Three and a half months later, at Training Ground Seven.
[Man, I'm beyond hyped!]
Link lay sprawled on a boulder, his whole body red as a boiled lobster, each breath exhaling scorching heat. Rising steam and the sweat matting his hair together made him look thoroughly overheated.
"Gulp—" He reached out for a handful of medicine he had prepared in advance and swallowed it.
Feeling his body gradually cool down, he sat up, clenched his fist, and applied Delicate Illness Extraction to himself.
After all, he still hadn't chosen to grow taller; in the end, getting stronger was more important. It was a necessary sacrifice for his grand plan.
During these past three-plus months, he hadn't left the village or taken on any missions. With Tsunade's connections, he got himself registered at the Medical Division, and spent nearly all his time taking powerful drugs and training.
Thanks to the variety of potent concoctions Tsunade provided, he had once again found that feeling of explosive growth he'd felt when he first mastered Delicate Illness Extraction.
But unlike before—when he had blindly focused on building strength at the expense of speed and ended up with an unwieldy physique—he now had a top-tier medic overseeing him. Every few days, Tsunade would check up on him and adjust his medication type and dosage. As a result, he was improving in all areas simultaneously.
Because of the medication, his body hadn't ballooned; rather, his muscle density became alarmingly high, making him look stocky and compact. Apart from genjutsu, which was already his weak point, he was shaping up to be an all-around heavyweight fighter.
Even if his body wasn't growing in height, doping himself into greater strength worked just the same. Although being short was a heavy blow, if one put a positive spin on it, a small frame did have advantages in high-speed combat.
Once I reach the future I want, I can let my body grow again.
Should be enough time, right?
I'm not "short"; I'm just choosing to develop a bit later.
So Link thought to himself, as he took the bucket of water a shadow handed him and drank his fill before pouring the rest over his head.
Having artificially cooled himself down, he felt far more comfortable.
My rate of improvement has begun slowing again these past couple days, and now I'm starting to develop resistance to these new drugs too, huh…
Staring up at the drifting clouds, he sighed. Ever since discovering that Delicate Illness Extraction could solve all sorts of problems, he'd been going at the medication pedal to the metal, no brakes—completely unrestrained.
He'd known from early on that eventually his progress would slow—Tsunade had predicted it. No one had ever crammed in so many dangerous drugs at once and lived, let alone built up tolerance. Normally, one's consumption of such potent stimulants is limited, so it never reaches the stage of diminishing returns.
Potent drugs inevitably incur huge side effects, and with repeated large doses, the body counters those effects by changing itself. It automatically filters out part of the drug's toxicity, causing the effect to drop off rapidly.
Even Delicate Illness Extraction couldn't fix that. The jutsu dealt with "illness or harm," removing them; but the body's new resistance to toxins was a beneficial adaptation, so it wouldn't be "removed." The real trouble was that a lot of these top-level stimulants worked similarly: once he developed a tolerance to one, anything else with similar effects did little for him.
Even Tsunade couldn't do much about it.
Originally, Link had thought of doing his own research into new drugs, but a person's energy is limited. He barely had time to develop new medicines. For the sake of doping up his base stats, he'd even scaled back his Wind Release nature transformation training. He hadn't even cracked open the ninja scrolls he got from Sunagakure.
Every day, as soon as he opened his eyes, he swallowed an amount of drugs that would last a normal person a week, then undertook a grueling workout. As the drugs' effects took hold, he'd cast Delicate Illness Extraction on himself. When the soldier pills were digested, he'd repeat Delicate Illness Extraction, and then keep doping and training. Such an inhuman schedule took up almost his entire day, leaving only a sliver for working on his Summoning Technique. He had no time to spare for anything else.
One piece of good news, though: he'd prepared himself mentally for a total halt in height growth, yet his body somehow still managed to eke out another centimeter in the last couple months. Don't underestimate that single centimeter—one small step in height, one giant leap toward a long-legged, taller figure later.
At least I want to be 150 cm by the time Shippūden starts…
He quietly sighed, thinking how uncomfortable it'd be if Shippūden began and he was still in the 140s.
After lying there for a bit, the shadow he'd sent out earlier returned with dry clothes. He got up, changed, and strolled toward Ichiraku Ramen, contemplating what to do next.
It's only been three-plus months, but I'm already hitting the "slow stage" Tsunade mentioned, so from here, I just have to make gradual progress. I can't be idle though.
