Chapter 13

I'm scared to the point of gnashing my teeth, but I have to pull myself together! One mistake and I could cripple myself. 

- Honey, you're going to be fine, calm down. You've done this a few times before," Mom said, trying to encourage me. 

"I've done it, I've done it, but every time it's like the first time!"

On this beautiful clear evening, I'm not sitting in the library like Minato-kun, competing with my peers in games like Tsume-chan, or walking around the village like Kushina-chan. My time today is dedicated to a very important event - the final development of the finger chakra channels. This means that after today's training, I can make full use of the family Hiden. 

Of course, when the final training is complete, I'll have to spend some of my jutsu points to record the first (and only) technique in the Jutsu Book. It's a crazy convention that if I don't record the technique in the book, all my efforts will be for naught, and I won't be able to use the jutsu. 

  (Youn) Concentration : 45% vs. 46% - Success. The effect of Fear is leveled. Next turn - 10 min. 

At last the skill passed. I failed four times, and it was only at the fiftieth minute that I succeeded. I could, of course, have started the training without the skill, but there was no point in risking it; as I had said earlier, if my arm twitched even a little, the chakra channels would be affected.

- Whew, here we go! - I exhaled and confidently tightened the fishing line at the base of each finger on my left hand, constricting the blood flow and chakrotok (chakra-conducting fishing lines). After enduring the pain, I take the first syringe, the smallest. Slowly but precisely, I push the needle into the tenketsu that I had marked earlier with paint. 

I'm injecting the toxin into the chakrochannel area of the little finger of my left hand. It hurt like hell, but I had to be patient. I ignored the messages about skills triggering and did the same with the rest of the fingers of my left hand.

- Time it," I said with difficulty. I hear the stopwatch click. 

Time seems to freeze, the pain tearing through every finger, it's so intense that tears involuntarily start to flow from my eyes. 

That's a hell of a workout. I don't even want to know how many people they tortured for the sake of maximizing the chakro channels in their fingers.

A minute, two, five alternate.

- Aki, it's time! - I hear my mother's voice through the pain.

Immediately, I loosen the nubs on my fingers and let the chakra flow through the channels, releasing it from the tenketsu of my left hand.

Instead of bluish chakra coming out of my fingers, it's an acrid-salacious chakra. Half done. After a short rest, during which my mother and I drank green tea brewed according to all traditions, my mother tried to cheer me up in every possible way, telling me that the hardest part was over and it was only a little bit left. Even though I tried to show my equanimity, but can you fool a person who knows you better than you do? Definitely not. 

  It was nearing nightfall, and once again I was torturing myself. I poured a toxin made from the sap of the Predatory Poison Lily of the Valley, a family recipe, into the tenketsu of each of the fingers of my right hand, and after a five-minute soak, I released the poisonous-salad-colored chakra. 

+1000 experience

  Level 9 received! Until the next 5789/7000

Achievement gained: 

[Hiden: Bloodline Seo Stage 2] : Available active skill [Double Seal]; Available to learn D rank Hidenjutsu [Bio: Toxic Claw]; +1 Stamina;

- It worked," I muttered heavily under my breath. It was damn hard, harder than the last time, because the toxin I was using now wasn't diluted. 

I want to lie down on the cold basement floor and sleep, but I can't. It's better to finish everything once and for all, and then just perfect the technique to perfection. 

- Aki, why don't you get some rest? - Mom asked worriedly. She waddled over to me and put her left hand on my head, gently smoothing my unruly hair. 

- No. I want to try and finish the Claws, and I'd like to get a handle on the Double Seal. I'm about to graduate, and I don't have any fighting techniques! The ones Minato found in the Academy library don't suit me at all! 

- Son, why rush, Jonin the mentor will give you a base and the Genin pass will allow you to borrow jutsu scrolls from the ninja library to study.

"It's just unknown who will be my mentor, and who will be on my team is also unknown," I thought to myself. 

Stubbornly, I rise and prepare to use the long-learned seals. I had used a surrogate Claws before, but they weren't a complete technique, just chakra released from the tenketsu and transformed into the shape of sharp claws. It was far from a technique, and such a surrogate was only good for practicing and showing off. 

But things are different now. The channels in the fingers are developed, the right tenketsu are modified and allow for the right transformation. 

I fold a number of seals. The first time you use a jutsu, you need to stack a full set of seals, then, after long training, the ninja reduces the number of crutches to one, and especially gifted and stubborn are able to produce jutsu without seals at all. My situation is a bit different, because I have a "game" genome, which has both advantages - after learning the number of seals for any technique will be no more than two, and disadvantages - jutsu not recorded in the Book of Jutsu, do not get a word at all, they simply do not work on them skills of Control (Change of Form, Natural Transformation).

  Regarding the technique I'm trying to perform right now. The jutsu is rank D and is called [Bio: Toxic Claw], and it's upgradeable. This means that when I take certain Hiden skills, the jutsu will have new features added to it, and the best part about it is that if I can upgrade it to S (or lower) rank, it will only take up 4 cells in the jutsu book as if it were D rank, and that's the case with all upgradable jutsu! 

