A/N: I'll be posting another chapter later today, so please drop some Power Stones to get the story out there!
I'm already writing chapter 39 for the pa*treon right now, and will continue to also unlock the chapters I post here on webnovel hours earlier on there, so you could actually already read the next chapter on there.
You can just become a free member if you're interested!
Either way, I hope y'all are enjoying the story this far and will continue to read along hehe.
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It had been a while since Kurai started her chakra manipulation training, but both her and Kuroichi had improved during this time. When Kuroichi practiced taijutsu, he imagined, in his mind, the fogveil civet as his opponent, only this time he was reacting differently, instead adding his own improved movements into the mix.
He was refining the way he attacked and reacted to attacks, his body moving more fluidly and without as much apparent strain as before. He was driven to improve his taijutsu, since he could already imagine that in the future, when enemies knew he had the dark release, they'd resort to fighting physically instead of with ninjutsu.
The speed at which he could use hand seals individually had increased a little bit, but not greatly. It was mainly because the more he trained in and used each jutsu, the more familiar he got with forming the seals, thus they quickly became muscle memory.
Nevertheless, through this he also observed the different changes his chakra went through by forming specific seals, even having become proficient enough to leave out some seals while still casting the jutsu.
It was difficult at first, he needed to train himself to manually mold his chakra the same way using a specific seal would. But once he systematically trained, he quickly refined the way he manipulated his chakra as well as his water nature transformation.
The first time he succeeded using fewer hand seals for a jutsu, he was ecstatic. He had already imagined himself fighting someone using more seals than necessary, and in a critical moment, simply using less. Catching the enemy off guard and perhaps landing a killing blow while they were confused was a future move he'd definitely keep in mind.
The clone and transformation jutsu could both be performed with only one seal, while the body replacement still needed three. Compared to the five needed before, it was a huge difference.
For water based jutsu, the water clone only had one seal in the first place, while the water bullet jutsu required 3 seals and the water wall jutsu took four, compared to it's previous 6.
He naturally didn't neglect his dark release. His father had left some notes on how to initially develop some proficiency with it. Now that he had the ability to call upon it whenever, he made sure to fully master it.
At first he'd only spread it slowly across his hands, consciously moving it around and controlling the way it flowed. It was difficult, making the chakra flow in a way it didn't want to, at least instinctively.
He was wrestling it for control, trying to make it flow towards a single region of his hand, like the lower third of his hand for example. Moving it was hard and required deep focus, so he improved slowly.
He did have some success in doing it though, it was something he was working on every day and he imagined that it would continue that way for the foreseeable future. While that would still take some time, he had become much more experienced in using dark release in general, letting him manifest it in his hands in a split second.
Kurai, in response to his repeated use of dark release, left whenever he practiced. She knew he wouldn't hurt her and trusted that feeling, but the dark release was still intimidating to her.
Now that she had chakra as well, it felt like a threat to her life was present whenever she saw that dark chakra and the way it shifted eerily in Kuroichi's hands.
——
Kuroichi sat on a large stone in a clearing with a scroll in his hands, deeply concentrating as he read over it's contents again. It was still early in the morning and Kurai was out by herself hunting, so he decided to finally start training in the body flicker jutsu.
When he felt ready to start, he placed the scroll to the side, stood up and focused on what he was about to do.
The clearing was big enough so that he didn't have to worry about accidentally flickering too far. That was impossible either way, since even though shinobi could reach great speeds and cross long distances with this jutsu, that was a skill that required mastery of it, not something someone who tried for the first time, with a small chakra reserve, could achieve.
He closed his eyes in concentration for a moment as he pulled on the chakra in his core, forming the tiger seal for the jutsu.
Chakra spread across his body, reinforcing and enhancing not only his skin, muscles and bones but also reaching his spine and brainstem, as well as other parts of the nervous system.
With this, his body actually had the capability to withstand the extreme conditions of flickering, not to mention processing the overload of information his body would send to his brain.
The jutsu wasn't about raw power, but more about precise manipulation of his chakra along with his body.
More chakra was compressed into his legs, acting akin to a booster, almost like a kinetic launch.
Simultaneously, his chakra formed something like a thin layer, or field around his body, that reduced friction and drag, letting him reach incredible speeds, at least in theory.
Knowing the exact direction and distance to flicker was extremely important to focus on, as explained by the scroll, since there were enough examples of people messing up and heavily injuring or even killing themselves because of a small mistake. Luckily, he didn't have to focus on that too much during the training in the clearing.
"Shunshin no Jutsu!"
His body indeed flickered forward, as his surroundings became a blur for a quick moment. His sight shifted abruptly and he found himself in a different spot from where he was just a second before.
However, it was only a short distance and the moment Kuroichi appeared, he ended up falling straight onto his face with a heavy Thud, the impact blowing up dust and scattering the birds sitting in surrounding trees.
Unused to such abrupt and high-speed movement, he immediately lost his balance and stumbled, eventually falling forward. He was stunned for a moment, unable to react, otherwise he could have twisted his body enough to land on his side or back.
'That was really fast, my reaction speed couldn't keep up at all.' He thought as the pain slowly eased. 'Next time I know what to expect, gotta keep my balance ..'
He got up, ready to try again. On his next attempt he almost fell again, but at the last moment he shifted his weight enough so that he only stumbled right after flickering, instead of falling.
This scene kept repeating a few times until he had begun to acclimatize himself to the jutsu, at least somewhat. Eventually, his proficiency rose to the point that he noticed that he could alter the amount of chakra used, thus changing the distance he'd flicker.
The speed of flickering stayed the same for him from what he could tell, at least for now, but learning to correctly judge the distance he'd travel with a specific amount of chakra was incredibly important either way.
After a few hours had passed, there were notable improvements in the way he performed the jutsu. The way he used it was much smoother compared to when he had first tried it, but sometimes his balance still looked off, like he didn't have control over his whole body during the process of the technique.
Even though it was only a D-rank jutsu, he still noticed how the repeated use of it strained his legs, as well as his stamina and chakra in general.
When he was too exhausted to continue, he recuperated by sitting back on the rock while he ate and relaxed, not leaving yet so that he could still train a little more before the sun went down.
That's when Kurai came flying over, having known where he would be. He had used this clearing for training before, so Kurai only needed to check the places she knew he'd usually train at.
They both relaxed together for a while, just enjoying the nice weather while sitting in the shades the trees provided.
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