To properly stimulate his physical potential and reach Hashirama Senju's level—or even surpass it—Menma was truly exhausting every possible method.
This was built entirely on the foundation of his Uzumaki bloodline and his status as the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki. His starting point was already incredibly high, which was the only reason achieving such an impossible goal in a short timeframe was even feasible.
Even so, Menma had to resort to highly unconventional methods.
He wasn't a vessel for Asura's chakra. If he were, he could already be attempting to fuse it with Indra's chakra to evolve toward the realm of 'All Creation.'
While that process would still be incredibly complex, it would be vastly easier than his current path. Lacking that inherent advantage, Menma had to carve out his own alternatives.
Harvesting the chakra of the nine Tailed Beasts, running continuous cellular activation tests, and pushing the limits of his Uzumaki bloodline—it was all geared toward this single, ultimate goal.
But clearly, it wasn't enough.
To reach that ultimate, transcendent tier, Menma needed to do everything in his power to strengthen his physical body and elevate his bloodline.
He needed to achieve a true, fundamental evolution of his life force.
The man he was about to hunt down was one of the keys to making that happen.
"Mm, I'll definitely keep a close eye on things, Menma," Karin replied, her small face tight with seriousness as she gave a heavy nod.
"I'm leaving it in your hands. Also, Karin, even though I have Muku watching Naruto, you need to check in on him occasionally. We absolutely cannot give him a single chance to try anything reckless," Menma said with a warm smile before his expression hardened, his tone turning dead serious.
The moment the war ended, Menma had brought Naruto straight back to the Hidden Waterfall.
They called it 'imprisonment,' but his freedom wasn't entirely stripped away. Within a specific zone designated by Menma, Naruto was free to move around.
Honestly, between the chakra-suppressing restraints, Muku's constant surveillance, and a detail of over a dozen elite Waterfall shinobi watching him 24/7, escaping was practically impossible for Naruto right now.
But just to be absolutely safe, Menma had instructed Karin to add her sensory net to the security grid.
With Karin's tracking abilities in play, Menma seriously doubted Naruto could flip the board.
"Understood!"
With his affairs neatly arranged and the newly merged village steadily getting on track, Menma quietly slipped out of the Hidden Waterfall alone.
He headed due south, straight toward the Land of Rivers.
Since this was just a simple snatch-and-grab—and Orochimaru had already sent someone to assist—Menma saw no need to bring any of his own people.
If possible, he wanted to keep his departure from the village entirely under wraps.
After a full day of high-speed travel, Menma cut straight down through the eastern border of the Land of Wind.
The moment he arrived at a small border town in the northernmost reaches of the Land of Rivers, he was greeted by Orochimaru's designated liaison.
An old acquaintance: Kabuto Yakushi.
He wore the same standard outfit and the same fake, plastered smile, but his manners were absolutely flawless.
He had been waiting at the rendezvous point long before Menma arrived.
"Lord Menma."
The instant Kabuto saw him, he bowed deeply in greeting.
Kabuto was nearly twice Menma's age, yet his deferential posture looked remarkably sincere—or at least, he played the part perfectly.
"Thanks for going through the trouble, Kabuto-san," Menma said with a light chuckle, blurring into existence right in front of him.
"Not at all. The honor is mine," Kabuto replied, pushing up his black-framed glasses while maintaining his deeply respectful tone.
The Menma standing before him was fundamentally different from the boy he used to know.
It had to be said—Kabuto was currently filled with profound awe toward Menma. It had barely been a year and a half since Menma defected from the Hidden Leaf, yet the sheer scale of his transformation was terrifying.
Who else but Menma could have pulled that off?
The recent succession of massive wars had put Menma's overwhelming power on full display.
Kabuto felt zero psychological friction bowing to him. Worshipping the strong was basic human nature, especially in a brutal world like theirs.
"You've pinned down his exact location?" Menma asked.
"Yes, Lord Menma. We finalized his position just yesterday. Hiruko is currently in Maple City, in the southwestern region of the Land of Rivers," Kabuto replied softly.
