Naruto: My Progress in Konoha.

After briefly reviewing his recent gains, Uchiha Haruki didn't linger. He swiftly erased all traces of his presence in the area and headed toward the cliffs above Flying Stone Ravine.

Activating his Sharingan, he scanned the surroundings. Confirming that no one had been attracted by the earlier commotion, he quickly returned to the Konoha outpost in the Valley Village.

By this time, it was already late at night.

Under the moonlight, Haruki moved like a ghost. With practiced ease, he slipped past the Iwagakure perimeter surveillance and the internal Konoha patrols, quietly returning to his cabin.

Inside the cabin.

Haruki cleaned up and, without doing anything else, lay down on his bed. Within seconds, his quiet snoring filled the room.

Clearly, he had fallen fast asleep.

Over the past month or two, he had been utterly exhausted. Severely sleep-deprived, his days had been filled with nothing but training and battle, leaving him with almost no time to rest.

But now, things were different. After unlocking the Mangekyō Sharingan, his strength had soared to Kage-level. With real self-preservation ability at last, he could finally afford a proper rest.

And so, over the next three days, Haruki didn't train at all. He gave himself some well-deserved relaxation.

Of course, that didn't mean he did nothing. The newly awakened Mangekyō Sharingan still required a period of adjustment.

He used this time to thoroughly explore and understand the changes that came with it.

For instance, the mere four-point boost in his Spirit attribute from awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan significantly enhanced his Genjutsu power.

Now, even if facing a seasoned Jonin like Karino again, Haruki was confident he could temporarily restrain them with just a swift cast of Genjutsu: Sharingan, even while using only his three-tomoe Sharingan—rather than being easily broken out of it like before.

And with the Mangekyō active? Unless the target managed to completely evade it, they'd have almost no chance of escaping.

In other words, he now had a new trump card.

And a subtle one, at that.

Imagine an opponent thinking they had already figured out his limits and prepared counters for all his known moves—including his three-tomoe Sharingan—only for Haruki to suddenly unveil his Mangekyō.

They wouldn't even have time to react.

Not to mention the divine force known as Susanoo. Even in its basic form, both its offensive and defensive capabilities were not to be underestimated.

And if that still wasn't enough? He had Amatsu-no-Mikoto—a ten-second invincibility window that let him do almost anything.

In short, he had no reason to lose to any Jonin now.

However, since both of his ocular abilities were non-offensive, his conventional combat techniques still needed improvement.

With that in mind, Haruki began allocating his chakra reserves.

Now capable of recovering 85,000 chakra points per day, Haruki decided to allocate 36,000 of those to physical enhancement—specifically through repeated use of Mystical Palm Technique.

Each use of that jutsu cost about 150 chakra points, which meant 36,000 would allow for 240 uses.

At a pace of one use every three minutes, that totaled roughly 12 hours of training.

Next, he set aside 30,000 chakra points to further develop his Mangekyō Sharingan, increasing the growth of Amatsu-no-Mikoto, Hito-no-Mikoto, and Susanoo.

The method?

Naturally, through the continued training of Yōshin no Jutsu.

Currently, his Chakra Control skill was at Lv5 (1450/5000), reducing chakra consumption by 26.5%.

So, each use of Yōshin no Jutsu now cost about 155–160 chakra points, allowing for approximately 192 repetitions with 30,000 chakra.

That training would take about 3 hours.

12 + 3 = 15 hours.

Just those two training regimens already accounted for 15 hours of his day.

From this, it was obvious: with his chakra reserves continuously expanding, chakra was no longer his bottleneck—time had become his biggest limitation.

More critically, neither Mystical Palm Technique for body enhancement nor Yōshin no Jutsu for Mangekyō development could be offloaded to Shadow Clones.

In other words, he couldn't use clones to lighten the load.

That made time extremely valuable to him.

The only upside was that several of his other techniques could still be trained via clones, which would pass on their experience upon dispelling.

While that would burn extra chakra and reduce efficiency, for someone in Haruki's time-strapped position, it was the best solution available.

So he planned to allocate his remaining 19,000 chakra points for clone training.

As for which techniques to practice?

Since his non-offensive ocular powers needed to be balanced out by lethal jutsu, his focus would be on:

Wind Release: Wind Blade – a solid elemental ninjutsu worth upgrading.

Rasengan – the foundation of his development of the S-rank forbidden technique: Wind Release: Rasenshuriken.

Other skills?

He'd invest in them only if additional chakra became available. If not, they would have to wait.

With the chakra allocation finalized, Haruki began his regimen.

But unlike before, when he mindlessly repeated techniques, this time his approach had evolved.

Whether he was using Mystical Palm to enhance his body or training Yōshin no Jutsu to evolve the Mangekyō, every ten repetitions or so, he would activate his Mangekyō Sharingan and use Hito-no-Mikoto to guide his body's evolution.

Although his current ocular power was still relatively weak and couldn't achieve highly refined manipulation, Hito-no-Mikoto naturally responded to his intent.

Even without visible changes, it was subtly reshaping his body to evolve in the direction Haruki envisioned.

Thus, integrating Hito-no-Mikoto into his regimen was essential.

The only precaution?

He had to limit its duration.

Frequent use placed tremendous strain on his right eye.

To avoid irreversible damage before he could upgrade his Physique attribute and lessen the burden, he needed to manage the rhythm of his training carefully.

By the end of the day, Haruki had a decent estimate of how long it would take to increase his Physique from 14 to 15.

At his current pace, it would take about 20 days to build up the necessary foundation for a qualitative transformation.

That was roughly a third faster than it had taken to go from 13 to 14.

Technically, going from 14 to 15 should have taken longer—but here, it didn't.

There was only one reason:

The guiding effect of Hito-no-Mikoto allowed him to bypass countless detours, saving enormous time.

And with its power continuing to grow, the efficiency would only improve.

It was entirely possible that going from 15 to 16 would take even less time.

Such thoughts flickered through his mind as Haruki calmed himself and resumed training.

And so, day by day, time passed…