Let's learn all the ninjutsu I've neglected, and pick up Wind Release nature training again…
My shadows' power is locked to my old physical stats, so they're increasingly useless. I need Tailed Beast chakra. Not sure how I'll fare against a jinchūriki, though.
Link wasn't fully sure of his own strength, since this wasn't a world that quantified power levels as "X" amount of chakra. Power had to be measured against real foes. Though he was much stronger than before, how he'd match up in a real fight remained uncertain. His broad-based physical growth mainly meant a bigger chakra reservoir; pure strength or speed still had mortal limits. At least with his better fundamental stats, he was less prone to being one-shotted, giving him more room for tactics.
Plus he had a specialized edge: the Chakra Scalpel. With intel on some of the jinchūriki from the manga, he was fairly confident if it came to a showdown. Ideally, he wouldn't kill but capture them. If that wasn't possible, at least snatch more Tailed Beast chakra.
Naruto's obviously off-limits, so maybe the easiest target is the Six-Tails jinchūriki, Utakata. A Kirigakure rogue in his twenties.
Yes, it's settled then.
Locking onto that plan—first gather Tailed Beast chakra from a jinchūriki to "refresh" his shadows' abilities, then go after Orochimaru. The decrypted data showed that "the slippery snake" had gotten very far with the Five-Element Seal. Link approved wholeheartedly of natural energy being popularized, but he wouldn't let Orochimaru maintain control. Even if he couldn't kill the man, he had to seize the "Original Body."
…
Medical Corps Building, Top-Floor Laboratory
"Plop!"
A bulge on the lab mouse's body burst open. Pale-pink flesh splattered across the transparent glass.
"Subject failed again…"
Shizune typed away at a computer, while Tsunade stood at the operating table, her expression grim as she looked down at Kimimaro.
Up to now, she still couldn't figure out how Link's Five-Element Seal created the "Original Body," nor why it could attract natural energy.
Two continuous months of experiments had revealed that normal flesh from Kimimaro, once transplanted, did not draw natural energy. Even unsealing it hadn't changed anything—no "pull" on natural energy. With Link's cooperation, they'd further determined Kimimaro's potential detonation was caused by mutual rejection among his body, the curse mark, natural energy, and "Original Body" cells. The excessive aggressiveness of those cells forced both Kimimaro's physique and the curse mark to jointly suppress them.
This left Kimimaro basically unable to control his own body or mold chakra. If it was only the standard natural energy from the curse mark, an explosion wouldn't matter so much, but the "Original Body" cells drew in a violently destructive kind of natural energy. The constantly escalating clash would ultimately make his body collapse into a special natural-energy bomb.
Tsunade understood the general principle, but not the deeper cause. Even so, she pressed on with the research. Having pinpointed the problem, she began extracting the small cluster of suppressed "Original Body" cells to run tests. Repeatedly transplanting them into lab mice over half a month, she slowly reduced the "Original Body" cells in Kimimaro—letting him recover his ability to mold chakra. Yet she remained stuck on how to keep the mice with transplanted cells alive.
"Could it be that, besides the curse mark's natural energy, normal chakra can't find a balance with the Original Body cells?" Tsunade muttered, though she already had a likely answer.
After all, Sage Mode existed, proof that sufficiently strong physical and mental energy could balance with natural energy. The trouble with Sage Mode was that not everyone could sense and absorb natural energy, and even if they could, they needed stillness to gather it, which was awkward in real combat.
The Original Body cells seemed to solve that problem, pulling in even more potent natural energy. But that power was also explosively destructive, meaning it required a body of great physical strength and abundant chakra to properly harness it into a brand-new Sage Chakra form.
So in principle, these "Original Body" cells overcame the difficulty of detecting and absorbing natural energy, if further experiments could figure out how to handle them. Yet mice were too frail; once they completed transplantation, they soon died. Realistically, the suitable test subjects were humans or ninja animals. Especially strong humans with advanced chakra control might allow each person to "use Sage Mode."
Tsunade's outward expression gave little away, but inside she was torn. Human experimentation wasn't a massive taboo in the shinobi world, but crossing that moral line felt too heavy for her. Long ago, Orochimaru's experiments with the First Hokage's cells had already taught her a painful lesson.
Yet the possibility of universal Sage Mode was like a carrot before a donkey, making it hard for her to dismiss.
If I need someone with great physical strength and massive chakra…
In silence, Tsunade closed her eyes.
~~~
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