Strength Beyond the Kage Level

On a summer night in Konoha Year 53, moonlight poured like mercury across the boundless sea of sand, dyeing the rolling dunes a cold silvery white. Sunagakure had long since fallen asleep; only the wind continued its tireless wailing.

The lights in the office of the Sunagakure Joint Development Division's director had long gone out. Shaye had not lingered behind his desk. At this moment, he stood quietly in the depths of an utterly secluded desert beyond the village's outskirts.

At seventeen, he stood straight as a pine. All traces of boyish immaturity had long faded from him, and beneath the moonlight, his sharply defined face appeared calm and profound. Three years had bestowed upon him not only status and prestige, but also an inner transformation that was nearly rebirth.

At the heart of that transformation was the Pocket Body Refining Furnace he wore close to his body, which had undergone two iterative upgrades. For more than a thousand days and nights, it had never ceased operating, constantly drawing in the thin yet omnipresent natural energy from the air and converting it into the purest, gentlest source of life, nourishing every cell in his body without pause.

The effects of that continuous, efficient nourishment were astonishing. It had completely remedied the final flaw in his foundation caused by his premature birth, while also unleashing his life potential to heights unimaginable for ordinary people. His chakra pathways were broad and resilient like rushing underground rivers, and the amount of chakra he could contain and circulate had long shattered the shackles of the ordinary Kage Level, entering a far vaster realm—Super-Kage Level! This was a qualitative change brought about by quantitative accumulation. Both the sheer scale of his chakra and his recovery speed had reached an inconceivable level.

Shaye had absolute confidence