Night, Link’s Home.

  “Tangible chakra that hasn’t dissipated even now—it’s absolutely absurd.”

  Link stared at the Shukaku chakra cubes on his table, ly cut into squares for easier ste.

  His own chakra, for parison, wasn’t even visible, let aloangible. If severed, it would immediately dissipate, and even if sealed in a scroll, it would quickly degrade and disappear.

  But a Jinchūriki's maed chakra? It could be seen, touched, severed, and preserved for long periods.

  “Acc to Jiraiya in the manga, the Eight Trigrams Seal—which is formed by bining two Four Symbols Seals— vert the ails’ chakra into Naruto’s chakra. If I want to use this stuff, the safest way would be to release Minato from the Shinigami’s stomad have him give me a Trigrams Seal too.”

  Of course, such a sario was impossible.

  Initially, he had sidered using a sealing teique to absorb the tailed beast chakra for his own use. But it didn’t take him long to realize: If abs tailed beast chakra via sealing were feasible, wouldn’t someone else have already do?

  The shinobi world wasn’t full of fools; if a sealing teique could solve this problem, it wouldn’t have bee for him to discover.

  So, he decided not to inform the Third Hokage about his acquisition of tailed beast chakra, choosing io keep it to himself. With Sasuke’s help, he had cut the chakra into smaller pieces and stored it at home for research.

  “If sealing won’t work, does it mean I have to eat it?”

  Looking at the sandy-colored cubes, Link shook his head. The Kumogakure had experimented with eating tailed beast chakra, but those attempts all ended ih, proving that normal humans couldn’t absorb it.

  Eating it was the absolute st resort, and even then, it was a gamble.

  He wasn’t a desdant of the Sage of Six Paths. Eating this chakra would almost certainly kill him.

  How I use this?

  Link ran through the ninjutsu he knew, dismissing the basic Transformation and e teiques. Even his enharansformation into “Big Guy” wouldn’t withstand tailed beast chakra.

  Then, as he pted his altered ninjutsu, a new idea struck him.

  He picked up one of the sandy-colored cubes and pced it uhe mp, casting a sharp shadow oable.

  “If Shadow es share physical energy, they also split off some of the tailed beast chakra? After all, this stuff teically ts as a biological entity, right?”

  Link decided to test it. He refined his chakra, split it evenly, formed the hand seals, and cast the jutsu.

  The shadow o the sandy-colored cube bulged and materialized into a bck cube. At the same time, the inal sandy-colored cube shrank, as if being ed.

  “If this works… wait a minute—”

  His thoughts raced as he retrieved another chakra cube from his et.

  This time, he refined his chakra into three parts, creating two shadow es instead of one.

  The process required careful preultiple es shared his physical energy, which diluted the power of each e and increased his own ption. Typically, he avoided this teique unless absolutely necessary.

  But now, his focus wasn’t on bat.

  He directed the shadow es to i with the chakra cube. One e ed the bed chakra cube entirely.

  Seds ter, something ued happened.

  “e lost.”

  The moment the shadow e ed the chakra, the link to it severed. The e stopped drawing energy from him and dissolved on its own.

  But the absorbed chakra didn’t dissipate—it remained intact.

  The shadow e stood across from him, still ected to his awareness but no longer depe on his chakra.

  The inal sandy-colored cube, now reduced by a third, vanished as well.

  “I ’t digest tailed beast chakra, but my shadow ?”

  “Why does the shadow persist even after the teique ends?”

  Link thought of the se Mountain Drake he’d created with Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole. Now, staring at the indepe shadow before him, new questions flooded his mind.

  “Is my teique capable of creating life?”

  “No… not life iraditional sehe shadow doesn’t think, reproduce, or have subjective sciousness—it merely obeys ands.”

  “But why?”

  “Is it the teique? Or the tailed beast chakra?”

  Link trolled the shadow, watg it perform tasks as usual—ing, transf into a three-dimensional form, and even fighting.

  The shadow funed like any other e, but there was one crucial differe no longer drained his energy. It operated indepely, with its own fiamina that could inexplicably replenish itself.

  A… its total chakra capacity equaled a third of his own.

  “Where does it get energy to recover stamina if it does or drink?”

  “Why doesn’t it use the tailed beast chakra as its energy base?”

  “Will the shadow develop indepehoughts? How does it store memories of bat and tasks?”

  By the end of the night, Link wasn’t thinking about how to use tailed beast chakra anymore. His head was swimming with even more questions.

  …

  The M, Hyūga pound.

  "You look like you didn’t get any sleep," Kakashi observed casually.

  "I ran into some… issues with my training st night," Link replied, dark circles under his eyes.

  He g the grouh him. In the dim sunlight, his shadow was unnaturally dark—bck as ink.

  Five perma shadows overpped beh him, the result of an all-nighter spent experimenting.

  "This lease," a Hyūga sman said, nodding as he led the two toward the pound’s interior.

  Bleam