There's more than before!
There were still seven warm currents, but each was clearly a third stronger than before.
Was this the effect of updating the template?
The passive locked in by the system reproduced his personal best.
Whenever he broke his record, the system would automatically capture the latest data, then copy and paste it endlessly.
This feature was ridiculously user-friendly!
As his body developed and his mental strength increased, his extraction efficiency would naturally improve.
If it stayed locked at his childhood level forever, this idle farming would become less and less useful.
Looks like I can't just coast forever!
The system handled mass production; he handled raising the ceiling.
Wait!
Once Lei Dou calmed down, he suddenly realized something was off.
He had actively practiced once just now, so why didn't he feel tired at all?
That had been a genuine, manual extraction session!
Normally, he should have felt a little mentally drained by now.
Why did he feel even more energetic than before?
Could it be... practicing manually doesn't consume my energy anymore either???
Lei Dou wasn't sure. Maybe his soaring chakra had boosted his physical fitness and mental strength along with it, making a single extraction session negligible?
To test his theory, he immediately began a second manual extraction session.
Again, he finished in half an hour.
This time, the system didn't announce an update, meaning the quality hadn't surpassed his previous attempt.
But that didn't matter. What mattered was that Lei Dou still didn't feel the slightest fatigue!
"It really is zero-cost manual activation!"
Once could have been his imagination. Twice confirmed it.
Lei Dou's heart raced.
Zero-cost skill activation?
It might not be obvious with a naturally gentle skill like the Chakra Extraction Technique, but what if he tried another ninjutsu?
The skill slots definitely had something to do with this.
The logic was simple: if equipping the extraction technique let him extract chakra without any cost, equipping other skills should let him activate those for free too.
He immediately removed the extraction technique from one slot and casually dragged the Clone Technique into it.
[Passive skill: Clone Technique]
The remaining six slots continued churning out chakra like mad.
Lei Dou jumped off the bed and formed hand seals.
Poof!
The white smoke cleared, revealing a clone identical to him standing beside him.
But this time, Lei Dou distinctly felt chakra draining from his body.
"Wasn't it supposed to be free?"
"Is the extraction technique the only exception?"
If so, his cheat's value had just taken a serious hit.
Lei Dou dispelled the clone, feeling discouraged.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he felt the six streams of chakra steadily growing inside him while his mind raced.
They were all skills. Why could he use the extraction technique for free but not the Clone Technique?
Did the system discriminate between them?
He stared blankly at the interface.
Six extraction techniques, one Clone Technique!
Quantity!
The only variable was quantity! Was it because he had equipped only one Clone Technique?
Lei Dou furrowed his brow and decided to gamble again.
He would try equipping another!
He cleared another slot and dragged in a second Clone Technique.
[Passive skill: Clone Technique] [Status: Continuously running] [Passive skills 1 and 2 have automatically completed one simulated run]
Just as Lei Dou was about to raise his hands to form seals, some strange insights suddenly appeared in his mind.
It was as though someone had stuffed a packet of Clone Technique experience into his brain.
What good did one passive run of the Clone Technique do?
Lei Dou shook his head. Testing his theory came first.
He formed hand seals again.
This time, it felt completely different. His fingers moved with extraordinary fluidity. He didn't even need to think; they found their positions on their own.
Muscle memory!
And his seal-forming speed was noticeably faster than before.
Poof!
Blue light flashed, and the clone appeared.
Lei Dou stared at the clone before him. Its details were far more lifelike than the previous one's.
But what shocked him most was-
The chakra inside him hadn't budged!
"So it really was because I stacked them!"
Equipping one didn't work, but equipping two triggered the zero-cost bug.
No wonder extracting chakra earlier hadn't drained him either. He had equipped a whole bunch!
"Is this... a hidden perk?"
No matter how he looked at it, this seemed like a loophole left behind after the system broke!
If the system were functioning normally, it probably wouldn't allow duplicate copies of the same skill.
Now that its modules had crashed, there were no restrictions, letting him exploit an incredible bug instead!
By using two slots, he could activate a skill endlessly at zero cost!
He had seven slots in total. In theory, that meant he could maintain three zero-cost skills at once.
Suddenly, Lei Dou had a wild idea. Who said he had to stick with just three skills?
Whenever he needed something, couldn't he simply swap it in and make a pair?
At that thought, he immediately brought up the system, ready to swap in the Transformation Technique and test it.
