"Squeak—"
That short, sharp cry marked the end of the "Pointy-Headed Rat's" life.
Damn it. Even if the Pointy-Headed Rat didn't have a pointy head, it still couldn't escape its fate of ascending to the great Steroid Planet—or maybe the Peptide Planet!
Hiroki frowned at the creature's body.
The muscular rat that had been sprinting endlessly on the wheel just moments ago now lay stiff and silent, limbs frozen mid-motion.
Almost immediately, Hiroki reached out with his consciousness.
[Attempting to connect to target "Big_Rat_01"...]
[Error: Target device not found.]
"Not found…?"
A faint chill ran through him.
It was the first time he'd ever seen that message.
So—this was what "shutdown" meant on a biological level.
Death.
Did death mean being powered off?
If so, what would that mean for him? If his system shut down—if his battery ran out—would he be dead too?
That was… very bad news.
Worse still, with the rat dead, he couldn't access its system logs to trace the crash point. Code-level debugging was impossible now. He'd have to rely on the oldest method of all—manual inspection.
He needed an autopsy.
Hiroki put on gloves, his expression calm and detached. He didn't have a scalpel, but a ninja's toolkit included something even sharper.
He pulled out a kunai, disinfected it carefully with alcohol, and under precise control, cut cleanly through the rat's abdomen.
The sharp scent of blood and decay filled the air, but Hiroki didn't even flinch.
What he saw confirmed his suspicion.
The muscles were abnormally developed—thick, dense, and flushed a healthy deep red. His script had worked perfectly on that front.
But the kidneys… the kidneys were a disaster. Swollen nearly twice normal size, blackened and soft as rotten tofu.
When Hiroki prodded them with the kunai tip, they collapsed instantly.
"It really is acute renal failure."
He matched what he saw with the knowledge in his mind.
Rapid muscle synthesis produces huge amounts of metabolic waste—urea, nitrogen, creatinine.
His script, [Muscle_Automated_Growth v0.1.bat], had forced continuous high-intensity protein synthesis and breakdown, twenty-four hours a day. The kidneys—the system's waste filters—had been pushed past their limits until they failed completely.
Unable to filter toxins, the body drowned in its own waste, leading to total system collapse.
"So it's just a balancing issue," Hiroki murmured, opening a new experiment log. "The other systems weren't factored into the formula. A bug in the parameters."
He paused, then smiled wryly.
"Good thing I didn't test it on myself."
If he'd been a little more reckless, he might've died instantly.
He jotted a quick adjustment note. The muscle growth multiplier needed to be drastically lowered—maybe not even ten percent of the current rate. Five percent, or even one percent, would be enough.
If he could grow 100 grams of muscle a day, that was 700 grams a week, nearly three kilograms a month, thirty-six kilograms in a year—about his entire current body weight.
Hiroki exhaled slowly. Next step—he needed more test subjects.
More rats.
Meanwhile, deep beneath Konoha, inside the Root base—
Orochimaru returned to his laboratory, the air thick with the familiar scent of formaldehyde.
Danzo's report still echoed in his mind.
That child—the one with the strange bloodline limit.
To be honest, Orochimaru had never thought much of the Sharingan. "Copy ninjutsu" was an overrated trick. Most techniques it mimicked were basic or useless in true combat. The legendary jutsu—the kind that decided wars—were never seen twice, much less copied.
Flying Thunder God. Spirit Transformation. Impure World Reincarnation. Those couldn't be replicated by mere observation.
But copying through memories—that was different.
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed, a glint of serpentine curiosity flickering within.
He'd played it cool in front of Danzo, but this bloodline… this could be the key to his ultimate goal.
To learn every jutsu in existence.
He sat at his desk and sifted through files, accessing the data easily with his dual authority in both the Anbu and Root.
Kushina's record was mostly unremarkable—just another Uzumaki orphan, listed as a future Jinchūriki candidate.
Hiroki's file, however, was strange.
Nine years of utter normalcy—then, after the Kumogakure kidnapping incident, everything changed.
It was like reading about a different person altogether.
"Bloodline awakening?" Orochimaru muttered. His golden eyes narrowed further.
Root's intelligence only covered Hiroki's daily life, not his awakening or genetic background. That wasn't their concern. Root handled traitors, not children.
If anyone knew more, it would be him—the Hokage.
The old man.
Orochimaru stood and walked out of the lab, his expression unreadable.
He was going to the Hokage's office.
He needed to know everything about this "disciple."
And if that boy couldn't serve his purpose…
Orochimaru's lips curled slightly.
Then maybe separating his bloodline from his body would be worth the experiment.