Thanks to Kado's eager assistance, Nara Kazuki and the team returned to the Land of Fire with a generous haul of rare goods from the Land of Snow.
"This is so slow..." Kazuki sat on the merchant cart, eyes glazed over.
"That's what you get when you travel with a caravan," Kakashi replied, lying sprawled over one of the horses, a book in hand.
He was starting to look more and more like his future self—never without a novel.
Kazuki couldn't help but wonder when Kakashi would finally stop hiding and just start reading Icha Icha Paradise openly.
"Oh! Kazuki! Kakashi! Let's do some training! Youth burns brightest when it's in motion!" Guy still had energy to spare. Ever since they'd gotten off the ship, he'd been fully recharged, brimming with vitality.
Kazuki twitched at the corner of his mouth, then sighed, jumped down, and started doing one-handed push-up hops alongside him.
Kakashi peeked once from under his book, then draped it fully over his face.
Nope. After that voyage, training was off the table.
Kazuki, however, kept at it until his muscles started to give out. When he finally collapsed back onto the cart, he noticed his Physical Strength stat had ticked upward again, and his mood improved.
It had reached the threshold for triggering the passive Heart of Steel trait.
Now all he needed was to test it in combat—just one punch on a proper enemy.
"Kazuki, you're thinking of spreading that steam train tech back in the village?" Kakashi asked once Kazuki paused for breath and set aside his exercises.
"Yeah. You saw it too—way faster than any horse-drawn cart." Kazuki perked up as he pulled out a scroll, unrolling the blueprints for the steam train he'd obtained from Snow Country.
He'd glanced over them before, but couldn't really tell what separated this version from the trains in his past life. It's not like most people just memorize steam engine schematics for fun.
"It definitely is," Kakashi agreed, glancing at the slow-moving woods around them. If they were on a train, they'd have already traveled miles by now.
But thoughts of the train reminded Kakashi of something else—something about their time in Snow Country. It was still fuzzy, like something he'd forgotten.
Kazuki yawned and lazily made a Shadow Clone. The clone began its own training. Then, with a quick Multi Shadow Clone Technique, he summoned another one.
It wasn't redundant—he'd discovered that progress from regular clones and multi clones tracked separately.
Ridiculous. But also useful.
Might as well take advantage of every possible EXP pool.
Along the road, they were eventually ambushed by a band of highwaymen. Kazuki didn't even move—Might Guy took care of it.
He figured, hey, he wasn't the one who'd paid most of the caravan's travel fee. Might as well pull his weight.
Kazuki didn't mind. These thugs weren't even worth chakra gain.
"When we meet Jiraiya later, I should really consider learning Sage Mode..." Kazuki mused. He'd already spent one of his precious Rewind Points upgrading his affinity for natural energy.
Not using it would be a waste.
"Guy, leave one alive for me," Kazuki called out, thinking about his Heart of Steel passive. He wanted to test its effect. Any enemy would do—it didn't need to be a shinobi.
"Sure thing, Kazuki!" Guy was mid-kick, about to crush a bandit's skull, but stopped in time. The man was already pissing himself.
"P-please, have mercy! I—I only became a bandit because my mother's sick! I needed the money!" the man sobbed, blood and snot pouring from his face, kneeling in the dirt with forehead bloodied from repeated kowtowing.
"Yeah, yeah. Let me guess—elderly mother, starving children, a bedridden wife." Kazuki rolled his eyes.
Why did these bastards always use the same excuses the moment death stared them down?
The collective script of the dying villain, perhaps?
Kazuki felt no pity. Not for someone who, just minutes ago, had gleefully said they'd chop off their legs and sell them into slavery at a mining camp. He'd even bragged about how he'd use the profits to go "negotiate some billion-ryō deals" at a brothel in the hot springs district.
And now he wanted mercy?
"Forgive me! I—I was wrong—!"
Kazuki stepped forward and struck him once, a clean punch to the shoulder.
DANG.
A solid metallic clang echoed.
Kazuki shuddered in satisfaction.
The bandit, however, screamed as his shoulder was obliterated—bone, muscle, and tendon pulverized. He collapsed in the dirt, dead-eyed, motionless.
"Mmm... Physique stat just ticked up again." Kazuki flexed his arm. His muscles did feel a bit firmer. Probably not his imagination.
"That... was taijutsu?" Guy asked, stunned. He'd watched the whole thing. Kazuki barely moved his arm, and yet—
"Nope. Just a little jutsu I've been developing."
When in doubt, call it "ninjutsu research."
Kazuki had come to realize that everyone in the shinobi world seemed obsessed with inventing their own techniques. It was like a local sport. Especially in Konoha—rumor had it there was even a yearly jutsu invention contest, though it hadn't been awarded in years due to lack of worthy submissions.
Kazuki was intrigued. Maybe he'd try inventing one of his own.
After all, Naruto had the Rasengan, Sasuke had Chidori—signature moves that left their mark, used even during their final clash at the Valley of the End.
Creating his own ninjutsu...
Now that idea was starting to sound really appealing.