Ryusei could feel it clearly now; his body was changing into something terrifying every day.
Every day now, his physique pushed past the limits of what even the strongest shinobi could achieve.
It was, in a way, like finding a cheat code to the human body, the next evolution of physical training itself.
Once, he had mimicked this process through hard work, Guy and Duy-style madness, relentless effort, day and night.
But that had only been an imitation.
This… this was the real thing.
The impossible had become routine; his body now evolved continuously and automatically, every second, in a process that could, in theory, go on indefinitely, and yield more in the near future.
However, the more micro internal damage he accumulated, like this, and the more his cells divided to mitigate it, while making him stronger, the weaker his overall life force became.
That was why Ryusei would eventually stop doing this so heavily in the future, one day.
Of course, without his Byakugan, chakra control, medical knowledge, and near-perfect internal perception, such training would've been suicide, even from the very beginning.
Ordinary shinobi would've torn themselves apart within minutes in the process of trying.
But Ryusei could see every fiber of his being, every muscle, tendon, and chakra thread.
He could monitor his body like a living map.
He understood the principle perfectly: training was about tearing the body down and rebuilding it stronger.
His method simply removed the middleman.
No exercises, no repetition, no exhaustion.
His Thunder chakra did it all, automatically, precisely, continuously.
It targeted weak points, stimulated repair, and evolved him in real time.
Combined with his medical chakra control and healing factor, there were no limits.
His body never stopped refining itself.
"This really is the ultimate cheat for taijutsu," he thought with a small grin.
The stronger his body became, the more perfectly it adapted to his Gates.
He no longer needed conventional training at all.
It was enough to keep his Byakugan active internally, constantly monitoring and maintaining the vibrating Thunder layers circulating through him.
He raised his fist, and a glowing white sphere appeared around it, a compressed quake bubble, the condensed form of Thunder chakra.
It wasn't a wide-area blast but an instantaneous, focused strike, pure destruction concentrated into a single point.
The impact shattered a massive rock formation ahead like glass again.
Long-range quakes, short-range bursts, vibration-based defense, his new release covered it all.
Ryusei exhaled slowly, the air humming around him.
"Now this," he murmured, flexing his hand, "this is what I call power. Enough to protect myself."
He had the body pressure of boiling steam release, the weight manipulation techniques, the vibration armor of Thunder, the regenerative strength of medical ninjutsu, and the Gates, all working in perfect harmony.
His body now wasn't just durable; it was monstrous.
Durable beyond reason, fast beyond sight, strong beyond anything mortal.
"Maybe only Hashirama, in the prime time of his life, could come closest," he muttered, eyes narrowing.
"But even he didn't have this."
And he still wasn't finished.
He hadn't opened all Eight Gates yet.
He hadn't learned Sage Mode like Hashirama.
His biological age was still very young.
Those would come next.
When they did, he knew exactly what he'd become.
"Not human," he thought, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. "Something beyond that. At this rate, soon perhaps only the Ōtsutsuki beasts could rival me when it came to raw physique."
When Ryusei had first transmigrated nearly two years ago, he had never planned to become this kind of close-range monster, layered in power like a living matryoshka doll, each layer enhancing the next.
It wasn't deliberate; it had simply evolved that way over time.
Yet now, it had become his greatest strength, his defining edge.
This was what set him apart.
What let him look past even the strongest Kage, the peak of ordinary humanity, and step into the realm of demigods.
He couldn't help but feel proud.
From a hunted genin nearly cut down by a handful of ragtag mercenaries, he had become someone who could kill dozens of them with a single motion.
No, he corrected himself with a quiet laugh, he wouldn't even need to move.
A wave of his special 'killing intent', perhaps just a glance, would be enough to erase them.
Yet, even with his pride, Ryusei never grew complacent.
Pride was one thing, being satisfied or still was another.
He couldn't afford that.
Because deep down, he already knew the truth: his real, most powerful enemies weren't even in Konoha anymore.
They were far greater than that.
No, they were the true orchestrators of this world, past, present, and future.
Godlike beings, far beyond mortals.
The ones who shaped everything behind the scenes.
Figures like the Sage of Six Paths, and perhaps even nature itself, the Great Elder Toad, Gamamaru. Ryusei knew now that he had drawn their attention. He was in their crosshairs.
