Time passes, and Touki's life has focused on developing Suki's skills. Developing her seal language is crucial for the future, but his inability to overcome quadruple combinations has stalled progress. The girl is undoubtedly a gift from heaven, and her adaptability is impressive, even achieving triple seal speed in just four months.
When it comes to chakra training, Suki is undoubtedly on a different level than Touki (who can barely access minimal amounts), being able to increase her body's physical capabilities almost instinctively. The girl's reserves aren't vast by any means, but it seems her affinity surpasses the standards described in the manuals. All the money spent on food and supplements designed for ninja and shinobi training also helps.
At six months, Suki already had the speed to perform quadruple combinations and the first helping experiment was performed at eight months. The experiment consisted of creating the simplest of programs to make a spoon heat and cool itself. Chakra molding with the help of another person is not unheard of, but it is very rare and only very experienced shinobi can perform it flawlessly. In this case, Touki used his own chakra, but through the seals performed by Suki, a truly complex process that required perfect synchronization on both sides. Needless to say, there were too many errors to be able to execute the program on the first try, but slowly they managed to fix the problems.
The main problem with the experiment was synchronizing both parties, as Touki couldn't find the most efficient way for the two to synchronize their focus while maintaining physical contact without interfering with the area where the seals were performed. In the end, they settled on a position where Touki, sitting cross-legged, allows Suki to sit on his lap, while he, with his hands in a meditation position in front of his navel, allows her to perform the seals unobstructed.
It took more than twenty attempts to successfully execute the program, bringing enormous joy to both of them. Soon, the doors opened so that the language of seals could take another step towards new possibilities.
Touki put his all into it, prioritizing Suki's development as if she were his own daughter, while also beginning to chart the course for quintuple combinations. The problem with these combinations is that there are 248,832 possible iterations, a number that is too large and would take years of dedicated time to review them one by one. Fortunately, Touki had already discovered relationships between seals that, for the moment, seemed to guarantee and rule out results, so all that remains is to find the best chances of success and test the method.
Suki seemed to realize how important the project was to Touki, as she redoubled her efforts with her arm and hand exercises, even exercising in her free time. Four months later, she was already skilled enough to execute quintuple combinations with a certain level of effort, enough to begin preliminary experiments.
The work was exhausting, with entire days dedicated to testing new combinations, due to the difficulty for Suki to execute them at first and the mental strain on Touki's part in synchronizing the procedure. But the effort paid off over the months, as Touki finally managed to test his hypotheses and was finally able to predict functional combinations for the language. The only thing left was for Suki to get used to executing the combinations and be able to handle the complexity of a program, although that was only a matter of time.
The new discoveries were promising, starting with significant developments in the power of the elements and new ways to simplify previously lengthy processes. But what was truly significant was the discovery of two combinations in particular: one capable of empowering the body exclusively with a type of chakra similar to senjutsu, but with fewer side effects, and second, one capable of simulating storage seals through dimensional spaces. The latter allowed Touki to conveniently store his most valuable objects without having to hide them among his belongings, much like the storage scrolls used by ninjas.
Touki was extremely excited about the constant progress in the research, passing on all his positivity to Suki, who was largely responsible for making it all happen. Touki did everything he could to reward the girl for her work, buying her the most delicious sweets he could find, as well as getting her a radio so she could listen to music in her free time.
The moment of truth came approximately two years after Suki's training began, when after great dedication and effort, they successfully created something with an advanced language (RedChakra 2.0). The first successful work was a complete remodeling of Touki's armor, going from a jacket with a few metal plates, to a true samurai-style armor made of countless metal plates, each with its own program and interconnected with each other. The programs are very varied, but they mainly focus on protecting the user with more powerful versions of the elemental force field, as well as storing much more energy within special seals (so that it cannot be detected) and even being able to optimize physical capabilities for short periods of time.
For nearly a year, Touki and Suki managed to improve and create a large number of artifacts, definitively transforming the way they both saw things. Touki proved that the possibilities of the seal language truly seem limitless and that it's only a matter of time before it advances even further. Suki, for her part, proved capable of exceeding even her master's greatest expectations, causing him to begin to consider the possibility of somehow solving her vision problems, something that for now remains only an idea.
With all the improvements, Touki went from being a very limited but unpredictable combatant to a potential walking fortress, still far inferior to shinobi of the caliber of jounins, but perhaps capable of taking on chunins or even tokubetsu jounins. This does not mean that Touki is capable of facing ninjas head-on without fear, but rather that he now truly has the ability to defend himself and even, if circumstances warrant it, be a real pain for most of them. The main problem remains movement speed, one of the most notable abilities of shinobi, and so far that does not seem likely to change.
Despite all the good things that have happened to Touki in these three long years, a key problem has resurfaced: money. Almost all of the successes achieved and the artifacts built have been possible with the expenditure of almost all the money the man accumulated during his days as a criminal hunter. Today, there's only enough money left, at most, to sustain him for about two months, without considering spending more on experiments.
Touki, with some regret, due to the fact that he will have to interrupt his research for a while, begins to plan his next steps to follow, since despite having a greater potential combat power than he had before, he is no longer very interested in going around killing and risking being identified or worse, attracting the attention of the ninjas.
The new lifestyle he's experienced with Suki has made Touki reflect a bit on his complex mental state. He doesn't quite know how he could have gone from an ordinary person in his past life to a bloodthirsty murderer in this one, because while no one forced him, the logic of this society, mixed with an evident innate ambition, made him take the step almost without hesitation. But now, with true mental stability and less fear of death, he thinks it might be time to look for something better to earn money, something a little more legal, or if that's not possible, something with less death.
Thus begins a new adventure for Touki and his apprentice, who already looks ten years old, in the only place that can offer the necessary opportunities to become rich, but without significant interference from the ninjas, the famous capital of the land of fire.