Methods of Growing Stronger Quickly

The first was the Cursed Seal obtained from Orochimaru, a flawed and twisted form of "Sage Mode."

True Sage Mode was the ladder to climbing the peak of Kage-level and touching legendary power.

Every user of Sage Mode was an exceedingly powerful presence among Kage-level shinobi.

The Cursed Seal, while likewise granting power beyond the ordinary, was closely tied to the user's own strength.

Just like Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki's first Final Valley Battle in the Original Work, the strength they displayed was nowhere near that of Sage Mode.

The true value of Cursed Seal Mode lay in its universal applicability; its requirements were far lower than those of Sage Mode.

In the eyes of a researcher like Minamoto Takuya, both Sage Mode and the power of the Cursed Seal were extremely special "independent multipliers," though Sage Mode simply had more multipliers.

And that meant they could stack and even multiply each other! Whether it was the berserk power of a Tailed Beast or the legendary power of the Sage of Six Paths, both could blend with them.

If he could master a stable, controllable Cursed Seal, then with his current strength, there was indeed a great chance that the boost would allow him to step across the threshold of Kage-level peak!

Unfortunately... Minamoto Takuya sighed inwardly.

He had shelved his research into the Cursed Seal for a long time. Not long after he obtained Orochimaru's research materials on it, the war had broken out.

During the early stages of the war, he had devoted himself entirely to researching the Chimera Technique in order to fuse his third bloodline.

By the time he had finally completed his research on the Chimera Technique, the war had deteriorated into an extreme situation, leaving him overwhelmed and unable to attend to everything.