Chakra Natures and the BUG

"No, not yet." Hiroki shook his head.

His gaze shifted from the steady curves on the monitor to the researcher, who looked slightly dazed by the pause in the experiment, his voice carrying a trace of calm.

"A successful single run and a stable, reliable program are two different concepts."

It is just like a piece of software; running successfully on a programmer's computer without bugs is one thing, but running successfully on a user's computer without bugs is another.

After all, you never know what strange reasons or bizarre background processes might be running on a user's machine.

Therefore, only software that has undergone long-term testing can be considered a stable and reliable program. This point holds true for the muscle patch as well.

"Only when their muscles show observable, stable growth, and there are no adverse reactions during long-term physiological activity, can this experiment be preliminarily deemed a 'success.' Next, we need to conduct a controlled group experiment."

He walked toward the third and fourth prisoners, with Orochimaru following closely behind, looking on with great interest.

"My plan is to divide the remaining test subjects into two groups, with a 4:4 ratio."

As he walked, Hiroki assigned tasks to the researchers beside him, his tone that of an experienced project manager.

Of course, in reality, he had actually been a project manager before he transmigrated, arranging software development schedules. It was just that now, he was programming the internal systems of the human body rather than code on a computer.

"One group will be the experimental group, on whom I will perform my technique; the other will be the control group, kept as they are. Crucially, this is a double-blind experiment—after I perform the injection, I will no longer have contact with them, nor will I inform you which ones are in the experimental group. I need to eliminate the data contamination that could be caused by the 'placebo effect'."

"Placebo effect...?" Orochimaru raised an eyebrow and suddenly interjected.

Hiroki paused for a moment and turned to look at Orochimaru.

This should be considered common knowledge... but considering the environment of the ninja world, it seemed possible that it was unknown.

Hiroki carefully chose his words: "Basically, it means that if you are sick and need medicine, regardless of whether you actually took the medicine or just a fake, as long as you believe you took it, your body will produce a certain effect."

"And this effect will likely play the corresponding role of the medicine. By the same logic, if you believe for a long time that your body is sick, even if you aren't, that long-term belief will cause your body to actually become sick and manifest the corresponding symptoms."

Simply put, it can be summarized by the following sentence—

The human body is truly miraculous!

But as he thought this, Hiroki's mind couldn't help but wander.

The placebo effect could be said to be the body's ability to maintain a considerable degree of self-healing. Could he find the effect of the placebo effect at the code level and then use his cheat to fix it in place?

"Interesting." Orochimaru nodded thoughtfully. Was this also a research achievement of the Second Hokage!?

Orochimaru couldn't help but grin; it was only the first day, and he had already learned something new.

As for what would happen in the future, did he even need to ask!?

He was going to squeeze everything out of Hiroki's brain! And then...

Orochimaru's eyes were filled with intense, eager emotions as he stared at Hiroki...

A researcher wearing glasses, who appeared to be the team leader, pushed them up, a flash of surprise in his eyes: "So we need a double-blind to exclude the influence of their subjective consciousness on our experiment?"

He quickly understood the meaning of double-blind: concealing information from both the researchers and the subjects, so that neither side knew the specific details.

"Yes, can we proceed to the next step?" Hiroki confirmed his statement, then turned his gaze toward Orochimaru, seeking final approval.

Orochimaru just chuckled and spread his hands: "Everything is for you to decide, Hiroki-kun. This is an experiment led by you."

The experimental plan was settled just like that. As the researchers began preparing for the group experiment, Hiroki took a deep breath, turned to Orochimaru, and brought up the next topic.

"Next, I would like to conduct a chakra nature test."

As soon as these words were spoken, the laboratory fell instantly silent.

Chakra nature is an advanced concept encountered only after graduating from the Ninja Academy, and at this point, Orochimaru had not yet taught Hiroki this part. Hiroki's statement was tantamount to confirming Orochimaru's judgment that he "possessed knowledge he shouldn't have."

Orochimaru's golden snake-like pupils narrowed slightly. He immediately recalled the report stating that Hiroki had collapsed from exhaustion after using Lightning Style: False Darkness, and a playful arc appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"Oh? Of course, no problem."

Hiroki breathed a sigh of relief. The reason he was so direct was that he had to figure out the nightmare-like problem—why did casting the B-rank ninjutsu "Lightning Style: False Darkness" once drain almost all of his "battery"?

According to the "experience file" he had copied from that Cloud Ninja, the consumption of this technique should not have been so exaggerated. He suspected the problem lay in the compatibility between his body (hardware) and the ninjutsu (software), or perhaps some kind of driver issue.

Without solving this problem, even if he copied the ninjutsu, he wouldn't dare to use it.

And chakra nature might just be the so-called "driver."

Soon, a researcher handed over a piece of white test paper.

Hiroki took it and slowly injected his chakra into it.

Everyone in the lab focused their eyes on that small piece of paper.

One second later, a corner of the paper became damp, representing Water.

Two seconds later, another corner began to wrinkle, representing Wind.

Three seconds later, the center began to burn and turned to ash, representing Fire.

Then, there were no further changes.

"Water, Fire, Wind..." the researcher in charge of recording muttered to himself, his tone filled with disbelief, "Three innate natures... this is generally the aptitude of a Jonin. However..."

However, there was no lightning.

This result caused a wave of hushed discussion to ripple through the laboratory.

They were researchers in Orochimaru's laboratory, but they were not isolated hermits from the Yamanaka clan who ignored the news; they had naturally heard the story of how Hiroki had saved Kushina from the Cloud Ninja and even used a Lightning Style jutsu to kill a jonin!

But...

Without a lightning affinity, how did he release that Lightning Style jutsu?

Or could it be that the test paper was unable to detect all of a person's affinities?

"No lightning affinity, yet he could release a B-rank Lightning Style jutsu of that power? How is that possible?"

"Is it the uniqueness of a Kekkei Genkai? Can it forcibly simulate chakra of other affinities?"

"But the consumption for doing that would likely be several, or even dozens of times higher than a normal release! No, no, no, according to existing theories, even simulation shouldn't be possible!"

"But it is a possibility—after all, if it were forced simulation, that would explain his subsequent coma. And if the theory is wrong, we can just revise the theory."

The researchers' discussion mirrored Hiroki's own inner speculations.

He had copied the jutsu, but he hadn't copied the lightning chakra affinity, which resulted in a bug—this explanation was clearly easier for Hiroki himself to accept.

So, analyzing Lightning Style: False Darkness now seemed to become difficult. First of all, the chakra affinity was wrong, so the testing risk was quite high.

If nothing went wrong, every time Hiroki forcibly released Lightning Style: False Darkness, it would likely cause his energy reserves to deplete too quickly.

Therefore, if he were to conduct jutsu testing, perhaps switching to a jutsu that matched Hiroki's chakra affinity would be better.

Moreover, besides this point, the size of Lightning Style: False Darkness was 11.0MB, which converted to 11,534,336 bytes—nearly eleven million. Although Hiroki had never paid attention to how many bytes a single character occupied during his Chinese programming...

However, if calculated at 50 bytes per line, 11MB would be approximately 230,686 lines, or 230,000 lines.

There was no telling how long it would take to read through that, or how long it would take to modify.

Furthermore, it wouldn't be safe to test the modified file on his own body...

Unless...

He had a second body.

He looked at Orochimaru, whose smile became even more meaningful.

"I need to learn a jutsu that matches my chakra affinity, and I also need Shadow Clone."