Chapter 24: Learning
"Why tell me all this?" She asked confused and concerned.
"Because you seem like you need to hear it and because I don't think you will tell anyone unless it's a matter of life and death. I don't know what you experienced or when but I do know that what ever it is is chaining you down. The sad part is that only you are holding those chains and can let go of them to free yourself, give it a thought or two." I said before leaving to find some food.
It was easy enough to get some spending money while out here as unlike my sensei I was a monster when it came to gambling. My senses were extremely sharp so I could read my opponents like a book with how they move, smell, and breath giving me clues as to whether they are bluffing or have genuinely good odds. I still lost sometimes when going for a draw isn't possible and my own odds weren't the best but otherwise I won fairly consistently. I had to keep my money away from my sensei though as she would try to use it to get booze or gamble more.-
After our little talk I took some of my money to a small restaurant and got some barbecued noodles that were full of flavor and fairly cheap too. It was a little irritating that the waiter was a ninja and tried to dose my food with sleeping powder but jokes on them as I was pretty much immune to stuff like that. That didn't mean I didn't feed them to Akasha though as I wasn't just going to ignore the attempt. No one knew it was me either as I simple followed the ninja while under stealth until they were alone before killing them with an ambush.-
I disposed of the body by feeding it to Akasha and then heading back to the town to practice my nature transformation for the rest of the day. I still hadn't figured out how to imitate some of my beasts abilities but the ones that had an ability based off the five basic chakra natures such as my hawk and Kiba I could more or less copy at this point. The wind blades of my hawk were pretty good as far as distanced attacks went and my sensei said they could count as high C rank jutsu.-
The lightning cloak of Kiba however was damn near impossible to use as while it functioned nearly identically to the Raikages lightning cloak jutsu in that it provided increased speed, reaction times, offensive capability and defensive capability it also shocked the ever loving hell out of me when I used it. I'm talking full blown high voltage full body taser kinda shocking which made my muscles spaz out and left me in agony. According to my sensei it was because my body unlike Kibas wasn't built to use the jutsu.
Unlike the Raikage who clearly had a more intense version of the same thing also had a way to protect themselves from the jutsu as well which I didn't have. That didn't mean that the ability was worthless however as according to my sensei nobody had ever gotten that close to imitating the Raikages jutsu and if I gave the information to the village could earn a lot of mission points that I could exchange for jutsu from the archive. I didn't plan to do that however as I was certain that the Kumogakure spies in the village would catch wind of it and the village hidden in the clouds would put a bounty on my head in revenge.-
I was fine with having a bounty when I was stronger and capable of fending off any attacks but for now I was now nearly experienced or skilled enough for that. Don't get me wrong I am well aware that killing me was pretty difficult simply due to my physical abilities and speed but there was no real chance of me winning any fight I got in with anyone experienced and not caught off guard or careless.-
Case in point when my sensei had me spar with Shizune who despite having a gentle demeanor absolutely manhandled me without breaking a sweat. Though she did complain that my body was unreasonably sturdy after punching me. For future reference I would like to officially state that Shizune was not weak at all. Unlike my sensei who seemed to rely on her monstrous strength to fight Shizune used high force paired with extremely precise attacks to devastating effect. She broke no less than seven of my bones during our spar as a result and then to my humiliation repaired them right afterwards. I was forced to eat humble pie and let me tell you that's some bitter stuff.-
We spent the next month traveling the land of hot springs after my chat with my sensei and it was so damn boring! I didn't find any chakra beasts despite looking and even had to spend the vast majority of my time learning medical jutsu. At first it was a simple matter of chakra control being used to separate more and more complexly mixed substances then we moved on to me having to revive a fish that had been sealed in a way to allow the brain to stay alive even after the body died.-
That particular test was rather frustrating as my sensei didn't actually tell me that what I was training was actually yin and yang chakra transformation until I figured it out on my own. Medical jutsu as it turned out was a mix of the two in most cases or legitimate yin yang release jutsus which weren't as simple as it sounds. See chakra by itself was a perfect blend of yin and yang but to get a true yin yang release jutsu you needed to separate chakra to those two base components before mixing them again without turning them back to chakra.-
It was some confusing stuff but my sensei smacked me for thinking about it since I wasn't even past the basics of medical jutsu yet. Speaking of basics I learnt the mystic palm jutsu and chakra scalpel jutsus within this month. Not mastered them mind you since they were a whole lot more complicated then you might originally think. The mystic palm jutsu for example had sub forms depending on what you wanted to achieve. Ones for small cuts, one for large cuts, bruises, frostbite and a bunch of other types of bodily damage types. Chakra scalpel was practically second nature to me though as it was basically just chakra flow with extra effects.-
My sensei hit me when I said that despite agreeing with the statement. As an added bonus she had been trying to overcome her fear of blood slowly by desensitizing herself to small amounts of it. When I say small I do mean it too as anything more than a knick with barely a drop of the red stuff and she freaks out. Not to say she's calm with that amount either just that she at least TRIES to remain calm with it.