CHAPTER 36

"What kind of shinobi is it if his actions aren't lightning fast and stealthy?"- Those were Yuske's thoughts on ninja activities in general. He abhorred the idea of becoming like those morons who stood in front of their opponents and began to perform a whole ritual of hand motions with seals.

The rest of the shinobi world mistakenly assumed that only geniuses were the ones who could ignore the need for seals and easily switch to ' intimate interaction' with the techniques.

Yuske thought that others were excessively lazy, not wanting to bother themselves and, of course, a little thickheaded, not having a deep understanding of their own circumstances.

Perhaps it was his small reserves of chakra, or perhaps his mediocrity in the form of being a user of only one element made him accept it as fact that there was nothing brilliant in him and it was necessary to correct the injustice to his persona on the part of fate at least through diligent training.

Regardless of Yuske's thoughts, as soon as the chakra flowed into the water, and once again formed a 'cloud' akin to a platform for the technique, a small pillar of water began to rise out of the reservoir once again.

- Hmm, that won't do. This form is a little less than optimal for the next step. - With those words, Yuske reduced the amount of chakra that passed through the pillar, eager to test what would happen to the technique if less chakra was injected into it compared to the first experiment.

He wanted to gradually learn about all the functions of his chakra and its interconnection with the water element, to probe all the possibilities at hand.

Although a great deal has been written about the use of chakra, but, in essence, it all boiled down to the fact that the shinobi himself must learn to use his chakra properly, and no manual gonna help. Personal experience is the basis of training to obtain the desired power, hence the need to deal with all the possibilities of chakra application firsthand.

The chakra itself had a myriad of uses, even the way water began to stick to it, due to Yuske's affinity for the water element was only one of its minor effects, which meant that an inordinate number of trials were required before the rest of its aspects could be found out in detail. 

Right now, the technique would be red faced if put for public display, and it was necessary to get it into proper shape before proceeding to the step of infusing the black substance into the water, which was why this experiment with infusing less chakra into the pillar was required.

After a couple seconds the result was already visible, but there was little of a rainbow in it, and it was far from what Yuske was striving for. Instead of receiving any of the hoped-for effects of the technique, it began to behave unsteadily in certain areas, and promised to break, losing contact with Yuske, which made him hurry and resume the amount of chakra before the pillar of water fell back into the pond.

An example of the desired effects from reducing the volume of infused chakra would be shrinking or thinning the water column itself, so that it would be easier to control it and infuse the correct amount of his 'special matter' in the future.

* 20% spent chakra in only about twelve seconds of such a simple manipulation? And there are as many as two more tasks to proceed to, and yet even the current one is not fully wrapped up.

Concentrating on the water in front of him, and folding his hands into the Dog Seal, Yuske once again formed a pillar of water, but this time created another wisp of chakra on top of the pillar and tried pulling it towards him in order to try and give the pillar the appropriate shape. Instead of manifesting as intended, the pillar began to twist, and its top began to move closer to Yuske. Yet again, the desired result of elongation and alteration of shape was not achieved.

* The only thing left to do is to resort to "it". If even that fails, I will either have to look for more books, or find a teacher. - After checking and finding that a little over half of the chakra was still in stock, Yuske decided to test the last method that crossed his mind.

Repeating the steps to form a pillar of water, this time Yuske mentally visualized lengthening the pillar itself by thinning its shape. Thinking that he had finally achieved some favorable result, Yuske was once again caught off guard by a setback that didn't take long to arrive.

Failure befell the youth in a way he had not expected, for the thinning did not begin along the entire length of the pillar, but only in the lower part of it, through which ran the thread of chakra that connected it to Yuske himself.

Foreseeing that the water pillar would soon begin to run out of control, and cease to be proportional in its shape, Yuske had to take swift measures, envisioning a different kind of extension.

In his new visualization of the process itself, the extension began to occur not from all parts at once, which first activates the area that is under more control, but instead from the upper part, which began to rise even higher, gradually taking along the water mass from the middle and lower parts.

Without much ease in the beginning, requiring extreme concentration, the pillar did start producing the desired result.

Over such manipulation of the jutsu, Yuske didn't notice that more than thirty seconds had passed and at one point the resulting headache promised to slam his body into the ground, if it weren't for his sitting position in which the whole training session had been conducted.