9 Progress II

After his first birthday, Dix kept the same schedule he always had before. Train, and work, and train some more, experiment with concepts and ideas he had about chakra, try and use his past knowledge and apply it to the chakra system and repeat. Time flew, from summer to winter the years passed by without anything notable happening, except Dix's rapid growth in skills.

By the time he turned 3 he was able to control his inner chakra pretty well. He tried to carve out new chakra channels in his body to imbue his organs with energy even more. It didn't really work out, it was mostly painful, and he had to concede, as he was afraid of any side-effects there could be... like death, or something even worse. He understood he has to be way more careful and choose the safe options, because he probably won't get other chances if he dies. Instead he tried dividing his focus on channeling chakra into his organs while doing his other tasks at the same time. This worked to an extent, but not perfectly. He was safe, but could also improve more. After a ton of work and more then a year of training he was able to do almost anything while his whole body, every single cell he had was drowning in chakra.

This was actually quite hard to manage, at the beginning it only lasted for a short while, because the chakra had to be controlled masterfully for it to not be wasted while it circulated. Also it was quite painful. Dix had to put up with the overwhelming amount of chakra he cultivated to actively reshape his body to accommodate even more chakra. Due to his relatively young age his body was still receptible to change. If he tried this at above the age of 14 or so he would definitely die.

Due to him constantly circulating, expending and regenerating his chakra it has been growing at a rapid rate for years. This means his chakra reserves and regeneration was closing onto a jonin's level. After a specific breakthrough at the age of around 3 and a half, his chakra regeneration rate overcame the maximum amount he was able to expend on keeping his organs enhanced, meaning he was able to keep them boosted passively.

The most important research he was conducting was boosting his mental capacity. By default enhancing the brain with chakra like any other organs made it work faster, have better memory and such. Basic upgrades, not much else. But that wasn't enough for him. He had to multitask many things at once, even if he is just sitting or doing some basic tasks or chores. His boosted brain could probably keep up with this, but he had to plan ahead for when he has to fight and strategise mid-combat.

He had three possibilities ahead of him. The first one is to ignite dormant parts of his brain with chakra and try to use those to bruteforce upgrading his brain's stats and hope it will make it easier to multitask. This had many problems, biggest of all he had no idea how to do it. The mysteries of the human brain was a hard nut to crack even for the scientists in his previous life. He was able to scan it somewhat with his inner vision, but that didn't give him much to work with either. He knew different parts of the brain had different functions like emotions, memory, handling facial expressions etc. This meant if he tried to activate his whole brain and every part of it at once, chances are his senses would be overloaded and his head would fry, or even worse.

The second option was he could try and carve extra pathways or break open the already existing ones towards his most important organs. Or maybe all of them. The 361 tenketsu points a person has all over their body are nodes to distribute chakra, but at the same time they are limiters. For some reason the body actively holds back chakra to not overexert itself.

With some research in his own body Dix could find and identify the Eight Gates throughout his body. These are bigger tenketsu points than the rest and are major distributors of energy. The practice of opening these are well-known in the ninja world, and are mostly used by ninjas specialized in taijutsu, as a last resort trump-card, because this technique leaves the user severely tired after it has ended. Higher stages of it can even cripple the user for a while. The last stage give the user the power to surpass the Five Kages, but also kills them in the process, so its only mildly useful.

Dix remembers that in the anime when characters opened some of the Eight Gates their bodies started to rapidly expel energy outwards, resulting in most of it being lost. This is probably the reason this technique leaves the user in a bad shape. If he was somehow able to suppress the energy leakage while the Gates are open that would mean he is able to overcome the limitations his body has on itself while also not tiring himself out in the process. The problem was finding out how.

