Magma Release Rock Armor, the Sannin's Gaze, and a Promise to Go All Out

The smell of smoke on the blanket covering him had faded another layer since it had first been brought over last night.

He rolled out of bed, carefully folded the blanket into a neat square, and placed it beside his pillow.

Two soft, rhythmic knocks came from outside the door.

"Uchiha En, by the Hokage's orders, you may return to the Ninja Academy starting today."

The cat-masked ANBU spoke through the door in a businesslike tone, devoid of personal emotion and without a single unnecessary word.

Yan opened the door. Two people stood in the corridor. On the left was the cat mask from last night; on the right stood an additional figure in an eagle mask. The eagle mask was half a head shorter than the cat mask, but his stance was steadier, legs slightly apart and center of gravity kept low—ready to explode into action at any moment. It was the typical posture of a close-combat ninja who had spent years walking the line between life and death.

Two ANBU, rotating shifts around the clock, never leaving his side.

The old man kept his word.

Yan did not greet them, nor did he spare them a second glance. It was not that he was deliberately putting on the arrogant airs of an Uchiha. Rather, if a twelve-year-old orphan tried to cozy up to the Hokage's personal ANBU at a time like this, it would only make him seem too calculating and deliberate.

Head lowered, he walked down the corridor and out through the side entrance of the Hokage Building.

The early autumn sunlight poured down over him, carrying a faint, crisp chill. The air was thick with the raw scent of dew-soaked earth and smoke from distant breakfast stalls.

The old woman selling three-colored dango was hunched over as she slowly set up her stand at the street corner.

The brats who chased stray cats through the alleys every day were still asleep—this was simply too early for ordinary civilians.

"Let's go." Without looking back, Yan casually spoke to the two well-concealed presences behind him, then took a familiar shortcut toward the Ninja Academy.

His steps were steady, but the schedule in his mind was racing wildly, turning over at high speed on its own.

Knowing how things usually went, he would probably run into Minato Namikaze.

Eight in the morning, Ninja Academy.

The instant Yan pushed open the classroom door, the previously noisy room abruptly fell silent for a second. More than half the class turned their heads toward him in unison.

The movement was so perfectly synchronized that it was as though they were being tugged by the same invisible string.

Their gazes held complicated emotions: curiosity, wariness, schadenfreude, indifference... each in varying measure. Yet one thing had completely vanished: contempt.

"Yan!"

A gleaming blond head suddenly turned around from the front row. Minato grinned carelessly, flashing two little white canine teeth as he greeted him.

Three rows behind, several clan kids whispered among themselves. "Hey, did you hear? That Uchiha Yan supposedly stayed in the Hokage Building last night... He was even escorted back this morning by ANBU..."

"Seriously? Isn't he just a Ninja Academy student who hasn't even graduated? What did he do?"

"My dad said the Hokage personally signed some kind of special authorization for him..."

The buzzing chatter was as annoying as summer flies. Yan ignored it.

Just a few days left before the exams. Focus on making money... no, focus on getting stronger.

Jiraiya.

That white-haired pervy old man was watching him train.

He did not come closer. He did not say hello. He merely watched for a few minutes—then his presence silently withdrew, disappearing beyond the edge of Yan's Observation Haki.

Yan leaned against a tree, his eyes half-closed.

The corner of his mouth curled up slightly.

Jiraiya was evaluating him.

Minato's teacher needed to find out what kind of person his student's best friend truly was. That was what a teacher ought to do. Jiraiya's personality had been made very clear in the manga from Yan's previous life—he would not approach Yan and question him directly. That would be too deliberate. He would observe for himself, using his own eyes and senjutsu senses to make his judgment.

This was a good thing.

Being noticed by one of the Sannin was worth a hundred times more than going up to him himself.

Approaching someone was "asking." Being noticed meant "being worth it."

The difference between those two words could mean the difference of an entire life on the political map of the ninja world.

In an open area on the outskirts of the Forest of Death, two twelve-year-old children were beating the hell out of each other.

"Beating the hell out of each other" might have been a little crude. But if someone happened to pass by and glance over, that was exactly what they would see—two boys tearing into each other like wolf cubs in the woods, dust flying, fists and kicks cracking through the air, punctuated now and then by short, muffled grunts.

Minato's speed had risen another level.

Not merely his physical speed—it was the "startup speed" of his attacks. He had compressed the blank interval between standing still and launching an attack to an unnerving degree. An ordinary person needed 0.4 seconds to complete the process of "decision → muscle activation → attack." Minato could now reduce it to under 0.2 seconds.

