His neck was as stiff as a block of frozen iron. Pain woke Rinto.
He had slid down the wall and slept sitting on the floor for nearly ten hours. His legs had gone completely numb, and the half-piece of spent crystal jade he had been clutching had long since rolled into a corner. The desk lamp had gone out, whether from a dead battery or a burned-out filament, he did not know. The whole laboratory was pitch-black, with only a little gray daylight filtering through the vent, not even enough to make out the debris on the floor.
He sat dazed for a long while before remembering where he was. Muttering "fuck," he braced himself against the wall and tried to stand, only to stumble on his numb legs and nearly smash his face into the workbench. He stood holding its edge for almost a minute before the pins and needles finally passed. His throat felt dry enough to smoke. He grabbed the bottle of cool water on the table, but it was already empty. Irritated, he slammed it back down with a clatter that sounded especially harsh in the quiet room.
He felt his way to the door and, sure enough, found an insulated jug and a stack of paper-wrapped rice balls on the floor. He did not need to think to know Kabuto had left them. He unscrewed the jug. The water inside still held a little warmth. Lifting it, he drank more than half straight from the jug before the burning in his throat subsided.
He unwrapped a rice ball and bit into it. It was cold, the rice hard enough to hurt his teeth, but he did not care. He wolfed down two in a few bites, and the gnawing cramps in his empty stomach eased a little. He pulled open the vent cover. Outside, dusk had already fallen. He had actually slept against the wall for an entire day.
The laboratory was still a mess, wastepaper and debris covering the floor, blasted pieces of starfall iron piled on the table, and sheets of scribbled paper scattered everywhere. He pulled over a chair and sat down, staring at the scrap of iron that had chipped yesterday, his head pounding.
The heat-dissipation problem that had held him up for two days was still a tangled mess when he thought about it now. Whether he carved cooling grooves or added diversion channels, he was only patching things up-the chakra itself generated heat through energy dissipation during anchor reconstruction. This was not residual heat carried out by the flow. No matter how many patches he added, heat kept accumulating at its source. Sooner or later, it would explode.
He leaned back with his eyes closed, unconsciously picking at a scab on the back of his hand. Only when beads of blood seeped out did he notice. Clicking his tongue, he wiped it on his trousers.
His whole approach had been wrong.
The question was not how to dissipate the heat, but how to stop it from generating so much in the first place.
He abruptly straightened, grabbed a charcoal pencil, and scribbled on a blank sheet, muttering, "When the anchors reconstruct, the old structure's been dismantled, but the new one hasn't been built yet. All the chakra dissipating in between turns into heat... Fuck, can I stop tearing everything down before rebuilding? Dismantle a little, build a little, both at once?"
The pencil raced across the paper as he drew a layered anchor structure. He divided the adaptive anchors, previously replaced all at once, into more than a dozen layers, dismantling and rebuilding them layer by layer. Channel clearing and reconstruction would proceed simultaneously, keeping dissipated chakra from accumulating in the channels.
As he drew, it began to seem wrong again. With too many layers, the anchors would fall out of sync, making collisions and explosions even more likely. Frowning, he crossed out everything he had just drawn and changed it to batch triggering. The anchors in the first half would dismantle the old structure while those in the second half simultaneously built the new one, with a transitional buffer section left between them.
The more he drew, the smoother it went. The knot that had blocked him for two days seemed to loosen a little. He tossed down the pencil, grabbed a piece of starfall iron, and clicked it into the vise. Just as he was about to start carving, his hand trembled-the cracks in his fingertips had reopened after his sleep, and gripping the knife pulled painfully at them. He swore, grabbed some gauze from the edge of the table, wrapped it haphazardly around his fingers twice, tied a tight knot, and gripped the carving knife again.
He carved extremely slowly. The triggering sequence for every layer of anchors had to be timed precisely. The slightest deviation would put the front and back out of sync and blow the whole thing apart. He worked into the small hours, the sky outside the window pitch-black, with only the new desk lamp he had switched on casting a small patch of light across the wrecked room. Partway through, he carved an anchor in the wrong position. Swearing, he threw away the half-finished piece and started over with a new one.
By the time he finished the last stroke, dawn was nearly breaking. He removed the starfall iron. His hands were so stiff that he had to work them for a long while before walking over to the steel target plate and feeding chakra into it through his fingertips.
Lava Release acid sprayed out steadily, melting a deep pit. He pressed his fingertip to the trigger point, and the anchors activated in their preset, layered synchronization. Dismantling the old structure, clearing the residue, and building the new structure happened almost simultaneously. The Explosion Release shock wave slammed into the steel plate immediately afterward, without a hitch or the sudden heating he had experienced before.
He relaxed a little and tested it five times in succession. All five were steady, and the starfall iron only warmed slightly, nowhere near hot enough to hurt his hand. But on the sixth switch, the two outermost anchors triggered half a beat late. Residual chakra collided with the new configuration, and the starfall iron instantly grew hot. He hurriedly withdrew his chakra, but he was still too late. A small section of the pattern along the edge broke apart. The heat made his fingertips recoil, and he dropped the metal onto the table.
