Chapter 29.1- Gamer of the Desert

I stared at the warehouse as my clone placed the final touches on the sealing script that surrounded it. After that experiment a week ago that ended up with a very dead clone, I’d had a clone spending every hour of every day working on the project, and now these were the fruits. We’d already had close to ten demo tests to ensure that everything worked as it ought.

Now that the seal was set up, the clone turned to me and winked before dispelling itself. I walked forwards on my own, ignoring the whispers of the small crowd that had gathered itself once the project had begun to get some attention. Ninja were naturally curious beings after all, and their presence had dragged the more daring of the civilians. At least they were all used to my presence so none ran for the hills when I arrived hours ago to supervise. Now, I closed my eyes and dispelled all my clones across the village and began to fold my chakra in on itself.

This was the first time ever bringing my chakra capacity to bear like this, so I was a bit taken aback when the wood in the buildings around me began to creak in place. Still, I didn’t relent and began to go through seals as I prepared myself to power the seal. Dog-Boar-Rat-Horse-Tiger, I silently whispered to myself before slamming my hands on the ground and flooding the matrix with chakra. Dispelling all my clones ahead of time had proven to be a wise choice as the seal drank up the chakra I fed it and came back for more in no time at all. I felt it reach into me with greedy, grubby hands and suck my chakra dry like a vacuum pipe or something. When it was all over, it was all I could do to keep myself upright, resting against the floor as I was.

If I were anywhere else, I’d have slumped to the floor and taken a nap. Here? A show of weakness like that could get me killed. So I steeled myself and stood up on my own two legs, operating off of pure willpower. I walked inside the warehouse and noted how the temperature and humidity were already noticeably different from how things were outside. Warehouse might have been a bad descriptor of the space that was to become the first of a dozen farms around Suna. It was about the size of three American football fields, and the others would probably be even larger to accommodate for the food needs of not just Suna but the Land of Wind in general. The goal was to supplement the foods we planted on the arable lands the Shodaime had been able to wrest from the Leaf in the first Gokage summit and what we imported, not to completely take over food production. But if things went according to plan in a week, food immunity would be a done deal.

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I stared at the seal in front of me with a scowl on my face. It was only about an hour until I was supposed to leave for Konoha but I had a breakthrough coming. I could just feel it. Level 74 in fuinjutsu had to be enough for this. The farmland problem was really bothering me. It turned out I’d vastly underestimated the amount of land that could be needed to grow crops to feed the whole of Suna. Even to meaningfully supplement it, I’d fallen short. I guess that was a lesson to involve actual professionals before attempting to revolutionise an industry.

I’d had only two choices, either make the seal more efficient so I could use it on many more locations and increase the land available to us, or make the land we could get much more productive than any other. Option A had been a bust. That’s what led me to my current project; space-time fuinjutsu. If I could somehow accelerate the flow of time within the barrier when compared to that outside of it, I’d be able to ramp up production exponentially.

“Gaara. It’s time” Mebuki said from the door.

“No, I still have an hour. That’s what you told me” I said to her in reply.

“That’s what I told you an hour ago” She said, taking the wind right out of my sails. Fuck.

A/N; Just a short peek into what we’ll be getting up to this chapter. Next part continues from Gaara’s arrival in Konoha. Any interaction requests?