A few hours passed in a flash.
By evening, after casting the Wood Clone Technique over a thousand times, Seimei had racked up 100 proficiency points, leveling it up from lv0 to lv1.
This marked his official mastery of the Wood Clone Technique.
From now on, under normal circumstances, he wouldn't fail when casting it, nor would his wood clones suddenly collapse and dissipate like they did at the start.
Of course, at his current lv1, both the quantity and quality of his wood clones were nowhere near the level of Hashirama Senju or Madara Uchiha. Those two could create wood clones capable of taking on the Five Kage.
Seimei even suspected that, even if he maxed out the Wood Clone Technique, he might not reach their level.
Why? Simple—his mastery of Wood Release was still too shallow.
The strength and quality of wood clones created by the Wood Clone Technique might seem tied to the technique's proficiency on the surface. But in reality, it hinged on one's mastery of Wood Release itself.
Right now, Seimei's Wood Release had only evolved once, putting him roughly at Yamato's level. Naturally, the wood clones he produced weren't going to be anything spectacular.
That said, with the boost from his Sharingan, his wood clones were still far stronger than regular shadow clones.
Plus, Seimei noticed something else: as he kept casting the Wood Clone Technique and building proficiency, his Wood Release was slowly evolving too.
In this case, even without actively trying to improve his Wood Release, the strength of his wood clones would naturally grow stronger over time.
Though Seimei hadn't planned to focus on evolving his Wood Release kekkei genkai from the start, he wasn't going to complain if it improved passively while practicing the Wood Clone Technique.
His only concern was chakra consumption.
With that in mind, Seimei opened his status panel to check his chakra reserves. He calculated the chakra he'd recovered over the past few hours and the amount drawn from the interdimensional space in his forehead.
In the end, he concluded that leveling the Wood Clone Technique from lv0 to lv1 had cost him a whopping 750,000 chakra points.
On average, each cast of the Wood Clone Technique burned through about 500 chakra points.
But that was before mastery. Now that he'd reached lv1, the cost might change.
Glancing at the sunset glowing on the horizon, Seimei, as usual, recalled the shadow clones scattered across the island working on Storm Release. After absorbing and processing their training experience from the past hour, he dove back into practicing the Woo
d Clone Technique.
Time ticked by, second by second.
About an hour later, Seimei had accumulated 200 proficiency points, successfully pushing the Wood Clone Technique from lv1 (1/200) to lv2 (1/500)!
As for chakra consumption? 50,000 points.
Yup, those 200 proficiency points cost him 50,000 chakra, averaging 250 chakra points per proficiency point.
While this was still higher than most skills, it was a big improvement from the 500 chakra points per proficiency point before mastery.
So, Seimei was okay with it, more or less.
Next, he needed to figure out how much time and chakra to dedicate to this technique daily.
His gaze flicked over the evolution progress of his Sharingan, then he sensed the state of his physical body, and finally checked his panel: 26 points in Constitution and 28 points in Spirit.
After some thought, he decided to keep his daily physical training time the same but carve out two hours from his Sharingan evolution practice to focus on the Wood Clone Technique.
Why this choice? It was simple—his Constitution and Spirit stats were too imbalanced.
He'd known for a while that the further along you go, the bigger the gap each stat point creates.
Right now, his Spirit stat was a full two points higher than his Constitution. This was putting pressure on his body from his mental strength.
Look at Itachi Uchiha's case—definitely not a good sign.
If this gap kept widening, it'd likely trigger a kekkei genkai disease, especially since he'd developed Wood Release, Lava Release, and Ice Release, pushing his genetic limits to the brink.
So, slowing down his Spirit stat growth was necessary.
His main way of boosting Spirit was through casting Mirror Heart Technique to evolve his Sharingan, which then fed back into his mental strength.
Naturally, he'd cut time from practicing Mirror Heart Technique.
Previously, he spent about six hours a day seriously practicing Mirror Heart Technique. Subtracting two hours left him with four.
Four hours would let his Sharingan's evolution progress by about 80 points daily.
In other words, from today until he maxed out the Wood Clone Technique, his Sharingan's daily evolution progress would drop from 125 points to 80.
This would save him roughly a million chakra points.
Of those, Seimei planned to allocate 100,000 points to practicing the Wood Clone Technique. The rest would be stored in the interdimensional space in his forehead for later use.
With a plan in place, Seimei started calculating how long it'd take to max out the Wood Clone Technique.
First, the Wood Clone Technique had slightly higher potential than the Shadow Clone Technique, reaching A-rank.
That meant its max level was likely lv9.
To go from lv2 to lv9, he'd need 88,500 proficiency points (500 + 1,000 + 2,000 + 5,000 + 10,000 + 20,000 + 50,000).
Practicing two hours a day would net him 400 proficiency points.
88,500 proficiency points would take about 220 days.
In other words, it'd take seven months to max out the Wood Clone Technique.
Seven months would also be enough to boost his Constitution stat by two points.
But catching up to his Spirit stat? Still not quite enough.
Why? In just over three weeks, his Byakugan would evolve, likely boosting his Spirit stat by another point.
Even with just 80 points of daily Sharingan evolution progress, seven months would add over 17,000 points.
Combined with his current Sharingan progress, that'd bring it to around (30,000/100,000), enough to break through one or two minor milestones.
Based on his last breakthrough at (10,000/100,000), those milestones would likely increase his Spirit stat by another one or two points.
So, seven months from now, his Spirit stat would probably still be at least two points higher than his Constitution.
This made dedicating two hours to the Wood Clone Technique not just a choice but a necessity.
On top of that, he needed to speed up his physical training to boost his Constitution stat even faster.
Otherwise, he'd have to spend even more time on the Wood Clone Technique and slow down his Sharingan's evolution even further.
In that moment, Seimei vaguely understood why Madara Uchiha only awakened the Rinnegan in his later years.
It wasn't just the massive chakra requirement or the lack of a proper method. More likely, his body couldn't handle it. He had to gradually adapt his body to the evolving Sharingan.
Otherwise, the moment he awakened the Rinnegan would've been the moment his body broke down.
All these thoughts swirled in his mind, but Seimei pushed them aside.
He glanced at the night sky, feeling the timing was about right. After swallowing a few enhanced soldier pills to replenish his energy, he began nurturing his Byakugan.
This was his final training task for the day.
(Chapter End)