First off, the speed at which his body was getting stronger had shot up.
From the tests he'd run, this latest jump in his "Physique" stat had boosted his body's durability by more than thirty percent.
Thanks to that, with a steady flood of chakra pouring in, the rate at which he could reinforce his flesh had also climbed roughly thirty percent.
And that wasn't even the final number.
On top of that, he'd switched training grounds. The harsher natural environment put way more pressure on his body, which pushed the reinforcement speed even higher.
Add the two boosts together, and compared to before this transformation, his overall body-tempering speed was now about fifty percent faster.
No question about it: that was a massive leap.
Of course, nothing comes free. There was a pretty steep price for all this.
Which brings us to the second thing he tested: daily chakra consumption.
Before today, when he was going all-out on body reinforcement, he burned through roughly 300 million points of chakra per day.
Now? That number had jumped to 410 million, an extra 110 million points tacked on.
And honestly, he got off easy. The new training spot made reinforcement so much faster that he didn't have to pump in as much extra chakra as he otherwise would have. If he'd stayed in the old place, the increase would've been way worse than just 110 million.
"110 million points…"
Seimei silently repeated the number to himself and started crunching the math for his daily chakra deficit.
Right after his last transformation, when his Physique went up and his natural recovery rose by 60 million points a day, he'd already warned himself that the surplus wouldn't last.
Well, the numbers were in, and he was right. In fact, the deficit had gotten a lot worse.
Last time, right after the transformation, his daily shortfall was about 53.132 million points.
Now? It had ballooned to 103.462 million points.
Here's the breakdown:
- +22.5 million: He'd increased the number of shadow clones working on Bloodline Net development from 220 to 235. That bumped the daily chakra cost from 33 million to 35.25 million.
- –19.2 million saved: He'd slashed the number of clones gathering natural energy.
Before, he needed 1,100 clones sucking in natural energy every day (cost: 2.2 million chakra).
Now, thanks to the node in the Land of Fields, even with the higher reinforcement demands, only 140 clones were needed (cost: about 280,000 chakra). That saved him 1.92 million points a day.
- +60 million: The extra recovery he'd gained from the Physique boost last time.
- +110 million: The new daily burn from the latest reinforcement speed increase.
Put it all together, and yeah: 103.462 million points in the red every single day.
A bigger deficit meant he was dipping deeper into his backup chakra reserves just to keep the training going full throttle.
Naturally, those reserves were going to run dry a lot sooner.
At the old rate, his stockpile would've lasted him another six or seven months.
Now? Probably only six or seven months total before the tank hit empty.
Once that happened, he'd have no choice but to slow down the reinforcement process.
Seimei didn't have any clever fix for it.
The good news, though, was that six or seven months was still plenty of time to finish this transformation, and then some.
After all, his reinforcement speed had jumped fifty percent. Even though pushing Physique from 42 to 43 would be harder than the last jump, it still shouldn't take too long.
Plus, within the next two months, his Ice Release, Storm Release, and Lava Release were all going to rank up. Each of those breakthroughs would shave a bunch of time off the process.
So yeah, he wasn't worried about dragging this out forever. He'd need more long-term testing to pin down an exact timeline, but for now he called it a night.
With that, Seimei pulled himself out of his thoughts, headed back to the cabin, and crashed.
A quiet, uneventful night.
······
The next morning.
Seimei was up bright and early. He washed up by the stream, scarfed down a handful of super-strength soldier pills to fill his stomach, and dove straight into another round of brutal training.
A whole week flew by just like that.
One week later, evening.
Seimei wrapped up the final day of this training cycle, flickered a few times, and appeared on the coast.
He stared out at the sunset painting the ocean gold, quietly running the numbers in his head.
Based on the data from the past seven days, he figured this transformation would take about four and a half months, tops.
That was a full month less than the five and a half months he'd originally estimated last time.
Keep in mind: the further you go, the harder these transformations get. Normally, even after a successful transformation and a beefier body, the next one still takes longer.
But this time? The timeline actually shrank.
There was only one reason for that: the fifty-percent boost to reinforcement speed was so huge it completely swallowed the extra difficulty.
Seimei was pretty stoked about it.
And four and a half months still wasn't the final number.
Just like last time, when his Wood Release ranked up mid-process and slashed a ton of time off the transformation, he had three bloodlines getting ready to evolve this round. Each upgrade would speed things up even more.
"Nice."
Seimei nodded, satisfied.
Then he let himself just soak in the view.
Time slipped by. Before he knew it, the sun had dipped below the horizon.
He snapped out of it, stretched, and without wasting another second, spread his Chakra Wings and cast Wind Release: Wings of Wind. He took to the sky and headed back toward the Hidden Leaf Village.
He didn't rush. Took his time cruising, and about an hour later he touched down in Konoha, night already fallen.
The village was still buzzing. New Year celebrations had just wrapped up, and the energy hadn't died down yet. When Seimei got home, he rinsed off quick and dove right into the festivities.
He'd barely rested at all over the holiday trying to rush this transformation, so he figured he'd earned a little fun as compensation.
He hit the village's famous "Food Street," the liveliest spot in Konoha, and went absolutely ham, eating anything and everything in sight.
Plenty of people stared, but he didn't care.
Pretty much everyone who mattered already knew his real body wasn't in the village most of the time, so why bother hiding it? He was gonna do whatever he felt like.
He pigged out for a solid two-plus hours, stuffed to the gills, then headed to the classic "Leaf Hot Springs" like he always did.
He soaked until they kicked him out at closing time, then finally dragged himself home.
The second he walked through the door, he beelined for the bedroom, flopped onto the bed, and passed out cold. Tonight's plan? Think about absolutely nothing and do even less.