When the nurse finally drifted awake, the surgery was already over.
Her body was still numb. Her tongue curled uselessly in her mouth, and she couldn't force out a single complete sentence. Her right hand had been reattached. The wound was wrapped in gauze, and someone had even tied it off with a neat little bow. She still couldn't feel anything.
"Neural reconnection is delicate work. Honestly… your talent is just… unbelievable."
Chihaya Tōru, who had ended up as the assistant, wiped down the blood-slick instrument table while praising Konome without restraint.
Combat talent was one thing. But picking up medical ninjutsu this fast was ridiculous.
He explained once, demonstrated once. After a few practice runs, Konome could reproduce every movement perfectly. The small hand holding the scalpel was steadier than his own blood pressure. When she cut, it was crisp and clean, with zero hesitation, as if the concept of psychological burden simply didn't exist for her.
As for chakra control, it wasn't even worth discussing.
When he trained her before, he'd noticed the reason she made mistakes wasn't lack of skill, but the opposite. Her ability to channel life force through chakra was too strong. She couldn't hit precision points cleanly.
That was just a matter of time.
After repeated attempts, she finally found the exact pinpoint.
With him guiding the physiology, and her body and chakra control catching up, even so-called "high-difficulty" medical ninjutsu became ordinary.
Chihaya Tōru scrubbed at the dried blood along the table's edge with a grin. He was in an excellent mood.
With Konome's help, both experiments and treatments would become far easier. He'd long since grown sick of dealing with the idiots upstairs.
"How does it feel?" Konome asked, turning toward the nurse with genuine concern.
Even though her Byakugan had already confirmed the neural links were complete and firing electrical signals, she still lacked confidence. This was her first surgery. Did it really work?
"Mm… mm…"
The nurse's tongue still wouldn't cooperate. She could only lift the hand she'd just gotten back and weakly curl a finger in response.
Konome's face lit up with a warm smile.
If the nerves had connected, everything else was small work. That meant her first surgery in her life had been perfect.
So you really could learn things in Root.
Click.
Chihaya Tōru switched off the lamp above the door that read IN SURGERY.
A moment later, hurried footsteps approached. Several nurses pushed carts into the room.
"Alright. The rest isn't our problem," Chihaya Tōru said. "Come on. I'll show you the environment you'll be working in."
"I'll be working in the Experimental Division from now on?" Konome asked.
"When you're not on missions, yes," he replied, then looked at her with open expectation. "By the way… can I draw a tube of your blood?"
Whirr.
Invisible threads of wind stirred softly around Konome's body.
"Okay, okay. I was just saying it," Chihaya Tōru blurted, eyelids twitching. He threw both hands up, even striking a dramatic, exaggerated surrender pose.
Konome didn't bother reacting to the performance. Her face stayed cold.
"If there's a next time, I'll cut you into pieces."
The sincerity in her voice was absolute.
Chihaya Tōru lowered his hands. The exaggerated expression drained away, replaced by a flat, emotionless calm.
"Kill me, and you'll die horribly."
"That makes me curious," Konome replied, killing intent gathering in her gray eyes.
She was only a shadow clone. She didn't fear his threat at all.
They stared at each other across the air.
The operating room went rigid, the atmosphere congealing.
"Tch. You really are like Orochimaru," Chihaya Tōru said with a click of his tongue, sounding almost regretful when he realized he couldn't intimidate her. He dropped the cold act, turned bored again, and walked out of the operating room without waiting, as if his earlier warmth had been nothing but an illusion.
"Who's Orochimaru?" Konome followed, fishing for information. "One of your test subjects?"
"If he were, that would be amazing," Chihaya Tōru muttered, rolling his eyes.
The moment he realized he wouldn't be allowed to "research," his patience with her nosedived. Even the strange golden goodwill above his head shrank noticeably, and the dark malice thinned as well.
They passed through the hive-like corridors and quickly reached a pitch-black underground chamber.
The walls and door were packed with sealing formulas and curse marks. When Konome activated her Byakugan, the chakra patterns were so dense they almost stung her eyes.
This was clearly the true core of the Experimental Division.
"The Experimental Division is split into two parts," Chihaya Tōru explained. "The hive above monitors the subjects and treats injured Root shinobi. Down here is where we store the crucial materials for human experimentation."
He glanced at Konome.
"That chunk of flesh filled with life force I gave you that day was a product of this."
