Time in the Hidden Sand flowed like the dunes themselves constant, shifting, but always moving forward. I'd settled into a routine that would have made an ascetic monk look lazy. By day, I was Granny Chiyo's most dedicated student, inhaling her medical and puppet data like a starving man at a buffet. By night, I was a solo developer, tweaking the Great Spider and refining the "Body Tempering Furnace."
The furnace sessions were the key. The consistent, nightly baptism of purified life-energy had finally scrubbed away the last traces of my "factory defects." I wasn't a bodybuilder, but I wasn't the "scrawny kid" anymore. I'd grown taller, my muscles were defined and supple, and I had a healthy desert tan. The chronic fatigue that had shackled me for nine years was officially offline.
But the real "patch notes" were internal.
I emerged from the furnace one night feeling an unprecedented level of clarity. I sat cross-legged on the floor, habitually starting my chakra refinement. Usually, it felt like guiding a steady stream into a basin.
Tonight, the basin was gone. It felt like I'd upgraded from a backyard pond to a reservoir.
When I reached for my physical and spiritual energy, they didn't just "merge" they surged. The resulting flow wasn't a stream anymore; it was a turbulent, high-pressure river. It raced through my meridians, which were now wider and tougher thanks to the furnace's "structural reinforcement." The sense of power was so thick it was almost overwhelming.
I opened my eyes, a grin splitting my face. I held out my hand, and without even needing a hand seal, a solid, pale blue flame of chakra coated my entire palm. It was steady, scorching, and visible from across the room.
"Chunin-level," I whispered.
The energy crisis was over. I finally had enough "fuel" to run the high-end hardware I'd been designing.
I didn't let the power go to my head, though. A bigger engine just means you can crash faster if you don't know how to steer. I spent the next few weeks field-testing my "upgraded" ninjutsu.
On the Earth Style front, I moved past the Headhunter move. I started practicing the Earth Dome Return raising defensive slabs of rock with a thought. I even started trying to mold larger masses, though throwing a full "Earth Mausoleum Dumpling" was still a bit out of my weight class.
On the Wind Style side, my Gale Palm was now a lethal percussion tool. I started working on the Great Breakthrough, focusing not on making the biggest whirlwind, but the most condensed one. A veteran Chunin might exhale a larger gust, but mine was tuned for maximum wind pressure and efficiency.
But all of that was just preparation for the main event. The "Lever."
I pulled out the Second Kazekage's Magnet Release documents from their hiding place. Before, I had the blueprints but no power to run the simulation. Now, I had the Chunin-level "voltage," the high-speed processing of my mind, and a deep understanding of Wind and Earth nature transformation.
It was time to see if the math worked in the real world.
The logic was brutal: I had to fuse the "sharpness and penetration" of Wind with the "density and stability" of Earth at a specific frequency. If the ratio was off, the energies would just cancel each other out or, worse, snap back and leave my arms numb for a week.
I spent nights at my workbench, surrounded by calculation papers filled with frequency formulas and energy ratios.
Failed.Failed.Annihilation.Feedback loop - ouch.
Then, during one attempt, I vibrated a thread of Wind chakra at an extremely high frequency and slotted it into a highly condensed Earth mass.
Buzz!
The mass didn't explode. It didn't fizzle. Instead, it emitted a strange, low-frequency hum. I felt a faint, ghost-like "pull."
I looked down. Tiny metallic shavings and dust particles on the workbench were slowly being drawn toward the chakra mass, sticking to it like iron filings to a magnet.
It only lasted for a second before the stability collapsed, but that was all I needed.
Zero to one.
The door to Magnet Release wasn't just open, I'd just kicked it off the hinges. I had the fuel, I had the logic, and now I had proof of concept.
I looked at the dust clinging to my palm and felt a fierce, electric heat in my chest. The "Dead Last" of Suna was officially offline. The architect of the "Great Spider" was coming for the top spot.
And I was just getting started.