Chapter two started....
The forest was thick with ancient trees, their canopies weaving a tapestry of green that filtered the sunlight into dappled gold. Naruto knelt by a stream, hands cupping water to his lips. The chill of it grounded him, sharpening his senses. Survival first. His stomach growled—a primal reminder. He'd need shelter, food, and a way to map this unfamiliar terrain.
Memories of his days as an academy student flickered—stealing eggs from crows, sleeping in hollowed trunks. Back then, the loneliness had been a blade. Now, it was a whetstone.
He moved silently, Sage Mode humming beneath his skin. The energy here—Ethernano, his mind supplied, though he didn't know the word—thrummed in the soil, the air, the very bark of the trees. It wasn't chakra, but it responded, like a tide drawn to the moon of his will.
Third day, a makeshift lean-to took shape between two cedars, cloaked by ferns. He'd trapped rabbits using snares of braided vines, their meat smoked over a firepit lined with stones. At night, he carved seals into the earth with a stick, equations only an Uzumaki might grasp. The Eight Trigrams. The Four Symbols. But this wasn't about containment—it was about transformation.
Baryon Mode had been a reactor, he mused, sketching a spiral in the dirt. Two energies colliding, creating something greater. But without Kurama... His jaw tightened. The void where the fox's growl once resided still ached, a phantom limb.
His solution? He needed to substitute the lost energy source. Sage Mode had always been a powerful amplifier, but it burned through his reserves. He needed something self-sustaining. Two energy points, housed within his seal: one to absorb and cycle Ethernano, the other to syphon and regulate his own chakra.
Seventh day, experiments began. He sat cross-legged, drawing Ethernano into his coils. It burned hotter than natural energy, wilder. Sage Mode flared, his eyes bleeding gold, but the foreign energy resisted shaping. A tree shattered when he channeled too much into his palm, the blast radius leaving a crater.
"Too unstable," he muttered, flexing singed fingers. But what if...?
He adjusted the seal. The flow had to be controlled, guided into a loop. If he could regulate the balance between siphoning chakra and absorbing external energy, he could create a continuous cycle—a system that mimicked the principles of Baryon Mode without the lethal drawbacks.
Fourteenth day, a wolf pack stalked him—moon-white pelts, eyes glowing like cursed seals. They moved as one, a dance of fangs and strategy. Naruto didn't kill them. A flicker of Sage-enhanced speed pinned the alpha against a boulder, his grip a hair from crushing its throat. The beast whimpered, yielding.
"Heh. Even here, huh?" He released it, watching the pack retreat. Some things don't change.
The encounter was a lesson—instincts mattered. Even the wildest energy could be tamed.
Twentyfirst day, the first breakthrough came at dawn. He meditated atop a cliff, Ethernano gathering into his being. The refined seal on his gut functioned as two reservoirs—one storing the gathered Ethernano, the other his siphoned chakra. With enough reserves in place, he initiated the jutsu.
Faux Baryon Mode.
The result? A new set of eyes, radiant and foreign—
Inside his seal, the energy looped in a continuous cycle, feeding off the atmosphere. It lasted three seconds before dissipating.
Naruto grinned.
Three seconds was a start.
But it was more than that. His vision sharpened, the world around him becoming a tapestry of flowing energy, every thread of Ethernano visible, every pulse of life in the forest laid bare. The golden glow of Sage Mode in his eyes had shifted to an ethereal blue. A new sight, a new power—one he had unlocked entirely on his own.
This was no legend. This was his creation. His Faux Baryon Mode.
For those brief seconds, the energy within him cycled profusely, mirroring the principles of Baryon Mode but without consuming his life force. The seal on his gut, once the prison of Kurama, was now the heart of this new power—a celestial engine that would grow stronger with time.
But it wasn't self-sustaining yet. Right now, it functioned like a battery, draining faster than it could replenish. If he wanted true autonomy, he needed to refine the cycle. The answer lay in nature itself. The stars, the sun—sources of endless generation. If he could mimic that process, his Faux Baryon Mode would become more than just an imitation.
It would become a true revolution.
He clenched his fists, feeling the energy thrumming through his veins. The forest around him seemed to pulse in response, as if acknowledging his resolve. He would survive. He would grow stronger. And when the time came, he would return home—not as the man who had been cast away, but as the shinobi who had forged a new destiny.
For now, he would let the seal work passively, drawing in Ethernano with every breath, every step, that means he has to be constantly on sage mode. The process would take time, but Naruto Uzumaki had never been one to shy away from a challenge.
Nightfall, Naruto stood at the edge of the cliff, his toad-like eyes glinting, his hand resting on the seal etched into his gut, feeling it as it continuously gathered resources from him and his surroundings. He basked his eyes on the vast, untamed world stretched before him, waiting to be explored.
He smiled.
A new passing point.
A new summit.
But first—he really needed his old ramen.
To be continued….
And don't forget to powerstone.