Letting Konome into the Experimental Division had been Danzo's decision, and the plan itself had no originality. It was practically a carbon copy of what had happened with Orochimaru back then.
From a shinobi chasing the limits of ninjutsu, to being tempted by Hashirama's cells into joining Root, to partnering with Chihaya Tōru in blood-soaked experiments, to finally becoming consumed by it and turning against Hiruzen Sarutobi. The entire chain had been orchestrated by Danzo.
Apart from Shisui's Kotoamatsukami and the fact that she was now "Danzo's disciple," Konome's situation was almost a perfect remake of the past.
Even during Orochimaru's registration in Root, the one who escorted him had been Aburame Ryūma.
What a sick sense of humor.
Chihaya Tōru formed seals quickly. Light flickered at his fingertips as he pressed his hand to the barrier on the chamber door.
Fwoom.
The barrier flashed red. As his chakra flowed in, a peculiar symbol formed on its surface: two wave-like curves, a massive hole shaped from countless arcs, and within it, a curled sign resembling infinity.
A chakra signature map?
The moment she saw that pattern, Konome thought of her own chakra signature.
Then she remembered the scene from earlier, when Die opened the barrier at the base entrance. He had also input chakra and formed maze-like broken lines across the barrier's surface.
Back then, she'd assumed those lines were part of the barrier itself.
Now she realized it.
That had been Die's chakra signature.
Buzz.
The barrier flashed again. The instant the signature fully formed, it was like matching a password. The barrier dimmed and unlocked.
So that's how it works.
Konome finally understood.
The curse mark carved into her identification disk was an incomplete extraction of this very mechanism. When chakra entered a barrier, it automatically formed a signature. Only if it matched the stored pattern inside would the pathway open.
"Normally, you're not qualified to enter here," Chihaya Tōru said.
With the seal released, he pushed the door open and smiled when he saw Konome freeze the moment the door cracked.
"You're my lab assistant. You'll be helping with experiments in the future. At the very least, I need to explain the project to you. It's more intuitive here. I don't know if you can see it, but this is Root's greatest treasure."
Konome swallowed hard.
Her eyes stayed empty, fixed on the enormous glass cylinder standing in the center of the chamber.
She had prepared herself mentally, but seeing it in person still hit like a hammer.
Chihaya Tōru smiled in understanding. Almost no one could stay calm the first time they saw it.
"Come on."
He pressed a hand to Konome's back and guided her inside.
The closer they got, the more overwhelming the glass pillar became, until the thing inside finally revealed itself.
Konome craned her neck, struggling to decide what expression she was even supposed to wear.
It was a giant tree, majestic beyond reason.
Its branches spread like a green ocean, lush and expansive. Along its dark brown trunk, countless human faces were embedded, mouths stretched wide in pleading, distorted poses.
And the roots were worse.
A pale mountain of flesh rose and fell slowly inside the massive cultivation tank.
More than a hundred bodies were fused together like melted wax to form its base. Limbs that hadn't fully assimilated yet stabbed out from the surface of the tumors at grotesque angles. Exposed muscle fibers had turned a corpse-wax blue-gray, while a moss-like biofilm coated everything, continuously secreting slime.
Gurgle.
The flesh shifted, slow and wet.
That ocean of living green, brimming with vitality, made Konome feel hotter than magma.
This is too much.
"It's incredible, isn't it?" Chihaya Tōru said, voice trembling with excitement despite himself. "That piece of flesh you saw that day was part of this."
His teeth chattered. His body shook as if he were being electrocuted.
No matter how many times he saw it, this thing still overwhelmed him.
"Can you feel it?" he whispered. "That astonishing life force?"
"Under a power this great… human lifespan, illness, disability, everything… everything can…" His words broke apart. He reached out and stroked the glass again and again, staring at the flesh with undisguised hunger.
"Calm down, Doctor Chihaya," Konome said flatly.
"O-oh. Sorry."
He forced himself to breathe deeply, eyes closed, until he finally settled.
"So what's our research topic?" Konome asked.
Staring at that manic sea of chakra, she didn't know why, but she felt oddly uninterested.
"This," Chihaya Tōru said, "is cells extracted from the First Hokage's corpse. The project is to transplant Hashirama's cells into the human body safely and stably, and obtain the First Hokage's power."
He sounded weary, almost resigned.
To take a cure that could solve humanity's ultimate problems and reduce it to a shortcut to temporary strength.
