Chương 122: Progress.

Haruto left his house the next morning with a sigh since he had to return to his usual routine from today. He visited Kakashi and Naruto in Training ground seven and greeted them officially for the day before moving ahead to the Interrogation and Torture department for his daily training routine with Daichi. Daichi looked at Haruto and nodded softly before they continued to study the scabbing jutsu in more depth and detail by working on increasingly more and more complicated procedures.

Daichi was getting more and more stringent with the requirements of Haruto's work now, for example, today they worked on two things, Daichi cut up the guts of a prisoner and forced Haruto to put the messy shredded flesh back together like a jigsaw puzzle, all without there being any apparent blood clotting marks on the organs once their bleeding was forcibly clamped shut using the Scabbing jutsu. And they also worked on applying the scabbing jutsu to the eyeballs. It was terribly hard and extremely delicate.

But leaning on Unohana's magnificent knowledge bank and his recently added Kage level chakra control skill, Haruto managed somehow. Eventually it was the end of the day and Haruto was allowed to go back home. But Haruto decided to ask Daichi one last question before leaving.

"Daichi-san… when will you be teaching me about transplantations and avoiding rejections?" Daichi looked at Haruto with a slightly confused gaze as he asked Haruto a blunt question, "What? Are you deciding to start an illegal hospital in the village?" Haruto chortled before he controlled himself and spoke hurriedly, "No! By Hokage-sama's grace I would never do such a thing! I was simply interested in them, that's all!"

"Interested in them? Why?" Daichi interrogated. Haruto shrugged and calmly blamed Danzo, "I heard in the Research and Development department that some of the researchers there were moved to a more secretive and important project to the village that involved transplants. I just wanted to see if I could contribute more to the village." Daichi's eyes widened. He immediately lowered his voice and spoke in a harsh tone.

"Don't talk about that so casually. It's much above your pay grade. Leave it alone." Haruto felt a shiver travel up his spine because of Daichi's tone but then he nodded calmly as if he wasn't afraid of Daichi doing something stupid like knocking him out and locking him up in the prisons. With that done for the day, Haruto went back to Training Ground Seven.

He trained there in his new jutsu for a while and surprisingly his kage level chakra control still wouldn't let him complete the jutsu for some reason since he was still unable to pierce through the skin of the balloon easily. He felt he was nearly there but was missing something crucial, a trick perhaps. Before switching to training the third stage of chakra control, separating gravel from sand and pretending to fail a bunch while fooling around like he did with water release.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Only, this time he wasn't getting wet continuously and swallowing gulps of unhealthy and unclean pool water. So it sufficed to say, Haruto was really enjoying training the third step of chakra control. After training until sunset when Kakashi and Naruto disbanded, Haruto took his leave and reached home. As soon as Haruto sat down to eat his daily dose of ramen today a short knock on his door alerted him.

And for some reason he felt it was-'Tsunade? Has she come here to read my mind?'

'No… she probably wouldn't knock the door if that were the case.' Haruto got up and opened the door softly before finding himself staring at a ROOT shinobi holding a storage scroll.

"Good evening… what may I do for Hokage-sama?" Haruto asked softly. The ROOT shinobi simply nodded and tossed the scroll at Haruto for him to grab it before speaking blandly, "Learn the contents of the scroll as soon as possible and Hokage-sama will see to it that you're assigned to a top secret project that is bound to help the village a lot and push it to the forefront of the five great shinobi nations." Haruto's almost eyes widened slightly.

'What a coincidence… I was talking about it with Daichi a few hours ago and now I'm a candidate for the project? How terribly convenient.'

'Did they hear my conversation with Daichi?'

'No… that can't have been the case, the I. T department's prison cells and corridors are quite narrow. I would've noticed them had they been anywhere near me at that point.'

'Then… what was it?' Haruto asked himself only for a recent memory to strike his mind, 'Oh! Could it be Hiruko's research?' Haruto nodded and spoke coldly, "I will see to it that it is done as efficiently as possible." The ROOT agent nodded and turned around and left with the body flicker jutsu. Haruto meanwhile simply turned around and closed his door after entering the house before excitedly going into his dining room and opening the storage scroll while placing it onto the dining table.

A bunch of smaller scrolls popped up in a soft white cloud of waste chakra causing Haruto to become instantly excited. He looked at the scrolls closer and noticed that they were numbered from one through to three.

'Is it supposed to be for me to learn the contents in this order? Or is it just a categorical separation?' Regardless of the intent, Haruto quickly unfurled the scroll labeled one.

"Hmm…?" Haruto went through the scroll and found himself staring at a scroll filled to the brim with several anatomical diagrams and medical jutsus, there were about eleven different jutsus. In order they were as follows- Poison Extraction Jutsu, Scabbing Jutsu, Suture jutsu, Chakra scalpel jutsu, Injection jutsu, Muscle shock jutsu, Nerve shock jutsu, Nerve rewiring jutsu, Cell Division Jutsu, Tissue shaping jutsu, and finally the all powerful Mystic Palm Jutsu.

Two of the eleven Haruto already knew, poison extraction and scabbing jutsu. He had to learn the rest of the nine. There was also one that had already piqued Haruto's interest and no it was not the Mystic Palm Jutsu, it was the injection jutsu.

'If I can combine that with my current injection explosion jutsu it should probably make it much easier to do.' Haruto then quickly opened the scrolls marked two and three as well. The second scroll contained several mechanical diagrams and had to do with puppets, while the third scroll was something Haruto intimately recognised, it was Hiruko's work on the soul.

'It's a lot more crude than I expected… Unohana's soul knowledge is far more in depth than all this nonsense that Hiruko has done…' Haruto was about to chuck away the third scroll for nonsense, slightly disappointed that he eventually didn't get his hands on Hiruko's body modification research, however at the last second just as he was about to close the scroll and toss it back into the storage scroll, leaving it untouched, Haruto spotted something in the margins that gave him a surprise.

'What if the boundaries of a soul are loosened so that it is easier to dissolve two souls together?' The words were simple but contained an exciting revelation for Haruto. Each soul had a soul boundary within which was something known as soul energy, the energy that made you, you. This soul energy was the content of the soul while the boundary acted as a film that kept the content secure.

If Hiruko was researching dissolving soul boundaries and dissolving souls together, perhaps this was the method he was abusing to absorb kekkei genkai?

'Perhaps Kekkei genkai also have an imprint on the soul as well as the body, so when Hiruko absorbed the soul as well as the body using the chimera jutsu he gained the abilities of the other person?' Haruto was excited to have a direction in this regard since this meant he could now use this knowledge to bait out Jigen and have him fight against Madara.

'I should still add a little bit to this knowledge so that Jigen feels it's substantial enough to act for me. If not he'll just probably kill me.'