CHAPTER 23

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Forty-ninth year since the founding of the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

- Ugh, something tells me that tomorrow morning the strain of this new workout will take its toll and I won't even be able to walk properly. - That's right, Yuske had finally decided to increase the load on his body and get himself in proper shape before the big events.

For four whole years he had been holding himself back, sticking to only light exercise every day, and mostly devoting himself to chakra control, which not only did not harm his body, but laid a solid foundation for future training and opened up new opportunities in the field of elemental jutsu. Now it was time to let your desires come true and move on to some really interesting chakra experiences.

* Time is really ephemeral: you wake up, work out a little, think about plans and then your day is over. The years fly by in a flash, and you don't even notice. - Yuske still had moments where he felt like time stood still, especially concerning the impatient urge to get started on ninjutsu as soon as possible.

What really stopped him from blindly moving on to more complex things like Nature Transformation was the knowledge that he wasn't ready yet, and needed to thoroughly consolidate his training with chakra control

There were several reasons to start more exhausting workouts now that he was six years old. The first and foremost is to bring techniques of chakra control to a reasonable finished stage. All he had to do was to proceed to a more refined form of control, namely Shape Transformation, and then there was only the magical world of Nature Transformation left, which means giving the chakra the elemental properties.

Our young acquaintance had his own approach to Shape Transformation, for there was no reason to believe that Rasengan was the pinnacle and the only method of practicing this advanced form of chakra control.

The answer to the question, "What approach did Yuske take in training with Shape Transformation?", lay in a very logical and accessible on the surface phenomenon - physics. Admittedly, this world sometimes gave a hard slap to the face of the rules of existence, making the impossible possible, but the general principles still worked as they should, especially for chakra configuration, which Yuske considered a fail-safe route to power.

For the next few years, he was going to actively pursue Nature Transformation, devoting most of his time to it, especially since Yuske could confidently claim to have mastered all available chakra control training methods to perfection.

In fact, four years is a huge span of time, and Yuske only needed to devote one year to complete the training of control. The rest of the time was spent on physical exercises and primitive throwing actions in the morning, sometimes studying accessible literature about chakra, anatomy of the human body, and in general everything that the youth could get to, due to the limitation of his age.

To tell the truth, what he had read did not stand out as anything new, and could be said to have been performed in vain, but Yuske felt that if he missed some important detail, due to arrogance or neglect, he would regret it greatly later. From which he decided to act for sure and secure his future by reading everything he could request from his parents, because the anime clearly didn't mention everything, and even the slightest new detail could be a significant factor.

Unfortunately for Yuske, a child's body tires rather quickly, which made it necessary to sleep practically 7 to 10 hours a day, spending the rest of the time doing exhausting activities.

For the past three years he had done little that could require chakra, from which he had spent nearly all of his reserves on pumping it into the black substance. Sure, he could try experimenting with it, but he had a good sense that the black substance was most likely the thing that could help him in a time of crisis, and the miniscule amounts of his chakra wouldn't be enough to keep him safe if someone attacked him.

There were days when all he did was spending his entire time in meditation, pumping full chakra reserves about fifteen times a day. He couldn't do it 24 times a day for the simple reason of having to eat, sleep, be distracted sometimes by his parents and other minor needs.

It was impossible to occupy himself with meditation alone, Yoshida Hana was always asking him to spend time together, taking him shopping with her, or trying to distract with some childish games and activities. Sure thing, Yuske showed with all his might that he didn't like it, and laid down the attitude in advance that he was annoyed by such actions, but sometimes he still had to give in and make compromises.

He had certainly tested some, the most elementary, properties of black matter, but he did so without much willingness. Every time he spent black matter, it was as if he was tearing off a piece of his own soul, so much he hated to waste it, especially for useless things.

He found out that the black substance was very durable and could be made extremely sharp, and also realized that he could easily protect himself with it, but this had its own complications due to the need for a large expenditure of his unique matter. Having determined these important details for himself he decided to stop wasting it. Then the process of accumulation started, which Yuske did almost with manic interest, because the boy akin a goblin chafed over his black "gold", not wanting to waste it, but only increasing his asset.

As they say there's no such thing as too much safety, especially if that material of safety is more interesting than any toy in the world.

Originally, Yuske had assumed that he might need to devote a lot more time to training with charka control, but actually managed to make it just in eleven months.

Oddly enough, he figured out walking on water faster than the other two methods, but there was a very reasonable explanation for that. The thing is, Yuske figured out one very effective and yet not very tricky way to simplify the task of improving control, and before he started walking on water surface, he perfected this particular method.

Some might even say that this step was unnecessary, others would label it as one that takes training to a whole new level. Regardless of the point of view, the fact remains that after achieving proficiency in this method, it was much easier for him to master walking on water surface, that is, learning how to maintain a stable flow of assembled chakra in one point and change its intensity when necessary, which is due to the fact that the surface of water is not constant, unlike walls or other solid objects.