"Continue?" Orochimaru arched a brow, his yellow eyes glinting faintly.
Hiroki took a slow breath. Without glancing at the body on the floor, he walked to the next restrained subject.
"Go on," he said calmly.
Even as he spoke, his consciousness was already diving deep into the virtual desktop in his mind. He opened a new document:
[Analysis of Muscle Automation Experiment Failure]Subject: Root cause analysis of muscle_automated_growth_v0.1.batObjective: Identify causes of lethal system failure, form a corrective hypothesis, and design v0.2 to achieve controlled, non-lethal muscle enhancement in humans.
Step 1: Data review and root cause analysis.
Hiroki frowned slightly as his thoughts raced.
During the first experiment, he had reused the mouse version of the script—the one that had already stabilized after days of testing. Yet, within less than a minute of activating it on a human, the subject had died instantly.Even the first unstable test on mice hadn't been this bad. Those mice had survived a full week.
Something didn't add up.
The mouse trial was a success… so what changed?The difference between a human and a mouse was obvious—scale.
A mouse weighs roughly 500 grams.An adult human? About 70 kilograms.That's roughly 140 times larger—and therefore, a completely different scale of muscle and cellular mass.
That alone could easily explain why the script's effect wasn't just amplified—it was catastrophic.
Hiroki called up the source file for muscle_automated_growth_v0.1.bat in his mental desktop and began editing the code. The problem likely stemmed from resource overload due to body size differences.
The script's current command structure was global—it sent maximum-intensity growth requests to every muscle cell in the entire body simultaneously.
For a small mouse, that load was tolerable.For a human… it was like triggering a biological DDoS attack.
Each muscle fiber was spamming the "server" (the body's circulatory system) with overwhelming resource requests—mainly for calcium ions. But the human body has a finite calcium reserve. When every muscle cell demands it all at once, the system collapses.
Just like what had happened in the lab.
Hiroki mentally ran through the calculations.A human body contains around 28 kilograms of muscle—about 28,000 grams. If each gram requires 0.1 milligrams of calcium ions to activate growth, then the total instantaneous calcium demand during global execution would be 2,800 milligrams.
For a mouse, with 225 grams of muscle, the total demand would be only 22.5 milligrams.
On the surface, the ratio didn't seem massive—but the real issue was supply versus demand.
A mouse has about 32 milliliters of blood, with roughly 3.2 mg of available calcium ions—seven times less than what the process demanded. Still, the deficit was manageable. The mouse could adapt.
A human, on the other hand, has about 5 liters of blood, with only 500 mg of available calcium.When the script demanded 2,800 mg instantly, that was five times more than the body could possibly supply.
The result? Immediate calcium depletion, heart arrhythmia, lactic acidosis, and cellular collapse.A total system crash.
In short—the experiment hadn't just failed. It had overloaded the host's biological CPU.
That's the difference between an animal model and a human one.Magnitude matters.
Still, this was only a working theory. The exact calcium requirements were impossible to calculate without real data, and Konoha's science simply wasn't advanced enough for precise biochemistry.
Even so, Hiroki knew one thing: he needed to localize the code.
He deleted the global loop that affected the entire muscle group list and replaced it with a targeted input parameter—a single muscle group per execution.That alone should stabilize the process.
But he didn't stop there.
Even with a smaller target, full intensity might still be fatal.So Hiroki added a throttling control mechanism: a variable called growth_intensity_percent, with a conservative default value of just 5%.
He would use that variable to cap the total growth rate per unit time and measure how much the human body could safely tolerate.
Next, he implemented a real-time resource monitor—a module similar to his old CPU/memory tracker—to watch blood calcium levels, pH balance, and other vital data.
When any variable hit the danger threshold, the monitor would automatically reduce intensity or trigger an emergency shutdown.He even added a "cooldown cycle," turning continuous strain into periodic bursts to allow recovery.
Finally, the compiler window in his mind displayed a message:
[muscle_sustainable_growth_v0.2.bat — Compilation Complete]
Hiroki exhaled slowly, then placed his hand on the second subject. His eyes swept across the screen displaying the man's blood calcium, pH, and oxygen levels.
"Execute," he commanded.
The man's body trembled violently. The researchers watching the monitors immediately began calling out data.
"Blood calcium levels dropping—three percent so far, but much slower than before!""Lactate is stable. Heart rate elevated but within range. No arrhythmia detected.""Subject's vitals are holding steady!"
Someone turned to Hiroki, excitement breaking through their usual restraint."We might've done it!"
Hiroki's eyes narrowed. He took a slow breath, watching the graphs level out on the screen. Then he spoke quietly.
"Not yet," he said.