Choosing that path meant throwing every waking hour outside of eating and sleeping into hammering your body into shape.
In a world where ninjutsu flew everywhere, trying to walk the road of a pure taijutsu shinobi was brutally narrow and painfully hard.
For Akira, it was even less worth it.
His own power and physical strength would already keep growing without limit over time, so why put himself through that kind of suffering?
With the same time and effort, he could develop a few more S-rank jutsus or dig deeper into the secrets of genjutsu, and the return would be far better.
Besides, if he really trained in the Eight Gates, his body would inevitably accumulate lasting damage. No matter how absurd his recovery was, pain still hurt exactly the same in the moment.
He might end up breaking his own system from overuse long before he ever reached the point of opening the Eighth Gate.
Real strength, in his eyes, should be something built naturally, layer by layer, not this kind of burst that burned through the foundation for a moment of glory. What he wanted was an endless future, not a brilliant instant.
The corner of Akira's mouth lifted into a faintly amused smile. "The one who looked like a shark, you mean Kisame Hoshigaki?"
Might Guy scratched at his trademark bowl cut. Even after wracking his brain, he still couldn't place the name, so he looked at Akira blankly. "You've run into that guy before?"
Akira nodded lightly, a flicker of memory crossing his eyes. "Yeah. Back when I was traveling with Jiraiya-sama to look for Tsunade-hime, I had a brief clash with him. His raw strength really was impressive."
Hearing that, Guy clenched his fists with immediate agreement. "He really was a formidable opponent. If I hadn't been forced to open the Eight Gates at the last moment, the rest of us might actually have gone down there."
Neji frowned from the side and added, "But something about it was off. Kisame's chakra felt wrong somehow. After he was taken down, the corpse changed into a completely unfamiliar face."
Naruto stepped forward, hands behind his head as he thought it through. "Pervy Sage said it looked like some kind of special clone jutsu. It only carried about thirty percent of the original's chakra, but it was way tougher than an ordinary Shadow Clone."
"A normal Shadow Clone pops into smoke after one heavy hit, and the chakra disperses with it."
"But these weird Akatsuki proxies could keep fighting even after losing limbs, as long as they weren't completely finished off."
"And the scariest part is that as long as that thirty percent of chakra wasn't used up, they could still perform all the advanced jutsus the original body knew."
He paused, then glanced at Akira.
"Honestly, it's kind of like the physical Sage clones Akira makes."
"The only real difference is that Akira's Sage clones can absorb natural energy on their own and recharge themselves. They're basically tireless perpetual engines. If you can't kill them instantly, you'll never wear them down."
Guy looked like a light had gone on in his head. "So that's what it was. No wonder the body left on the ground turned out to be a shinobi from Sunagakure."
"If thirty percent strength is already that troublesome, then how terrifying would the real thing be? The Akatsuki really are deeper than they look."
Whether it was the unreadable Itachi Uchiha or Kisame Hoshigaki with his absurd chakra reserves, either one of them alone was undeniably Kage-class.
And those two were just the tip of the iceberg. According to what they knew, there were several more monsters like them inside the Akatsuki.
That oppressive weight of the unknown was what really made people's scalps crawl.
But while the others looked grim, Akira merely waved a hand, relaxed as ever. "There's no need to scare yourselves. That so-called thirty percent strength already tells you most of what you need to know about how they fight."
"Someone like Itachi Uchiha, who's a precision-heavy fighter with serious chakra limitations, gets hit hard by that kind of restriction."
"But Kisame Hoshigaki, the so-called tailless tailed beast, is practically a chakra reservoir. He doesn't care about losing that much."
"His base chakra pool is too huge. Even at thirty percent, he still has more than enough to last through a brutal high-intensity fight."
"In other words, even if Kisame's real body had shown up, the main difference would just be that he could throw out a few more big moves. The pressure of his actual combat power wouldn't be that much greater than what you already saw."
Akira understood that perfectly well.
Itachi suffered because, with only thirty percent chakra, he couldn't afford the Mangekyo Sharingan, which dragged his overall combat power down sharply.
But a brute like Kisame, who fought by smashing through opponents with raw power and massive water jutsus, didn't change all that much between clone and original. The real difference was simply endurance.
And his clash with Guy had been over in a flash anyway.
The chakra inside that proxy had been more than enough to cover a short, explosive battle.
After hearing that calm, rational breakdown, the tension in Guy's body eased a little.
"That guy's chakra really did feel like the ocean, endless and impossible to measure. One casual move from him could flood hundreds of meters. Keep fighting him long enough and flat ground starts turning into a lake."
Guy might not remember Kisame's name, but his body had remembered the pressure of facing him all too well.
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