It turned out the rumors weren't exaggerated at all—this meteorite was insanely hard to smelt.
Even with Sage Art: Fire Release cranked up as far as Kenichi Amemiya dared, he could barely melt it. That alone made him very curious what exactly this rock from the heavens was made of.
Back in his previous life, meteorites were already precious research material. Especially metallic ones—rare and ridiculously expensive. Sometimes they even contained unknown elements, sending the scientific community into a frenzy.
But it was always just that—a frenzy, not a revolution.
The problem was simple: there was never enough material. A few kilos of meteorite might only yield a few dozen grams of the "new element." Great for papers, terrible for mass production.
You couldn't fuel an entire world's research just off one lab sample.
"This stuff really is special," Kenichi murmured.
He held a small sphere in his hand, about the size of a quail egg. It was the result of melting and refining that chunk of meteorite—a dense, smooth bead.
And that tiny bead had already absorbed a lot of Sage Chakra… without cracking, glowing, or doing anything weird on the surface.
That was both exciting and terrifying.
Right now, Kenichi didn't dare keep feeding it chakra inside the lab. If it suddenly reached critical mass and blew everything at once, there was no blast chamber here to save the equipment.
Orochimaru's lab did not come with explosion insurance.
"I need to take you outside," Kenichi looked at the sphere.
He had a checklist in mind:
Figure out how much chakra it could store before hitting its limit.
See whether it released that energy on its own, and if so, how.
Check if there were warning signs before detonation.
Measure delay time between saturation and release.
And if possible—recover the core afterward for reuse.
If it worked the way he hoped, this could become the heart of his upgraded, chakra-boosted thermobaric bomb.
"Kenichi, that thing in your hand… what is it?"
Just as he was heading for the door, he almost bumped straight into his teacher.
Orochimaru was standing there.
In his original body.
No Yūki body, no golden hair. Just the familiar pale face, casual clothes, and a simple bag in one hand. Behind him stood someone even more surprising:
Shin Hoshun—now with both arms.
Kenichi's fingers reflexively tightened on the bead in his palm. He suddenly felt very aware of the Jiraiya book still hidden in his sealing scroll.
If Orochimaru ever found that…
"Sensei, this is a meteorite I bought. It has very strong chakra absorption properties," Kenichi quickly explained, handing the sphere over.
Orochimaru's eyes lit up with interest immediately, long fingers turning the little metal bead this way and that.
Kenichi took the chance to study the man behind him.
Shin looked… normal. Two complete arms, no signs of cellular rejection—that alone was extraordinary given what was in his body. Aside from that, though, he was just a standard-issue ninja.
In fact, only a genin.
Kenichi gave him a friendly smile. The name Shin tugged at his memory—he was pretty sure there'd been someone with that name in some Naruto material, but he couldn't quite pull it out of the fog.
"Sensei, have you made a breakthrough with your cloning work?" Kenichi asked, looking back at Orochimaru.
Shin's left arm had originally been cut off and given to the Third Hokage to restore his mobility. For him to now have a complete, functional arm again… that told Kenichi all he needed to know.
"A bit of progress," Orochimaru answered mildly.
Kenichi almost rolled his eyes.
A bit of progress, he says.
Since Kenichi had become his disciple, Orochimaru had basically never stopped working. He was always in the lab, and when he wasn't, there was usually a shadow clone still doing experiments somewhere.
It was beyond "hardworking." It was pathological.
When other people were resting, Orochimaru was experimenting.
When other people were competing for power, he was still experimenting.
Sometimes Kenichi suspected that during the Second and Third Ninja Wars, Orochimaru had been sending shadow clones to war and personally staying in the lab.
This wasn't just "studious."
This was the final boss of overachievers. The Ultimate Grind Lord.
Kenichi was honestly afraid that if he ever explained nuclear weapons to him, Orochimaru would just nod thoughtfully, disappear for a while, and then casually show up with a working warhead.
"Kenichi, these are my latest experiment notes," Orochimaru said suddenly.
He handed over a thick, neatly bound logbook.
"Read through it and file it properly afterward."
Then he turned, motioned for Shin to follow, and walked away down the corridor with that unhurried, serpent-like grace.
Danzo had been getting impatient lately.
The old man's arm wasn't responding the way he liked, and he wanted a new one—one that wouldn't reject Hashirama's cells. In exchange, Danzo had promised that once the operation against the Uchiha clan began, he'd send Orochimaru a generous supply of Sharingan.
Orochimaru was planning to use Shin as a testbed—to see if this body could withstand the power of those eyes.
Kenichi watched them go, then looked down at the logbook in his hands.
He cracked it open.
His pupils shrank slightly at the first line written across the top of the first page.
"Research Notes on the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path"
So that's what he'd traded for with Pain.
Kenichi's mood improved instantly.
The Demonic Statue of the Outer Path.
The husk of the Ten-Tails.
The withered form of the Divine Tree.
The source of nearly all chakra in this world.
And a biological weapon belonging to the Ōtsutsuki clan—those star-devouring parasites who wandered the cosmos planting Divine Trees like crops.
Now his teacher's research notes on that were sitting in his hands.
Orochimaru got to dissect the god-tree corpse.
Kenichi got the data.
In his mind, that was what you called… a very fair deal.
Note: If you're interested, you can read up to chapter 99+ at patreon.com/nakai01. Don't forget to give a power stone for more bonus chapters.