38 The Importance of Fuinjutsu!

{In the Command Tent, Base Camp}

'He's quite impulsive isn't he...' Hikaru thought as he stared at Jiraiya. He would like to think Jiraiya's impulsive actions were due to the effectiveness of the seal that he had created but unfortunately, Kiyoshi didn't share that sentiment.

"What the fuck are you doing Jiraiya. That's an untested seal, stop activating it in the middle of the command center," Kiyoshi warned.

Jiraiya paused, he looked at Kiyoshi and then at Hikaru before he spoke with a sheepish look, "It shouldn't blow up... I think." 

Seeing two unimpressed looks Jiraiya sighed, his comedic genius was really underappreciated. Still, a hint of seriousness appeared in his eyes as he spoke, "Alright, the seal seems fine, let me go out of the tent and test it."

"Testing is only allowed outside of base camp," Kiyoshi spoke. His stern attitude put a hamper on Jiraiya's mood. The war was sucking the joy out of the white-haired man and seeing a new seal was the highlight of his week... aside from Tsunade's tits of course.

"Fine," Jiraiya spoke as he picked up the seal and walked out of the tent, he expected Hikaru to follow since it was his seal but Kiyoshi followed him as well.

All of them walked over to the west side of the base camp and after walking a bit further Jiraiya once again channeled chakra through the seal. The childishness in his eyes was gone as he stared at the seal. 

The seal was a brilliant personification of art, each of its components was carefully selected with its placement and simplicity given priority. It didn't take long for Jiraiya to fully charge the seal with Earth Natured chakra. Though his eyes widened in surprise at how much chakra it could hold.

"Alright, judging from the amount of chakra I had to use, the explosion... wait will it explode?" Jiraiya asked Hikaru.

"No Earth Nature chakra is different from Fire nature after all. Earth's nature focuses on sturdiness and manipulation. If the seal works correctly then it should be able to manipulate the Earth on the ground and change it into large spikes..." Hikaru concluded. 

At least that was what should happen, based on the characteristics of each element the result should be different. Each seal has its own advantages and disadvantages.

"Alright, get ready to back away just in case," Jiraiya cautioned as he wrapped the seal tag on a kunai. With a flick of his wrist, the kunai sailed for around 40m before it got stuck on the ground. 

...

Hikaru blinked as he waited and a second later 5 huge spikes of Earth poked through the ground, they rose in a semi-hemispherical pattern. The delay was unexpected but the result was within range. All three of them shared a look before they rushed to inspect the result of the seal.

Every element has a different measure and standards by which it must abide. For Earth, the simplest test would be durability. Jiraiya cocked his hand back and slammed a punch into one of the spikes. His eyes widened as pain racked through his arm.

"So the seal works I guess," Hikaru concluded. 

Kiyoshi nodded he looked at the 5 spikes, 4 of them pointing away from each other at a 45-degree angle from the ground while the 5th one was erected straight upward.

"The advantage of this against a normal explosive seal is that it could effectively change the terrain of the battle. As most chunins would be able to avoid getting stabbed initially since the spike points are quite obvious." Kiyoshi commented, still he was quite impressed by the seal.

He could see that the seal would have quite obvious uses in a large-scale battlefield, though it wouldn't be as effective one-on-one.

"What about the rest of the 4 seals are they one for each element?" Kiyoshi asked.

Hikaru nodded, "Yeah, one for each element."

"What do the rest of the seals do?" Kiyoshi questioned.

"Well, the Wind and Water works in a similar fashion to the Fire. Each of them is a compression of chakra that would blow up 2 seconds after the trigger seal is activated. The Lightning is a little different though as it is quite difficult to create a bolt that could travel through air without chakra guidance." Hikaru explained.

"So once the trigger seal is activated, after 2 seconds the seal would discharge all the lightning chakra in the form of a single bolt. This bolt would attack the closest conductive material it could find, so the principle for its effective use is a lot harder."

"You have to make sure that when the timer is up, the closest thing to the seal is your opponent. If the seal, let's assume it is wrapped up in a kunai, is closer to the ground than an opponent. Then the whole charge would be absorbed by the ground." Hikaru finished as he looked toward Jiraiya.

