A new future had arrived.
Sure enough, beside the urn marked with the scratched-out forehead protector symbol of Rogue Kiyohara, a second urn materialized with a ripple in the darkness of his mind.
This one had a dark metallic sheen. On the lid was the emblem of a sharp katana.
"A blade?"
Kiyohara couldn't help thinking of a swordsman.
He shook his head and tapped the urn with his mind.
"Are you there?"
He asked carefully.
Even if it was still another version of himself, there was no telling what kind of temperament this future Kiyohara might have. Different worlds, different experiences, different years lived—those things could turn one man into someone almost unrecognizable.
"So... I'm dead?"
A phantom spirit rose from the urn.
This one looked to be in his early twenties. He stood straight as a pine, tall and steady, with shoulders that seemed shaped by countless hours of training.
His face resembled Kiyohara's by seven or eight parts, but his features were sharper, more rugged. There was a hard, unshakable resolve in his brow, the kind forged only by walking through fire and refusing to kneel.
"You're me from the past, aren't you?"
The new Kiyohara understood quickly enough. He had already grasped that the Last Will and Testament had delivered him to another version of himself.
"That's right. I'm you from the past." Kiyohara studied him from head to toe. "You trained with a sword?"
In the ninja world, swords and blades were blurred together anyway. Whether people called it swordsmanship or blade work hardly mattered.
"You can think of it that way."
The young Kiyohara gave a small nod.
"Commoners naturally have too little chakra. So I became Master Maruboshi Kosuke's disciple and studied the Konoha-Style sword arts—especially Willow."
His voice was clear and brisk, entirely unlike the weathered roughness of Rogue Kiyohara.
"Later, I died at the hands of Ao of the Hidden Mist. His Byakugan could read my muscle movements perfectly. He was too troublesome to deal with."
"I see..."
Kiyohara listened quietly as this young future self explained his path.
He also pieced together another important detail. This future version's chakra reserves were about the same as his own before taking the forbidden drug.
So instead of trying to force power where there wasn't enough of it, he'd chosen another route. He had poured everything into swordsmanship, wringing every bit of value out of every thread of chakra.
Many sword techniques consumed chakra as well, but compared to pure ninjutsu, they leaned far harder on skill.
"What's your last wish?"
Kiyohara asked the question that mattered most.
No bloodline-limit future had appeared this time, which left him slightly disappointed.
Still, if he could inherit this version's swordsmanship, that alone would be worth a great deal.
When a ninja ran out of chakra, what remained were fists, steel, and whatever had been carved into the body through repetition.
And Maruboshi Kosuke was no ordinary eternal genin. He simply refused promotion. In truth, he was stronger than most jonin.
If this future Kiyohara had really become his disciple, then the value of that inheritance was obvious.
These were exactly the things Kiyohara had lacked most when he had nothing.
"I only have two last wishes. The first is revenge."
Young Kiyohara's expression hardened at once.
"That bastard really killed me. Ao of the Hidden Mist deserves to die properly."
"All right," Kiyohara said without hesitation. "I'll help you take revenge."
Ao hadn't yet transplanted the Byakugan at this point in time. He was nowhere near as difficult to handle as he would become later.
Wanting revenge on the man who killed you was only natural.
"And the second?"
Young Kiyohara answered at once.
"I want you to forge a ninja sword—one that can properly amplify chakra and bring out the full strength of swordsmanship. One of the reasons I lost was because my blade broke."
Kiyohara nodded slowly.
That was manageable.
Compared to Rogue Kiyohara's final wish, this future was far easier to satisfy.
Back then, becoming a proper chunin had required surviving Kannabi Bridge first. The pressure that put on him had been enormous.
Now things were different.
The chakra metal was already in his hands. All he needed was enough money and a skilled craftsman to forge the blade.
As for the revenge, that wasn't impossible either. Ao was still just another shinobi right now.
In fact, if everything went smoothly, Kiyohara felt he might be able to resolve both wishes within the month.
Kirigakure had already begun moving. If he moved quickly enough, he might be able to complete the will, absorb the inheritance, and make room for the next future to arrive even sooner.
And that was what really stirred him.
What if the next future brought a bloodline limit?
He set himself a small goal then and there.
One or two months. He would clear these wishes within one or two months.
And if things turned sour, he could even let Young Kiyohara fight in his place.
