Naruto: My Progress in Konoha.

Inside the Iwakuma Cavern,

Uchiha Haruki withdrew his hand from the last of the Iwa-nin and quietly nodded to himself, sensing the surge of chakra newly added to his reserves.

After a round of testing, he had finally estimated how much chakra his six captives could supply per day.

The Kirigakure ANBU could yield 12,000 chakra daily when thoroughly drained.

The three Kumo-nin averaged 7,000 each.

The two Iwa-nin provided about 6,000 apiece.

Adding in Haruki's own natural daily recovery of 17,000 chakra, that brought his total daily available chakra to 62,000.

In other words, even if he did nothing else, it would take fewer than eight days to grind his "Mind Reflection Technique" from Level 6 to Level 7.

And if he managed to capture more prisoners in the next few days, that time could shrink even further.

That's exactly why Haruki was so confident about reaching Level 7 in a short span.

Once that happened, the boost it gave to his Sharingan's development would significantly increase.

At that level, even casting the jutsu once might raise his Sharingan's evolution level by a point.

That, in turn, would drastically speed up the progression of his ocular power.

Of course, that was all speculation for now.

Even before hitting Level 7, simply training the technique was already pushing his Sharingan steadily toward the next stage.

And the more the Sharingan evolved, the stronger its ocular power became—enhancing both its inherent abilities and the genjutsu it could cast.

So even though Haruki had paused training in other techniques, his strength continued to steadily grow.

"Haaaah…"

He exhaled deeply, clearing his mind of unnecessary thoughts.

He set two shadow clones to stand guard nearby—

one to monitor the main battlefield between the Kumo and Iwa forces,

the other to scout for new "prey."

As for Haruki himself, he sat down and entered training mode.

The "Mind Reflection Technique" was cast again and again.

Each repetition brought fresh insights—

and nudged his Sharingan ever closer to the Mangekyō stage.

Just like that, three days passed in the blink of an eye.

During this time, Haruki had taken action twice, capturing an additional three Kumo-nin and five Iwa-nin.

However, two of the Iwa-nin were only genin.

Even when pushed to the limit, they could only produce 2,500 and 3,000 chakra, respectively.

As for the other six captives, they were chūnin like before—each capable of supplying 6,000 chakra daily.

With that, Haruki's available chakra rose from 62,000 to 103,500 per day.

Unfortunately, because these captives hadn't been caught earlier, a fair amount of time had already been wasted.

As a result, in these three days, his "Mind Reflection Technique" only gained 1,550 proficiency points, going from

Level 6 (6975/10000) to

Level 6 (8525/10000).

Still, starting tomorrow, he would gain 647 proficiency points per day.

Meaning it would take just over two days more to reach the next level.

"Hmm… Cutting it down by two days—not bad!"

Haruki muttered to himself and was just about to return to his training.

But then—

a stream of chakra carried a memory fragment through their shared link and entered his body.

After checking, Haruki saw that the memory came from the shadow clone tasked with finding new prey.

Initially, he assumed the clone had located another target.

But as he finished reading through the memory, he realized—

The situation was completely different from what he'd expected.

The clone hadn't found any new prey.

Instead, it had uncovered a vital piece of intel:

Iwa's main army had completed an encirclement, and was now rapidly closing in on their last defensive line.

That's right—the final defensive line.

In the past three days, the elite Kumo forces under the Third Raikage had broken through two of Iwagakure's defense layers.

They'd pushed the battlefield from 200 kilometers away to less than 50 kilometers from the village gates.

It had to be said—Ōnoki was playing a dangerous game.

To bait the Third Raikage and his elite unit deeper, he'd intentionally exposed the village as a target.

If the final line couldn't hold and the Kumo forces broke into the village, then even if Iwa's army surrounded them from the outside, it would be game over.

After all—everyone had family.

If Iwa didn't surrender, the Raikage could take hostages and force the outer army to hesitate—

buying time to call reinforcements and launch a counterattack from behind.

Caught in a pincer, Iwagakure might actually face total annihilation.

And if that happened, the Third Raikage would go down in history as a legend.

That's how much of a gamble Ōnoki had taken.

Of course, the bait had to be tempting enough to draw the Raikage in—and it was.

That said, the Third Raikage wasn't a fool. He knew full well that Iwa reinforcements were on their way.

But by his calculations, even if Iwa mobilized immediately, it would still take more than five days to return.

So as long as they captured Iwagakure within that window, there would be no problem.

Even if they failed to breach the final defenses in time, they could always retreat before the encirclement was fully formed.

That's why the Raikage had decided to press on.

In theory, the Raikage's decision made sense.

But it all hinged on one thing:

That Iwa didn't know about the assault.

That they weren't already prepared.

But if Iwa had caught wind of the plan…

Then the Raikage was walking straight into a trap.

And now, it seemed—that's exactly what had happened.

Unbeknownst to the Raikage, the enemy had already closed in.

The moment intel leaked, the Raikage's fate had been sealed.

Now, Iwa had regained control of the battlefield.

The only question was:

Would they choose to sacrifice the Third Raikage—

or destroy his entire elite unit?

According to memories from his past life, Haruki knew that Iwa had ultimately chosen the former.

And he suspected that the same outcome would repeat here.

But that wasn't his concern.

What Haruki was thinking about now was—

Could he use this chaos to cash in?

If he stayed cautious, he could definitely reach Level 7 before the mission ended and accomplish his original goal.

But if he could push further—why not?

Once the mission ended, he'd be thrown back into the frontlines, surrounded by watchful eyes. Doing anything sneaky then would be difficult.

But now—

if he took some risks, he could steal a huge haul of chakra while everyone else was distracted, and fast-track his Sharingan's evolution.

After a long moment of silence, Haruki slapped his thigh and stood up.

"The brave feast, the timid starve. Let's do this!"

Without hesitation, he crossed his fingers and cast the Shadow Clone Technique again, creating two more clones.

He then instructed these two, along with the two already on patrol, to scour the area for suitable new targets.

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