Naruto: Tango with Death

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The Shadow Clone Jutsu was a forbidden jutsu of Konoha, one supposedly only shown to a few people. This wasn't really seen in the manga because the story followed the main characters who had access to said jutsu, one way or another, but in my world, not just anyone could get it.

And it wasn't because of its power, it was because of the danger it brought. It is widely believed that the problem comes from the chakra shortage, that if one creates too many clones they would kill themselves by emptying their chakra, but that was only a minor problem.

The real problem came from the memories.

The brain could only process so much information, and several minutes of everything a clone is disturbing already, so having ten of them give feedback, or for said feedback to be over a period of several hours, most people would end up frying their minds.

But then, that begged the question. How come Naruto was able to conjure thousands upon thousands of clones, even as a kid?

Well, I thought about that for a while, and I believe I have found the answer to this question. Kurama.

Kurama, or Kyuubi, was a Tailed Beast locked inside Naruto, or was in the canonical world at least, and I believe that Kurama had been taking the blunt of the technique for Naruto, willingly or not.

Just like how a Genjutsu couldn't mess with Naruto because it would inevitably go through Kyuubi's chakra, so would the memories, go through his Yin Chakra.

And so, that explains why I finally decided on getting the technique. Before very recently, even though I probably could use two or three clones to make my work faster, that would most certainly tire my brain in the long term, and even possibly the short term.

But two things came. First, Jashin. I was holding him inside me in pretty similar conditions to a Jinchuriki with their Tailed Beast. Moreover, Jashin was purely spiritual in nature, so my guess was that I could use him to deal with my memories.

But that remained in the domain of the hypothesis, I had to get a personal insurance. And that, came with the Eight Gates.

The 3rd Gate, to be precise. The Gate of Life. As I discovered before, even though I never opened it, I opened the first two, thus half opening the third one, and other than enhanced senses, it also gives me Yin Chakra, and helps regulating it.

Then, if my gamble was right, then I finally had access to the OP technique known as the Shadow Clone Jutsu. And if I'm wrong in both hypothesis… well, nothing is going to happen, I'm not just going to summon a hundred of them and hope for the best, I'll take more of a gradual approach, I'm not crazy.

And so that's exactly what I did, when I returned to Iwa's front. As it turned out, while he was of some assistance, Jashin couldn't help me as much as I wish he had with this technique.

His spirit was strong enough for sure, but a large part of it was used for the contract. However, my second hypothesis about the Eight Gates happened to be true.

And so after a week of testing, I found out that I could use 9 clones comfortably, and although this split my chakra by ten, not only was I quite strong even with a tenth of my chakra, I had no use for massive chakra as my days more or less consisted of waiting for Iwa to make a move, and scout a bit to try and discover their motives.

Moreover, after said week passed, and I got comfortable working with 9 clones at the same time, the Sacred Water Pool was also finally done upgrading itself. I only needed to dip in for a moment before I felt how vastly different it was from before.

Of course, it worked the same, but the effects were increased by a large margin, not only making it an even better way to heal, but also helped with my training. I didn't have to worry about Yin-Yang imbalance either as the input of Yin Chakra I received also massively changed, with the clones.

And so this situation went on for a month, a calm month. Our forces in Iwa were focused on searching for the enemy troops, as well as finding their motives. But since them performing a second blitz attack wasn't impossible, we couldn't really launch any large scaled attack, so we did not move.

This was fine to me as I used the time to train, and for quite the effects too. My training speed had been increased by about 10 times, and I used this to make a few breakthroughs.

Excluding the sheer increase in physical strength, spiritual wisdom, and chakra reserves that came with every session of training, I had managed to open the 3rd Gate of Life.

I had already felt I could open it a month back, while fighting against the dragon, but I didn't want to make a rushed opening if I could avoid it, and so it was in safe conditions that I opened the 3rd Gate, and learned to use its power. This also allowed me to discover that my healing factor was able to deal with the 3rd Gate, although barely.

This also allowed me to half open the Gate of Pain, the 4th one, allowing for an even more increased senses, and Yin input.

But those were all gains I would have had with or without the addition of the clones. What I used the clones for was mostly the discovery of more Tenketsu paths.

As a result, after a single month, not only had I mastered all the jutsus I had bought all the way back when I achieved my first mission, I also made some real good progress on my Suiton related Tenketsu.

If I had to give an estimate, I would say that I was able to use about half of all the E Rank Suiton Jutsus in existence. Granted they weren't very strong, but it was a start.

So overall I hadn't really grown that much stronger, but it gave me a better adaptability, as well a real start. I was already in cycles of 25 Tenketsu Points, and it was only going up.

Oh, right. I also turned 10.