The Mouse with Kidney Failure, Orochimaru's Plan

"Squeak—"

That short, sharp cry of agony was the signal that the Pointy-headed Mouse's life had come to an end.

Damn it, even if the Pointy-headed Mouse didn't have a pointy head, was it still unable to escape the fate of ascending to the steroid planet and the peptide star!?

Hiroki frowned as he looked at the Pointy-headed Mouse.

A second ago, its muscular body, which had been running tirelessly on the wheel, collapsed with a bang after a violent spasm, its limbs stretching out stiffly, completely devoid of life.

Almost at the same time, Hiroki's consciousness space attempted to contact Big Mouse_01.

[Attempting to connect to target "Big Mouse_01"...]

[Error: Target device does not exist.]

Does not exist...

Hiroki's consciousness gave a slight jolt.

This was the first time he had encountered such a situation.

This was... a shutdown... but on a biological level, perhaps another term could be used to describe this mouse.

Dead.

Does being dead equate to "shutting down"?

Hiroki pressed his lips together tightly. If death corresponds to a shutdown, does that mean if he were to be forcibly shut down due to a power depletion or other reasons, it would also be equivalent to death?

This was truly bad news.

What was worse was that since the mouse was dead, it meant he could no longer read the mouse's system logs to analyze where the bug had occurred.

Debugging at the code level had failed; he had to turn to the most primitive and fundamental method—physical inspection.

He needed to perform a dissection.

Hiroki put on his gloves, his expression calm to the point of coldness. He didn't have a professional scalpel, but a ninja's tool kit contained things far sharper than that.

He took out a kunai and carefully sterilized it with alcohol. Under his precise control, the sharp edge of the kunai acted like the finest surgical blade, steadily and fluidly slicing open the chest and abdomen of the Pointy-headed Mouse.

A stench, heavier than the previous smell of urine and mixed with the scent of blood and rotting internal organs, rushed toward him, but Hiroki didn't even frown.

The scene before him intuitively confirmed his hypothesis.

The muscle tissue was abnormally developed, with every muscle fiber thick and astonishing, presenting a healthy deep red color; this proved that his script had performed perfectly in the single goal of "muscle gain."

However, the condition of the kidneys was horrific—they were swollen to almost twice the size of a normal mouse, dark in color, and their texture was as fragile as a piece of soggy tofu.

Hiroki touched them lightly with the tip of the kunai, and the pair of completely exhausted organs collapsed.

"Acute renal failure, just as I thought."

He mapped the biological phenomenon before him to the biological knowledge he had learned.

The growth and synthesis of muscle naturally produce metabolic waste.

And the [Muscle_AutomatedGrowth_v0.1.bat] script forced the body to continuously perform ultra-high-intensity protein synthesis and decomposition; this process generated massive amounts of metabolic waste, such as urea nitrogen and creatinine.

All this "system trash" flooded into the blood, waiting for the kidneys—the "purifiers"—to filter it out.

However, 7 days of 24-hour non-stop extreme labor far exceeded the design limits of the "hardware."

The kidneys were overwhelmed and eventually went on a total strike. Metabolic waste could not be excreted and accumulated rapidly in the body, triggering fatal uremia and ultimately leading to a "systemic collapse" of multi-organ failure.

"It seems this was just a consequence caused by improper value settings; a bug caused by failing to account for anything other than the muscles." Hiroki was silent for a moment, then created a new experimental log and wrote down his conclusion.

It was fortunate he hadn't used himself as the test subject.

If he had been even a little more reckless, he might have just died...

—He would need to significantly lower the values; he didn't even need ten percent of the mouse's muscle growth rate, he might only need five percent or even one percent.

Assuming a stable synthesis of 100 grams of muscle per day, that would be 700 grams a week, three kilograms of pure muscle a month, and thirty-six kilograms a year.

For Hiroki, that was already approaching his current body weight.

Hiroki took a deep breath; then, he needed to catch more big mice to contribute to his cause of becoming stronger!

Meanwhile, deep underground in Konoha, the base of Root.

Orochimaru returned to his familiar laboratory, which was filled with the smell of formalin.

He had developed a keen interest in the "interesting Kekkei Genkai" that Danzo had mentioned.

To be fair, Orochimaru didn't think much of the ordinary Sharingan.

The so-called copying of ninjutsu could only replicate some useless techniques; on a real battlefield, those ultimate-level ninjutsu were almost always used in life-or-death situations.

Most of what the Sharingan could copy were useless techniques that would be defeated by a crude Fire Style.

As for those truly astonishing and exaggeratedly effective ninjutsu, one would rarely get to see them a second time, and their difficulty was staggering; let alone copying them, even if one studied them for over a decade, one might not be able to learn them.

Representative ninjutsu included the Second Hokage's Flying Thunder God, Dan Katō's Spirit Transformation Technique, and the Impure World Reincarnation he had recently learned about.

However, it would be different if one could copy someone else's ninjutsu by reading their memories.

Orochimaru narrowed his eyes. Although he had acted as if he didn't care much in front of Danzo, this Kekkei Genkai was truly helpful for him to achieve his ideal—

To master all ninjutsu.

Orochimaru sat in his chair, flipping through the files.

Relying on the special clearance he held in both the Anbu and the Root, he easily accessed the complete records of the two children.

Kushina's file was unremarkable; aside from the labels of "Uzumaki orphan" and "Jinchuriki candidate," everything else was plain. The only thing worth noting was the special nature of her chakra.

As for Hiroki's file, it presented a strange sense of discontinuity. The first nine years were extremely mediocre, but after the "Cloud Village kidnapping incident," it was as if he had become a different person.

It was just like those Uchiha who awakened the Sharingan.

"A Kekkei Genkai awakening, is it..." Orochimaru's golden snake-like pupils narrowed slightly. Most of the information provided by the Root focused on the target's daily activities; they hadn't done much regarding Kekkei Genkai awakening or background investigations.

After all, the Root was ultimately a clandestine organization, primarily dealing with traitors, restless internal elements, and hostile intelligence agents. The backgrounds, personalities, and grades of children in the village were not within the Root's scope of responsibility.

In this regard, his teacher, the honorary principal of the Ninja Academy and the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, clearly knew much more.

He left the laboratory and headed straight for the Hokage's office.

He needed more data to better understand this student and decide on his assessment.

If, if this student could not live up to his expectations... Orochimaru narrowed his eyes; attempting to extract the Kekkei Genkai from that child might also be an option.