The sky went from black to gray, then from gray to light. Rinto sat against the back of his chair all night, without turning on the light or moving.
The morning breeze pouring through the vent carried a chill, raising goosebumps on his arms. Only then did he stir as though he had just come back to life, moving his stone-stiff neck. His joints cracked, sending a throbbing through his temples.
He reached up and switched on the light. Pallid light instantly flooded the room, making him squint, and it took him a long while to adjust. The mess covering the desk and floor hit his eyes: shattered starfall iron, crumpled paper balls, overturned empty water bottles, dry, hard rice-ball crumbs, and blood smeared all over the backs of his hands. He muttered, "Fuck," his voice as hoarse as sandpaper scraping wood.
He got up to find water. The insulated container Kabuto had left earlier was long empty, with a layer of scale at the bottom. He casually slammed it back onto the floor with a clang. There were still two cold rice balls in an oiled-paper bag in the corner. He peeled off the plastic wrap, but the rice was hard enough to hurt his teeth. He took one bite, choked until his throat hurt, then tossed it back into the bag.
He had no desire to clean the room or touch a carving knife. He pulled open a drawer and rummaged aimlessly through it, making everything clatter. It was full of worn-out pen tips, broken carving-knife heads, and crumpled scraps of paper. At the very bottom, he found a palm-sized piece of dark iron bearing half a crooked Wind Release pattern-it was practice material he had picked up at a scrapyard when he first arrived in Konoha, nearly ten years ago. He weighed it in his hand, tossed it back, and shut the drawer.
Then he pulled over the towering stack of discarded drafts beside the desk and flipped through them one by one. He was not looking for inspiration, just leafing through them aimlessly. When he reached his earlier three-attribute sketches, the more he looked, the angrier he became. Every approach he had taken before felt like a dead end. He crumpled the page into a ball and hurled it at the wall. It bounced back and rolled into the scrap pile.
There were two soft knocks at the door, as faint as the wind. A long while passed before Kabuto poked his head inside. Only after seeing that Rinto was awake did he dare step in, carrying an insulated container and a medical bag.
"Mr. Rinto, there wasn't a sound from your room all night, so I brought you some hot congee and side dishes." Kabuto kept his voice extremely soft. He placed the container on the desk's only clean corner, then crouched and swept the fragments and paper balls on the floor into a pile before putting them in a garbage bag. As he cleaned around the desk's corner, he noticed the burns and split wounds on the backs of Rinto's hands. He placed iodine antiseptic and fresh gauze within reach without daring to say anything more.
Rinto said nothing. Only when Kabuto had nearly finished cleaning the mess on the floor did he ask hoarsely, "Those dogs outside still haven't left?"
Kabuto's hands paused. "The Anbu are still hanging around the R&D department's main entrance. They haven't dared come in. Lord Orochimaru has already told the guards to stop them. No one can enter the department's underground area without his approval." He paused, but still added quietly, "According to the guards, Lord Third wants to bring your research under the Anbu ninja tool unit and have you make standardized military ninja tools specifically for jonin. He also wants you to go to the Hokage Building for a meeting."
"In his dreams." Rinto's face darkened instantly, his tone full of barely contained anger. "My work has fuck-all to do with him. If anyone else knocks on my door, tell them to get lost. Don't waste words."
"Understood. I've already spoken to the guards." Kabuto hurriedly agreed, not daring to say more. He picked up the garbage bag and quietly withdrew. As he closed the door, he heard the insulated container being opened inside, and only then breathed a sigh of relief.
Rinto opened the insulated container. The millet congee was still scalding hot. Holding the container, he gulped down more than half of it. As warmth spread through his stomach, the hollow feeling and anger left by the sleepless night finally subsided a little.
After finishing the congee, he pushed the container aside and stared blankly at the empty drafting paper. He had solved the dual-attribute problem, but three attributes were like a dead knot. Whether he used dual transition states or independent modules, it either exploded or suffered an unbearable loss of power. The more he worked on it, the more irritated he became. On top of that, all this bullshit involving the Anbu, the Third, and Orochimaru left his mind in turmoil, unable to settle.
