The engraving knife scraped across the black iron with a faint, grating squeak.
Rinto's fingertips were perfectly steady. The thick calluses on his fingers brushed the cold iron without him so much as blinking. The depth of each cut, the spacing between the lines—he judged it all by feel. He had no precision measuring tools. The rulers sold at ninja tool shops were nowhere near accurate enough for what he needed. He could only rely on the feel he had honed over more than a decade, ruining over a hundred pieces of iron.
The room was a mess. Discarded chunks of black iron lay piled like a small mountain in the corner, each covered in crooked lines. Some had chipped; others had split in half. All were failed experiments. The desk was even more cluttered. Sheets of rough paper covered in scrawls were stacked half a person high. Some had been crumpled into balls, some were stained with dark brown iron filings, and others had holes burned through them by sparks released by chakra. Half a bowl of water sat at the corner of the desk, its surface coated in dust. Beside it lay half a dry, hard ration pill. It had been there nearly three days and was too hard to bite into.
He had no attention to spare for any of it.
All he saw was the palm-sized piece of black iron in his hand and the half-finished line on its surface.
This was the seventeenth revision of his Wind Release configuration. In the previous sixteen versions, either the chakra had dispersed halfway through, or the lines had failed to withstand the force of the particles and shattered outright. Even the best attempt had produced only a wisp of breeze too weak to tear paper.
Everyone in the Shinobi World said chakra was formed by blending physical and spiritual energy, and that ninjutsu required hand seals. Wind Release required practicing wind-attribute Chakra Nature Transformation; Fire Release required practicing fire. Without the talent for it, a person could spend a lifetime without ever getting a foot in the door.
Rinto did not believe it.
He had been in this world for twenty-three years. From the moment he woke up and learned that this world had chakra, ninjutsu, and ninja, he had never bought into that explanation. In his previous life, he had spent half a lifetime working on fluid mechanics and energy transmission. However mysterious an energy might be, it still had to follow rules of transmission and possess a structure that gave it form. That fixed set of hand gestures used for hand seals was, in plain terms, a way of using movement to give chakra a temporary framework. Too crude, and too clumsy.
What he wanted to do was engrave that framework directly onto a medium. Let chakra flow along the engraved lines, without hand seals or practicing any damned nature transformation. The amount put in would determine the corresponding effect produced.
If he said that aloud, everyone in Konoha would laugh and call him crazy. Even the Uchiha clan considered him nothing but a failure. His parents had died in the Second Shinobi World War, leaving him only the Uchiha name. His chakra reserves were pitifully small, he could not even get the Three Body Technique right, and there was not so much as a hint of a Sharingan. He had dropped out of the Ninja Academy early and holed up in this drafty wooden house on the edge of the village, tinkering with who knew what.
The clan had cut off his relief rations long ago. He made repairs for ninja tool shops and copied documents for people in exchange for a little food and a few scraps of the cheapest black iron. Every remaining moment went into this.
The engraving knife finished its stroke, joining the last line seamlessly to the starting point. Rinto set the knife down, brushed his fingertips over the intricate lines on the iron, and took a deep breath.
He raised his left hand, and a faint wisp of chakra seeped from his palm. There was very little of it, thinner even than an ordinary Genin's chakra, yet it was absurdly steady. Like a thread as fine as could be, it landed precisely on the starting point of the lines engraved into the black iron.
The instant the chakra flowed along the lines, a faint layer of pale green light appeared on the iron. It was not a dazzling glow, but something like a thin coating of frost, gone in an instant. Then a condensed wind blade shot from the front of the black iron. With a hiss, it drove into the earthen wall opposite him, leaving a deep hole as thick as a finger, its inner surface as smooth as if it had been polished.
The rough paper in the room rustled in the gust. The oil lamp's flame lurched sideways and nearly went out.
Rinto's fingertips paused briefly before he withdrew his chakra. He picked up the black iron and turned it over several times. The lines were intact. No fractures, no deformation.
He picked up a sheet of rough paper beside him and scrawled on it with a charcoal pencil:
Seventeenth Wind Release configuration. Spacing: 0.05 cun. Depth: 0.02 cun. Black iron medium. Chakra input: 0.03 units. Wind blade effective range: 7 meters. Penetration depth: 12 centimeters. No disintegration. Dissipation rate: 11%.
Once he finished, he tossed the pencil aside and set the black iron on the desk. There was no wild joy, no excitement. He merely let out a breath, as though he had completed the most ordinary task imaginable.
After more than a decade of trial and error, he had finally completed one basic configuration.
But his pleasure lasted only a few seconds. Looking at the black iron, he frowned again.