He already a few ideas on how to handle this, most notable is writing seals. For now he had shallow knowledge of them, but what he had seen before was that they are able to store and/or execute some kind of mechanism or program, mostly simple instructions, that is put into them. Example of this is the seal he had on his stomach that kept Kurama locked up or Minato's kunais that were able to summon him, which was the 'Flying Thunder God' technique. If Dix were able to learn the know-how of writing seals and researched some more, he would be able to tattoo his body full of seals that force his chakra to stay inside his body while the Eight Gates are opened. This hopefully would take care of the crippling side effects. Also, if he is able to to do this as fast as possible, while his body is still young, his body may be able to get used to the exertion caused by some of the gates, thus he could keep them permanently open, and as a consequence, take most of the mental load off of Dix's shoulder.

The third option is also connected to the aforementioned seals. If he was able to miniaturize the seals then he could be able to make small circuits, that are as long as powered, could act as automatic management units for his menial tasks that require constant focus. He actually could see in the far far future that he's able to create modern cyber-punk kind of augmentations for his body, like a Heads Up Display, or a small processor as a second brain.

For now he wanted to focus on only one of these, but he realized, to be a really great ninja, he has to work out all of these options in the future and combine them to maximize efficiency.

By the time he turned 4 he had realized he missed something crucial. The nature of chakra is built up of two things: mental and physical energy. His mental energy was soaring due to his unique way of handling his chakra, while his physical energy had barely grown. This was a huge problem, as he soon hit a hard bottleneck because his body couldn't keep up with the amount of chakra he had. Even though he regularly exercised and his every fiber was imbued with chakra he still had a limit. Thus he decided to exchange his daily meditation with extra workouts and upgrade his regimen.

Even though he was only 4, he was still allowed to go anywhere. Actually its more like nobody stopped him. When he first asked if he could leave the premises of the orphanage the caretaker just said something, like 'Yes, of course.. just.. just go!'.

Thus, he just simply left the facility in the morning to go to the forest nearby. There he started his great workout. ONE HUNDRED SIT-UPS, ONE HUNDRED PUSH-UPS, THEN A TEN KILOMETER RUN... AND ONE HUNDRED SQUATS!

Yes, that is an old running joke in the circles he was moving in his past life. Everyone knew its not quite the brutal training, so he decided to do it three times a day, with little breaks of meditation or eating between them. He also decided he should practice 3 dimensional movement, so he started practicing the famous tree climbing exercise. Even though he had great inner chakra control, most of what he did was move it around with just remotely precise amounts. What he needed to actually master it was to be as precise at controlling the amount and placement of his chakra as possible. The tree exercise was the best for this.

What he had to do is climb any random tree he could find without using his hands. The way to do this is the point of the practice. Dix had to use just enough chakra to stick to the side of the tree with his feet, without using too much and breaking its surface. The first time he tried to climb, when he put his charged feet at the tree it immediately broke the outer surface and looked like a car crashed into it. He realized he had so much chakra it was severely abnormal and he had another secret he had to keep. Adjusting a bit, actually tuning the charge waaay down, he tried again and now it didn't stick to the tree enough. So he pushed it up a bit, which also resulted in a fail. This way he kept on adjusting and practicing for hours with occasional breaks.

In the afternoon, when it started to get dark he gathered his bearings and made his way back to the village. He had to get home, because there was a curfew in the orphanage, not like they would enforce it on him, and the village gates get closed at a specific time at sunset, which was the actual problem. When he approached the checkpoint at the huge village gates the guarding ninjas kept staring at him without pause. He just did a mental shrug, dropped an 'idiots' in his mind without speaking out loud and kept on walking. Nobody asked him who he is, nobody stopped him to ask what a 4 year old was doing outside the village alone. They just stood aside and he continued on.

The greatest tragedy of Naruto's life was Dix's greatest relief.

Nobody cared what he is doing.

Everyone stood out of his way, even on the streets. Everyone knew who he is.

He could do whatever he wants, and was even financially covered to do so.

Naruto was a hurt and stupid kid that only used this freedom to play tricks on the villagers and vandalize. Dix will do something else. He is going to acquire everything he strives for, and there will be no one this time to stop him.