After sitting there for a long time, he still could not accept it. Cursing was one thing, but the problem still had to be solved. He grabbed a charcoal pencil and started drawing again, taking a different approach this time. Instead of fixed transition states, he would use modular anchor points, making each attribute configuration into an independent little module sharing a single main channel. Switching would mean directly changing modules, without dismantling and rebuilding everything.
The more he drew, the more promising it seemed. He muttered to himself, "Increase anchor density at the interfaces. Don't let residue leak in... the connections between the modules and the main channel need to be smooth. Don't restrict the flow rate..."
Once he finished the framework, he grabbed a piece of starfall iron and clicked it into the vise, taking particular care as he lowered the blade. The splits in his fingertips pulled painfully. Gritting his teeth, he kept every cut steady. Whenever he carved a corner wrong, he cursed and started over with a new piece.
By the time he finished carving, the sun was overhead. He took the piece of iron to the steel target plate, drew a deep breath, and injected chakra.
The first shot, Lava Release, was stable. Acid melted a deep pit into the steel plate. He pressed the trigger point with his fingertip and switched from Lava Release to Explosion Release. That went smoothly too, the shock wave striking the plate with a dull boom.
He had barely begun to relax when he pressed the trigger point again to switch to Lightning Release. With a sharp crack, the interface between the module and the main channel collapsed. The starfall iron exploded into fragments in his hand, burning him so badly that he abruptly let go. Several more red blisters rose on his palm, and fragments struck all over his face.
"Fuck!" He shook his heat-numbed hand and cursed, staring at the iron fragments on the floor with nowhere to vent his fury.
He picked up the shattered interface and examined it, revised the drawing to double the anchor density, then took a fresh piece of material and started carving again.
This time, it survived three complete switches. On the fourth, when he switched back to Lava Release, it still exploded. Residual chakra from the three attributes collided inside the channel, blasting the entire piece of starfall iron into powder and even leaving small pits in the blast shield.
He tested from noon until evening, and the scrap bin was heaped high again. He tried four approaches and ruined eight pieces of starfall iron and twelve pieces of crystal jade. Even his best attempt only survived four switches; the fifth always exploded. Either the interface collapsed, the anchors fell out of sync, or residual chakra piled up and caused a blowout. Not one was usable.
The last blowout left his arm numb from the shock. He slammed the carving knife onto the desk, slumped into his chair, and closed his eyes, not wanting to move.
The burns on his hands stung fiercely, the splits in his fingertips seeped blood, and his eyes blurred from exhaustion. His head was full of shattered patterns and the haunting faces of the Anbu, irritating him until his temples throbbed. He even suddenly thought of packing up and returning to the shabby wooden hut on the village outskirts. He would be poor and have no good materials, but no one would bother him. He could carve as long as he wanted without dealing with this bullshit every day.
While he was stewing, the laboratory door opened.
Orochimaru walked in, the hem of his black clothes brushing over the fragments on the floor. His golden slit pupils swept over the deskful of ruined iron, then settled on Rinto's injured hands. His lips curved into his customary, hissing smile.
"It seems the Third's people have made you quite angry." He approached the desk and casually picked up a piece of starfall iron ruined by an explosion. His fingertips brushed its shattered modular patterns, and a trace of interest flashed in his eyes. "Dynamic switching between three attributes? Even bolder than I expected."
Rinto shot him an irritated glance. "If you have something to say, say it. Don't waste my time."
"I've held the Third off for you." Orochimaru set down the scrap iron and spoke unhurriedly. "But you need to understand that he won't let this go. You're on Konoha's territory. He has plenty of ways to bother you. Today he sends the Anbu; tomorrow he can cut off your material supplies. Even if I can shield you for a while, I can't do it forever."
Rinto tugged at the corner of his mouth. "What do you want? Just say it." He knew Orochimaru all too well. The man never acted without something to gain and would not fend off trouble for him without a reason.
Orochimaru chuckled and moved half a step closer, his tone enticing. "I can find you somewhere quieter, away from Konoha's watchful eyes, where no one will disturb you. All the materials and samples you want, in ample supply. You won't have to touch human experimentation. All I ask is that you occasionally share a few scraps of your basic chakra-configuration research data with me."
