9 Delving into the Sinful Legacy
Hey everyone, author here. I just want to say that the timeline around the events of the Uchiha Massacre and the time the Rookie Nine spent in the Academy always confused me a bit so I'll just take some creative liberty a fanfic is not supposed to be exactly like the original anyway so that's that. So that means all the Rookie Nine and Shiki will have four years in the Academy, from ages 8 to 12.
When the Uchiha Massacre occurred Sasuke was already in his first year in the Academy so it means it will occur when he's 8 in my timeline, I know he is supposed to be younger but I'm doing it this way to save the hassle, Kishimoto messed up the timeline in this period pretty bad.
Well that's all from me. Enjoy the chapter!
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It was a moonless night in Konoha, in a small secret sanctum Shiki had built over the last year, the five year old boy was standing in the middle of a ritual circle made up of countless esoteric characters drawn with his own blood.
'Over the last year my chakra control and reserves have improved to an acceptable level, since this type of jutsu is where all my legacy given talent shines, I should be able to perform it. I triple checked the jutsu formula it's perfect. I'll get this first try!'
As he finished his though Shiki placed a red pot, crafted from clay mixed with his blood and chakra, in the center of the ritual circle then he jumped to the circle's edge and after chaining over twelve special hand seals he said in his mind.
'Sealing Jutsu: Soul Harvesting Pot'
The the characters of the ritual circle lit up with what it looked like an eerie, ethereal white flame and then were drawn into the clay pot setting it ablaze as well.
A few moments later, the flames died out and an eerie black pot and charred markings of the characters in the stone floor of was all that was left. As he gazed at the pot Shiki thought with glee and satisfaction.
'Good with this any being that dies within range will have their souls drawn into the pot. As long as I leave it in this ritual circle made by the burn marks on the floor, the range will cover the entire village. With this when the Uchiha massacre occurs their souls will be all mine!'
Having done this Shiki started planning out his next move.
'Hmm, for my second avenue of gathering souls, I can summon the souls of the dead from the afterlife if I have their blood, a piece of flesh or bone, that means grave robbing. Considering that the bodies of shinobi can conceal a lot of secrets there will probably be security measures like seals stopping someone from just stealing them fortunately, that's my specialty, at least it will be once I study that part of the legacy and since my chakra reserves improved I can use more shadow clones for my training now.'
'After I have some souls I can also perform the Reaper Contract Seal, I'm curious what kind of powers that will give me . . . And at what cost. I can also perform the Reaper Death Seal: Release by simple exchanging the souls i gather with the ones the Shinigami has already devoured, though without the mask, I must offer up one soul just to summon it.'
'Anyway, my goals for the near future are set. All I have to do now, is train until I have the ability to achieve them!'
One more year had gone by, Shiki was now six years old and had endeavored to maximize the benefits gained in this past year.
His chakra reserves barely improved much to his chagrin but his chakra control became even more refined, reaching mid jounin.
He also endeavored to learn some basic jutsu for all four elements other than wind and it only made him develop a great deal of respect towards shinobi who had mastered all four basic transformations without using hax like abilities such as the rinnegan. Still, he persevered and succeeded in learning a few C-rank jutsu: Earth Style: Hidden Mole Jutsu, Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu, Water Style: Raging Waves and Lightning Style: Lightning Ball.
But that was just part of his focus, the majority of Shiki's time was spent studying barrier and security seals, with particular focus on how to break them, a largely successful endeavor. He truly underestimated the power of the Gift of Legacy, when god said he would have immense talent for the jutsu within, he wasn't joking.
In order to not to be caught unaware during his illicit activities, the redhead worked on his Mind's Eye of the Kagura and the associated ability to conceal one's chakra from detection. His detection range was already over one kilometer and he was confident not even kage level shinobi could detect his chakra, of course his physical movements and hiding techniques would be child's play for such shinobi so he still wouldn't be able to hide from them. Even so, Shiki was pretty sure there would be no kage level shinobi guarding his current targets.
With his improved arsenal, the boy sneaked out of the Senju compound once more, under the cover of night. He was not confident in his ability to conquer the security measures protecting high rank shinobi but he was sure the wouldn't put such care into protecting those of lower status.
In this particular instance, Shiki simply went to the Konoha cemetery and checked each of the graves and then, after determining which were within his ability to breach, he collected samples across a number of days, as for how useful the souls would be, he would figure it how after summoning, since souls without notable traits can be refined into pure souls which can be used for various purposes., he was sure no sample was wasted effort.
At this moment, Shiki was back in his hideout. It had been expanded through the use of Shiki's newly learned earth nature transformation. The expansion was a mere enlargement of its single chamber that was now protected by triple layered, specialised seals. The first layer has a wider range and detects intruders, when this happens the second layer will prevent entry while the third layer disposes of all objects within. Although this would cause Shiki some setbacks, it was still better than being caught.
Before gathering the samples, Shiki had created a Soul Sealing Pot to hold them through a much simpler but similar process to the one used to create the Soul Harvesting Pot. The boy had also prepared a second ritual circle as preparations for the Soul Summoning Jutsu.
Placing the pot in the middle of the new ritual circle. Shiki started with the long process of summoning the souls from the Pure Land. Since only one soul could be summoned at a time and the process was quite exhausting, the redhead took a considerable amount of time to finish summoning all the souls. Still, as he looked at the Soul Sealing Pot filled with thousands of souls Shiki was filled with glee, thinking it was worth the effort while storing the newly filled pot in a storage scroll for safekeeping.
Since he had yet to learn the Soul Refining Seal and Soul Reading Jutsu or the Reaper Death Seal, Reaper Death Seal: Release and Reaper Contract Seal, there way really nothing Shiki could do with these souls but merely knowing that he already had enough materials to work with for later, made him happy. So
The five year old could already tell these jutsu would take much longer to learn so he decided that while he would still dedicate a large portion of his time to studying them he would shift his focus to refining his skills as a shinobi.
For the next year he would attempt to learn one more basic jutsu for all basic nature transformations, gain some rudimentary skill in genjutsu at the very least learn to break them since Mind's Eye of the Kagura could already help him detect them and perhaps pester Tsunade to arrange for someone to teach him bukijutsu and perhaps fork over some money for a specially made fan too, since wind jutsu were currently his best offensive method.
So in the first morning after his last night of soul summoning, Shiki was hard at work pestering Tsunade while his clones worked on the other tasks he set for himself.
"Tsuna-nee! You look positively radiant today, the whole word should prostrate before such beauty!"
Tsunade merely looked upon Shiki suspiciously.
"You're particularly grand with your compliments today so what do you want?"
Clearly after spending two whole year living with Shiki, Tsunade knew him pretty well.
"Ah Tsuna-nee, you know me too well! It can already be said that we are bound by fate, soulmates of the highest order!" Shiki shamelessly continued.
"Alright, alright I get it! Now spit it out!" Tsunade hurried him.
