The skirmish with the Iwagakure Elite squad was a "victory" in the technical sense, we survived, they didn't but as a system-wide assessment, it was a disaster. We were currently a unit operating at less than forty percent efficiency. Captain Iryō was running on emergency power; the sheer physical strain of countering an Elite Jonin's "Rock Fists" had left him with internal stress-fractures and a chakra pool that was virtually flatlining.
Lucado and Shiori weren't much better. Shiori's sensory "radar" was glitching from the trauma of the near-death encounter, and Lucado was nursing a deep laceration on his shoulder that my medical ninjutsu had only been able to patch, not fully repair. The mental load was the real issue; the realization that we were being hunted by the very top tier of the enemy's military had introduced a massive amount of "lag" into the squad's decision-making.
We couldn't stay in that dried-up riverbed. The scent of blood was a beacon for desert predators and follow-up Iwa scouts. We dragged ourselves across the Gobi for the rest of the day, moving with a jagged, irregular pace that barely qualified as a forced march. Just before the sun dipped below the horizon, we found a settlement nestled in a leeward mountain hollow.
It was a tiny village, barely more than a collection of twenty dilapidated huts made of packed earth and sun-bleached timber. From a distance, it looked like a cluster of barnacles clinging to a dry rock, waiting for a tide that would never come. As we approached, I saw children thin, sallow-skinned, and clearly suffering from long-term nutrient deficits. Their "hardware" was failing before it had even reached maturity. They scurried away from us like frightened rabbits, their eyes wide with the specific kind of terror that people living in a war zone have for anyone wearing a headband.
The Village Chief, an old man whose skin looked like a piece of weathered driftwood, came out to greet us. He didn't offer a smile; his face was a mask of awe, fear, and a terrifying kind of numbness. He led us to an empty room in the most "intact" hut and offered us what little surplus the village possessed: a few hard wheat cakes and a small plate of salt-pickles.
"I apologize... esteemed Ninja," he whispered, his voice sounding like sandpaper on stone. "The Land of Wind is harsh this year. This is the village's entire reserve for the week."
Iryō thanked him with a tired nod and closed the door. We sat around an earthen kang, the room lit only by a single, flickering oil lamp. We gnawed on the wheat cakes in silence. They were brutal, hard enough to break a tooth and filled with the fine grit of the desert sand.
As the others drifted into an exhausted Sleep Mode, I leaned against the wall and looked through a crack in the packed-earth window. I couldn't sleep. My mind was running a diagnostic on the scene outside.
I watched the villagers returning from the barren land beyond the hollow. They were bent double, carrying meager bundles of dry scrub and roots. I saw two children in the shadows wrestling over a single shriveled sweet potato, their movements sluggish and desperate. I saw an old woman sitting by a doorway, meticulously picking sand out of a handful of grain, her focus so intense it was as if she were trying to extract gold from the dirt.
The air in the village didn't smell like a home; it smelled of dust, thirst, and a slow, creeping decay. This was a system in total failure.
I'd seen scenes like this during our search for the Third Kazekage, but tonight, the "Legacy Data" of my previous life was screaming at me. Back on Earth, I was an engineer. I built machines to optimize life. I solved problems of efficiency and resource management. Here, I was a "Ninja," a biological weapon trained to hide in the shadows and kill people for a village that was itself struggling to breathe.
What exactly were we fighting for?
We were out here bleeding for the "glory" of a village that couldn't even provide clean water to its outlying nodes. We were defending a barren wasteland where the "users" were starving in the dark. The "Cold Peace" that the Great Nations boasted about was a lie it was just a period where the suffering was distributed more quietly.
The logic didn't scan. The project scope was all wrong.
Suna's entire philosophy was based on military hegemony being the strongest "Spear" in the desert so that the Daimyo would keep the funds flowing. But the budget was being spent on weapons and war, while the infrastructure of the Land of Wind was a buggy, outdated mess.
A new thought, quiet and firm, began to take root in my mind. It was the instinct of a builder who had seen a catastrophic design flaw.
I didn't just want to repair my own "Body Tempering Furnace." I didn't just want to become a powerful ninja so I could survive the next skirmish. I wanted to reformat the Land of Wind.
My mind started running a massive, high-level "Engineering Proposal":
Magnet Release Optimization: It shouldn't just be for Iron Sand or Gold Dust. I could use magnetic resonance to locate deep-vein mineral resources or detect underground aquifers that had been lost for centuries.
Automated Labor: Why were these people breaking their backs in the sun? I could design a new class of "Worker Puppets" autonomous drones powered by high-efficiency cores that could dig canals, till the soil, and build irrigation systems 24/7 without needing water or sleep.
Resource Management: Using Sealing Jutsu, I could create high-capacity "Atmospheric Condensers" that would pull every milligram of moisture out of the desert air and store it in sealed reservoirs.
Bio-Logic Enhancement: My Medical Ninjutsu and the Furnace theory could be scaled. If I could optimize the health of a population, the "System Output" of the entire nation would skyrocket.
Ideas sparked in my head like high-voltage discharge. I wasn't looking at a desert graveyard anymore; I was looking at a "Beta Version" of a paradise that just needed a massive, top-down update.
Transforming this wasteland into a prosperous, self-sustaining nation that was a project worthy of an engineer from another world. Protecting the Hidden Sand was a short-term tactical necessity. But rebuilding the Land of Wind? That was the ultimate goal. That was the "Grand Architecture."
Iryō's exhaustion, Granny Chiyo's grief over her grandson, Sasori's corrupted hatred, it all started here, in the dirt and the hunger. If I fixed the land, I'd fix the people.
The fatigue from the battle with the Iwa scouts was still there, but my eyes were brighter than they had been since I arrived in this world. The "Sandstorm" squad was resting, blissfully unaware that the Genin sitting in the corner had just decided to become the Architect of a new world.
The path ahead was no longer just about survival or revenge. It was about Optimization.
I reached into my pack and touched the "Unknown Fragment" I'd scavenged earlier. It hummed against my fingertips a piece of ancient hardware waiting for a user who knew how to bridge the gap between Ninjutsu and Engineering.
"Step one," I whispered to the dark room. "Build the engine. Step two... update the world."