Pero's Sunbath

Amegakure, the office.

After Pero had arranged everyone's powers and the script for what came next.

He decided it was time to prepare for his vacation.

He stood in the center of the office and slowly closed his eyes.

Holding two fingers upright before his chest, he formed a very simple hand seal.

The next moment, brilliant flames of light suddenly erupted from his body, and chakra like solar lava began churning violently over him.

As though caught by a planet's gravity, the flames of light gathered around Pero, first taking the shape of a dazzling golden sphere.

Its radiance, like the blazing Sun, seared the eyes of everyone in the office.

At that moment, a crack quietly opened in the bio-electric field that surrounded his body at all times, the field he had always used to avoid damaging this world.

Flames of light spilled through it.

Just one hundred-thousandth of his aura leaking out made the entire world tremble.

The endless drizzle over Amegakure froze in midair at that moment, as though someone had pressed pause.

Above Amegakure, the planetary belt floating around the planet also abruptly stopped moving, frozen in the void.

Inside the office, Nagato, Konan, Yahiko, Rin, and Obito felt an indescribable fear, born of the difference in their levels of existence, clutch their hearts.

They felt as though they were standing not before a person, but before a god who embodied the Sun.

"Old man... just what... level is this..." Obito's teeth chattered and his legs gave way, but the immense aura seemed to have frozen space and time, leaving him unable to fall to his knees.

Amid that suffocating pressure, the golden flames around Pero began flickering and separating.

Strands of golden light seemed to peel away from his flames, yet Pero's face remained expressionless, as though separating these flames had no effect on him whatsoever.

The separated flames kept gathering, compressing, and taking shape in the air.

They gradually formed a golden clone that looked exactly like Pero.

The instant the humanoid figure fully took shape, Pero's eyes snapped open, a sharp gleam flashing through them.

In an instant, he drew the aura he had released back into his body like a receding tide.

The raindrops paused in the sky fell again, and the little stars in orbit resumed their movement, as though nothing had happened.

Only then did the people in the office feel alive again.

They stood there gasping for breath, only now realizing that their backs were completely soaked in cold sweat.

"That... that was terrifying..." Yahiko wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, still shaken.

"All right, I've created the clone." Pero clapped his hands and pointed at the clone made of flames of light, which looked exactly like him.

"He'll look after the Akatsuki for now. I can control him from the Sun, so just come and tell him if anything comes up."

The clone stood there with vacant eyes. Aside from looking exactly like Pero, it was clearly just a puppet that still needed its master to control it.

"Are you leaving today?" Konan looked at Pero.

"Yeah, I'm going to rest on the Sun for a while." Pero stretched, loosening his muscles and joints.

"You don't need to worry. Once I'm up there, I can control this clone through a mental link. You can treat him as me."

"I've finished giving you the instructions. Remember to call me when the Otsutsuki show up."

After all, he still needed to absorb energy.

"Don't make a mess of things while I'm gone and leave me to clean up after you when I get back."

With that, he floated out through the window and paused briefly.

The next moment, he vanished without leaving a trace. Only the clouds split apart in the distance proved he had been there.

At a speed that surpassed light and the very concept of space, Pero broke free of the planet's gravity.

Behind him, the azure planet rapidly shrank, soon becoming an unremarkable little blue marble.

Finally, it disappeared from view altogether.

Pero turned back around.

He had only one destination-the Sun.

As he drew closer to the Sun, he could feel his body growing stronger exponentially, dozens of times faster than it had on Earth.

His attention focused on the notification panel provided by the system.

[Energy absorption efficiency increased by 1000%...]

[Energy absorption efficiency increased by 5000%...]

[Energy absorption efficiency increased by 20000%...]

System notifications flooded his mind, and the constantly soaring numbers and his ever-strengthening body filled Pero with an unprecedented sense of pleasure.

Finally, he stopped.

An unimaginably enormous, burning ball of fire filled Pero's entire field of vision.

The churning corona and erupting flares unleashed the universe's primal, violent power.

At that moment, the system's readings also reached an unprecedented peak, and the energy he absorbed continued to increase.

"I'll just go straight in." Pero nodded in satisfaction.

Just as he was about to move forward and dive straight into that golden ocean of plasma, the system displayed a warning for the first time in a long while.

[Warning! A high-risk energy zone lies ahead. At its current strength, the host's bio-electric field cannot provide complete immunity to damage. Your body hair may burn off. Absorbing energy at the edge of this region is recommended.]

[Come back to explore the region inside another time~]

"Hold on, system. You're being cheeky again, huh?" Pero curled his lip.

"What's there to be afraid of? It's just a little pain," Pero said carelessly.

"If I go in and lie down, the Sun's power will only slowly eat away at my bio-electric field. No big deal."

"I absorb energy much faster than it can eat away at the field. As one wanes and the other grows, I'll only get stronger, and my bio-electric field will regenerate faster and faster."

He already couldn't wait to experience what it was like to bathe inside the Sun.

He looked at the sight before him, something he could never have imagined before.

Ignoring the system's advice, he took a deep breath.

Like a diver, he plunged headfirst into the churning sea of fire.

The instant he entered the Sun, he felt its energy and radiation constantly eroding and dissolving his seemingly all-powerful bio-electric field at an astonishing speed.

What followed was energy rushing into his body like floodwater bursting through a dam.

In that instant, the system's readings actually soared dozens of times higher than before.

[Energy +0.1%...+0.2%...+0.5...+1%]

This rate of growth was more than tens of thousands of times faster than it had been in Earth's orbit.

"Tsk, this isn't spicy." Feeling the burning sensation on his skin and the rapidly growing power within his body, Pero echoed the remark of a certain once-famous food critic.

At this rate, he would evolve into Silver Superman in no more than two or three months.

He found a relatively gentle lava flow and lay down comfortably, spreading his arms and closing his eyes as he floated on his back atop the lava.

He began enjoying this one-of-a-kind sunbath.

Meanwhile.

The clone Pero had left behind, standing like a torch in the office, quietly opened its eyes a sliver.

A golden light flashed beneath its eyelids.

Pero's lips curved into a smile.

The show had officially begun.