Black iron still would not do. Its energy conductivity was too poor. With even a slightly more complex configuration, chakra dispersed as soon as it flowed in, never mind the attribute conversion and compound configurations he intended to work on next. He needed a better medium, such as crystal jade. He had heard that crystal jade produced in the Land of Wind had more than three times the conductivity of black iron. But it was outrageously expensive. A piece the size of a fingernail cost as much as six months of his food.
Then there were samples. He could only test with his own chakra, but his reserves were too small and he had only one attribute. He did not even have enough samples to test configurations for basic attributes like fire and water.
That was the bottleneck. For nearly half a year, he had been unable to advance a single step.
He scratched irritably at his hair. It had grown long and tangled, with plenty of iron filings caught in it. He paid them no mind. Picking up the kettle on the desk, he took two swallows of cold water straight from the spout. Just as he was about to pick up the engraving knife and revise the configuration again with denser lines, someone knocked.
Knock, knock, knock.
Three heavy knocks, delivered with a ninja's characteristic crispness, shook the wooden doorframe.
Rinto frowned and stayed where he was. He had lived here for more than a decade, and apart from the landlord coming to collect rent, almost no one ever knocked on his door.
The knocking came again, more urgently this time, accompanied by a shout. "Is Uchiha Rinto here? A message from Lord Hokage!"
Only then did he rise, walk over, and pull open the door.
Two Chunin in Konoha uniforms stood outside, their forehead protectors neatly in place. When they saw Rinto open the door, their eyes first swept over his old jacket covered in iron filings, then over the room behind him, which looked like a garbage heap. They could not hide the contempt in their eyes.
"You're Rinto?" The lead Chunin took out a wax-sealed scroll. His tone was businesslike, but held little respect.
"Yes," Rinto answered, his gaze settling on the scroll. He did not reach for it.
"Orders from Lord Third." The Chunin held the scroll out to him. "Report to the research and development department in the rear courtyard of the Hokage office building at the hour of the dragon, three days from now. Lord Orochimaru has returned to the village and is heading up ninjutsu research and development. He specifically requested everyone in the village conducting related research."
Orochimaru.
As that name reached his ears, Rinto's fingertips twitched almost imperceptibly.
One of the Konoha Sannin, a genius recognized throughout the Shinobi World. He was also the most obsessive researcher in all of Konoha, and the one most willing to pour resources into research. It was said that he had the finest laboratory in the entire Land of Fire, rare materials collected from various countries, and texts on forbidden techniques that even the Hokage might not get to see, not to mention countless chakra samples.
Everything he lacked, Orochimaru had.
The shorter Chunin beside the first let out a derisive laugh, making little effort to lower his voice. "I really don't get it. Why call someone who isn't even a ninja to the research and development department? Even making up the numbers shouldn't go this far."
The lead Chunin shot his companion a glare but said nothing more to him. He only addressed Rinto. "The message has been delivered. Don't be late. If you hold up Lord Orochimaru's work, you won't be able to answer for it."
With that, the two turned and left in a hurry, as though spending another second there would bring them bad luck.
Rinto closed the door and returned to the desk with the scroll. He casually tossed it onto the tabletop without breaking the seal, his gaze returning to the freshly engraved black iron.
He had no ambitions of making a name for himself, nor did he care whether others considered him a failure. He only wanted to fully understand chakra's structure and turn the configurations in his mind into tangible things, one by one.
Orochimaru's research and development department was the only opportunity within his reach to get past this bottleneck.
He picked up the half-eaten, rock-hard ration pill and took two bites, washing them down with cold water. He frowned as it caught in his throat, but did not stop. Once he finished eating, he sorted the rough papers on his desk one sheet at a time. Those pages, filled with configurations, data, and records of failures, were everything he had accumulated over more than a decade.
He picked up the engraving knife again and held it over a fresh piece of black iron, but did not cut immediately.
His mind was working. What should he bring as his calling card when he met Orochimaru? This Wind Release configuration alone certainly would not be enough. He needed to organize more than a decade's experimental records into a coherent framework and straighten out the core logic of chakra configurations.
Not to please anyone, but to secure a place where he could experiment freely, along with the materials and samples he needed.
Outside the window, the sky had long since gone completely dark. Most of Konoha's lights had already gone out. Only his oil lamp still burned. Rinto sat at the desk, picked up his charcoal pencil, and carefully wrote a title on a fresh sheet of rough paper.
There were no grand declarations, just one line: Basic Experimental Records of Chakra Configurations (Versions 1-17).
The oil lamp's flame flickered, casting his steady shadow on the wall. Outside, the night breeze blew and leaves rustled. He did not even look up. The pencil moved across the paper, leaving dense rows of numbers and lines.
What happened in three days could wait until then. For now, he would get this data in order first.