Hiruko!
A former jonin of the Hidden Leaf. He was from the exact same generation—and even a close friend—of Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade.
He was Menma's target.
More specifically, Menma was after the jutsu Hiruko had developed: the Chimera Technique.
It was a highly specialized, forbidden jutsu capable of seamlessly absorbing and merging human bodies and summoning beasts. More importantly, it allowed the user to forcibly strip and integrate the Kekkei Genkai of others.
For Menma's upcoming experiments—whether it was physical enhancement, spiritual evolution, or fusing foundational power sources—he desperately needed a flawless medium.
The Chimera Technique was the perfect tool.
Again, Menma wasn't Asura. He couldn't just casually absorb Hashirama's cells, let them naturally acclimate over time, and effortlessly awaken the Rinnegan to touch the realm of All Creation like Madara did.
Menma had to do significantly more heavy lifting.
He had to manually upgrade far more aspects of his own existence.
And he simply didn't have the luxury of time. The Chimera Technique was an unorthodox shortcut, and Menma couldn't be one hundred percent certain it would actually solve his problems.
But having it was vastly better than not having it. An extra path forward was always a strategic advantage.
At the absolute minimum, Menma calculated that even if the Chimera Technique couldn't serve as his ultimate catalyst, its auxiliary benefits would be flawless.
Mastering all elemental chakra natures.
Perfectly harmonizing Yin and Yang Release.
Pushing both physical and spiritual power to their absolute limits.
The moment he could seamlessly fuse all of those elements together at perfect synchronization, Menma would finally grasp the power of All Creation.
For Yin Release, Menma's core research subjects were obviously the Byakugan and the Sharingan—the most direct physical manifestations of the Otsutsuki bloodline.
However, his current progress was stuck in the preliminary research phase, mostly relying on the data he was feeding Orochimaru to harvest results.
His physical enhancements hadn't even reached their absolute ceiling yet.
How could he realistically expect to break ground on the more esoteric research?
He had to walk before he could run.
But time was running out, and Menma had to aggressively accelerate his schedule.
Because of this, securing Hiruko was a mandatory objective. The Chimera Technique could drastically compress Menma's experimental timeline.
Orochimaru could easily guess why Menma wanted Hiruko. The snake Sannin was intimately familiar with the Chimera Technique. Over the years, he and Hiruko had actually maintained a certain degree of contact.
Otherwise, how could Orochimaru have tracked him down so effortlessly?
However, Orochimaru personally looked down on the Chimera Technique.
He also had no idea what Menma's true endgame was.
Ultimately, whether Orochimaru knew or not didn't really matter, because even Menma wasn't completely certain his grand theory would pan out.
When Orochimaru had probed him about it earlier, it had truly just been a casual test of the waters.
The Sannin was far too busy with his own ambitions to care too deeply anyway.
"Excellent. Let's get moving, then. We shouldn't keep Hiruko-san waiting," Menma said with a light smile.
Swish!
With a slight push off the ground, Menma blurred into a high-speed sprint toward Maple City.
Kabuto flickered instantly, rushing to keep pace.
When it came to raw military power, the organization Orochimaru had built in the mere decade since his defection obviously couldn't rival the Hidden Waterfall. The gap in sheer ninja numbers was massive.
However, before Menma took over, the Hidden Waterfall had been a highly conservative, isolationist village.
Aside from their own borders and a few neighboring minor nations, Waterfall shinobi rarely stepped foot into the wider world.
The past few village leaders simply lacked that kind of ambition.
They knew their limits and didn't believe they had the strength to project power globally. As a result, the Waterfall's intelligence network was painfully localized. Menma had only been in charge for a year; he couldn't magically fix that systemic flaw overnight.
Orochimaru, on the other hand, was different.
From day one, his strategy had been global domination. He had dozens, maybe even over a hundred, hidden bases and outposts scattered across every region on the continent.
It was an incredibly expensive network to maintain, but the returns were astronomical.
Its greatest asset was intelligence gathering. Orochimaru's spy network was arguably only a single step behind the Five Great Villages.
