Over the next several days, the benefits of Might Guy's guidance became obvious.
First was intensity control.Before, Tōma could only guess how far he could safely push his body. Now, he understood his limits with far greater accuracy and could complete his training goals in significantly less time.
Second was volume control.Guy had even calculated how much Tōma could increase his workload each week without harming himself. The time saved was enormous.
Of course, Guy wasn't present every day—only enough to observe their basics and correct the dangerous parts. After that, most sessions returned to Tōma and Lee training together, pushing each other as usual.
Tōma trusted Guy's taijutsu expertise completely. This was, after all, the man who nearly ended the Fourth Great Ninja War with one kick.
But the matter weighing most heavily on Tōma was Sage Mode—the state of perfect stillness.
Since his breakthrough, he hadn't been able to re-enter that stillness at all. Not until several days later, when he finally slipped back into the state again… without pushing his body to its limit. And this time, he stayed in it much longer.
Still no trace of natural energy.
Nothing but silence.
But Tōma wasn't discouraged. This was only a preparatory stage. It wasn't supposed to do anything flashy. His goal now was simple: lower the conditions needed to enter it. Eventually, he needed to be able to trigger it anytime, anywhere. After all, no enemy would politely wait while he exhausted himself just to meditate.
The more he practiced, the more something felt… strange.Inside the stillness, he found that he could think again. Not fully, but enough. He could even observe something—but he wasn't sure what.
Maybe, eventually, it would be natural energy.
Then came the turning point.
One day, while Tōma was in the void-like state, Lee approached. The moment Lee stepped close, Tōma's eyes snapped open, shock flickering behind them.
He had seen it.
Or rather—felt it.
He sensed the flow of chakra inside Lee's body, along with the faint, natural leakage that all humans produced.
Is this similar to the Byakugan? he wondered.
But he dismissed the thought just as quickly.The Byakugan could see through vast distances and complex structures. His perception simply mimicked what he already understood of chakra, filling in shapes from sensory cues.
Still, it revealed something important: Lee had chakra. A normal amount, even. His problem wasn't the absence of chakra—he simply couldn't mold it. Which aligned with Tōma's memories of the Eight Gates; after all, if Lee had no chakra, the Gates couldn't function at all.
With the stillness broken, Tōma returned to practicing shape transformation. This time, when he pushed chakra outside his body…
The connection held firm, clearer than ever before.
He concentrated, and for the first time, a small sphere of chakra formed neatly in his palm.
Yesterday, this had been impossible.
Tōma stared at it, stunned.
Then he nudged the chakra's structure, and the sphere snapped into the shape of a cube.
A perfect cube.
He blinked once. Twice.
Then the cube crumbled as the chakra dispersed.
No way my progress jumped this much in one day.He knew exactly how fast he should improve. This wasn't normal advancement.
It had to be the void-like state amplifying his perception.If he could feel even external chakra with high clarity, then molding it became infinitely easier.
If that was true… this state was far more powerful than he had assumed.
And it made him even more determined to master Sage Mode.
One afternoon, while deep in the void-state again, his sensory field expanded further. It still couldn't compare to the Byakugan, but it now covered most close-quarters ranges. He could read the flow of another's chakra, sense tension spikes, and predict when someone might begin forming seals.
A terrifying advantage in the right hands.
Unfortunately, the range was tiny—barely enough for taijutsu distance. At that range, a fast opponent might hit him before he could react.
Still, that wasn't what bothered him.
No—what bothered him was the realization that he'd overlooked something obvious.
He'd been so fixated on using this state to sense external chakra or natural energy…that he forgot the most important subject was himself.
Even if the range was tiny, he was always within it.
So Tōma turned his perception inward for the first time.
His real eyes remained closed, but his awareness dove into his own chakra network.
He saw the flow.The currents.The pulses.The micro-changes of nature within his chakra.
And inside that flow, he saw two distinct natures—
Wind.And lightning.
They had always been part of him. He'd simply been unable to perceive or use them, intending to revisit the topic much later. But seeing them directly was a revelation.
He studied the wind affinity as it spun through his chakra.Then the crackling current of lightning.
Wind stirred around his body.Light arcs danced faintly across his skin.
He opened his eyes abruptly and stepped into an open area.
He recalled the ninjutsu hand signs he'd memorized but never attempted before.
For the first time, he felt absolutely certain he could use it.
"Wind Release—Great Breakthrough!"
The technique fired, but not as the scroll described.
Instead of a wide, weak blast of scattered wind, a compact air cannon fired forward like a compressed projectile.
Tōma exhaled slowly.
"So that's it…"
The standard version of the jutsu spread its power too widely, making it shallow but useful for dispersing mist. But because Tōma understood wind chakra, he could compress it. Even imperfect compression turned the jutsu into something far more precise.
It still wasn't strong—compression was incomplete—but it worked.
He looked to his arm, where faint sparks danced again, and smiled.
Today, he had stepped forward on the shape transformation path in a way he had never managed before.
This wasn't Sage Mode yet.It was something else entirely.
A precursor state.A personal sensory mode.
He needed a name for it.
"…Void-State," he murmured. "Yeah. That fits."
A state meant for natural energy, repurposed by him to dissect chakra itself.
Others used this meditative state only after surpassing shape manipulation entirely. For them, it was merely a stepping stone to Sage Mode. But for Tōma, whose foundation was still developing, this state acted like a high-end processor installed into low-end hardware.
And the results spoke for themselves.
He would refine it. Expand it.And one day, step from Void-State into true Sage Mode.