The inauguration of the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa, was an internal "System Patch" that stabilized the village, but in the grander architecture of the Land of Wind, we were still just a sub-process. To gain legal legitimacy and, more importantly, to keep the national funding servers running, Rasa had to travel to the Capital for formal conferment by the Daimyo.
I watched from the workshop rafters as the diplomatic envoy prepared to leave. Rasa looked like a man heading to a funeral rather than a coronation. Beside him, Elder Chiyo and a group of senior Council members moved with the stiff, formal gait of "Legacy Hardware" trying to interface with a modern, hostile OS.
The journey across the desert to the Capital was a week-long trek that underscored the "Systemic Failure" of our nation. The farther we got from Suna, the more the infrastructure crumbled. Trade routes were ghost towns, and oases that should have been regional hubs were drying up, their "Life-Support" systems failing due to neglect and sand-encroachment.
As an engineer, I knew how this worked. In any large-scale system, the military is just a service provider; the government is the client. And the client was about to pull the funding.
The ceremony in the Capital was a masterclass in aristocratic latency. It was held in a sprawling palace of white marble and gold leaf, a sharp, insulting contrast to the functional, wind-carved stone of Sunagakure. The Daimyo himself was a "Low-Spec" user who treated the Ninja World like a game he was bored with. He offered formulaic condolences for the Third Kazekage and signed the papers making Rasa the Fourth with the same enthusiasm one might use to sign a grocery receipt.
The real "System Crash" happened after the theater ended.
In a plush Side Hall, away from the prying eyes of the court, the Prime Minister of the Land of Wind met with Rasa's entourage. He was a lavishly dressed old man with eyes like polished coins - astute, cold, and calculating.
"Lord Fourth Kazekage, Elder Chiyo," the Prime Minister began, his smile as fake as a wooden prosthetic. "First, allow me to express the Daimyo's continued 'moral support' for the Hidden Sand. The peace of our nation is inseparable from your... struggles."
He paused, and I could practically hear the "Logic Gate" closing. "However, the economic telemetry is grim. Border instability has crashed our tax revenue. Disaster relief for the drying oases is draining the treasury's reserves. After a full-system audit, the Daimyo's Residence has reached a difficult decision: Effective immediately, the annual budget allocated to the Hidden Sand Village will be cut by one-third."
"Cut by thirty-three percent?!" A Suna elder nearly suffered a hardware failure on the spot, his face turning a dangerous shade of purple. Ebizo held him back with a firm, silencing look, but the damage was done.
Rasa's expression darkened until it looked like it could drip oil. He leaned forward, his voice an icy rasp that made the silk curtains in the room shiver. "Prime Minister, that is a fatal logic error. We are currently in the initialization phase of a World War. The Cloud has already breached our coastal firewall. The Stone is massing heavy units on our northwestern flank. To cut the budget now is to delete our own defense parameters. If Suna falls, the flames of war reach your marble palace next."
The Prime Minister's smile didn't reach his eyes. "The National Government is aware of your 'concerns,' Lord Kazekage. But a clever housewife cannot cook without rice. The treasury is empty. As for the defense... this is precisely the time to test the 'Legendary Efficiency' of the Sand Shinobi. We trust you to optimize your revenue. Perhaps you could... monetize your gold-finding abilities?"
The meeting ended in a cold, suffocating stalemate. The journey back to Sunagakure was conducted in a silence so heavy it felt like lead. The 33% budget cut meant development was dead. Infrastructure repair was dead. Compensation for the families of the fallen was stalled. Suna was being forced into "Austerity Mode" right when we needed to be "Overclocking."
The news filtered down through the village hierarchy like a virus. I felt the urgency immediately. If the village was going into a resource blackout, I couldn't rely on "Official Requisitions" to fund the Mirage Protocol. I needed an energy source that didn't depend on the Daimyo's permissions.
I returned to the secluded temple that night, the "Unknown Fragment" burning a hole in my pack.
Master Bunpuku was sitting in his usual spot, a silent server in a noisy world. Shukaku was seemingly offline, but when I pulled out the shard and let the sealing paper slip just a fraction, the temple's atmosphere changed. The ambient static in the air spiked, and a low-frequency hum vibrated through the stone floor.
"Oh?" Bunpuku's eyes snapped open. He stared at the dark, patterned shard in my hand as if it were a ghost.
Suddenly, the seal on his abdomen flared with a violent, sandy light. A hoarse, static-filled voice screamed inside our heads:
"HMMM?! That signature... that frequency... is that a shard of THAT THING?! Kid, where did you find a piece of the Original Server?!"
Shukaku was wide awake, and for the first time, he sounded genuinely rattled.
I gave them the summary of the discovery. "Master Bunpuku, Shukaku, I need a diagnostic. The energy in this shard isn't like chakra. It's pure, ancient, and heavy. I want to use it as a power source for my Mag-Lev platform, but I need to know if the hardware can handle it."
Bunpuku held the fragment with trembling hands. "This power... it carries a hint of nirvana, yet it's overflowing with a terrifying vitality. It's like holding a sun in your palm."
"Hmph! Ignorant brat!" Shukaku scoffed, his voice tinged with a weird mix of arrogance and nostalgia. "That's a fragment of the Divine Tree (Shinju)! The parasitic tree the 'Woman from Heaven' planted to drink this world dry of its life-code!"
Confirmation. My heart hammered against my ribs like a malfunctioning piston.
"The Old Man Six Paths shattered it during the 'Grand Deletion' of his mother," Shukaku continued, his mental voice echoing with ancient thunder. "I haven't felt this baud-rate in centuries. It's a trace of the world's original source code before it was partitioned into chakra."
"Is there a way to channel it safely?" I asked, my inner engineer already mapping out the "step-down" requirements. "Standard chakra-syncing doesn't work."
"Of course it doesn't!" Shukaku laughed harshly. "Chakra is just a derivative product, a low-resolution copy! If you try to plug that straight into your system, your hardware will melt. Your cells will be overwritten and turned into stone in seconds. You'd be assimilated into the 'System' before you could even scream. Unless..."
"Unless what?"
Bunpuku looked at me, his gaze solemn and full of a teacher's warning. "Unless you use a Forbidden Sealing Formula to construct a Spirit Siphoning Seal. It acts as a high-voltage transformer. It draws the raw Natural Energy out in a microscopic stream, filtering and diluting it through layers of conversion barriers until it's gentle enough to be used as fuel."
"But," Bunpuku added, his voice dropping to a whisper, "if the barrier fails, the energy surge is a total system wipe. There are no backups for your soul, Sayo."
I didn't blink. I looked at the shard, then at my own hands. The village was being defunded by a greedy Daimyo, and our enemies were sharpening their knives. I didn't have the luxury of "Safe Testing."
"Teach me the seal," I said, my voice flat and analytical. "I'll build the interface. I'm ready for the risk."
Compared to a world where my nation was being slowly deleted by bureaucracy, a little "Natural Energy" radiation was a project-risk I was willing to take.
With the Divine Tree fragment as my "Core Battery" and the Spirit Siphoning Seal as my "Middleware Interface," the Mirage wouldn't just be a puppet. It would be a god-tier machine running on the world's original power.
The "Mirage Protocol" was officially moving from the "Design" phase to the "Experimental Reactor" phase. The Hidden Sand might be broke, but its youngest Chunin was about to go nuclear.