Crack-
With that sharp snap, the starfall iron broke in two in his hand. Scalding fragments shot into his sleeve, burning Rinto so badly that he abruptly let go, swore, "Fuck," and shook his arm for ages. Even so, several red burn marks rose on his arm.
This was the seventeenth piece of material to blow up today.
The scrap bin was already too full to close, and shattered iron slag and crystal jade fragments littered the floor, along with crumpled balls of ruined drafting paper. He had spent nearly thirty hours at this workbench, working nonstop since getting Shukaku's scroll. His eyes were bloodshot, and the gauze around his fingertips was soaked through with blood, blackened and stiff. Every time he exerted force while holding the engraving knife, the splits in his skin pulled with piercing pain.
The compatible-anchor approach he had worked out from Shukaku's Chakra records in the previous chapter had looked sound. Only when he actually started engraving it into iron did he discover how difficult it was. He was not trying to piece together three elemental configurations, but to engrave a set of anchors that could reshape themselves according to the Chakra's nature-the same node had to accommodate water-and-earth Lava Release, support fire-and-wind Explosion Release, and also transform to provide the sharpness of lightning nature. The slightest deviation meant a blowout.
On the first piece, the anchors collapsed as soon as he infused Chakra. Three natures of Chakra collided inside the channels, and it blew up outright.
On the second piece, the transition from Lava Release to Explosion Release worked, but when Explosion Release shifted to Lightning Release, the anchors failed to keep up and cracked outright.
The third piece actually survived one round of switching, but as soon as he began the second round, residual Chakra clogged the gaps in the anchors, and it blew up again.
He revised it over and over, adjusting the anchor density seven or eight times, producing more than a dozen versions of the channel curves, and filling more than a dozen sheets with compatibility logic. It still did not work. Either it exploded, one nature's power dropped to thirty percent, or the switching lagged as though it had jammed. It was completely unusable.
He hurled the half-piece of scrap iron in his hand into the scrap bin with a clang that made the water bottle on the desk wobble. He slumped backward, the chair legs scraping across the concrete floor with a long, piercing screech. Sunk into the chair with his eyes closed, his mind was full of shattered anchor lines, tangled like a mass of hemp.
He had been lying there with his eyes closed for less than two minutes before he suddenly sat upright again, grabbed Shukaku's scroll from the desk, and brought it under the desk lamp to read. He had previously thought the anchors were not dense enough, but as he read, he realized he had misunderstood the fundamentals-Shukaku's Chakra did not use one anchor to accommodate three natures. The anchors themselves were alive. When the Chakra's nature changed, the anchors' core structures changed with it. It was not "compatibility," but "reconstruction."
"Fuck, what's wrong with my brain?" he cursed himself, tapping the anchor structure diagram on the scroll as he muttered, "It's not about building a universal framework and waiting for the nature to come. The anchors follow the nature. Dismantle the core first, then reconstruct it. It's different from a transition state-even the anchors themselves get replaced..."
He grabbed a charcoal pencil and started drawing on fresh drafting paper. When its tip wore flat, he tossed it aside, fished out a new one, and kept drawing. As he drew, his elbow knocked over the ink bottle at the edge of the desk, spilling half a bottle of black ink all over Shukaku's scroll and spreading into a large blot. Rinto's eyes reddened. He swore and hurriedly grabbed tissues to wipe it off, but the more he wiped, the worse it smeared, until half a page of structural diagrams had become a black blur.
He stared at the smeared scroll, stunned for a long while, then smashed the empty ink bottle against the floor in anger, scattering glass everywhere. Fortunately, he had already studied the core pages thoroughly and remembered them all. Otherwise, he really would have had to slap himself twice.
Not in the mood to clean up the broken glass, he hunched over the desk and redrew the obscured anchor structures from memory, then revised his previous compatibility logic along this "core reconstruction" approach. He drew fast and revised just as fast. The lines on the paper were crooked, crossed out and amended, looking like incomprehensible scrawls to anyone else. Only he knew what every stroke meant.
When the door was gently pushed open, he did not even look up. Kabuto entered carrying a food container and a medical bag. On his very first step, he trod on broken glass and hurriedly pulled his foot back in alarm. Looking down at the mess covering the floor, he carefully picked his way around it and set the food container on the counter in the corner.
"Mr. Rinto, I brought you a hot meal, and some new engraving knife tips. You mentioned the old ones were dull." Kabuto placed a small box of brand-new diamond engraving tips at the edge of the desk, then crouched down and carefully swept up the broken glass, afraid Rinto might get cut.
Rinto grunted in acknowledgment. His pencil never stopped, and he did not spare Kabuto so much as a glance.
Kabuto glanced at his blood-soaked gauze and said quietly, "The wounds on your hands need fresh dressings. They're already bleeding through. They'll get inflamed if you don't change them. Shall I do it for you? It won't take long."
"No." Rinto frowned without looking up. "Don't bother me. Just leave it there."