In some ways, this version of himself would be more dangerous than Rogue Kiyohara had ever been.
Because Rogue Kiyohara relied on hardened experience.
This one relied on pure technique.
"But your body, back then—it was too weak."
Young Kiyohara floated to the side, brows knitted, and began criticizing him without the slightest politeness.
"Think about it. In a drawn-out fight, if you run out of chakra—or if you meet an enemy who can absorb it or disrupt it—what are you left with?"
His gaze swept over Kiyohara's body like a blade.
"Nothing but the body you've tempered through battle, and the combat skills you've sharpened over years. If those aren't enough, then you're already dead."
Faced with this cold, demanding future self, Kiyohara could only steady himself and answer seriously.
"Then where do I start?"
"Swordsmanship begins with the basics. Grip. Footwork. Power generation."
Young Kiyohara spoke as if laying down law.
"First, find something suitable to stand in for a sword. Then train the fundamental actions—swinging, chopping, slashing, thrusting—until they sink into your bones."
Hearing that, Kiyohara turned and looked across the stream.
It didn't take long for him to spot a branch of hardwood, smoothed by water and worn almost straight. It was about the right thickness too.
He walked over, picked it up, weighed it in his hand, and felt the balance was acceptable. He was about to shave it down with a kunai and turn it into a simple wooden practice sword.
"Wrong."
Young Kiyohara's voice rang out at once.
His illusory arm rose, pointing at something half-hidden in the grass not far away.
It wasn't wood.
It was a black-gray rod of stone, almost one and a half meters long and as thick as two fists together.
Judging by the fracture, it had likely snapped off from a larger boulder. It looked heavy enough that even lifting it would require both hands.
"Use that one," the young swordsman said. "It builds strength."
Kiyohara stared.
"You want me to train with that?"
For a second, he thought he'd heard wrong.
He pointed at the stone bar, which looked less like a sword and more like something meant for tamping earth or shoring up a bridge foundation.
In that instant, an absurd image flashed through his mind—some one-armed swordsman wandering the world with a divine eagle on his shoulder, dragging around a black iron slab.
Fortunately, he still had both arms.
And no eagle.
"When you get used to the weight and inconvenience of that stone rod day after day," Young Kiyohara said flatly, "and when the correct way of generating force is carved into your body, then the day you switch to a real ninja sword, it will feel light as nothing."
His tone carried a relentless perseverance Kiyohara couldn't help recognizing.
After hearing him out, Kiyohara thought it over seriously and found the logic hard to dispute.
In the original story, Rock Lee trained much the same way—only instead of a stone rod, he wore outrageous weights across his body.
So from that day on, Kiyohara's life on the eastern front settled into a new rhythm.
Besides routine patrols, guard duty, the occasional short-distance supply escort, and practice with Wind Release: Gale Palm, he spent nearly all his remaining time carrying that absurdly heavy stone bar to a relatively level patch of open ground near the edge of camp.
There, under the instruction of his future self, he practiced what Young Kiyohara simply called the basics of swordsmanship.
He swung.
He chopped.
He slashed.
He thrust.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The stone rod tore the air with ugly, cumbersome weight. Every movement dragged at his shoulders, his wrists, his waist, his back. It was nothing like wielding a proper blade.
But that was exactly the point.
Young Kiyohara corrected every flaw mercilessly.
"Your grip is too loose."
"Your left foot is dead weight."
"Your hips moved too late."
"You chopped with your arms. Use your whole body."
Each correction was cold and precise, like a blade shaving away waste.
At first, Kiyohara could barely get through the most basic sequences without his palms going numb and his shoulders burning.
But after a few days, the rod no longer felt like a foreign object. Its weight remained monstrous, yet his body was beginning to understand it.
And once the body began to understand, improvement became visible.
Naturally, that drew attention.
"Kiyohara, are you... training some new taijutsu?"
Rin Nohara had come by the stream for water when she noticed him.
Her eyes fixed on the thick, black, brutally heavy stone rod in his hands, and her face filled with open confusion.
After all, from a distance, what Kiyohara was doing hardly resembled sword practice at all.
It looked more like he was swinging around a broken pillar.
"Yes," Kiyohara said with a calm nod. "Something like that."
Every time he raised the rod, its thick silhouette cast a broad dark shadow over Rin's face.
Don't misunderstand. That was only because the sun was behind him.