The period following Butsuma Senju's funeral was marked by a silence so profound it felt heavy, as if the land itself were holding its breath. To the common clansman, the two-week truce was a desperate reprieve to bury the dead and harvest what little grain hadn't been trampled by iron-shod sandals. To Hashirama, it was a golden window of opportunity.
In the world of Solara, progress was measured in data packets and neural upgrades. Here, in the damp, moss-covered forests of the Warring States, progress was measured in the steady drip of sweat and the terrifying, exhilarating resonance of chakra.
Nathan, now irrevocably Hashirama, knew he was a variable in a world that had previously been a fixed story. He was a master-builder gifted with the blueprint of the future, and he had no intention of building a simple house when he could construct a fortress of the spirit.
He retreated to a hidden glade deep within the Senju territory, a place where the canopy was so thick that the sunlight filtered down in ethereal, emerald shafts. It was here that the rigorous alchemy of his training began.
He started with the scrolls Tobirama had provided. Tobirama was a genius of logic and structure; his notes on Fūinjutsu were clinical, precise, and demanding. Hashirama spent hours sitting cross-legged, the parchment unrolled across the forest floor. In the modern world of Solara, programming was done with gestures in the air. Fūinjutsu was the original programming, the art of folding reality into ink and paper.
He practiced drawing the intricate calligraphic anchors, feeling the way the ink resisted or accepted the infusion of his spiritual energy. He moved past the basic storage seals and quickly grasped the concepts of barrier arrays and elemental suppression. Because his chakra control was already at a level that bordered on the divine, he found he could "debug" the seal formulas by sensing where the flow of energy became turbulent.
He didn't just learn the seals; he understood the underlying mathematics of them. By the end of the first week, he could execute high-level suppression seals with a single, fluid motion, a feat that usually took masters years to perfect.
With the foundation of control set, Hashirama moved to the experimental phase. He recalled the legend of Minato Namikaze and the three years it took to create the Rasengan. For Hashirama, the process was truncated by the sheer biological advantage of his "Sage Body."
He stood in the center of the glade, holding his right palm upward.
First step: Rotation. He visualized a dozen streams of chakra moving in every direction simultaneously. In his mind, it was like managing a complex gravitational simulation. His hand began to glow with a pale blue aura. The air around his palm grew agitated, a small whirlwind forming.
Second step: Power. He flooded the rotation with more chakra. The sphere didn't just spin; it hummed with the density of a collapsing star. The friction against the air produced a high-pitched whine that sent birds scattering from the nearby trees.
Third step: Containment. This was the hardest part for most, but Hashirama's nearly perfect control allowed him to create a translucent shell of focused energy, keeping the chaotic storm inside a perfect sphere.
The first Rasengan was complete within hours. He stared at it, a swirling globe of pure, compressed kinetic energy. It was a masterpiece of simplicity. But Hashirama was not interested in simplicity. He pushed further, expanding the sphere until it was the size of a wagon wheel, the Oodama Rasengan. The sheer weight of the chakra began to crack the earth beneath his feet, the rotational force tearing at the very fabric of the atmosphere.
"Now."
He whispered, his voice vibrating with the thrill of creation.
"Let us add the life."
He began the process again, but this time, he didn't just use pure chakra. He reached deep into the core of his bloodline, tapping into the Mokuton. He began to weave the affinity for wood and life into the spinning vortex.
The color shifted. The brilliant blue was consumed by a deep, vibrant emerald green. This was no longer just a ball of force. Within the spinning core, micro-vinous fibers began to manifest, swirling violently like a hurricane trapped in glass. Tiny, needle-sharp roots whipped around within the sphere, reinforced by the rotational speed.
He lunged at a massive, ancient cedar tree. Upon impact, the Mokuton: Rasengan didn't just explode. It invaded. As the rotational force shredded the wood, the chakra-infused fibers shot outward like hungry parasites. Within seconds, the tree was not just shattered; its internal structure was riddled with foreign roots that drained its moisture and energy, turning the wood to gray ash.
It was a terrifying realization: he had created a jutsu that killed from the inside out, a biological weapon disguised as a kinetic strike.
Hashirama then turned his attention to an element that was not his primary affinity: Lightning. He remembered the Chidori and its later, more stable evolution, the Shiden (Purple Electricity).
He closed his eyes, recalling the physics of electricity he had learned in the "Old World." He began to agitate the chakra in his hand, moving it at a frequency that felt sharp and jagged. He compressed the flow, spinning it in tight, horizontal patterns until the standard blue sparks began to deepen in hue.
He sought the "harmonic resonance", the point where the lightning became a stable blade rather than a chaotic discharge. The glade was filled with a sharp, ozone smell as the air ionized. Suddenly, the sparks coalesced into a steady, humming glow of deep violet.
Unlike the Chidori, which required a linear charge, the Shiden danced across his fingertips like a liquid blade. He swung his hand, and the purple arc sliced through a boulder as if it were soft wax, the edges of the cut cauterized and perfectly smooth. He had achieved the pinnacle of form manipulation with an element he had barely used before.
Inspired by the future Third Hokage's Shuriken Kage Bunshin, Hashirama decided to create a weapon that combined projectile lethality with the adaptability of wood.
He clapped his hands together. Mokuton: Mokushuriken. From his palms, a dozen shuriken made of dark, iron-hard wood emerged. They were not static objects. As he threw them, he infused each one with a delayed-growth chakra trigger. They whistled through the air, carving arcs that defied standard physics.
When they struck their targets, wooden training posts, they didn't just stick. They blossomed. Upon impact, the fibers of the shuriken exploded into a tangled mess of thorns and roots, binding the "enemy" and injecting a paralyzing seiva (sap) into the surrounding area. It was a mid-range suppression tool that allowed him to control the battlefield without even moving his feet.
Despite the dizzying array of new weapons he had added to his arsenal, Hashirama knew that the true pinnacle of power lay in the world itself. He spent his nights in deep meditation, sitting perfectly still until moss began to creep over his boots.
He began to "listen" to the forest.
With his Sage Body and the Mokuton, the Natural Energy (Senjutsu) didn't feel like a foreign intruder; it felt like a long-lost sibling. He could feel the heavy, grounding energy of the earth beneath him and the light, fleeting energy of the atmosphere above. They were swirling around him in a constant, invisible dance.
He felt the temptation to reach out and pull that energy into his core. He could see the path clearly, how to balance his internal physical and spiritual energies with the external power of nature.
But he stopped.
He remembered the warnings from his past life's memories: the "Petrification of the Toad," the risk of losing one's humanity to the wild.
He was a pioneer in this world, and he could not afford a single mistake. He needed a catalyst, or perhaps a more controlled environment. He sensed that his Mokuton made the transition safer for him than for anyone else, but he would wait until after the "Ritual of the Dominant Root" before he stepped across that final threshold.
By the end of the second week, Hashirama stood in the center of his ruined training glade. The earth was scarred, trees were transformed, and the very air seemed to hum with the residue of his power.
He was far beyond where the "original" Hashirama had been at this age. His mind was a bridge between two worlds: the brutal, instinctive power of the Warring States and the cold, analytical foresight of a man who had seen the end of the story.
Millions of players from Solara were likely struggling to survive their first days in the game, fighting over scraps of food or basic rank-E missions. They were playing a game.
Nathan was building a destiny.
He clenched his hand into a fist, feeling the emerald glow of the Mokuton: Rasengan flicker momentarily around his knuckles. The Ritual was coming. The Blackwells and their corporate shadows were out there somewhere. But he was no longer the boy they had exiled.
He was the God of Shinobi, and he was only just beginning to wake up.
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