With a plan in place, Arata no longer lingered outside the village. Although his strength had already reached its peak, that didn't mean he could stop training—what needed to be done still had to be done.
Most of the equipment he had prepared was kept at home, so the majority of his training time was still spent there.
His taijutsu had already hit a bottleneck and was unlikely to improve much further. As for his Devil Fruit–like abilities, he only needed time to adapt to them, so there was no need to constantly head out of the village.
What concerned him more was the third stage of his Lightning Armor. Although he had used it smoothly the first time, the overall power still wasn't strong enough. Arata felt there was plenty of room for improvement.
Because of that, he would probably need to leave the village from time to time in the future, finding uninhabited areas to practice that technique.
The destructive power of that move was terrifying. Just its sheer size alone was enough to be alarming—if used inside the village, it would cause massive destruction in an instant.
In the Third Gear state, the temperature around his body was high enough to melt steel instantly. There was no way he would dare train with it inside Konoha.
Even the lightning arcs alone were enough to instantly incapacitate an elite jōnin. Naturally, Arata had to find somewhere completely deserted to practice. The Kamui space would normally have been a good option—
—but there was no natural energy there, nor any cloud cover. The conditions simply weren't right to use that technique. As a result, Arata could only train it within the shinobi world itself.
At home, his main focus was on chakra training.
In the past, limited by his own aptitude, his ceiling had been special jōnin at best. But after acquiring Uchiha Madara's bloodline, he could continue advancing.
In fact, Arata could clearly feel that now—possessing both the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan and Madara's bloodline—his chakra still had room to grow.
He also hadn't forgotten the scene when he killed the Monkey Sage. Once the Second Great Shinobi War ended and he secured the position of Hokage, he would still need to make a trip to the Three Great Sacred Lands—at the very least, to figure out what exactly was going on with his body.
As for Sage Mode, if he met the conditions to train it, Arata was definitely interested. He no longer underestimated Sage Mode in the slightest. The fact that natural energy had been able to stimulate the awakening of his abilities proved that it had unique and profound qualities.
After all, the Sage of Six Paths himself—despite already possessing overwhelming power, the Sharingan, the Rinnegan, and Ōtsutsuki blood—had still gone out of his way to master Sage Mode. That alone showed that Sage Mode remained highly effective even in Six Paths–level battles.
It could even directly enhance a Complete Susanoo.
Take Uchiha Madara as an example—his Susanoo, even at full output, was only about a hundred meters tall. But the Sage of Six Paths' Susanoo was utterly terrifying. When he fought the Ten-Tails, his fully manifested Susanoo rivaled it in height.
The Ten-Tails stood even taller than the True Several Thousand Hands—well over two hundred meters. For the Sage of Six Paths' Susanoo to match it meant that it, too, stood at roughly that height.
And even setting the Sage of Six Paths aside—Senju Hashirama was another example. He had already reached peak super-Kage level, yet after mastering Sage Mode, he could unleash the True Several Thousand Hands.
All of this showed that how powerful natural energy was depended entirely on the user. If the user was strong enough, the boost provided by natural energy would push their techniques to an entirely new level.
Jiraiya's Sage Mode, by contrast, was relatively low-tier. Even at full power, it was probably only early super-Kage level—perhaps merely peak Kage at best.
Arata, however, was already on par with Hashirama in raw strength. That meant if he successfully mastered Sage Mode, the power he could unleash might not be any weaker than Hashirama at his peak.
That said, Sage Mode training wasn't something that could be accomplished overnight. Arata couldn't rush it. At the very least, he would have to wait until the war was over and Konoha had stabilized.
Moreover, training Sage Mode meant dealing directly with the Three Great Sacred Lands. And although Arata was powerful, he couldn't guarantee that he would be able to walk away unscathed if he confronted the sages of those lands.
The hostility shown by the Monkey Sage toward him made Arata even more wary of the Three Great Sacred Lands. It was entirely possible that the moment he stepped into one of them, he would be treated as an enemy. In that case, forget training Sage Mode—whether he could even make it back to the shinobi world alive would be questionable.
After all, even an obscure Monkey Sage potentially possessed late super-Kage–level strength. There was no way the sages of the Three Great Sacred Lands were weaker than that.
...
As for how to reach the Three Great Sacred Lands, given Arata's connections with the Three Sannin, it shouldn't be too difficult.
Not to mention Tsunade—who was already his wife—even his close friend Jiraiya would almost certainly be willing to take him to Mount Myōboku if Arata asked.
Ordinary people couldn't possibly reach the Three Great Sacred Lands on foot. Wherever the summon beasts lived, it almost certainly wasn't within the normal shinobi world. Otherwise, space–time ninjutsu like summoning wouldn't be required just to meet them.
Arata suspected that the realms inhabited by these summon beasts were similar to the Kamui dimension—separate pocket dimensions that nevertheless overlapped with the shinobi world, making travel between them relatively easy.
As for the exact truth, Arata would only know once he reached them himself.
...
Fortunately, he had Kamui. As long as he visited a place once, he could record its coordinates. After that, he could teleport there directly.
So even if the Three Great Sacred Lands truly lay outside the shinobi world, Arata wasn't worried about being unable to reach them.
By the time he returned home, the two girls were already asleep. They were still children—no matter how hard they trained, they couldn't compare to someone like Arata.
Arata himself, however, was full of energy. He immediately resumed training, curious to see just how far he could push his chakra.
At present, his chakra level was only in the late super-Kage stage—still far from the true peak. As long as he continued training, there was still room to grow.
Sage Mode required balancing one's own chakra with senjutsu chakra. His lightning abilities and powerful physique wouldn't interfere much in that process, which meant chakra training was essential.
Chakra, after all, was the fusion of physical and spiritual energy. Arata's physical energy had already reached the peak of the shinobi world—only his spiritual energy still needed to grow.
Fortunately, the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan greatly raised his upper limit in that area. Because of that, his future training would proceed smoothly and naturally.
With his realm already elevated and Madara's physique supporting him, training no longer felt exhausting.
And so, immersed in training and refinement, the entire night quietly passed by…