That was the direction Root's leader had chosen.
Boring. Ignorant.
"After several catastrophic failures, we only have two results," Chihaya Tōru continued.
He pointed at the fleshy mass.
"One is a source that can produce Hashirama cells almost endlessly. The other is a failure specimen whose chakra core has been contaminated, inheriting the First Hokage's Wood Release."
"Isn't that already a success?" Konome's heart jumped.
Transplanting Hashirama cells to gain a Sage Body was the entire reason she had come to Root.
And Danzo slaughtered the Uchiha for their Sharingan, using it to suppress Hashirama cells' erosion, didn't he?
How could it be a failure?
"Senju Hashirama wasn't powerful because of Wood Release," Chihaya Tōru said with disdain. "He was powerful because of that nearly limitless life force and chakra core. What's the point of inheriting Wood Release alone?"
"Limitless chakra core?" Konome scratched her head. Her blind spots were piling up fast.
Chihaya Tōru noticed, sighed deeply, and decided to explain from the beginning.
"First, you need to understand what a chakra core is. In your heart, the thing absorbing physical energy and spiritual energy to synthesize chakra is your chakra core."
Konome reached up and touched her chest.
Thump, thump.
A violet core flickered with light. The body's energy gathered, the mind's energy rose, and the two collided within that core.
"Body, soul, energy. The chakra core fuses the three, and gives birth to the power that shapes all things."
Thump.
With each heartbeat, the core absorbed strength carried through the meridians and produced a violet power filled with endless possibility.
"Everyone's body and soul are different. Their chakra cores are different. So their chakra is different. That's why a chakra signature can identify someone."
Konome nodded.
Aside from the chakra signature, this was all basic theory taught at the Academy. She already knew it.
Seeing her foundation was solid, Chihaya Tōru smiled with satisfaction and continued.
"Everything a shinobi is, all their power and information, is contained in the chakra core. Even bloodline limits. In theory, if you could copy a chakra core, you could manufacture an individual identical to you."
"Shadow Clone?" Konome's shadow clone self murmured.
"Exactly." Chihaya Tōru answered in two quick sentences. "The principle of the Shadow Clone Technique is chakra's mimicry. It creates a fake chakra core containing all of the original's information. That's why it can use the same power.
They have no body and no soul. They're a shadow simulated by chakra using the original's data, capable of mimicking the original's actions and thinking."
"So what does this have to do with Hashirama cells?" Konome cut in quickly, not wanting him to keep rambling.
"Don't rush." Chihaya Tōru waved his hand and kept going.
"Normally, every chakra core goes through six stages: seed, sprouting, growth, blooming and fruiting, aging, and withering.
Once it withers, it can no longer produce power."
"But the First Hokage was completely different."
He paused, voice lowering.
"For reasons we don't understand, his cells can devour physical and spiritual energy from living beings and grow without limit. Once they reach a certain point, they automatically condense a chakra core and begin producing chakra."
As he spoke, he turned toward the massive trunk again, eyes going soft with obsession, like he was about to relapse.
"Cough."
Konome coughed into her fist, snapping him out of it.
"Ah. Sorry."
He slapped his forehead and forced himself back on track.
"You need to understand: human life force has limits. Chakra cores have limits. Based on a person's life ceiling and core growth cycle, you can calculate the total amount of chakra they'll produce in their lifetime with precision.
Hashirama cells are great because they break that ceiling. As long as living beings still exist to generate energy, the cells can devour it endlessly, produce life force, and even after the chakra core withers, they can condense a new one again. It's practically…"
"Just give me the conclusion." Konome interrupted sharply. "Why did it fail?"
Chihaya Tōru's face tightened with regret.
"Because we discovered Hashirama's cells aren't normal. This is a pathological cellular structure."
He stared at the glass pillar.
"Konoha's history books never explain how Senju Hashirama died. Some people guess he died from injuries that never healed, but… you can see it. Even decades after death, his cells are still active, overflowing with life. If you told me he died from wounds, even a ghost wouldn't buy it.
So after years of experiments, we concluded Senju Hashirama didn't die from wounds. He didn't die from old age."
"He died from illness."
"What illness?" Konome frowned, sensing she was finally nearing the core of it.
Chihaya Tōru raised one finger, eyes fixed on the tree filled with life.
"A disease only genius shinobi can even possibly suffer from. A disease ordinary people don't even have the right to imagine."
"Bloodline Disease."
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