And during those three months of relative quiet, he had spent long nights thinking.
Revisiting everything he knew about this world.
Reanalyzing every piece of lore, every myth, every fragment of what he once thought he understood.
It made sense, didn't it?
Who would ever want an anomaly like him, a foreign soul, an outsider, to exist in their world?
From their perspective, he wasn't part of the story.
He was an infection.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized how obvious it was.
If you stripped away the narrative idealism, the hero worship, and looked at everything through the lens of logic, the "real world", then the most suspicious being in the entire history of this planet wasn't Black Zetsu.
It was Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki himself.
The Sage of Six Paths.
The so-called God of Shinobi.
The man whose story didn't add up the closer you looked.
Ryusei dug deeper into the inconsistencies, the contradictions that people had glossed over for centuries.
Hagoromo was half human, half Ōtsutsuki—more alien than divine.
Yet history portrayed him as some luminous deity. Why?
Why was he the only one so closely connected to the Pure Land?
Why could he casually revive souls from there, souls of the dead Kage, grant godlike powers to Naruto and Sasuke from another dimension, and linger so perfectly for millennia after his death, unlike Indra, Asura, or even his own twin brother Hamura?
What was Gamamaru's prophecy exactly?
After all, who could guarantee it was exactly what he said it was?
Who—or what—was Gamamaru himself?
Why did he even have the power to "foresee" events in the first place?
The more Ryusei thought about it, the more it painted a darker picture.
Maybe they weren't "evil" outright, but their motives were far from pure.
They acted like guardians, yet hid everything from humanity.
And secrecy, Ryusei knew, always bred suspicion.
If Hagoromo was truly omnipotent and wise, how could he fail so spectacularly with his own sons?
How could he be so naïve as to think giving humanity access to chakra—to power—would somehow make them better, not worse?
He had lived through human nature himself, seen it.
Humanity killed itself for millennia before chakra use ever existed.
Giving them greater power could only accelerate their destruction.
And then there was the question of Kaguya.
How did the entire world completely forget her, but remember Hagoromo himself?
They lived in the same era, after all—mother and son.
Was that a coincidence? Or by design?
Ryusei's thoughts darkened further.
Maybe Hagoromo erased her from history himself.
Why?
To make her revival easier later, perhaps?
After all, it would have been far more difficult if the world—and potential "Madaras" born in future generations—still remembered her.
Erasing her from history not only concealed her existence but also gave Hagoromo complete freedom to shape events without interference, from a blank slate, no competing narratives.
Then came the Gedo Mazo.
If Hagoromo truly wanted to prevent his mother's resurrection, why would he create the one object capable of perfectly ensuring it?
The very tool that made it possible to revive her?
That wasn't a mistake at this point.
That was a clear intent.
It became clearer to Ryusei with each thought.
Additionally, Ryusei didn't believe Hagoromo ever intended to help Kaguya return on its own.
No, he was most likely using her, manipulating her revival, as part of some deeper, far-reaching design of his own.
The Black Zetsu, the so-called ultimate schemer, was merely a puppet—another actor following Hagoromo's grander plan.
A plan so vast and long-reaching that even the events of Boruto might not have revealed it fully by the time Ryusei transmigrated here.
Maybe it was all even tied to some of Gamamaru's true prophecies and predictions—to some future the two of them had foreseen, best for the two of them, one they had been subtly shaping for millennia.
The more Ryusei studied it, the more the pieces fit.
The attempts on his life through Konoha's leadership, the timing, the methods, they bore the mark of an invisible hand guiding from above.
Hagoromo's hand.
This is when Ryusei realised it for the first time, three months ago.
Perhaps the Sage couldn't appear physically anymore, but his influence could still reach through the living.
Ryusei was very grateful for that limitation.
If Hagoromo had been able to appear in person back then, Ryusei might've already been erased.
He had been too blind to it before—never even considered that the "God of Shinobi" might be his real enemy, and trusting in the original lore too much.
But now he knew.
Even if he was still weaker, he could prepare. He could anticipate.
And for the first time, Ryusei smiled—not in pride, but in defiance.
"Good," he thought. "Then let the gods watch me. Let them try."