While Sasuke was grinding away at his training, Hanabi was grinding equally hard at hers.
During the periods of strategic adjustment, Hanabi's coursework hadn't fallen behind either. Three weeks in, she'd already completed sixty class hours.
This time, the exam was for the "Junior" level.
After passing, Hanabi—or rather, Mana Ouma—would officially be a third-year student.
While she couldn't use Shadow Clones in this world, she could use them for review immediately after each lesson was over. What normally required long after-class consolidation could be compressed down to fifteen minutes or so, letting her barrel through course hours at breakneck speed.
If not for the fact that she also needed to squeeze in Barrier Ninjutsu and Space-Time Ninjutsu lessons from Jiraiya, her progress would've been even faster.
Learning makes me happy.
For this past half-month-plus, as long as she didn't use Close-Up Shot Cards, there'd be essentially no "training footage" for the audience to see.
Because everything worth showing had already been shown.
Hanabi was seizing this "dead zone" to improve herself as aggressively as possible.
[Instructor is grading the exam]
[Academic assessment in progress]
[Congratulations—you have passed the test]
[Mendel University has issued a new semester scholarship: 30 class hours]
"Very good."
After passing, Hanabi returned once more to Mendel University in the SEED world, once more transforming into that relentless "study machine"—Mana Ouma.
"Good morning, Mana."
When she entered the classroom, Via and Ulen were already there, and they spotted her immediately.
"Good morning~" A bright smile spread across Mana Ouma's face.
This woman…
Ulen Hibiki took a seat nearby.
The woman called Mana Ouma was strange.
Supposedly, she was a Natural—yet she possessed an extraordinarily beautiful appearance, which had become something of a talking point around campus.
She was also remarkably personable. No matter what anyone said, she always met it with a smile.
But this student was equally mysterious.
Rumor had it she only ever showed up for the biology lectures.
That in itself wasn't unusual—"Mendel" was practically synonymous with biology, after all.
The problem was that she never appeared anywhere outside of class hours.
Once she returned to her dormitory after lectures, she simply never surfaced again—not in the cafeteria, not anywhere.
If anything, that mysteriousness only made her seem even more mysterious.
But what concerned Ulen wasn't that. It was her learning ability.
Two years ago, she'd been a complete blank slate—no different from any other clueless freshman. But her bizarre manner of speaking had been unsettling.
Two years later, though, she seemed no different from an ordinary person from Earth. Her smiles were more natural, her speech no longer peppered with phrases like "you humans."
As if a case of chuunibyou had been cured.
But Ulen suspected that wasn't it.
Her behavior felt more like a simulacrum gradually learning to become more human.
—Of course, Ulen had no way of knowing that this was simply the self-cultivation of a consummate actress.
Setting aside her social graces, what astonished Ulen even more was her academic progress.
During the first year's monthly assessments, she'd started out in the lower-middle range—but by the end of the semester, she was at the top of the class.
From the second year onward, she'd practically monopolized the top rank in the department.
And somewhere along the way, Ulen's girlfriend Via had become friends with her.
"What are you writing?"
There was still some time before class. Mana Ouma—Hanabi in disguise—was writing something on paper.
This was another thing Ulen found peculiar.
The woman rarely used modern technology. Even her academic papers and reports were all done on paper.
"A method of constructing mechanical life based on carbon-based engineering." Hanabi said.
"What does that have to do with biology?"
Mechanical life counted as biology…?
Even if it did, wouldn't that fall under information technology?
"Carbon-based?" Ulen caught the key word.
"Yes. Carbon-based machines. Or to put it another way—an organic mechanical body. Machines are constructs built on principles of mechanics. If metal can be used to make machines, why can't carbon-based structures do the same?"
This wasn't Hanabi making things up.
The demand for this actually existed in the Naruto world.
—Hashirama's Cells.
Hashirama's Cells were practically omnipotent. Down the line, they'd even be used to manufacture prosthetic limbs and the like.
In a sense, they were even more useful than Touko's puppet technology.
"So it's really genetic engineering?" Ulen guessed.
"That's a bit narrow." "Mana" handed her paper over to Ulen directly.
After reading through the literature review at the beginning, Ulen understood the general idea.
"I see—so while the structure is that of carbon-based organisms, at the cellular level, each cell is treated as something akin to a nanomachine. Then you assemble them one by one to build an entirely 'carbon-based' artificial human."
This was a technique for creating artificial humans, but it was entirely different from cloning, genetic modification, or even Coordinator technology.
It was something altogether unique.
"Like a bio-android?" Via asked.
"No—it can't even be called a bio-android. It's a robot. Just one built from cells instead of metal. Why would you have an idea like this? Are you confident you can actually make something like that?"
The concept had never even crossed Ulen's mind.
"Coordinators possess abilities that ordinary people don't, but no matter how precisely they're adjusted, the results always deviate from the intended design." Mana Ouma said. "If that's the case, why not build an entirely new body from scratch?"
"But is that really possible?"
Ulen felt the idea bordered on fantasy.
"Maybe some places have already succeeded?"
Mana Ouma wasn't lying.
Because Hashirama's Cells could, in fact, do exactly this.
Though Hashirama's Cells were still biological organisms in the end.
If possible, you could even take it a step further beyond that.
Yes—just like the carbon-based mechanical BETA in the Muv-Luv series.
"Any form, any ability—wouldn't that be the ultimate perfection?" Mana Ouma said.
"Then would something like that even count as human?" Ulen felt uneasy.
People generally acknowledged Coordinators as human. Some Coordinators even claimed to be the next stage of humanity, or something along those lines.
Of course, that was just a label.
In reality, they were still human.
"If necessary, this kind of organic machine could also be designed to have no reproductive barrier with existing humans." Mana Ouma continued. "And besides—who says the definition of 'human' has to be limited to carbon-based life? A consciousness alive in a quantum state could be human. A consciousness residing in a metal machine could be human. Even something you've created—as long as it possesses its own will, it could be human."
"That's quite a generous definition of humanity you have." Via was wide-eyed.
"I just think you're all a bit too narrow sometimes. Still in the cradle, yet you never stop fighting."
In short—just do what feels good and call it a day.
Set a fire and run. Hone the acting chops along the way. Wonderful.
After finishing the first lesson of her third semester, Hanabi left this world once more.
And the moment she exited the Training World, a new message awaited her:
[Foreign Market expansion complete]