Kabuto did not dare press him further, but mentioned a couple of other things in passing. "The Anbu are still hanging around outside the research department. Things have gotten a little tense between Lord Orochimaru and the Hokage's office. Lord Third said your research was classified Konoha defense information and wanted you to submit your materials for the record, but Lord Orochimaru turned him down. Also, there's been no movement from Danzo. Lord Orochimaru has probably kept him in check."
"Got it." Rinto's voice was full of impatience. "Don't tell me about this bullshit again. Just keep them out. Don't waste my time."
"Understood," Kabuto hurriedly agreed. He cleared away the crumpled paper and fragments on the floor, placed fresh povidone-iodine and gauze within Rinto's reach, and quietly withdrew. As he closed the door, he heard another curse from inside, followed by the dull thud of an engraving knife hitting the desk.
Rinto did not take anything Kabuto had said to heart. Whether it was the Third or Orochimaru, as long as they did not come knocking on his door, even the sky falling had nothing to do with him. His mind was filled with the newly revised core-reconstruction anchors. The moment he finished the plans, he grabbed a fresh piece of starfall iron and clamped it into the vise with a click.
With a new engraving tip, his cuts were a little steadier, but after nearly two days without rest, his hand still trembled uncontrollably. Gritting his teeth, he brought his face extremely close to the iron and even lightened his breathing. This set of anchors was more than three times as complex as the previous dual-nature version. Every core node had to be positioned with absolute precision. A discrepancy of one micron would cause it to collapse during reconstruction.
Halfway through engraving, his knife hand went numb. He shook it for ages, the splits in his fingertips hurting so badly that he bared his teeth, but he did not stop. Closing his eyes, he took two seconds to recover, then leaned in and resumed engraving. Partway through, he got the curve of one anchor wrong. He swore, "Fuck," tossed out the half-engraved iron, and started over with a new piece.
By the time he finished the final stroke, the sky outside was pitch-black again. Only the desk lamp above him lit the laboratory, casting his long shadow onto the wall amid the mess. He removed the starfall iron. His hands were so stiff that he had to flex them for quite a while, cracking his knuckles, before walking over to the steel-plate target, taking a deep breath, and infusing Chakra.
The first shot, Lava Release, was stable. Thick acid melted a deep pit into the heavy steel plate. The Chakra flowed smoothly, and the anchors remained orderly.
His fingertip pressed the trigger point. Explosion Release worked too. The shock wave slammed into the steel plate, and the anchors' cores reconstructed smoothly, without any stalling or residue.
He tensed inwardly and pressed the trigger point again, switching to Lightning Release.
Lightning flashed at his fingertips. An extremely sharp blade of Lightning Release energy slashed into the steel plate, cutting a deep gash. Nothing exploded or collapsed. The Chakra was completely stable, and the anchors reconstructed almost instantaneously, with barely any perceptible delay.
It worked?
Rinto froze for a moment, then immediately began switching repeatedly: Lava Release → Explosion Release → Lightning Release → Lava Release, back and forth, faster each time. After eight consecutive switches, the starfall iron in his hand was only slightly warm. There were no cracks or stalls, and the power of all three natures had barely dropped.
He stopped, held the piece of black iron, and stared at it for two seconds, then tested it more than a dozen more times. It was stable every time.
The three-nature problem that had held him up for nearly four days had actually been solved.
He let out a breath and casually tossed the starfall iron onto the desk. All the strength drained out of him at once, and sleepiness and exhaustion surged over him like a tide. He could barely stay on his feet. Bracing himself against the edge of the desk, he swayed, then dropped back into his chair.
His stomach felt so empty it unsettled him. Only then did he remember that he had not eaten for nearly two days. The food container was still in the corner. He moved over and opened it. The food had long since gone completely cold, but he did not care. He grabbed a rice ball and bit into it, finishing one in two or three bites, then gulped down half a bottle of cold water, choking and coughing.
After eating and recovering a little strength, he picked up the starfall iron again and turned it over in his hands. During the tests just now, more than a dozen consecutive switches had been fine, but when he reached the twentieth switch, the anchors'.
Also, when switching from Lightning Release to Lava Release, the power still dropped a little, by about ten percent. Although it did not affect usability, it was still not right.
He sat back down at the desk, grabbed a charcoal pencil, and began revising the plans again, wanting to speed up the anchor reconstruction a little more and resolve the residue problem. As he drew, his eyelids grew heavier and heavier, until he could barely hold the pencil. His head kept nodding, and the pencil tip dragged a long black line across the paper.
He jerked awake and cursed himself for being useless. Rubbing his eyes, he tried to keep drawing, but his eyes were so sore he could not open them, and his hands shook so badly that he could not even hold the pencil steady.
Forget it. I'll close my eyes for ten minutes first.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had only intended to rest for ten minutes, but his eyelids sank, and he fell asleep, still clutching the charcoal pencil. His head tilted against the chair back, and his breathing deepened.
The laboratory was silent. Only the desk lamp remained lit, illuminating the finished three-nature starfall iron on the desk, the discarded drafts and fragments all over the floor, and Shukaku's open scroll, half a page smeared with ink. The sky outside slowly grew pale. Morning wind blew through the vent, lifting the drafting paper on the desk with a soft rustling sound, but he did not wake.