Even more troublesome was his Wind Release.

He could already steadily coat his fists and feet with Wind Release chakra. Every punch was wrapped in a nearly invisible layer of air blades—not independent long-range attacks launched outward, but "attached" wind blades clinging to the surface of his limbs.

What made this kind of attack so nasty was that dodging the fist itself was useless. Along the fist's path, the shockwave of the wind blade would slice through an additional two to three centimeters.

In other words, even if you twisted aside and dodged Minato's right straight, if you did not move far enough, the residual force of the wind blade would still leave you a souvenir.

A two-centimeter cut had appeared on Yan's lower leg.

It was not deep, but the location was vicious—right where the soft tissue in front of the shinbone was thinnest. The pain made him suck in a breath.

"Your wind blade control is more precise than it was two days ago." Yan crouched to inspect the wound. Blood seeped from the cut and trickled down his calf.

"Jiraiya-sensei said the key to Wind Release coating isn't 'more,' it's 'thin and even.'" Minato stood three meters away, breathing hard, the lingering traces of wind blades around his hands not yet fully dispersed. "I used to coat them too thickly, and it actually slowed my punches down. Thinner works better for both speed and sharpness."

Yan raised his assessment of Minato's combat strength by another notch.

Twelve years old.

And he was already playing with "the integrated application of chakra nature transformation and taijutsu."

At this pace, he was not a genius among his peers—he was a monster. Even among adult ninja, it was nothing to be ashamed of. Most chunin could spend their entire lives unable to achieve such fine control as coating their fists and feet in Wind Release.

And Minato had done it in five days.

Five days, from nothing to practical combat use.

A humanoid cheat code.

There was no more fitting description.

Yan rose to his feet and casually wiped the blood off his calf.

"I've thought of a countermeasure for your problem."

Minato blinked.

Yan held out his right hand.

A layer of dark crimson material surfaced in his palm—not magma, but a "disguised version" of Magma Release suppressed into a semi-solid state. A dark gray shell covered his palm and the back of his hand, its temperature precisely controlled at the level of "hot, but not enough to scorch the air."

Then the shell began to spread. From palm to wrist, wrist to forearm, forearm to elbow.

It finally stopped at his elbow joint.

His entire right forearm was wrapped in a dark crimson shell less than a centimeter thick. Its surface was rough, its patterns resembling cracked volcanic rock. Occasionally, one or two thin crimson lines flowed through the fissures, like lava that had not fully cooled.

"Magma Release... Rock Armor?" Minato stared at that arm, his eyes wide.

"Something like that." Yan flexed the fingers covered by the shell. The sensation was somewhat duller than with his bare hand, but acceptable. "If the density's high enough, wind blades can't cut through it."

He was stating a fact.

The essence of this Rock Armor was the product of the Magma-Magma Fruit's material, compressed to the extreme and then solidified. It was far harder than ordinary steel—Minato would need to at least triple the amount of chakra in his Wind Release coating to cut through it.

But to outsiders, it looked like nothing more than a defensive application of a Magma Release bloodline limit. Reasonable. Not excessive. Nothing that would make anyone think of anything more absurd.

"How long did it take you to learn that?" Minato asked.

"Two weeks."

"You developed a new application of your bloodline limit in two weeks?"

"It's not new. I just changed the form of an existing ability."

The look in Minato's eyes changed—not to surprise, but to pure excitement.

"Come on." Minato resumed his fighting stance. "I want to see whether my wind blades can break that."

Yan did not hold back.

The two collided again.

This time, the intensity of their sparring was pushed straight to the limit. Minato removed his speed restriction, his Wind Release-coated fists and feet hammering in again and again. He moved so fast that the air tore apart, leaves in the forest whipped up by the currents and spun into a small storm around them.

The first crack appeared in Yan's Rock Armor when it took the seventh punch.

The wind blades did not have enough cutting power to break the armor, but the constant high-frequency impacts pushed the stress on the shell's surface to its limit. The crack spread from the back of his hand to his wrist, a dark crimson glow seeping through the fissure.

Yan retreated a step and pressed his left hand against the Rock Armor on his right arm.

His palm heated up.

The power of the Magma-Magma Fruit surged out from within him, filling the crack and completing the repair in two seconds.

"Self-healing?" Minato stopped attacking, breathing heavily.

"Not really. I'm just adding new... material. Like patching a wall."

Minato's mouth moved as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, only two words came out.

"That's so unfair."

Yan curled his lip.

"There's no such word as 'unfair' in the ninja world. There's only winning and losing."