Menma partnered with Orochimaru partly for his peerless research skills, but his global intelligence web was the other massive selling point.
It saved Menma an ungodly amount of time and effort.
---
Maple City, located in the southwestern corner of the Land of Rivers, was the largest urban center in the region.
Sitting directly on a major north-south trade route, it was the most prosperous city in the country outside of the capital. With a population pushing four hundred thousand, it was a genuine metropolis by the standards of the ninja world.
Hiruko was laying low here because the city's massive trade flow provided easy access to the obscure materials he needed.
It was also comfortably close to his primary hidden base.
Just off the southern coast lay a large island nation: the Land of Artisans. For a shinobi running complex experiments, the logistics couldn't be better.
Completely oblivious to the monster currently barreling toward him, Hiruko stepped out onto the bustling streets of Maple City.
He glanced down at a specialized sealing scroll resting in his palm, a faint look of satisfaction crossing his eyes.
With this batch of supplies, I can finally start the next phase of the experiments. Once this step is complete, I just need to acquire the final Kekkei Genkai. When that's done... who in this entire world will be able to stop me?!
Hiruko's hands clenched into tight fists, his pupils practically shaking with a manic, sinister glee.
If you evaluated raw talent as a shinobi...
Out of the massive global ninja population, Hiruko could technically be classified as a 'genius.' He was, after all, a jonin of the Hidden Leaf.
In the grand scheme of the ninja world, how many people actually reached the rank of jonin, let alone inside the most competitive village on earth?
But obviously, Hiruko had never been satisfied with that.
Because his eyes were constantly glued to Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade.
Especially Jiraiya. The man used to be a complete clown, a textbook failure—yet he eventually grew into one of the legendary Sannin.
How was Hiruko supposed to stomach that?
Simply put, the massive psychological gap shattered his worldview and warped his mind.
His hunger for power violently expanded. No longer content with his own limits, he became obsessed with finding a shortcut to absolute strength.
His answer was Kekkei Genkai. And the Chimera Technique was born from that obsession.
You had to admit, in this specific, twisted field of study, Hiruko was a genuine, peerless genius.
Even if the Chimera Technique was basically just high-end biological stitching, the fact remained: he could actually stitch them together. And he could flawlessly wield the bloodline limits he stole.
After decades of grueling, agonizing effort, Hiruko had finally reached the absolute threshold of his lifelong ambition.
He was already confident he could fight any of the Five Kage to a standstill. Once he took that final step and absorbed his fifth Kekkei Genkai, he firmly believed he would be invincible and dominate the entire shinobi world.
At least, Hiruko genuinely believed that.
But Kakashi's Sharingan was stolen by that Menma Uzumaki brat. I'll have to adjust the plan. Maybe Orochimaru's little toy, Sasuke Uchiha? Or... maybe I should just go straight for Itachi Uchiha!
A deep, calculating light flickered in Hiruko's eyes.
Having already perfectly integrated four Kekkei Genkai, his ego had completely detached from reality.
Orochimaru? Itachi Uchiha?
Hiruko was fully convinced he could crush either of them.
And honestly, his confidence wasn't completely baseless.
He was already a jonin-level combatant before stacking four powerful Kekkei Genkai on top of his base stats. Assuming he could synergize them effectively, calling him 'Kage-level' wasn't much of a stretch.
It made sense that he was feeling arrogant.
In Hiruko's grand design, the Uchiha bloodline—the Sharingan—was the absolute crown jewel of his biological fusion.
As long as he secured those supreme eyes, he was certain he could rival the legendary power of the Uchiha's ancient god of war.
When that happened, wouldn't the entire ninja world be nothing more than clay in his hands?!
The thought of that glorious future made Hiruko's lips curl into an intensely smug, twisted grin.
Yes, Itachi Uchiha is the better choice. He already has the Mangekyo Sharingan; it skips so many tedious steps. It seems I can accept that man's invitation after all. Joining them will give me the perfect opening!
Hiruko thought viciously to himself.