Chương 114: Reward.

"Demonstrate it." Danzo ordered as soon as he reached Haruto's desk. Several thoughts ran through Haruto's mind the moment those words were said.

'I need to show Danzo that I know nothing about Kakashi and Shikaku's plan for him.'

'Given Danzo's support for my research… isn't this demo going to end well anyways?'

'No… I still need to do my best or else I won't be able to ask him for the reward I want.'

'How could I make this presentation even better for him? What is he looking for?' Haruto used his Occlumency to remember everything about Danzo from the entire anime in the span of a few moments.

'Danzo's a methodical man…'

'He prefers results over means…'

'He probably didn't even hesitate when he heard that my research could uproot the jobs of several dozens of shinobi across the village…'

'He fully supported me and probably even improved my security to keep me well protected during this time.'

'So he's more bothered by the utility of my research rather than its social implications.'

'So I should present to him in a way that'll show off the ways that my research can be utilized to cut more costs, to cut more personnel, show him how in the future it could be improved to make more drastic cuts to the village's personnel so that he can pocket the funds to fund his pet project, the Hashirama Cells research.' Haruto closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath in after thinking so far and let it all out in a deep exhale.

"Yes Hokage-sama." Haruto complied and opened up the software and began explaining after pulling up a relatively new receipt on it, the one he'd previously wanted to use for his demonstration, it was a relatively clean receipt with minor stains on the paper which were scanned in.

"My research project Hokage-sama is a handwriting recogniser and document digitizer."

"As you can see, this is a receipt that would take a normal transcriber anywhere from five to ten minutes to digitize fully. Particularly the stains on this note would cause some confusion and cause the digitizer to spend a few minutes scratching their head." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"But with my software…" Haruto pressed the convert button skilfully, "It takes only a few seconds." And bam! The conversion was done within seconds since the receipt was one the software had seen while training.

"Hmm…" Danzo grunted softly, but Haruto wasn't done there. With a quick swipe of the mouse and a few clicks, he imported the twenty year old receipt that he'd gotten his hands on just before Danzo's arrival and demoed it instead.

"As you can see, this particular receipt is nearly twenty years old, and it was kindly donated to me by my precious colleagues. The receipt is faded and several letters would take even the most diligent of digitizers looking at the original receipt with a magnifying glass to make sense of and digitize, putting the minimum time of digitizing the receipt to about half an hour if not more… but now, with my software… you can do it in…" Haruto pressed the digitize button again.

And within seconds the result was in front of everyone. Danzo's lone eye widened slightly as he looked at the result.

"Obviously, not everything is perfect, as there is a tiny mistake in the date's conversion, but as you can clearly see, in the original receipt the three was written quite close to an eight which shows the reasonable error."

"Hmm…" Danzo nodded, "There will be some need of supervision but otherwise it should allow one person to be able to do the work of up to twenty or even thirty people in a day."

"Precisely Hokage-sama. I knew you would understand it well." Haruto praised Danzo sincerely. But that wasn't all that Haruto's Occlumency aided mind had planned for Danzo. Instead Haruto continued speaking softly, "Hokage-sama, but that is not all the benefits of this software… after all, given some more time there are enormous future applications to this."

"Like?" Danzo questioned, appearing puzzled, 'There was more?' None of his advisors about the matter had informed him of anything like it.

"Currrently the software already recognises handwriting, and to some extent it can detect various styles, which means that given enough time it can learn to detect forgeries. Imagine having a skilled forgery detector at your finger tips at all times. This will be a massive boost to the intelligence department." Danzo's lone visible eye truly widened this time as he looked at Haruto in a totally new light. Danzo remained silent for a while before nodding to one of the ROOT shinobi following him around.

The ROOT shinobi, who had a blank expression and was looking at Haruto with a look that screamed that he could not care less, stepped forward and handed Haruto a storage scroll.

"You've done a great service to the village." Danzo started, the wrinkles around his lone eye crinkling as he continued speaking, "In exchange you may keep the monetary compensation provided to you. Also, you can ask for one thing that you want from me." Danzo didn't say the rest but his gaze meant it. Haruto had to ask for something reasonable and not step the line, or there would be a price. Haruto nodded and forcing down his excitement calmly stated what he desired the most in this current situation.

"Hokage-sama, I would like Hiruko-san's research notes to study them in detail regarding the body modifications he did on his personal self." Danzo's lone eye widened for the third time during this visit. He looked at Haruto strenuously for a few seconds before he asked, "Why do you need them?" Haruto nodded and chose his words carefully, "Hokage-sama… as you know I have awakened the Scorch release Kekkei Genkai…

but given that I'm not from a clan my potential for utilizing the kekkei genkai to its fullest extent is very limited. As such I would like to turn to research that Hiruko-san did before me to improve his body to study it and in turn improve myself." Danzo gruffed before nodding, "So be it. My shinobi will hand over the scroll containing all the available information to you by tomorrow evening."

"Thank you Hokage-sama, I will be eternally grateful to you for this debt." With that Danzo slowly nodded while maintaining eye contact with Haruto, placed his hand on Haruto's shoulder and spoke seriously, "I expect great things from you in the future, do not let me down."

"I will not let you down Hokage-sama… I will make you take pride in my name." Haruto said polite words, but his emotionless tone made it seem like a sarcastic remark. Even still, Danzo nodded firmly before he turned around and left. Haruto kept standing till Danzo left the research and development department before collapsing into his chair the second he was gone, but he did so as softly and in an as controlled manner as possible that it seemed completely natural.

'Phew… that was a headache.'

'At least now I have the reward I wanted… my weapon to bait out Jigen… Hiruko's research…'

'I truly did not expect you to ask Danzo for the research Haruto… what a surprise…' Megumin said softly.