[Notice: Changing passive skills has a cooldown. Please wait 60 seconds] [Current cooldown remaining: 44 seconds]
Ugh!
Seeing that line of red text, Lei Dou deflated.
Apparently, exploiting bugs didn't make him invincible.
A one-minute cooldown was no big deal in everyday life.
But on a battlefield where life and death hung in the balance, a minute was enough for him to die eight or ten times over.
Showing off by switching skills midfight was pretty much out of the question.
Even the five-second cooldown on Pain's Shinra Tensei could be exploited, let alone this full minute of downtime.
Still, he couldn't be too greedy.
If he really needed to fight, he could configure three core skills for zero-cost use beforehand.
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The remaining slot could hold the Chakra Extraction Technique.
The Chakra Extraction Technique could both raise his maximum chakra and replenish it.
At full mana, it earned him experience; at empty mana, it became a powerful recovery pack.
Once his chakra reserves grew larger, a refill every five minutes would restore a considerable amount.
If he could learn Sage Mode someday...
He could slot in senjutsu extraction directly!
Then he could automatically absorb natural energy around the clock without interruption.
Wouldn't that accomplish the "charging energy while moving in battle" Naruto had always dreamed of?
Even without Hashirama Senju's absurd Sage Body and its automatic mana regeneration, these skill slots could achieve the same effect-or something even stronger.
After all, Hashirama's passive mana regeneration surely couldn't match active extraction.
And Lei Dou's cheat turned the effects of "active extraction" into "passive idle farming"!
This was an advantage on a whole different level!
Lei Dou walked to the window, looked at the scenery outside, and slowly clenched his fists.
"Mediocre?"
"To hell with mediocrity... one day, the entire shinobi world will hear what I can do!"
Shaking the shinobi world could wait. Right now, he needed to thoroughly understand his cheat.
After the Clone Technique ran once, his hand seals had become faster and his clone more realistic.
The Clone Technique was E-Rank Ninjutsu, a mere visual deception that was easy to see through.
The reason was simply that its details fell short.
A clone was an illusion constructed through imagination, unlike a Shadow Clone, which had a physical body.
For example, if his real body was injured and bleeding but his mind failed to account for that while casting, the resulting clone would be lively and uninjured. Even an idiot could tell it was fake.
Looking at the nearly perfect illusion before him, Lei Dou roughly understood another function of running ninjutsu passively.
Grinding proficiency!
A passive run was equivalent to the system controlling his body to practice repeatedly in a mental world, with every attempt executed perfectly.
Not only could this raise a ninjutsu's level, it could also improve hidden attributes such as seal-forming speed.
"To sum it up: the Chakra Extraction Technique can endlessly increase my maximum mana."
The size of a ninja's mana pool determined his baseline, but having mana alone wasn't enough.
Early on, Naruto was a textbook example. He had a terrifying amount of chakra, but all he could do was spam Shadow Clones and basic attacks. Experts like Zabuza could run circles around him.
Meanwhile, putting support ninjutsu into the skill slots improved his hand speed as well as their levels.
Since it worked for support ninjutsu, offensive ninjutsu should work the same way.
A ninja's three pillars: chakra, ninjutsu, and taijutsu.
If he had nothing but mana and spells, with a body as fragile as paper, someone could get close and finish him in a single combo. He would be a joke.
He absolutely couldn't become a glass-cannon mage.
Lei Dou's gaze swept over the skill list.
"Academy-Style Basic Taijutsu."
This should be the set of fighting exercises taught at school, practically a calisthenics routine.
Putting it in should improve his physical fitness, right?
Since one run equaled one training session, the effects surely wouldn't stop at learning it mentally.
[Passive skill: Academy-Style Basic Taijutsu] [Passive skills 2-7: Chakra Extraction Technique] [Status: Running]
He had only just dragged the taijutsu icon into place.
Barely more than ten seconds passed before the system notification arrived.
[Passive skill has completed one simulated run]
Immediately afterward, Lei Dou felt as though every muscle in his body had suddenly caught fire.
A burning ache instantly spread through his entire body, then vanished just as quickly.
He knew that sensation all too well.
It was the soreness of muscles tearing and rebuilding, something he only felt after running himself to exhaustion on the training ground or doing push-ups until his muscles spasmed, pushing beyond his physical limits!
This system could even train his body while he idled!
