Chief Scientist, Orochimaru

His voice was dry and clipped, extreme suppressed fervor seeping from every syllable.

The ANBU Captain in the corner truly could not keep it together, drawing in a sharp breath beneath his mask until his teeth ached.

Orochimaru's gaze was nailed to the Circuit Diagram, as if he wanted to peel apart its underlying logic right there.

Minato reached out and caught his wrist, then pulled out the yellowed old blueprint at the bottom and slapped it onto the table.

"The armor is just an appetizer. This is what I invited you here for."

Interrupted, Orochimaru frowned in displeasure.

His eyes swept across the blueprint titled Land of Fire Agricultural District Thermal Map as Minato's clear voice entered his ears.

"Turn heating equipment into a Geothermal Network covering the entire nation, so the Land of Fire's frozen soil can grow food even in the depths of winter."

Minato's finger landed heavily on the center of the blueprint.

"We produce food in winter, all year round."

"When other nations run out of food in the bitter cold, we will not only refuse to fight—we'll sell them the food that saves their lives."

"As long as we control pricing and trade routes, without moving a single soldier, we can drain their treasuries and war potential dry!"

At those words, Orochimaru even stopped breathing.

Geothermal energy, agriculture, economic lifelines, national scale—those terms frantically rearranged themselves in his mind, piecing together a grand plan that made his scalp tingle.

His horizons had opened up.

Opened completely.

The forbidden flesh-and-blood techniques and Bioelectric Signals he had studied before could, at most, alter a few individual bodies. His vision had been trapped within the limits of a single soldier.

But this blueprint the Fourth Hokage had produced treated the entire nation as a living experimental field