Jiraiya was already fiddling with the second seal, he had mastered two chakra signatures so he quickly poured chakra into the water explosive tag, wrapped it around a kunai, and threw it against the ground a few meters away from the initial impact site.

This time Jiraiya had timed the seal activation perfectly, and as soon as the kunai landed on the ground it imploded into a burst of water.

'That is less than what I was expecting...' Hikaru thought, considering that the Water Dragon Jutsu was a B-rank technique Hikaru was expecting an impact similar to that.

But the burst of pressurized water did cut through the ground as it imploded upon itself. Some water rose in the form of a splash before it settled down in the form of a small pool.

"Jiraiya, how much water would you be able to generate by using the Waterfall jutsu with the same amount of chakra?" Kiyoshi asked, his eyes twinkling in anticipation.

"Double that," Jiraiya spoke, he was comparing the effects of the seal to the Kanji that was written on the tag. Its effect was different than what he was predicting.

'I was expecting it to release the water in the form of a pressurized projectile. Did I read it wrong...' Jiraiya thought

...

"Do you have another one of the Water exploding tags?" Jiraiya/Kiyoshi both spoke at the same time. They both looked at each other with a raised eyebrow. 

...

"My clone is making some as I'm still perfecting the seal matrix, the seals are still not as efficient as they can be. Though he is not focusing on just the Water-based exploding scroll..." Hikaru shrugged.

Jiraiya and Kiyoshi then stared at the last three explosive tags that were in Jiraiya's hands. The remaining elements were Fire, Wind, and Lightning. Unfortunately, all three of them had a primary Fire nature affinity so there was no way to test these 3 seals.

With the excitement of the new seal dying down Jiraiya focused on observing Hikaru again. His initial impression that Hikaru's fuinjutsu education would be handled by Tsunade was squashed down by the seals he had presented.

'There's no way Tsuna could have taught him these seals. Unless she knows some Uzumaki fuinjutsu that her grandmother taught her, Hikaru must have got these seals from somewhere else.' Jiraiya thought.

Kiyoshi on the other hand turned away and walked back toward Hikaru's tent. Jiraiya was hesitating about what to do. There were several complications that could arise if he taught Hikaru some seals.

First of all, Hikaru was an Uchiha. He was naturally more inclined to be combat-focused, but since he was leaving a clone behind to practice fuinjutsu, he must care or like Fuinjutsu as well. Secondly, since he's an Uchiha, his clan would surely object to him officially teaching him.

So anything that he must pass on to him, must be done in secret and without anyone knowing. At this time Jiraiya wasn't one Sanin right now, he was just the third Hokage's student. Although his strength warranted some respect to be shown to him, the Uchiha clan being one of the founders didn't need to be polite to him.

And finally, if Hikaru could come up with a way to make these seals that have a distinct taste of the Uzumaki clan then there is no point in him teaching Hikaru. In a matter of months, he would absorb everything that he could teach him and move on. This has happened before so he was aware of his own shortcomings. 

'I need to see if Arashi sensei would be willing to teach him, his talent in seals is somewhat similar to an Uzumaki...' Jiraiya thought.

"Did someone teach you these seals Hikaru-kun?" Jiraiya asked. He was still surprised by the mature look in Hikaru's eyes. He could see Hikaru's mind spinning with thoughts about why he would be asking this question.

Hikaru stared at Jiraiya, he hid his surprise as he spoke, "No, I found the basic book on seals in the clan library and learned the basic storage seal and basic exploding seal from there."

He shrugged, "It finally clicked a couple of days ago when I was thinking about the exploding seal, if Fire natured chakra could be stored and compressed then why couldn't I use the same principles for other nature chakras."

Jiraiya nodded seriously, the expression seeming a little off on his face, "What about the Kanji, have you read those before?"

"Uh no, I connected the Kanji based on how the specific elemental chakra behaves, you know water flows and air cuts. I wrote some synonyms and then after some trial and error I found the words corresponding to the elements that would work as storage containers." Hikaru spoke.

All of this was bullshit of course he wasn't that gifted with fuinjutsu. This was the result of 1 year of grinding the explosive tag. But now that he knew that just by upgrading one of the intermediate seals to an advanced level his knowledge of fuinjutsu would also increase, the next increase should happen a lot quicker.

