The Hidden Leaf Village sprawled beneath the afternoon sun as Seiran climbed the stone steps toward the Hokage's Office. Two months away. Two months of solo contracts, underground dealings, and a careful dance through the black market under the "Silver-Faced Asura" alias. The harvest had been worth it—more than worth it.
Rasa, the Fourth Kazekage, had proven to be a generous benefactor. Gold dust first. Then a bounty worth thirty million ryo. And finally, the man had risked his own body to shield him from Kakuzu's wrath. The gesture stuck with Seiran still, a debt of honor he didn't take lightly.
But debts or not, it was time to go home.
The knock on the Hokage's office door was respectful, measured.
"Come in," came the reply.
Hiruzen sat behind his desk, eyes crinkling as he spotted the dust-covered shinobi. "Seiran. You've been out training for over two months. How was it? All missions complete?"
"All three, Lord Third." Seiran stepped forward and laid out the proof items—documentation, marked targets, intelligence reports. Everything required. "The B-rank bandit operation, the A-rank missing-nin elimination, and the intelligence contract."
Hiruzen examined each piece carefully, nodding with obvious approval. "Very thorough. No complications?"
"Uesugi Toru was difficult to track," Seiran replied, which was true enough. The man's secret technique would have been valuable intel, but the mission parameters hadn't required it. No point volunteering information the Hokage hadn't asked for. "That delayed things, but nothing I couldn't handle otherwise."
The Third nodded, accepting the answer without probing deeper. Seiran felt the tension in his shoulders ease.
"Take your mission certificate to the desk and collect your bounty," Hiruzen said. "Well done, Seiran. You're shaping up to be one of our finest independent operators."
"Thank you, Lord Third."
The praise felt distant now. Money—even the substantial payout from three successful missions—barely registered anymore. What once would have excited him left him cold. Strength was the only currency that mattered now. The world was shifting; he could feel it like pressure building before a storm.
The three-way war loomed. Always. Like Damocles' sword.
Back at the training grounds—his usual spot in the back mountain—Seiran took position among the tall trees. He centered himself, drawing deep on his chakra reserves.
"Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
The world exploded into duplicates.
Dozens of clones materialized in a massive cloud of chakra smoke. Seiran's legs trembled as he gripped a nearby trunk, his face pale. He'd never pushed this many clones at once. The sensation was like having his entire body hollowed out—the chakra distributed so thinly across so many forms that the original was left with barely a spark.
He understood now why the First Hokage had classified the technique as forbidden. The consumption was apocalyptic.
But unlike Hashirama, Seiran didn't have a bottomless well of chakra. He had to be smarter. Faster. More efficient.
The clones turned to him, waiting.
"I need your help," he said, voice steady despite the exhaustion clinging to him. "Serious work."
"Original body, you want us to do something big, right?"
"Whatever you need. We're all you."
Seiran felt something settle in his chest—a strange pride at seeing his own determination reflected back at him through so many versions of himself.
Around the clearing, stacks of metal ninja tools lay ready: shuriken, kunai, needles, wire. Hundreds of pieces.
"Group up in threes," Seiran commanded. "I need you to melt those tools and reforge them. Use Electromagnetic Furnace and density compression. Work efficiently."
The clones moved with practiced precision, organizing themselves into efficient teams. Within moments, the clearing blazed with heat. Six palms at a time moved across the metal, the Electromagnetic Manipulation field roaring to life as the tools began to glow—first red, then brilliant orange.
In his mind's eye, Seiran watched the experience counter tick upward. Faster than before. Much faster.
This was the exploit he'd discovered—using Shadow Clones to perform advanced techniques simultaneously, compounding the experience yield. It was brutally efficient and brutally taxing. When these clones dispersed, their memories and exhaustion would slam back into him all at once.
It was gambling with his own body.
But time was running out. The war wouldn't wait for steady progress. He had to push. Had to accelerate. The electromagnetic control had reached Level 3, and Level 4 felt impossibly distant at his current pace. Months of normal training stretched ahead of him when he needed progress measured in weeks.
The clones worked without complaint, three-person teams flowing into each other's rhythm as the ambient heat shimmered off the mountain air. Ninja tools were transmuted, reformed, solidified into slightly different configurations—each transformation feeding his evolution.
Seiran monitored the pace carefully. Not too hard. Not so hard that he collapsed when they dispersed. Dangerous. Controlled. On the knife's edge.
By the time the sun hung low, he'd made the call. Seiran raised his hand.
"That's enough. Regroup. Return."
The clones merged back into him in a torrent of memory and sensation.
Exhaustion crashed through his body like a physical force. Seiran dropped to his knees, gasping, every muscle screaming. The memories weren't his—but now they were. Hours of intense focused work, dozens of perspectives, the accumulated fatigue of a hundred tasks compressed into a single moment of reclamation.
He gritted his teeth and pushed through it, forcing his breathing to steady.
When the vertigo finally subsided, Seiran checked his internal counter.
Nearly five thousand experience points. Not quite enough to reach the next threshold in one session, but close. Far closer than he would've managed through normal training.
He could do this. Carefully. Methodically. And before war came knocking, he would be ready.