What was Kizaru's upper limit?
To be honest, even Kizaru himself did not know.
All he knew was that he was still growing stronger.
Five days had passed since Minato returned to the village.
After Kizaru explained the principle and training method behind Wind Release: Rasenshuriken to Jiraiya and Danzo, he left Minato's training to them and stopped worrying too much about his progress.
It was not because Kizaru wanted to slack off.
There were two reasons.
First, Kizaru trusted Minato's talent. He also trusted Jiraiya's ability as a teacher and Danzo's experience with Wind Release ninjutsu.
Second, Kizaru himself had also been training recently.
After accepting Might Duy as his disciple and teaching him the Six Powers, Kizaru had also obtained the Eight Inner Gates training scroll from him.
With Kizaru's current strength, most ninjutsu in the ninja world could no longer offer him much improvement.
But the Eight Inner Gates were one of the few exceptions.
After obtaining the scroll and understanding the method, Kizaru immediately began practicing.
Learning the Eight Inner Gates itself was not especially complicated.
In simple terms, it involved using chakra to break through the eight limiters inside the body, forcibly releasing the body's self-protection mechanisms one by one.
The true difficulty of this forbidden technique lay in the physical requirements.
The user needed a body that had been tempered to an extreme degree, strong enough to withstand the violent chakra surge after the limiters were opened.
If the body was not strong enough, then either the user would fail to open the gate...
Or they would die the moment it opened.
Unfortunately for that rule, Kizaru's physical ability was already monstrous.
In the current ninja world, if Kizaru claimed to be second in physical strength, no one would dare claim first.
With the peak physical ability of an Admiral fused into him, Kizaru was already a terrifying existence who could stand above the shinobi world through raw physical power alone.
Because of that, after mastering the method to open the Eight Inner Gates, Kizaru reached the Sixth Gate of View on his very first attempt.
It was not that he could not open the Seventh Gate.
He simply worried that the increase would be too extreme. If his power and explosive force became difficult to control, it might cause unnecessary damage.
After testing it, Kizaru found that the Sixth Gate increased his physical ability and chakra by roughly two to three times.
The burden on his body was not too severe either.
According to Kizaru's own estimate, if he wanted to, he could keep the Sixth Gate open during battle without much issue.
After testing the Sixth Gate and gaining a rough understanding of it, Kizaru left the village on his own and headed to a wasteland more than thirty miles away from Konoha before opening the Seventh Gate of Wonder.
There, he tested the amplification effect of the Seventh Gate.
Once the Seventh Gate was opened, his physical ability and chakra rose by roughly five to six times.
However, the burden it placed on his body was much heavier.
Kizaru was not completely sure how long he could maintain it, but by his estimate, sustaining it for a full day at maximum output would not be a problem.
But to Kizaru, that duration barely mattered.
Looking at the entire ninja world, if anyone faced Kizaru with seven gates open and attacking at full strength, whether they could survive even one minute was already a question.
A whole day?
That was unnecessary.
Satisfied with the growth the Eight Inner Gates gave him, Kizaru spent the next period of time training after mastering the forbidden technique.
His training had two main goals.
The first was to open the gates faster and more smoothly.
The second was to adapt to the changes in speed and strength after opening them.
On the wasteland thirty miles away from Konoha, Kizaru stood bare-chested as he trained.
He had been practicing the Eight Inner Gates for a week now and had basically adapted to the strengthening brought by opening the gates.
Wrapped in blue steam, almost like a Saiyan, Kizaru prepared to test his strongest attack.
The Seventh Gate of Wonder.
The massive chakra amplification.
The Armament Haki of an Admiral at his peak.
The chakra-enhanced strength technique that became difficult to control precisely once chakra turned violent.
The blessing of his Devil Fruit ability.
The Six Powers' Finger Pistol.
And the principle behind Daytime Tiger.
Kizaru planned to fuse all of these abilities and techniques into one strike.
He bent his knees.
His feet pressed down.
The ground beneath him sank instantly.
He raised his right hand, extending his golden index finger.
Armament Haki gathered on that single finger.
Then, concentrating all the power and chakra in his body, Kizaru exploded forward in an instant.
The surrounding airflow merged with the steam pouring from his body. Driven by an enormous amount of chakra, it turned into a golden-blue arrow, like a divine arrow from myth, shooting forward at extreme speed.
Under that overwhelming speed and force, the space around him seemed to twist.
In an instant, Kizaru arrived before a tall rocky mountain.
His index finger had not even touched the mountain yet.
But under the terrifying air pressure and distorted force, spiderweb-like cracks spread across the hard rock surface.
The entire mountain began to collapse.
Then came a roar that pierced heaven and earth.
The moment Kizaru's index finger made contact, the towering rocky mountain was reduced to ash by the shock wave.
After destroying the mountain, Kizaru came to a stop.
But the terrifying shock wave he released did not stop.
From the tip of his index finger, an ever-expanding beam of light shot forward. It merged with the massive shock wave and turned into a golden dragon, roaring ahead with destructive force.
It tore through every obstacle in its path and continued forward for nearly a thousand meters.
Then, the golden dragon released a blinding white light.
An earth-shaking explosion erupted.
The ground trembled violently.
Scattered shock waves devoured everything around them without mercy.
Kizaru's body turned into golden light as he flew directly into the sky.
Looking down from above, he watched as the shock wave spread more than twenty miles before finally stopping near the outer edge of Konoha.
Kizaru quietly let out a breath.
That was close.
A little more and the village might have been gone.
Feeling slightly relieved, Kizaru lowered his gaze to his right hand.
His arm muscles were sore, and his index finger throbbed with pain.
At that moment, his right index finger had turned dark red.
He moved it slightly. After confirming that the bone was not fractured, Kizaru began reviewing the problem.
After opening the Eight Inner Gates, his instant burst of power became too strong.
The chakra also became far too violent, making fine control difficult.
Because of that, his index finger and arm had taken too much strain.
If he did not solve this problem, then using this attack multiple times in battle would probably fracture the bone in his index finger.
Kizaru shook his right hand lightly.
Then he sensed someone approaching from the direction of the village.
His body turned into light again, and he flew toward the incoming group.
On the road leading out of Konoha, the ANBU commander, Sarutobi Shinnosuke, was leading ten ANBU shinobi toward the source of the massive explosion that had caused the earthquake.
Although the shock wave from Kizaru's attack had not reached the village, the loud roar and violent tremors had still spread all the way to Konoha.
A disturbance of that scale naturally made the village uneasy.
For safety, the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, had ordered his son, Sarutobi Shinnosuke, to lead an elite ANBU squad and investigate the situation outside the village.
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