Late at night, Tetsumaru used a barrel lantern to illuminate a large patch of woods. It was a primitive lighting tool—a wooden barrel with its inner walls painted white and a candle placed inside as a light source.
Because it relied on a candle, the illumination was mediocre at best. Fortunately, Konoha currently lacked any form of light pollution, making the barrel lantern an incredibly effective lure. Before long, various flying and crawling insects began to gather in the illuminated clearing.
Tetsumaru pulled out a casting net and captured every unfamiliar insect he could see on the ground, sorting them into separate containers. Once he was sure he had everything from the dirt, he switched to a hand net to snatch the insects circling in the air. This part was more tedious; he had to catch a batch, identify them one by one, keep the new or useful ones, and store the rest temporarily in a holding mesh.
After spending considerable time processing one area, a new wave of insects arrived, and he started the cycle again.
He repeated this process until the clearing went still. Tetsumaru packed his nets, picked up his lantern, and moved to a new location. By the time the first light of dawn touched the sky, he had finished his work at the fifth site and headed home.
During a routine inspection last month, an Aburame ninja had been horrified to find that all the Sugar Ants in a section of the forest had vanished. Their empty nests were now overrun by various scavenger insects.
The discoverer had turned pale with fright and sprinted back to the clan manor to raise the alarm. The entire clan was jolted into action, and soon, over a dozen allied clans were mobilized.
Five years ago, this wouldn't have been an issue. But now, it was a catastrophe. For the families deeply invested in the Sugar Ant Alliance, this was a matter of life and death.
As the saying goes: The thicker the snake, the bigger the hole. Over the last few years, the clans in the Alliance had made a fortune, and their spending had increased accordingly. To Tetsumaru's shock, the merchants in the Shinobi World were incredibly savvy—they had successfully pressured several clans into "predatory lending" and "luxury consumption" traps. Many were now drowning in debt; if the ants failed, those clans would collapse.
In the Aburame forest, where insects mutated at an accelerated rate, it was only a matter of time before a natural predator of the Sugar Ants evolved, or a targeted biological disaster—like a fungus or virus—emerged. This was why Tetsumaru had suggested keeping specific colonies as "canaries in the coal mine" to provide early warnings.
Currently, the Alliance managed sixteen hundred crates of Sugar Ants, generating a monthly revenue equivalent to the mission rewards of three hundred Jonin. A spreadable threat to the ants was a loss that simply could not be tolerated.
A secondary investigation confirmed that a newly evolved insect species was systematically exterminating the Sugar Ants. It was a direct assault on the Aburame clan's livelihood. Elder Shiki had nearly hit the ceiling in a rage. The clan underwent a total mobilization.
Members of the Hyuga, Uchiha, and Inuzuka clans were invited to assist. The order was clear: find this "cursed pest" and wipe it out.
Tetsumaru had been given a vital role. He spent his nights hunting and his days identifying samples. In his lab, he let out a massive yawn before rolling over to continue his nap.
He had already found the source: a Mutant Wasp.
This wasp laid its eggs near the ant nests. It emitted a chemical pheromone that tricked the ants into thinking the eggs were their own, leading them to carry the "intruders" into their incubation chambers. Once hatched, the wasp larvae would gorge themselves on the ant eggs, larvae, and pupae. These gluttonous predators grew much faster and larger than the ants; within days, even the adult ants became prey.
Because a single larva was over ten times the size of an ant queen, a lone ant had no chance of fighting back. The pheromone camouflage prevented the colony from swarming the intruder. A single larva could consume roughly forty thousand ants before pupating. If more than twenty larvae infiltrated a nest, the entire colony—including the Queen—was doomed.
Aside from this devastating wasp, Tetsumaru found two other minor predators, though they weren't a real threat. He kept that to himself, figuring they might as well be caught in the crossfire.
Tetsumaru knew the culprit, but he didn't end the clan's screening mission. He wanted to be absolutely sure there were no other threats, and more importantly, he wanted to use the resources. With a full mobilization involving over three hundred sensors and scouts, the efficiency of the "sample collection" was staggering.
They were effectively filtering every single insect in the five-square-kilometer forest. Tetsumaru could never have done this alone. He was using this "crisis" to conduct a once-in-a-lifetime comprehensive census of the forest's biodiversity.
Tetsumaru sneezed and sat up. He couldn't sleep anymore. He scanned his laboratory. Man, the storage room is almost full. I'm running out of specimen bottles.
Well, the Clan Head did say "spend whatever is necessary."
He decided to ask the Patriarch for more money and manpower. He'd double the size of the lab and order ten thousand—no, thirty thousand more specimen bottles. He'd also need a massive requisition of bug feed and chemical reagents. Cash is fine, but direct supplies are better. Hehehe.
Over the next few days, Tetsumaru and the clan's other experts officially identified the Mutant Wasp as the primary threat, along with five other harmful or competitive species.
With a command from the Patriarch, six hundred ninjas swept through the woods, thoroughly exterminating all six species. They then reintroduced ten "tester" colonies of Sugar Ants and monitored them for a month. When no new threats appeared, the crisis was declared over.
Tetsumaru walked away with the lion's share of the benefits. His lab had doubled in size, his warehouse had tripled, and he had accumulated more new insect samples in a month than he had in the previous six years combined.
With the crisis resolved, life returned to normal. It was time to focus on the war.
Tetsumaru sat in his lab, mentally cataloging his assets. His foundation in the Kikaichu system was solid; he had mastered the four pillars of Attack, Defense, Scouting, and Communication. He was powerful.
But he had a glaring weakness: multitasking. Or, as he called it, "Multi-unit Micromanagement."
The reason Aburame techniques relied on controlling thousands of individual bugs was that a single Kikaichu was weak and slow. They required complex formations, feints, and manual "envelopments" to secure a kill. Every advancement in the Aburame heritage required even more multitasking talent to be effective.