Every time that wonderful warmth flowed through his body, it clearly reminded him that his physical capabilities had climbed another notch.
It wasn't merely a change in muscle size. His bone density, reflexes, and explosive power were all surging across the board under this subtle nourishment.
Honestly, compared with the tedious process of chakra extraction and its obvious bottlenecks, taijutsu training that made him stronger simply by idling felt unbelievably good.
Lei Dou's original aptitude for taijutsu had been merely average. Among the students at the Ninja Academy, he was utterly unremarkable.
Perhaps because he reached his chakra ceiling so easily, he had plenty of spare time and no other option but to grind away at taijutsu.
But precisely because his aptitude was mediocre, even sweating through relentless training had never brought him anywhere close to a taijutsu monster like Rock Lee.
That thick-browed boy might have had zero talent for ninjutsu, but in taijutsu, he was unquestionably a freakish genius others could only dream of catching.
But that was before. Now, with the passive skill slots as his cheat, Lei Dou could break through his physical limits every dozen seconds or so, even if each improvement was minuscule.
With the terrifying compounding effect of evolving every moment, given enough time, surpassing a hard-working genius like Rock Lee-at least by ordinary people's standards-was a certainty.
As his physical constitution kept stacking at a staggering rate, his chakra capacity would naturally rise with it, since chakra was derived from physical energy. This was an ironclad rule throughout the Shinobi World.
The key now was the conversion rate. For someone exceptionally gifted, a one-point improvement in physique could bring a ten-point surge in chakra. For him, it might only bring one.
But that was no problem at all. With the passive skill slots backing him up, that one point could be stacked and amplified endlessly.
As long as he kept his head down and lived long enough, even becoming a saint or a god through his body alone was no pipe dream in this deadly world!
Since Taijutsu could upgrade his physical energy-the "hardware"-he needed to shore up his weaknesses to make the Chakra Extraction Technique-the "software"-more efficient.
His most pressing concern was how to increase the other crucial half: spiritual energy.
"Could practicing genjutsu really be the only way to hone my mental strength?"
Lei Dou racked his brains, trying to recall the original story's lore. Aside from that rather elusive method, there seemed to be no other way.
The awkward part was that his hands were only good for basic attacks. He knew absolutely nothing about delicate work like genjutsu.
He had learned how to break out of genjutsu in theory class, but casting it was an entirely different matter!
When he went to school on Monday, he could swallow his pride and pester a teacher, hoping to learn the most basic D-rank genjutsu to practice with.
Or... he could go bother one of the Shimozuki elders living nearby. They belonged to the same clan, after all. Surely that counted for something.
Lei Dou was not greedy. He did not expect any grand, sophisticated genjutsu. Anything he could actually cast would do.
His only goal was to test whether these methods of attack and defense on the mental plane could serve as a grinding tool for increasing spiritual energy.
"Hmm... better sooner than later. No time like the present. I'll head out now!"
Lei Dou was a man of action. The moment the thought occurred to him, he could barely contain himself.
It was Saturday, so among the few clan uncles who were usually run off their feet, someone was probably home on a rotating day off.
He quickly washed up and got ready, setting his skill slots for the day's idle training while he was at it.
He filled six slots with the Chakra Extraction Technique to stack experience, while the remaining slot stayed devoted to Taijutsu enhancement, as always.
Building up his chakra reserves-his mana bar-came first, but he also needed to shore up his physical strength as soon as possible.
As for all those other flashy ninjutsu, Lei Dou knew next to nothing about them. Even if he wanted to slot them in, he had no skills to use!
The only one he knew, the Three Body Technique, did not seem urgent now either. That could wait.
First, he needed to get started on this new genjutsu project.
Lei Dou's little home was not far from the Shimozuki residential area. It was only a short walk away.
A small, second- or third-tier clan like the Shimozuki naturally had no exclusive compound in Konoha like the prestigious Hyuga. Still, its members lived close together so they could support one another.
Lei Dou's original destination was the Chunin uncle who had always looked after him. Someone he knew would be easier to ask.
But halfway there, as he passed another clan member's front door, something unexpected happened.
The door creaked open from inside. Someone in the house was evidently getting ready to head out.
The person spotted Lei Dou just as he was about to slip past and called out to stop him.
"Hey, Lei Dou! Where are you rushing off to this early in the morning?"
Lei Dou stopped and looked up. When he recognized the figure leaning in the doorway, a thought stirred in his mind.