Rinto stared at him for two seconds, his gaze turning cold, and refused outright. "I'm not going. You don't need to arrange where I do my experiments. My research has nothing to do with you either."
He had no interest in getting mixed up in the bullshit between Orochimaru and Konoha. Whether it was the Third, Danzo, or Orochimaru, they all wanted his technology in their grasp. He trusted none of them. He only wanted to conduct his own research in peace.
Orochimaru was not angry. He had long expected this reaction and did not press him, merely smiling. "Don't be so quick to refuse. If you ever find the harassment unbearable, you can come to me anytime."
He casually placed a wax-sealed scroll on the edge of the desk. "This contains records of the One-Tail Shukaku's chakra configuration, obtained from Sunagakure. Compound attributes of wind, earth, and Magnet Release. It should be of some use to your research."
With that, he stayed no longer and turned to leave. The door closed gently behind him without a sound.
Rinto looked at the scroll without moving. He knew it was bait Orochimaru had thrown out, hoping to hook him gradually, but he truly had never encountered a Tailed Beast's compound chakra configuration. Everything he had encountered before was either an ordinary ninja's binary chakra or a Kekkei Genkai's fixed compound configuration. The chakra structure of a Tailed Beast, naturally capable of controlling multiple attributes, held far too much appeal for him.
He sat for a long while, but eventually reached out and took the scroll. He picked off the sealing wax with his fingertips and unrolled it.
Inside were records of Shukaku's chakra fluctuations from Sunagakure's Sealing Jutsu, along with dissected anchor structures and densely packed annotations, all concerning the fusion logic of wind, earth, and Magnet Release. As he read, his irritation, anger, and fatigue vanished all at once. The lines on the paper captured his entire attention.
In his previous work on three attributes, he had only considered how to fit three independent attribute configurations into the same carrier, either separating them or creating transitions. At its core, he was still "piecing" them together. But Shukaku's chakra was not pieced together at all. It fused the core anchors of the three attributes. A single anchor could simultaneously accommodate the chakra flow of all three attributes. It was not forced together, but naturally fused.
Rinto's fingertips stopped on that page of anchor diagrams. He stared for a long while, unconsciously muttering, "Fuck... so you can do it this way... the anchors aren't fixed. They can change shape..."
He abruptly spread the scroll across the desk, grabbed his charcoal pencil, and began drawing furiously on blank drafting paper. His previous approach had been completely wrong. It was not about fitting three things into one box, but making the box itself accommodate all three. No independent modules, no multiple transition states-just one set of deformable, compatible anchors. The anchors themselves would adjust their structures according to the attribute of the injected chakra. For Lava Release, they would form a water-earth configuration; for Lightning Release, they would shift into a lightning-attribute structure. There was no need to dismantle and rebuild anything.
The idea was outrageously mad. It meant carving universal anchors capable of accommodating three completely conflicting attributes into a space the size of a fingernail. The margin for error was almost zero. The slightest mistake would cause an immediate blowout as soon as chakra entered. Yet the more he drew, the more he felt this was the right path. All those earlier patchwork solutions had been wrong at the root.
Outside the window, the sky went completely dark, then slowly took on the pale white of dawn. He stayed up the entire night without the slightest drowsiness, his eyes full of light. Densely packed anchor structures covered the paper. He revised and erased, erased and revised. Where some drawings went wrong, he simply scribbled them into black lumps. The entire sheet was so chaotic that only he could understand it.
By the time he finished drawing the basic framework, the sun had risen outside the window. He dropped the pencil, moved his neck, which was so stiff it felt ready to snap, and grabbed a fresh piece of starfall iron. Just as he was about to clamp it into the vise, his hand, after two days and two nights without sleep, suddenly shook. He nearly dropped the iron onto the floor.
He muttered, "Fuck," and set the iron on the desk. He shook his numb hand for a long while. The wounds on his fingertips hurt piercingly, but he paid them no mind. Grabbing the gauze beside the desk, he hastily wrapped it around twice, picked up the starfall iron again, and secured it in the vise with a click.