Grind is My Ninja Way

Seimei reined in his wandering thoughts and turned his focus back to himself.

Just now, he'd only taken a quick feel of what changed after his Ice Release leveled up.

But right now?

He wanted to dig into the full package of goodies it brought him.

First things first: his natural talent got another boost.

Just like when his Wood Release evolved, this Ice Release upgrade pushed his aptitude up another notch.

In real terms, that meant reinforcing his body just got a whole lot easier—like the difficulty slider dropped a solid chunk.

Which also meant he could finish his physical transformation way faster and shave off a bunch of training time.

How much time exactly? He'd have to test it to know for sure.

On top of the aptitude boost, the Ice Release evolution straight-up increased his raw physical toughness, basically fast-forwarding his body-tempering progress.

That saved him even more time—and this part he could calculate without testing.

Seimei closed his eyes and carefully compared his body before and after the Ice Release breakthrough.

Then, using the data he'd gathered over the past month-plus of training, he converted those physical gains into "normal training hours."

The final number?

Half a month.

Yep—fifteen whole days saved, just like that.

Compared to the twenty days he'd saved when Wood Release evolved, it was a few days less.

He wasn't surprised, though.

Wood Release had been the first big one, so of course the second bloodline limit hitting the same tier wouldn't pack quite the same punch.

Even the ongoing training-speed bonus from the aptitude boost was a little weaker this time around.

Made sense.

With that in mind, Seimei didn't waste another second.

Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu!

Poof-poofff—three hundred and eighty-one shadow clones popped into existence around him.

A hundred and forty of them immediately scattered to gather natural energy, while the remaining two hundred and forty-one got right back to work developing new bloodline meshes.

That's right—after another month of grinding, his total chakra reserves had jumped by another 900,000+.

That let him add six more clones to the bloodline-development squad, bringing the count from 235 up to 241.

Thanks to that, Storm Release, Lava Release, and Dust Release were all going to evolve even faster from here on out.

But that wasn't his main focus right now.

Once all the clones dispersed, Seimei locked onto the Flying Thunder God seal in his fifth storage space and—whoosh—teleported straight back to the familiar lava cavern.

He stepped onto the round platform in the center, slipped into Sage Mode like it was second nature, and got straight to hammering his body with "Body Extremity" training.

Right now, speed was everything.

Inside the cavern, he spammed Body Extremity over and over. He could feel it clear as day—his body was soaking up the training way more efficiently than before.

Still, a few minutes wasn't enough to get hard numbers on exactly how much faster he'd gotten, so he settled in and kept grinding.

…Time ticked by.

An hour later, he teleported back to Moon Island.

While his body recovered, he checked his progress again.

After just one hour of training, he already had enough data to nail down the exact boost from the aptitude increase.

Rough math said his body-tempering efficiency was up about 20%.

At that rate, he'd shave another twenty days or so off the remaining time needed to finish his transformation.

It wasn't quite the full month he'd gained from the Wood Release evolution, but it was right in line with what he expected, so no complaints here.

Plus, when you added everything together…

Originally, he'd estimated four and a half months total to complete the transformation.

He'd already been at it for one month, leaving three and a half to go.

The direct toughness boost from Ice Release shaved off half a month → three months left.

Now the 20% speed boost shaved off another twenty days → just a little over two months remaining.

Yeah, no way he was disappointed with that.

And this still wasn't the final tally.

In another half a month at most, Storm Release would evolve.

Three days after that, Lava Release would follow.

Each of those would cut even more time off the clock.

Seimei was honestly hyped.

After sensing his body a bit longer, he turned his attention to the shadow clones scattered across the island, still hard at work trying to fuse all seven chakra nature transformations.

Perfect timing—his body had recovered, so it was time to bring them home.

With a thought, he released the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu.

Instantly, every bloodline-development clone on the island popped out of existence.

At the same moment, the 140 natural-energy clones hanging out near that hidden spot in the Land of Rice Fields vanished too.

A massive flood of memories, chakra, and natural energy surged into him.

Seimei closed his eyes, sorted and stored the chakra and natural energy first (old habit), then started sifting through the memories and absorbing all the training experience they carried.

Ten minutes later, he opened his eyes again.

He popped a few super-soldier pills to top off his energy, rested just long enough to feel fresh, then dove right back into training.

Just like that, he lost himself in the grind once more.

…Another half a month flew by in a blur.

One morning, Seimei finished a session, teleported out of the volcano, and was just about to dismiss all his clones and collect their one-hour memories as usual.

Then something clicked.

He flicked open his proficiency panel with a thought—and sure enough, Storm Release was sitting right on the edge of evolution.

Last time Ice Release broke through, he accidentally turned half of Moon Island into a frozen wasteland.

Even now the place was basically a barren ice forest with nothing but trees and a few bugs.

Yeah, no thanks—he wasn't doing that again.

Time for a change of venue.

He scanned the horizon, flashed a few times, and in just a couple breaths arrived above a wide-open stretch of ocean far from anything.

"This'll do nicely."

Seimei nodded, satisfied. He glanced at the Wood clone still faithfully patrolling the skies in the distance, then lightly tapped the ocean surface with his toe.

A huge surge of Ice Release chakra poured into the water.

In the blink of an eye, ice crystals spread across the sea, freezing a solid platform hundreds of meters wide in seconds.

He hopped a couple times on the ice to test it, sat cross-legged once he was sure it'd hold, and finally released the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu.

Boom—memories came rushing in like a tidal wave, followed by a flood of chakra and natural energy.

Seimei handled it like a pro: sorted and stashed the raw energy first, then started digging into the memories.

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