"No, not yet." Hiroki shook his head.
His gaze shifted from the steady line on the monitor to the researcher, who looked a little lost now that the experiment had been paused. His voice held a trace of calm.
"A single successful run and a stable, reliable process are two different things."
It was like a program that ran successfully without bugs on a programmer's computer versus one that ran successfully without bugs on a user's computer. Those were two different things, too.
After all, you could never know what strange issues or bizarre programs might be on a user's computer.
That was why only software that had undergone long-term testing could be considered stable and reliable. The same applied to the Muscle Patch.
"Only when their muscles show measurable, consistent growth, and they have no adverse reactions during long-term physical activity, can we tentatively call this experiment a success. Next, we need to conduct a controlled study with separate groups."
He walked toward the third and fourth prisoners, with Orochimaru following behind him, intrigued.
"My plan is to divide the remaining test subjects into two groups of four."
As he walked, Hiroki assigned tasks to the researchers beside him, speaking like an experienced project manager.
In fact, he really had been a project manager before transmigrating, and had overseen programming work. Only now, he was programming the human body instead of a computer.
"One group will be the experimental group. I'll perform my technique on them. The other will be the control group and remain as they are. The important thing is that this will be a double-blind experiment. After I inject them, I won't have any further contact with them, and I won't tell you which ones are in the experimental group. I need to rule out data contamination caused by a possible 'placebo effect.'"
"Placebo effect...?" Orochimaru raised an eyebrow and suddenly asked.
Hiroki paused, then turned to look at Orochimaru.
This should count as common knowledge... But given the Shinobi World's circumstances, it was possible that people weren't familiar with it.
Hiroki chose his words carefully. "Basically, let's say you're sick and need to take medicine. But whether you really take the medicine or only pretend to, as long as you believe you've taken it, your body will produce some kind of effect."
"And that effect will most likely correspond to what the medicine is supposed to do. By the same logic, if you believe for a long time that you're sick, then even if you aren't, that persistent belief can actually make you sick and cause you to show the corresponding symptoms."
In short, it could be summed up with this sentence—
The human body is amazing!
But as he thought about it, Hiroki's mind wandered again.
The placebo effect could be said to help the body maintain a considerable degree of self-healing. Could he find the effects of the placebo effect at the code level, then use his Golden Finger to lock them in place?
"Interesting." Orochimaru nodded thoughtfully. Was this another result of the Second Hokage's research!?
Orochimaru couldn't help grinning. It was only the first day, and he had already learned something new.
Could there be any doubt about what would happen next!?
He would wring every last bit of knowledge out of Hiroki's head! And then...
Orochimaru's eyes burned with eager desire as he stared at Hiroki...
A bespectacled researcher who seemed to be in charge of the team adjusted his glasses, surprise flashing in his eyes. "So we need a double-blind test to rule out the subjects' awareness influencing our experiment?"
He quickly grasped the meaning of double-blind: both the researchers and the test subjects would be kept in the dark, and neither side would know the relevant details.
"Right. Can we move on to the next step?" Hiroki confirmed, then turned to Orochimaru for final approval.
Orochimaru simply smiled and spread his hands. "It's all up to you, Hiroki. You're leading this experiment."
And so, the experimental plan was settled. As the researchers began preparing for the group study, Hiroki took a deep breath, turned to Orochimaru, and brought up the next topic.
"Next, I'd like to test my chakra natures."
The moment he said this, the laboratory fell silent.
Chakra natures were an advanced concept that students only encountered after graduating from the Ninja Academy. Orochimaru hadn't taught Hiroki about them at all yet, so Hiroki's words once again confirmed Orochimaru's suspicion that he "possessed knowledge he shouldn't have."
Orochimaru's golden snake eyes narrowed slightly. In an instant, he recalled the report that Hiroki had passed out from exhaustion after using Lightning Style: False Darkness. A playful smile curled his lips.
"Oh? Of course."
Hiroki breathed a sigh of relief. He'd been so direct because he had to figure out the question that haunted him: why had using the B-rank jutsu Lightning Style: False Darkness just once nearly drained all his "battery"?
According to the "experience file" he had copied from that Cloud Ninja, the jutsu's cost shouldn't have been anywhere near that high. He suspected the problem lay in the compatibility between his body (hardware) and the jutsu (software)—or perhaps some sort of driver issue.
Until he solved this problem, he wouldn't dare use the jutsu, even if he had copied it.
Chakra natures might be the equivalent of "drivers."
Soon, a researcher handed him a white piece of paper.
Hiroki took it and slowly infused it with chakra.
Everyone in the laboratory focused their gaze on the small slip.
One second later, one corner of the paper grew damp, indicating Water.
Two seconds later, another corner crumpled, indicating Wind.
Three seconds later, the center began to burn and turned to ash, indicating Fire.
Then, nothing else happened.
"Water, Fire, Wind..." the researcher in charge of recording murmured in disbelief. "Three innate natures... That's usually the aptitude of an elite jonin. But..."
But there was no Lightning.
A subdued murmur of discussion broke out in the laboratory.
They were researchers in Orochimaru's laboratory, but they weren't shut-in Yamanaka yokels who never followed the news outside. Of course they'd heard that Hiroki had rescued Kushina from the Cloud Ninja and even killed a jonin with Lightning Release!
But...
Without a Lightning nature, how had he used Lightning Release?
Or was it possible that the paper couldn't reveal all of someone's natures?
"He has no Lightning nature, yet he can use a B-rank Lightning Release jutsu with that much power? How is that possible?"
"Could it be the special nature of his Kekkei Genkai? Maybe it lets him forcibly imitate chakra of other natures?"
"But that would probably take several times, even dozens of times, the chakra of a normal jutsu! No, no, no. According to current theory, even imitation shouldn't be possible!"
"But it is possible—if he forcibly imitated it, that would explain why he passed out afterward. And if the theory is wrong, then we can just revise it."
The researchers' discussion matched Hiroki's own suspicions.
He had copied the jutsu, but not the Lightning Release chakra nature. That had caused a bug—a much easier explanation for Hiroki himself to accept.
In that case, analyzing Lightning Style: False Darkness seemed difficult. First, his chakra nature didn't match, which made testing risky.
Unless something unexpected happened, every time Hiroki forcibly used Lightning Style: False Darkness, it would probably drain his battery too quickly.
So if he wanted to test a jutsu, it might be better to choose one that matched his chakra natures.
Besides that, Lightning Style: False Darkness was 11.0 MB in size, which converted to 11,534,336 bytes—nearly eleven million. Hiroki had never paid attention to how many bytes each character took up while he was programming in Chinese...
But if he assumed fifty bytes per line, then 11 MB would be about 230,686 lines—that was 230,000 lines.
Who knew how long it would take to read through all of that, let alone revise it?
Besides, it wouldn't be easy to test the revised file on his own body...
Unless...
He had a second body.
He looked at Orochimaru, whose smile had grown even more meaningful.
"I need to learn a jutsu that matches my chakra natures. I also need Shadow Clone."
Before you continue