As Haruto went to sleep, he visited the Template Inventory world only to find a terrified Edward who was hiding behind a tree doing his best to stay away from Megumin.
Haruto looked around and immediately realised the problem.
Megumin had used another explosion in the crater that already existed, turning the lake wide crater even deeper and larger.
'It's only natural a person from a less powerful world is afraid…' Haruto shook his head at Edward who was now on top of the tree while Megumin was taking full advantage of the situation by waving around her staff dangerously.
Seeing that there was nothing wrong with Edward and Megumin, Haruto left the template inventory space and fell asleep himself.
"Shrimp, are you already so afraid of the Dark Crimson Wizard!!? Kekekekeke!!! All witness the extended power of the crimson demon who can create an explosion so large all shrimps in range get cooked!!!'
That did it!
Within seconds, Edward clapped his hands and slammed them onto the tree, causing the roots to turn into wooden constructs and bind Megumin in place, separating her from her staff which Edward quickly picked up.
'Phew… that was dangerous…'
"WWWWAAAAAA!!!! Give me back my staff!!! I bought it after taking a loan from Kazu-trash!!! It's my only staff!!! Give it back to mee!!!!" Megumin wailed like a little child, tears and snot flying everywhere as she vibrated in captivity.
"Only if you answer a few of my questions." Edward quickly said, holding his hands up to his ears to block Megumin's loud cries.
Megumin instantly shut up, looking at Edward eagerly as if telling him to spit out the questions and be done with whatever he wanted to do.
"Did you meet an old man when you were brought here too?"
Megumin nodded, "Tall, long beard, wearing purple robes, he also had a tall wizarding hat and horizontal half moon spectacles."
"Is that soo…" Edward nodded, "Me too… it seems we were brought here by the same person then… but what was your reason? Why were you brought here?"
"Becuase Aqua abused resurrection magic and I died too many times… so the old man sent me here as punishment telling me that as long as I helped Haruto in defeating this world's demon king, he would send me back."
"Resurrection magic!? Such a thing exists in your world!?"
"It does… does that also count as a question, are the questions done? Can I get my staff now?" Megumin asked lazily.
Edward nodded in his thoughts, "I was told to help him defeat this world's version of the Father."
Edward paused shortly after that before his eyes turned serious, "Do you believe Haruto's explanation about… Authors?"
Megumin looked into Edward's eyes and sighed, "It's not like there's anything else we can do is there? He does seem reasonable when he says it… and there's no use for him to lie to us… why shouldn't I believe it?"
Edward frowned hard at that explanation. "Perhaps he might be lying to us to trick us into helping him? I don't trust that old man who sent us here… he seemed shady in some way I can't put my finger on… I trust him even less than Truth. After all, isn't it strange? Why would a supposed god help out a random boy become an Author of all things?"
Megumin frowned, "I trust Haruto completely. He might seem a little strange but he's a good kid. If anything this might be him being used by that old man, not the other way around."
Edward nodded, "Possible… but I like to pursue all paths to truth at once, leaving no stone unturned."
Edward placed his hand on the wooden construct binding Megumin and reversed the alchemy on it, turning them all back into roots that fed the tree they were taking shade under.
Megumin instantly latched onto her staff and made sure not to let it go anymore.
She looked at Edward and clicked her tongue in a show of anger before strutting off to a different side of the wide tree and sitting down to rest.
***
Haruto woke up the next morning well rested.
The first thing he did as usual was make himself some ramen which he devoured like a hungry beast to replenish the lost physical energy he'd used yesterday to make so much chakra.
'I wonder if there's a technique like life return in the Naruto world… fast digestion would be quite helpful in being able to replenish chakra reserves.'
'I remember the Akimichi clan having techniques to manipulate body fat by converting it into chakra for emergency funds… but is there a way to digest something faster to do the same?'
'How does the body even generate physical energy?'
'Soldier pills work to help increase chakra too so clearly doping works in this world.'
'Is there a way to use pills to make the body inherently stronger? Or inherently expand the chakra pool so that one can have Uzumaki like chakra reserves?'
'My body coughing out after spitting out a couple of fireballs won't do… it's probably not even one Kakashi's worth of chakra currently.'
'I'll try and look into some material at the R&D department if it's available to me.'
'Hopefully the basics aren't restricted so that I can strengthen my body a little bit even now.'
'Oh! I know! I should ask Hiruko about it. He's surely delved into these sorts of things given he's looking into modifying his own body to grow stronger and immortal.'
'That'll let me get closer to him and gain information to grow stronger and also allow me to expose him more easily when the time comes.'
With his thoughts settled, Haruto made a clone, picked up Kakashi's textbook about improving fire nature chakra and made his way to the I.T department.
At the I.T department, Haruto noticed that the model training was still going smoothly, even if the model could currently only predict the correct letters and numbers from the handwriting about sixty percent of the time.
'It'll get better as the week goes on.'
'Unless it plateaus…'
With that Haruto quietly made his way to Hiruko's office.
Knock Knock
"Yes? Ah… Haruto-kun… do come in." Hiruko said from inside his sealed room.
Haruto opened the door and entered, and thankfully unlike the last time, there were no corpses with organs hanging outside to air in the office space.
The surprise showed on Haruto's face and Hiruko noticed, he simply chuckled softly as he explained himself, "Disappointed that I'm not doing any research Haruto-kun? Well the paper work keeps this department alive so I sometimes need to divert my attention."
Haruto nodded, "I understand."
"Tell me Haruto-kun, why're you here today? What can I do for you?"
Haruto took a short pause to gather his words before he started speaking calmly, "Sir, I was wondering if there's any research I can access about improving the body's foundation artificially."
"Oh!?" Hiruko's brows lifted, he was clearly interested. "And why would that be Haruto-kun?"
Haurto took a deep breath in and exhaled, "I don't know if you've heard Hiruko-san, but I recently awakened a kekkei genkai called scorch release. Kakashi-san is currently training me in how to use it, but I find the lack of my chakra slowing my development. I was hoping that if I could improve my chakra pool, maybe triple or even double it from its current state, I would be able to train harder and improve at a faster pace."