"Fuck!" he swore, kicking a table leg and baring his teeth at the pain.
The approach was clearly right, so why was it still out of sync?
He grabbed the diagram and stared at the anchor timing on it. The longer he looked, the more irritated he grew, and the more he felt something was wrong. He had calculated the trigger intervals, so why were they slower once he actually carved them? He crumpled the diagram into a ball, hurled it hard at the wall, and slumped into his chair, closing his eyes and not wanting to move.
His mind was full of anchors, triggering, and reconstruction, circling around in a tangled mess. After staying up most of the night, he felt sleepiness rising again, and his stomach was empty too. He felt around in his pockets but found nothing to eat. Only then did he remember that the two rice balls he had eaten earlier had long since been digested.
While he sat there irritated, two soft knocks came at the door. Kabuto pushed it open and poked his head inside. Seeing that Rinto was awake, he stepped in quietly, carrying an insulated food container.
"Mr. Rinto, I saw your light was on, so I brought you some hot food." Kabuto set the container on the only clear spot along the edge of the table. He asked no further questions about the experiment and mentioned none of the bullshit involving Orochimaru or Danzo, only adding, "If you need any materials or want any tools replaced, just let me know."
Rinto grunted without looking up. Kabuto did not linger either. He quietly withdrew, closing the door without making a sound.
He opened the container. Inside were hot congee, side dishes, and two freshly steamed rice balls. Without even sitting up properly, he stayed slouched sideways in the chair and shoveled down the congee in a few mouthfuls. Only then did some of the chill leave his body, and his mind cleared a little.
After eating, he did not rush back to carving or look at the diagram again. He simply leaned against the chair back, turning the scrap of iron he had miscarved over and over in his hand, mulling things over.
The layered anchors were still too rigid. Either they synchronized or they broke down. The margin for error was too small. Was there a way to make the anchors change continuously instead of jumping from one stage to the next?
He casually picked up the finished Senjutsu circulation piece from the table and fed a trace of chakra into it through his fingertips. A pale green glow lit up. Three-component chakra circulated steadily through the closed loop, and the adaptive anchors adjusted their positions bit by bit with its flow. There were no abrupt jumps, no hard switches. It ran smoothly.
Rinto went still.
Right, continuous, not abrupt. The previous switching jumped straight from Lava Release to Explosion Release, forcing a hard switch between two completely different configurations. The anchors had to be completely dismantled and rebuilt. Of course they broke down easily. Of course they dissipated energy as heat. Could he add a transitional state in between? Not A straight to B, but A → transition → B. The anchors would change little by little along with the transitional state instead of being forcibly dismantled and rebuilt. Naturally, there would be less dissipation.
The instant the thought arose, he sat bolt upright. His exhaustion and irritation vanished, and he grabbed the charcoal pencil and began drawing. The transitional state did not need to be complicated, just a basic channel configuration with no nature transformation. When switching, he would first dismantle the Lava Release configuration into basic channels, then build those channels into the Explosion Release structure. The anchors would change continuously instead of all being replaced at once. Naturally, there would be less energy dissipation, and synchronization would no longer be an issue.
The more he drew, the smoother it went. The timing problem that had held him up was no longer a problem at all-there was no need to nail down trigger intervals. He only had to follow the transitional state.
He tossed down the pencil, grabbed a fresh piece of starfall iron, and clamped it back into the vise. This pattern was more complicated than the last. Besides the main channels and adaptive anchors, he had to add triggering logic for the transitional state. As he lowered the knife, he even softened his breathing. His eyes were almost pressed against the metal, his bloodshot gaze utterly focused.
By the time he finished carving, it was broad daylight outside the window. Morning light shone through the vent, casting long, thin shadows on the floor. His hands had gone numb, and the fingertips holding the starfall iron had turned white from gripping it too hard.
He walked over to the steel target plate, took a deep breath, and injected chakra.
Lava Release, Explosion Release, Lava Release, Explosion Release... He switched back and forth, faster each time. After more than twenty consecutive switches, the starfall iron in his hand was only slightly warm, nowhere near hot enough to hurt. There were no fractures, no residue, and almost no perceptible delay between switches. The power had barely dropped either.
He stopped, holding the piece of iron, and stared blankly for two seconds. Then he tested it more than a dozen times again. Every attempt was steady.
The problem that had held him up for nearly three days was finally solved.
He let out a breath and casually tossed the starfall iron onto the table. All the strength drained from his body at once. Sleepiness surged over him like a tide, leaving him without even the energy to pick up a pencil and record the data. He lay over the table, looking at the messy diagram scribbled over with black blotches, his eyelids growing heavier and heavier. He had only meant to close his eyes for two minutes, but the moment his face touched the paper, he fell asleep.
Charcoal dust smeared his entire face, and he still held the broken-tipped charcoal pencil. The laboratory was quiet. Only the wind blowing through the vent stirred the scattered sheets of paper on the table, while debris and scrap iron lay silently across the floor in the morning light.