability.
He drew a standard kunai from his tool pouch and took a steadying breath.
"Lightning Release: Lightning Flow Technique."
Crackling sparks burst to life at once.
A brighter arc than before coiled rapidly around the kunai's blade, blue-white and violent, hissing like a living thing.
This time, Kiyohara felt the chakra in his meridians moving more smoothly than ever. He had a stronger sense of guiding it, of taming the wildness of Lightning Release without losing its destructive edge.
It was hard to describe. The closest thing he could compare it to was instinct.
Some people could glance at a problem and see the answer immediately. Others could stare at it for half a day and still only write down a clumsy attempt at a solution.
Talent was cruel like that.
"The bottleneck in this body has finally loosened…"
Kiyohara looked at the electricity dancing along the kunai and felt a faint surge of joy.
From this point on, he could finally experience what it felt like to be a minor genius instead of a mediocre civilian ninja clawing upward one step at a time.
If he could stack enough of these inheritances, then one day he might really become the person with the greatest affinity for Lightning Release in the history of the ninja world.
His gaze shifted to the stony target piled in one corner of the yard.
It was about a meter high, dragged there long ago so he could practice Wind Release against it.
Without hesitating, Kiyohara twisted his waist and hurled the kunai.
Whoosh—sizzle!
The weapon shot through the air like a bolt of blue lightning, far faster than before, and slammed straight into the center of the stone.
There was a heavy crack.
The kunai did not shatter the rock, nor did it simply embed itself in place. Instead, it drilled straight through, boring a charred, fist-sized hole into the hard stone surface.
The force carried it onward. It punched into the mud wall behind the target and sank deep enough that only half the handle remained outside, quivering faintly as the last arcs of electricity slowly faded.
Kiyohara stared at the blackened hole in the rock, surprise flashing across his eyes.
This was much stronger than when he had practiced it before.
More importantly, he could clearly feel the improvement in his control. The angle of the throw, the output of chakra, the maintenance of the lightning after release—every part of it had become cleaner, sharper, more stable.
"Let's try Wind Release too."
He exhaled, dispelled the remaining Lightning Release chakra from the kunai, put it away, and formed a new sequence of hand seals.
Dog. Horse. Rooster.
His fingers moved quickly.
Then Kiyohara puffed out his cheeks and released a long breath.
A whistling gale burst upward into the sky.
He deliberately did not aim it at the walls of his yard. If he blew the walls apart, he would have to spend money repairing them, and he was in no position to waste cash on something like that.
So he sent the wind straight up. It roared into the air with a sharp, cutting sound, scattering dust and leaves in a widening spiral.
Kiyohara could clearly feel the difference this time. The chakra it consumed was lower than before, yet the power of the technique itself had risen by an entire level.
The result was immediate, obvious, undeniable.
He slowly lowered his hands and stood in the fading light, silent for a moment.
This was the value of true talent.
Not flashy theory. Not empty praise. Real, measurable growth.
His chakra reserves had increased. His spiritual strength had deepened. His affinity for Wind Release and Lightning Release had both improved. Even the once-vague details of nature transformation now seemed easier to grasp.
If he relearned Lightning Release: Earth Walk from the beginning now, he would be able to reach his previous level in far less time.
The difference might not look enormous from the outside, but Kiyohara knew exactly what it meant.
It meant his progress from this point onward would no longer follow the same miserable pace as before.
It meant that each hour spent training would produce more results.
It meant the gap between him and the clan-born prodigies had finally stopped being an unbridgeable abyss.
And that was only what he could feel right now.
He also remembered the fragments that had surfaced during the fusion—brief, broken glimpses of the rogue-nin Kiyohara's life.
Cold test tubes gleaming in Orochimaru's hidden labs. Long pursuits through hostile territory. Countless narrow escapes. A complicated, bitter feeling toward Konoha that could not be summed up in a single word.
Those memories had not truly become his. They were more like fragments of old film spliced into the edge of his mind, broken images from another branch of existence.
Fortunately, there had not been many.
Kiyohara was relieved by that.
If full memories came with every inheritance, then he might one day lose track of where he ended and those other futures began. A person who had only lived a little over ten years could easily be overwhelmed by decades of experience from other timelines.
Too much future would become a burden.
Too much foreign memory would become erosion.
In the end, if he was not careful, he might stop being Kiyohara at all.
But this fusion had not gone that far.
He had gained power, talent, insight, and fragments of understanding. His sense of self was still intact.
That alone was a blessing.
"Orochimaru in that future was even more obsessed with human experimentation…"
Kiyohara murmured inwardly, piecing together the little he had seen.
That explained why so many forbidden drugs had existed in the rogue-nin timeline. It also explained how that version of himself had gotten his hands on some of them.
And it confirmed something else too.
Those futures really were closer to parallel worlds than straight, linear continuations of his present. It was not just Kiyohara who changed from branch to branch. The entire ninja world shifted alongside him.
That made the "Last Will" even more frightening.
It was not simply borrowing from the future. It was reaching across possible worlds.
Kiyohara raised his head and looked up at the sky, now turning dark by degrees.
No matter what, the rogue-nin Kiyohara's second final wish had been fulfilled. He was now a legitimate chunin of Konoha, with a vest, a headband, and the recognition to prove it.
And from today onward, his road would begin to change completely.
The thought filled him with a strange, restrained anticipation.
If one possible future had already produced a rogue-nin version of himself strong enough to survive for years in Orochimaru's shadow, then what other versions might appear next?
A Kiyohara born with a bloodline limit?
A Kiyohara who specialized in taijutsu?
A Kiyohara who had walked an even darker road and come back stronger for it?
He did not know.
But for the first time, that uncertainty no longer felt frightening.
It felt promising.
Kiyohara looked once more at the hole blasted through the stone and the scorch marks left by his wind and lightning, then slowly let out a breath.
His future had finally become something worth looking forward to.