"...You sound like some old hustler conning kids in a tavern."

"Thanks for the compliment."

Minato choked on that, then laughed.

The two fought for another half hour.

By the time the sun had completely set, Minato's Wind Release coating had struck the Rock Armor one hundred and twenty times. The number of successful armor breaks—zero.

But three times, his fists found spots the Rock Armor did not cover—the armpit, the side of the neck, and the back of the knee. Those areas, where the joints needed to move, could not be wrapped in the hard shell. They were the blind spots of the Rock Armor.

Minato had found all three blind spots in just half an hour.

"Your Rock Armor has three openings. It can't cover the joints, right?"

"Right. So I need to use Observation Haki to predict your target in advance and move before you strike at an opening."

"What if your Observation Haki can't keep up?"

"Then I get hit."

"You say that awfully calmly."

"Getting hit won't kill me." Yan rubbed the back of the knee Minato had kicked. "If I die, you'll have to collect my body."

"Fine. But I'm not writing your epitaph. I'm bad with words."

"Doesn't matter. I can't read anyway."

"You got full marks on the written exam, and you're telling me you can't read?"

"I guessed."

The two looked at each other for a second.

Then they laughed together.

Not loudly—it was the kind of laugh that came after training, when every part of your body ached and you were too exhausted to move, yet you felt completely at ease inside.

A large patch of grass in the clearing had been trampled flat. The tree bark was covered in fist and footprint marks. Several shallow pits dotted the ground—made by Minato's Wind Release-coated punches when they missed.

Minato sat on the ground and gulped down water. It took half a canteen before he recovered.

"Yan."

"Yeah?"

"If the graduation match really ends up being you against me—" Minato screwed the cap back onto his canteen. "How much of your real strength are you planning to use?"

Yan leaned against a tree, watching the sky above, painted red by the sunset.

"What do you think?"

"I think you should go all out."

"If I go all out, someone will die."

"Then go all out without killing anyone."

"...Are you trying to make a tongue twister?"

"I'm serious." Minato turned to look at him. "You've been hiding for the past six months. From the Ninja Academy to the Forest of Death, from sparring to your daily disguises. You've hidden for too long."

Yan did not answer.

"For tomorrow's exam—I don't want to beat a version of you that's holding back." Minato's voice was calm. "I want to beat the real you. Or lose to the real you."

The wind passed through the forest, carrying the scent of pine resin and soil.

Yan closed his eyes.

"I'll think about it."

That was all he said.

Then he stood and dusted the dirt off his backside.

"I'm leaving. See you tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow."

The two left the Forest of Death by different routes.

When Yan stepped beyond the tree line, his Observation Haki once again caught that faint presence of toad oil a hundred and forty meters away.

It had stayed longer than yesterday. Around seven minutes.

Jiraiya had been watching him spar with Minato.

He had watched the entire thing.

Yan gave no indication. His pace did not stop, his expression did not change, and his breathing remained steady.

But he knew—Jiraiya had seen the Rock Armor.

With the Sannin's insight, he would immediately determine that the dark crimson shell was "not ordinary Magma Release." But he would not expose him. Not because he was kind—it was simply Jiraiya's way of doing things.

That man liked watching a story unfold on its own, rather than flipping straight to the final page.

Just like when he wrote novels.

Late at night.

Yan lay on the floor of the lounge. The lounge in the Hokage Building was far better than his rundown shack—at least it did not let in drafts, and the floor did not creak.

The Third Hokage's smoke-scented blanket covered him. He had already grown used to the smell.

The system panel floated quietly in his mind.

[Magma-Magma Fruit Evolution: 38%]

[Source: sustained high-intensity combat training.]

[Observation Haki: Lv. 1 (Sensing Radius: 160 meters)]

38%.

Enough.

Yan closed the panel and turned over.

Two days left.

Tomorrow was the final day of classes, and the day after was the graduation exam.

Tonight, there was only one task—sleep.

Rest every muscle and every nerve in his body to their peak condition.

He closed his eyes.

Three seconds later, he was asleep.

On a tree a hundred and fifty meters away, an ANBU in a hawk mask was standing watch. Every so often, he glanced down at the Hokage Building's lounge window—the lights were off, and there was no movement.

Safe.

What he did not know was that beyond his range of perception—on the rooftop of a residence roughly three hundred meters away—a figure wrapped in a black trench coat stood under the moonlight for a while.

His presence had been suppressed to zero.

Like a stone.

Two minutes later, the figure vanished.

He was headed for the entrance to the underground passage in Konoha's northwest corner.

In the direction of Root Headquarters.