Each fuinjutsu level was divided by the knowledge base he had access. The very basic fuinjutsu taught him the skeleton of how to structure a seal and its very basic elements. Similarly, the Intermediate fuinjutsu taught him the kanji connecting to the five basic elements and some other connecting and control-based Kanji. 

'What I could do if I wanted to create a new seal from scratch was a different thing altogether. I wonder what would happen when I try to create something other than the standard shit that the shinobi world is used to.' Hikaru thought.

Fuinjutsu could be compared to programming from his last world, although he wasn't that into it the basics of logic gates were quite clear to him. The only reason he hadn't tried anything was that the knowledge of seals he had from the basic fuinjutsu skill was not enough to experiment.

"Alright, Tsunade knows some advanced fuinjutsu but her focus is more on the medicinal effects of seals. I don't think she knows that you are gifted in fuinjutsu otherwise she would have taught you some stuff as well." Jiraiya spoke, this was all he could do for now.

Before sharing some of the more advanced stuff he learned under Arashi sensei he would have to take permission from the man.

'If he had not been an Uchiha then this would be so much easier.' Jiraiya thought. The Uzumaki clan could be attributed to be one of the most backward clans in the Elemental nations. They were protected by the feudal lords because of their skills in fuinjutsu, so they have always had a high station.

He didn't know the full history but the Uchiha clan were mercenaries during the warring states periods. So although the Uchiha and Uzumaki clans didn't clash they weren't allies either. The Uzumaki were quite proud as well, that was the reason they denied the offer to join Konoha directly but instead created their own shinobi village.

Seeing that Jiraiya was lost in thought Hikaru spoke, "Alright I'll go I have some stuff to do."

After getting an absentminded nod Hikaru rushed back to his tent. Kiyoshi was watching over his clone to create water-natured explosive tags.

'I need to rename these seals, in the gamer interface all 5 seals are simply called Intermediate explosive tags. So I could name them whatever I want...' Hikaru thought. 

He walked over and picked up a brush, thoughts and ideas kept bouncing over in his head. The most important one would be how could he make seal tags that would store elemental chakra that one could use to perform jutsu.

'The main component of the Intermediate explosive tag compresses the elemental chakra before releasing it based on the trigger. To effectively use the chakra to perform a jutsu, I need to remove the compressor part. But then again the chakra that would be released would mix into the air...' Hikaru thought.

He hashed out a few ideas but everything hit a dead end, his knowledge of seals still wasn't enough for that idea to work. He needed something that would channel chakra from the seal into his tenketsu.

While thinking about this problem an idea came to his mind.

'Jiraiya said that Tsunade also knows fuinjutsu right, I only know about the seal on her forehead but isn't what that seal does a little similar to what I want.' Hikaru thought.

"So what do you think about the seal," Hikaru asked as he destroyed his drawing with some fire manipulation.

"It's a good seal, practically divine for water-natured users." Kiyoshi spoke, looked into Hikaru's eyes, and explained, "In most scenarios when there is no water around, the first thing any water ninjutsu user does is create water by burning through their chakra. The Waterfall Jutsu and Great Waterfall Jutsu are perfect examples of this."

He picked up a blank piece of paper and started writing, "Just our shinobi force could be divided into 3 categories. One does not have a primary water affinity but they know some water jutsu and water is their secondary affinity. If there is no water nearby then they would simply use their primary affinity instead of wasting chakra and creating water."

"The second category would be those who have water-natured chakra but aren't strong enough to use those two jutsus, mainly genin and some new chunin. In a battlefield, their ninjutsu is basically useless so they are constrained to fight with taijutsu or genjutsu." 

"And the final category is for those who have water as a primary affinity. Even they had to use around 25-30% of their total chakra just to create enough water to use their techniques. While your seal does not eliminate the need to use their chakra to create water. It does make it so that most shinobi could fight without having to worry about it and not fight with a handicap of lowered chakra." Kiyoshi explained.

Hikaru was expecting the 3rd scenario but even he had not thought about the 1st and 2nd category. The flexibility of fuinjutsu was once again highlighted as he nodded and walked out of the tent.

'I need to talk to Tsuande...'

...

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