Tetsumaru rubbed his temples. After six years of relentless training, his micromanagement skill was... complicated. Thinking about it made him want to shed tears of regret.
I should have given up on multitasking years ago, he lamented.
His path in Ninjutsu was equally frustrating. Despite sleeping in class and playing truant, he had technically mastered every C-rank jutsu available in the Academy. However, testing them proved that his skill level was only slightly better than his Kikaichu arts. This was a joke, considering he had over a hundred times the chakra of his peers.
The problem was the selection of C-rank jutsus. They didn't include any of the "classics" like the Great Fireball or Great Breakthrough. The Academy only taught low-tier, generic utility jutsus—the kind of "trash" that Kakashi copied by the thousands but never bothered to use.
In the current Konoha, there were only two ways to learn powerful jutsus: find a Jonin master or accumulate enough merit points to buy them from the village. Tetsumaru had no master, and merit points were a "long-term" solution that wouldn't help him survive the upcoming front lines.
Taijutsu was even worse. In the entire Shinobi World, the only "perfected" Taijutsu system was the Gentle Fist, and that was locked behind the Byakugan. He had bought the Eight Inner Gates scroll from Might Duy, but it was incomplete. There were no instructions on how to actually open the gates or how to train for them.
The unknown creator of the technique had been a pure genius who had likely opened the gates through sheer talent without a training manual, recording only the results and the eventual "bloody death" of the Eighth Gate. It was Might Duy who was currently spending his life's blood to turn those fragments into a viable training system.
Every path felt like a dead end.
Tetsumaru sighed. If the mountain won't come to me, I must go to the mountain.
He spread a blank sheet of paper on his desk and listed his assets:
Multitasking talent: Terrible. Single and double-line control: Excellent.Chakra reserves: Massive.Taijutsu: Competent.Insect database: 60,000 species.Finances: Wealthy.
He thought for a moment, crossed out "Excellent" for multitasking, and changed it to "N/A." He also crossed out "Taijutsu."
Looking at the list, the conclusion was staring him in the face: I need to select and breed insects from my database that are fast, lethal, and versatile. I need bugs that can act as elite individual units, tailored to my single-line control and massive chakra, to replace the Kikaichu in combat.
First, scouting. He needed to upgrade the Slime. It didn't need more features yet; it just needed to not die the moment a fight started. Maybe I should give the Slime a shell? he noted.
Next, attack. The Kikaichu lacked speed and piercing power. He looked through his "Speed" and "Flight" tags. This locust is good—fast, with a head as hard as a drill. It keeps breaking my nets. Potential. This beetle is like a tank—hard shell with sharp ridges like a miniature shuriken. Also potential. This assassin bug is incredibly fast and its venom is lethal. Very high potential.
Wait... that beetle from earlier? It can't fly, but it's incredibly durable. Thick, wide armor plates. I could use it as biological plating for defense.
Choosing bugs was like a hobby for him; he could get lost in it for hours. Before he knew it, he had filled a scroll with over a hundred species and a hundred different breeding projects. When he snapped out of it, he realized he only had three months until graduation.
Can I really finish a hundred mutation and selection projects in ninety days?
He looked at the list and sighed. He couldn't narrow it down further. He didn't know how the mutations would turn out, and cutting a project now was a gamble that might cost him a "god-tier" unit.
Fine. No more filtering. I'll start with the Slime and run as many parallel projects as possible.
Tetsumaru selected a Slime and a group of "donors"—snails, scabies mites, and weaver insects—to begin the induction process.
Biology, as any scientist from Earth knows, is a frontier science. It's full of uncertainty. Without computers or pure reagents, genetic manipulation in this world was basically gambling.
Forty days later, in the dead of night, Tetsumaru stared at a disgusting, indescribable lump of flesh in a test tube. Another mutation failure.
He had nothing.
His only trump cards were his massive, hard-to-use chakra and forty-four "garbage" jutsus. His Grand Circulation's "Hide and Burst" mechanics were his only real ace.
Am I really going to the front lines like this?
For a transmigrator like him, going to war without a hundred hidden cards and a dozen ultimate moves felt like going out naked. The more he thought about it, the more his anger and frustration boiled over. When he calculated how much money he had flushed down the drain on these four thousand failed induction experiments, his mind finally snapped.
A tiny tributary in his Grand Chakra Circulation fractured. Like a solar flare erupting from the sun, a massive surge of chakra burst forth.
BOOM!
The explosion shattered hundreds of test tubes. It was as if a Great Fireball had detonated inside the lab. The interior was gutted. The door and windows were blown out like cannonballs, disintegrating in mid-air and scattering debris across the entire courtyard.
The burst of "evil fire" left Tetsumaru feeling strangely calm. He looked at the wreckage and felt a pang of regret for the new losses, but he was too tired to care. Ignoring his parents' "what-is-wrong-with-you" stares from the main house, he went to his room and crashed.
After a solid night's sleep, Tetsumaru woke up in a much better mood. He had a hearty breakfast and headed out to clean up his mess.
He piled the debris in the yard and walked into the lab to start scrubbing the floors. But when he looked at the ground, he froze.
The floor was covered in dozens of crawling, wriggling mutant Slimes.
Slimes with shells. Slimes with legs. Slimes with wings, pincers, or furry coats. There were even conjoined slimes and one with forty legs.
What the hell? This has to be a dream.
His brain went into overdrive. Why did years of meticulous work fail, while a random explosion of anger succeeded? He sorted the mutants into jars, his mind racing through the possibilities.
By the time he was done, he had eliminated every impossible factor. Only one remained: Chakra.
Does chakra have the inherent property of inducing targeted mutation?
Time to verify.