Mikami Yuu almost said something, then stopped himself.
No—why did that question sound kind of weird?
If he didn't know what Rin was like, he might've thought she was doing it on purpose.
Still, Mikami Yuu had tried using Snake Limb Hardening on his torso before.
But judging from how Orochimaru developed the technique, its original purpose was probably to let the user turn an arm into a substitute for a blade in a critical moment, so defense hadn't really been the focus. Using it anywhere other than the limbs was a little trickier and required finer chakra control.
He'd need more practice.
After giving a quick summary of the spar,
Mikami Yuu and Nohara Rin cleaned up the scattered tools around them, bundling the steel wires back into a tangled coil.
"Looks like without the Sharingan, those flashy wire tricks really aren't that easy to pull off… Well, no rush. It's not meant to be my main fighting method anyway."
The night deepened.
After packing everything up, the two left the training ground and parted in front of their respective homes.
"Good night, Yuu-kun."
"Good night, Rin."
Before long, the boy and girl had each washed up and gone to bed, their minds lingering on sealing formulas and their time together at the training ground, before finally drifting to sleep along with the rest of Konoha.
In the days that followed,
Mikami Yuu's schedule gradually became completely packed.
Every morning, he rushed to Konoha Hospital to do ward rounds with the medical jōnin, help treat patients, sit through one or two theory classes, or assist in several internal and external surgeries.
In the afternoons, he either trained near the Naka River, or went to Orochimaru to help sort through mountains of experimental data, run blood analyses, and handle tissue samples from unidentified organisms.
At night, once he got home, he spent two hours reading books on sealing, then interacted with the jutsu girls inside the galgame system. Whether or not he had time to [Practice], he still tried to max out the [Talk] affection gain whenever possible.
On top of that, his squad still averaged one or two routine missions a week: patrols, bandit extermination, escorting supplies, relaying intelligence—
None of those things were especially quick to finish, and with all of them stacked together on his schedule, Mikami Yuu felt like a spinning top, like he was back in the final countdown to a college entrance exam or graduate-school exams.
Of course, the gains were considerable too.
First of all, his "harem roster" had expanded.
During the third time he listened to one of Kushina's little sealing lectures, Mikami Yuu successfully encountered Binding Formula, adding her to the list and bringing his number of romanceable targets up to thirteen.
Unfortunately, he really wasn't good at dealing with gloomy landmine girls like that one. Normally the only time they interacted was when he practiced drawing sealing formulas, and she barely reacted. Her affection was still in the single digits.
That said—
Orochimaru's side gave him quite a pleasant surprise.
At the start of the second month, when Orochimaru paid him, he also handed Yuu a research report on Cell Activation Technique.
Yuu had no idea whether it was real or not, but according to Orochimaru, it was the newest result he had.
And sure enough, the galgame system reacted to it—
[Ding! Special item detected · body component — Cell Activation Technique: Sealed Left Arm!]
"What the hell is 'Sealed Left Arm'? Am I assembling a Gundam here?"
Even though he was at a loss for words, Mikami Yuu still copied the six or seven pages of research notes as soon as he got home, then used the original to attach it to Cell Activation Technique.
[After much difficulty in searching and fighting, you obtained the missing left arm of Cell Activation Technique from a snake nest west of Konoha and attached it to the incomplete girl's body. The girl remained asleep with her eyes shut, seemingly unaware, but her pale face gained the faintest trace of color, as though she had moved one small step closer to awakening.]
[Cell Activation Technique affection +5. Affection cap increased by 11. Current affection: 14/36 (Stranger)]
That's right.
Because the technique was incomplete, Mikami Yuu hadn't dared practice Cell Activation Technique recklessly. During this period, he had only been interacting with it through [Talk]. Even though it never responded no matter what he said, he still occasionally got a [Affection +1] prompt, and those had slowly accumulated to where it was now.
Judging from the current situation, Cell Activation Technique still needed at least four more body components: Sealed Right Arm, Sealed Left Leg, Sealed Right Leg, and Heart. He'd have to find at least one or two more before the affection cap could be raised to 50.
But that wasn't something Mikami Yuu could do by himself.
After all, Cell Activation Technique involved neurology, cell biology, even electromagnetics, and required extremely precise chakra control. The complete version was at minimum a B-rank jutsu. Being able to understand the research notes at all was already impressive, never mind actually developing or innovating it.
He had asked Tsunade about it too, but considering her usual work style—running off the moment class ended, sometimes not showing up at the hospital for days, and on more than one occasion leaving a faint smell of alcohol in her office—counting on her to develop a new jutsu seemed unrealistic.
He could only hope Orochimaru would put in the effort.
Aside from those two unusually special new targets, the rest of his jutsu relationships were progressing steadily enough:
[Current romanceable targets: Three Basic Jutsu (100), Great Fireball Jutsu (100), Healing Technique · Infatuated (99/100), Phoenix Flower Fire Technique · Intimate (71), Wild Water Wave Technique · Intimate (70), Hatake Swordsmanship · Friendly (37), Dragon Fire Technique · Friendly (29), Water Formation Wall · Friendly (28), Eight Gates · Stranger (22)]
Healing Technique was currently stuck at 99 affection. Apparently that was because the special event "Personally treat 100 patients" wasn't complete yet, so its affection was temporarily locked.
But that wasn't a big issue. New patients appeared at Konoha Hospital every day, and both Yuu and Rin were often involved in frontline treatment, so maxing it out was just a matter of time. And considering that stage four traits often underwent a qualitative leap, a higher difficulty curve made sense.
Besides that, Phoenix Flower Fire was the technique Yuu had practiced the most lately and was already close to the Infatuated stage.
Then there were the new traits unlocked for the Water and Fire techniques:
[Dragon Fire Technique:]
(1 stage reward obtained: Constitution +1. Trait · Piercing Flame: Your Dragon Fire Technique is exceptionally stable and less affected by outside environmental conditions. Flame range increases by 15% from its base value. If you spend time charging it, every second of charge grants an additional 1% range increase, stackable up to 5 times.)
[Water Formation Wall:]
(1 stage reward obtained: Constitution +1. Trait · Self-Aware Water: Your Water Formation Wall has a strong sense of self-management. It will actively observe your combat habits, predict the openings you tend to expose, and gain an additional 25% defensive strength when cast. It also has a 20% chance to trigger on its own to block a hard-to-defend surprise attack for you.)
Both of those traits were pretty solid—one boosted range through charging, the other strengthened defense.
They weren't as dramatically enhanced as Great Fireball or Wild Water Wave, but they were still much stronger than the original versions. Once Phoenix Flower Fire and Hatake Swordsmanship each leveled up one more time, Yuu could probably free up some time and start focusing more on those two as well.