"What is fire?"
Pakura hadn't expected Mukai to ask her so bluntly.
As a ninja skilled in Fire Style and Wind Release, she answered without hesitation:
"Fire? It's a power created through the Chakra in our bodies.
Take my Scorch Release, for example. It combines wind-attribute Chakra and fire-attribute Chakra,
making the Chakra take the form of flames, giving it heat and destructive power capable of evaporating anything."
It was a standard ninja answer, and perfectly correct by this world's understanding, but it was fucking useless for improving one's strength.
Mukai shook his head and remarked mercilessly:
"Heat and destructive power that can evaporate anything? You can't even evaporate that iron ball, Teacher Pakura!"
Pakura threw him the iron ball she had heated red-hot countless times:
"Brat, how could fire possibly evaporate iron?
If you're so capable, show me how you'd do it!"
Mukai's main Chakra attributes were wind and lightning. Though he had relied on his understanding of Natural Energy,
along with precise sensing and control, to forcibly unlock Chakra Nature Transformations for the other attributes,
he still primarily used wind and lightning.
Catching the iron ball Pakura had thrown, Mukai tossed it in his hand and immediately began his demonstration.
Mukai placed the iron ball on a rock and loosely cupped his hands around its mottled surface.
High-voltage arcs suddenly sprang from his hands.
Blue-white arcs of light pierced the air in an instant, connecting Mukai's hands to the iron ball.
With a piercing sizzle, the intense heat first left its mark on the surface of the ball.
The mottled flakes of iron oxide left by repeated heating began to fall away,
while the electric arcs quickly scorched dark brown patches of oxidation onto the newly exposed metal.
The spots grew larger and darker as the heat penetrated, as though a charred shell had formed over the iron ball.
The extreme heat conducted by the electric arcs never started from the outside.
As the arcs continued to act upon it, the temperature inside the iron ball rose sharply,
and fine cracks began to appear in the inconspicuous oxide shell on its surface.
Right before Pakura and Chiyo's eyes, a searing orange-red glow began to show through the cracks in the iron ball's shell.
Soon, the cracks spread into a web, and the charred shell crumbled and fell away as it expanded in the heat,
revealing the partially molten iron inside.
The iron ball had really melted!
It was no longer a regular sphere. Its edges began to soften and sag, slowly deforming like a block of wax melting in the sun.
The iron ball's original silvery gray had been completely replaced by a bright, searing orange-red.
Tiny bubbles also appeared from time to time on its molten surface.
When they burst, they splattered tiny droplets of liquid iron onto the rock, where they instantly cooled into little black grains.
Even the rock beneath the iron ball, where it touched the metal, began to soften.
When the temperature passed iron's melting point, the ball completely dissolved into a mass of flowing molten iron,
which gathered into an irregular, bright red pool on the surface of the melting rock.
The edges of the pool kept slowly flowing outward.
Wherever it went, the rock's surface was scorched black and began to smoke,
gradually showing faint signs of melting.
As Mukai increased the power of the electric arcs from his hands,
the temperature of the molten iron continued to soar, and its color gradually shifted from orange-red to a dazzling bright white.
The bubbles on its surface grew denser and more violent.
The surface of the molten iron began to boil like water.
Large quantities of iron vapor began to escape from the surface,
condensing in the air into pale gray metallic dust.
The iron vapor rapidly oxidized, forming a thin gray haze that hung over the area.
"Molten iron... the molten iron actually boiled?"
Even the well-traveled Elder Chiyo had never seen such a sight.
So when the temperature rose to its extreme, it really could melt iron and rock!
According to legend, everything in the path of Madara Uchiha's Fire Style melted.
Chiyo had thought that was just an exaggerated tale.
Now, seeing Mukai's demonstration, she realized that even hard iron and rock could be boiled like water!
How amazing was that?
Was this something a Genin could do?
Mukai continued producing electric arcs, increasing their power to make the effect more pronounced.
When the temperature reached iron's critical vaporization point, a dramatic change suddenly occurred.
The bright white pool of molten iron instantly began to boil violently, and vast quantities of iron vapor erupted at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The once-scorching, brilliant pool of molten iron rapidly shrank.
The blue-white electric arcs were enveloped by the vapor, their light appearing even more dazzling.
In just a few seconds, the remaining liquid iron was completely transformed into iron vapor by the intense heat.
As the vapor gradually dispersed and cooled, the gray dust in the heat-distorted air slowly settled,
leaving only a large, charred black depression burned into the rock by the intense heat.
The iron ball that Pakura had heated for so long, only managing to make it glow red, had been completely evaporated by the electric arcs.
Mukai clapped his hands and grinned.
"Oh, I forgot to make a bet with you, Teacher Pakura. I would have been sure to win!"
Pakura was stunned by the sight, standing there with her mouth agape.
What had she just seen?
Mukai, who wasn't skilled in Fire Style, had used his Lightning Release to reach a temperature that her Fire Style, the thing she was proudest of, couldn't achieve?
If her Scorch Release could reach that level of power, what could her enemies use to defend themselves?
Pakura suddenly shrieked and lunged forward, pulling Mukai into her arms.
"My dearest disciple!
Hurry up and teach me how to raise the temperature of my flames!
I'll agree to any condition you set!"
Caught off guard, Mukai was trapped in Pakura's soft embrace, unable to free himself, caught in a blissful torment.
If Elder Chiyo hadn't rescued him, Mukai might well have suffocated.
A woman gone mad was terrifying.
Mukai wiped away his nosebleed and said, still shaken:
"Teacher Pakura, you need to control yourself!
I had you try to melt that iron ball so you could experience firsthand the nature of temperature and fire."
As he spoke, Mukai took several more fingernail-sized Chakra Metal balls from Sasori.
"Teacher Pakura, to increase the power of your flames, you first need to understand two things:
The first is temperature. The temperature of a flame is the speed at which countless little balls like these move.
The faster these little balls move, the higher the object's temperature.
Conversely, if the little balls that make up matter stop moving completely, the temperature will fall to its lowest possible limit.
So temperature has a lower limit, but practically no upper limit.
In theory, you can raise your temperature to a very, very high level,
like 1.4168 times ten to the thirty-second degrees Celsius (I think it's called the Planck temperature?).
What you need to do is make these invisible little balls in the flame move faster!"
As he spoke, a small, dark red flame appeared on Mukai's fingertip.
Immediately afterward, the little flame began to change color,
going from red to orange-red, then bright red.
Finally, the little flame turned a dazzling bright white!