Half an hour later, the second round of training wrapped up.
Inside the volcano, Seimei paused his practice of the Limit of the Body technique. With a flicker of thought, he activated the Heart Connection Technique, re-establishing a link with the shadow clones outside, who were busy absorbing natural energy.
This time, after checking their progress, he decided to dispel eight of them. Instantly, over 30,000 points of chakra, mixed with more than 300 points of natural energy, surged back into his body.
As usual, Seimei first funneled the natural energy into the special space in his abdomen. Then, he quickly sorted through the memories of the eight shadow clones, absorbing and processing their training experiences from the past two hours, converting them into skill proficiency.
But when he checked his status panel, he noticed something odd—the proficiency gained was less than he'd expected, even though these clones had trained for an extra half hour.
At first, Seimei was puzzled. But it didn't take long for him to figure out why.
It was simple, really. These eight shadow clones were created when his Natural Energy Perception and Natural Energy Control skills were still at Level 1. Now that both skills had reached Level 2, the proficiency they could contribute was naturally lower. Their starting point was just too low, wasn't it?
Seimei could already foresee that as his skills continued to improve, the older shadow clones would yield even less proficiency. But he wasn't too bothered by it. Why? Because this was only temporary. As long as he kept cycling through this process, the issue would resolve itself once the proficiency needed for each level-up became harder to achieve.
For now, he was just grateful that the early levels of each skill were relatively easy to climb. Otherwise, his progress wouldn't have been nearly as noticeable.
With that in mind, Seimei split off a portion of his chakra and sent it into the abdominal space, where it mixed with the natural energy to create over 300 points of sage chakra. He then drew this sage chakra out and used it to enhance his body.
Soon, the sage chakra was fully consumed.
Wasting no time, Seimei used the Flying Thunder God Technique to teleport back to the surface. He glanced at the shadow clones—both on the island and beyond—who were working on developing the Dust Release. Without hesitation, he canceled the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique.
In an instant, the clones dissolved into chakra, carrying an hour's worth of training experience and memories back to him. Seimei closed his eyes, carefully sorting through the memories and absorbing their training insights.
About fifteen minutes later, he opened his eyes again. It was already 5:00 p.m.
According to his usual schedule, he should've finished his Limit of the Body training by now and moved on to practicing the Wood Clone Technique to boost its proficiency. That would take four hours, followed by two hours of the Heart Reflection Technique to stimulate the evolution of his Sharingan. By the time everything was done, it'd be around 11 or 12 at night, and he could finally rest.
But today? Things were off. Because he'd spent the morning and part of the afternoon getting started with Natural Energy Perception and Natural Energy Control, he'd only completed two rounds of Limit of the Body training—far short of his planned sessions.
In other words, his training schedule was incomplete.
So, Seimei started weighing his options. Should he keep going with Limit of the Body? If he did, it would definitely cut into his time for the Heart Reflection Technique and Wood Clone Technique. But if he didn't, his physical enhancement would fall behind, and that was something he didn't want.
After some thought, he made his decision: he'd stick with Limit of the Body for now. The Heart Reflection Technique and Wood Clone Technique? They could wait for today.
Why make that call? Two reasons. First, skipping one or the other was only a half-day delay—nothing major, so he could just go with what felt right. Second, right now, boosting his Physique attribute was more urgent than his Mental attribute.
Decision made, Seimei didn't waste another second. He cast the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique and kicked off a new round of training.
Six hours flew by in a flash.
During that time, Seimei kept up the same rhythm as the first two hours, constantly creating and dispelling shadow clones. While training Limit of the Body, he also worked on improving his Natural Energy Perception and Natural Energy Control proficiency.
By the time he stopped for the night, both skills had reached Level 3, undergoing a small but significant qualitative leap. He could now control over 2,000 points of natural energy—a big step forward.
On top of that, after an afternoon and evening of training, Seimei had calculated the chakra loss from using 100 shadow clones to absorb natural energy. It came out to about 300,000 points per day. Of course, that was just the initial cost. As his skill levels increased and he could handle more natural energy, he'd need to dispel clones more frequently, which would drive up the loss. He estimated it would eventually stabilize around 500,000 points.
But that 500,000-point cost? Totally worth it. Why? Because it came with a massive boost to his physical enhancement efficiency.
How did he know it was a massive boost? Simple. After Natural Energy Control hit Level 3, he'd tested using sage chakra for Limit of the Body training. Compared to regular chakra or even Yang Release chakra, sage chakra was noticeably more effective at strengthening his body.
Seimei figured that once he could use sage chakra for full-day training, his efficiency would at least double. That's right—double! At that rate, he wouldn't need five months to transform his body. Two and a half months would be enough for a complete overhaul.
By then, his Physique attribute would spike, bringing his mental and physical stats back into better balance.
Speaking of balance… before heading to bed that night, Seimei used the Sealed Heart, Locked Soul: Contract Instant Movement Seal to temporarily seal part of his mental energy. This way, his mind wouldn't overwhelm his body while he slept.
With that done, he could finally catch a good night's sleep and relax a bit.
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