Hokage's Office.
Sawada Hiroki took a deep breath.
He blinked.
The sunlight outside the window was still dazzling, and the noise of the streets—the hawkers' cries, the running of ninja, the hum of Flying Thunder God Logistics pipelines—rushed into his ears in an instant.
He was back.
Hiroki did not stand up immediately.
He remained in the posture of holding his teacup, his fingers slightly stiff. He needed some time to process the information he had just received.
Before him, the surveillance screens still emitted their faint blue glow.
"Ninshu—Chakra—Protocol—"
Hiroki murmured to himself.
So that was it.
The greatest question that had plagued him all along—the origin of his system—had finally been answered.
His Golden Finger had been created by his future self, who had gone back into the past.
He was not some lucky person who had stumbled upon an advanced development tool.
He was the beginning of everything.
And the creator of his own system.
Then the question was, how had the original time loop begun?
How had the version of himself without a system passed the system on to himself?
Hiroki quickly formed a hypothesis.
—On some timeline, the version of himself without that loading screen might have been more cautious, more diligent, and more eager to learn. Without a Golden Finger, he would have feared the future more and been better at concealing himself.
Knowing the future and possessing his own experience as a programmer, he might have tried his best to establish contact with Orochimaru, then develop ninjutsu.
Then, through some fortunate coincidence, he would have created the first version of the Windows interface using chakra, and then tried to refine it.
And in the end, he would have relied on the Dragon Vein to travel back to the moment of his own birth,