Since the Gen 1 Body Tempering Furnace went live, my life shifted into a grueling, high-stakes routine. Every night, when the winds outside the village died down and the sand stopped rattling against the windows, the real work began.
The process wasn't exactly a spa day. For the furnace to work, it needed a massive, steady input of power. My dad, Sharyu, was the "battery." No matter how exhausted he was from his squad missions, he'd sit there for thirty minutes at a time, pouring his Chunin-level chakra into the intake nodes. It was a massive drain on him; by the end of a session, he'd be pale and trembling, forced to meditate for an hour just to get his feet back under him.
Inside the chamber, I wasn't having a much better time.
Bio-hacking your own foundation is like re-tuning a car engine while it's still running. The "Life-Energy" was gentle, but the process of repair was brutal. It was "breaking and establishing" the energy had to forcibly expand underdeveloped meridians and stimulate dormant tissues. It felt like a mix of localized fire, deep-tissue bruising, and an itch I couldn't scratch because it was inside my bones.
I'd spend those sessions drenched in sweat, biting my lip until it bled just to keep from screaming. But the "telemetry" didn't lie.
The first change was the most obvious: my skin. The ghost-white, transparent look was gone, replaced by a faint, healthy flush. The blue veins that used to map my arms like a roadmap were receding. Even my hair, which had always been dry and brittle, started to look like it actually belonged on a living person.
But the real breakthrough happened on a Tuesday night.
I climbed out of the furnace, feeling that familiar mix of exhaustion and strange, buzzing vitality. I sat cross-legged on the floor, habitually attempting my daily chakra extraction. Usually, it was a struggle like trying to draw blood from a stone.
This time, I closed my eyes and reached for the energy.
It wasn't a dry well anymore. It was like a blocked pipe had finally burst open. My physical energy was surging, active and abundant. My spiritual energy, my "30-year-old soul" side slid into place with a click. The two merged instantly, creating a flow of chakra that was no longer a pitiful wisp.
It was a stream. Clear, steady, and continuous.
I felt it move through my meridians, filling the empty spaces and bringing a sense of "voltage" I'd never felt in nine years. I opened my eyes, and I knew my dark pupils were practically glowing.
I held out my hand, focused, and pushed the energy to my fingertip.
Buzz...
A faint blue aura, a real, visible flame of chakra shimmered on my index finger. It wasn't the "maybe if you squint" spark from my Academy days. It was a stable, flickering blue light that illuminated the corner of the room.
"Dad!" I gasped, my voice cracking. "Look!"
Sharyu, who had been meditating nearby to recover from the session, snapped his eyes open. He stared at the blue light on my finger, then scrambled over to me, his face a mask of shock and pure joy.
"This... Sayo, this is solid," he whispered, his hand hovering near the energy. "It's stable. It's consistent. Kid... that's standard Genin-level chakra."
The quantity was still low I was at the bottom of the bracket but the quality was master-class. The bottleneck was gone. The factory defect had been patched.
I stared at that little blue flame, my chest tight with an emotion I couldn't quite name. Nine years of being "the sick kid." Nine years of "Dead Last" rankings. Hundreds of failures, thousands of hours of research, and a machine I built out of junk and theory.
It had all paid off.
I wasn't a "ninja-in-training" anymore. I was a Ninja.
The path wasn't just a mirage anymore. The road was open, and for the first time in this life, I had the engine to actually drive it.