I fold the last seal and say the name of the technique quietly. 

Toxic chakra emerges from the tenketsu on the fingers of both hands, and three centimeters long claws of an acrid green color are formed. With an effort of will, I gave permission to write in the Book.

(D) [Bio: Toxic Claw] reserved 4 jutsu cells. 

Listening to myself, I realize that they're not wasting much chakra, now we need to figure out the striking power. 

I walk over to the pre-hung carcass of a young calf, stripping it with my chakra claws.

Where I hit, the flesh falls off in chunks. Quite entertaining. The area of impact has increased, and the claws have become quite a dangerous weapon.

However, this jutsu was obtained by accident, but the thing that my mother's ancestors used to kill people in packs trying to overcome the limit of tenketsu throughput on their fingers was the Double Seal. It's not even a jutsu, but rather a specialty of folding seals, in my case a skill. 

First of all, you need to understand why you need hand seals in the first place and how to reduce their number in jutsu.

  The whole point is that it is impossible to immediately discard crutches in the form of seals. They are needed to redistribute chakra while preparing to use the jutsu. The more often a ninja uses the jutsu, the fewer seals he needs. However, the optimization process is long and arduous, and even the Jonin have only a couple of techniques that are perfected to the point of perfection. You can know a thousand jutsu, but you simply don't have the life to optimize them all! At most five or six, or even two or three. 

Mom's ancestors valued time greatly and wanted to be masters of as many jutsu as possible. The result of their painstaking research was double seals, which are not too different from the 6 basic anchor seals, but allow 2 or more anchors to be used in a row. This means that a shinobi can immediately reduce the number of seals in a jutsu by half, because there is no need to stack a stabilizer seal after the anchor seal. For a normal shinobi to achieve such a thing, it would take a couple of years to intensively hone the jutsu. So Double Seals is a cheat when learning jutsu. Instead of 5-6 years, you only need 2-3 years to perfect the jutsu. 

It is also important that even if someone were to peek, they would not be able to repeat the Double Seals. It is also important that even if someone were to peek at it, they would not be able to replicate the Double Seals. 

I let go of the technique, stopping it from being drunk with chakra. The claws fade into the air.

  Three Double Seals:

- Bunshin no jutsu! 

And voila. Three seals instead of six, and the effect is maximized. 

- Oh, Aki, mom is so proud of you. At eleven years old... I didn't achieve something like that until I was fifteen," Mom was almost crying with pride.

- Come here," she beckons me with the only hand she has. I cancel the technique and put my arms around my mom. She had to go through a lot, we have less and less money, and the missions above E rank I will not see until I get Genin, and the first two months we with my future team will perform only D rank missions, this kind of fitting, and in these two months will not earn much. 

- But remember, Aki, only use the Double Seal in emergencies. If anyone finds out that it can be learned, you'll be in trouble.

"One more secret, one less. Big deal."

Later, we had a celebratory late dinner. We chatted about nothing, discussed Grandpa Kayoshi, who was caught red-handed by his young mistress (81 years old man!) in the arms of another mistress. We laughed. 

And yes, mom's donuts are the best! 

Already lying in bed satiated and satisfied, I distributed the received level, raised Taijutsu to 4, which in turn allowed me to take the skill Tai and General skill. There was a thought of raising my premium class to 2, but discarded it. No need to go against the pumping plan, next time Bio I will only raise Bio to 12. 

Choosing a skill is a challenge, there are so many of them, and they all need. The general one is easy.

[Greater Focus: Ninjutsu] (o) - Elemental chakra power + 15%; + 1 Jutsu cell/level; space reserved by Jutsu of rank D or higher in the Jutsu Book (-1);

But with the choice of Tai skill there were problems. I was offered to choose from 4 skills one, and the full list was closed. 

Each of the four skills relied on one of four characteristics: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, and Intelligence. In fact, if I had a choice, I would have taken all of them, because they were so good! For example, [Fox's Cunning] reduces the Yin cost of action, which means that you will be less tired when mentally active. The [Power of the Bull] skill, on the other hand, increases the Yang effect of an action, meaning that it increased the net physical strength of your muscles by as much as 25%! Even [Grace Neko], which increases the effectiveness of Yin in relation to the body, which is expressed in improved control of their actions, accuracy and reaction, made the mouth drool in desire to get this skill. Except that there are 4 skills (6 in general, but the Wisdom of the Owl and the Eagle's Greatness can not be taken - the requirements are not met), and you need to choose one.

I thought about it, I thought about it, and I decided to take Bear's Indefatigability.

[Bear's Indefatigability] (t) - The Yang cost of the action is reduced by 25%; 

  Reducing physical fatigue and extending one's life span by 25% seemed to me to be the most beneficial of the rest.

My consciousness slowly drifted away, my eyes slipped shut and after an unknown amount of time I fell into a sweet deep sleep.

  In the courtyard of the Shinobi Academy. After class. 

- It's been so quiet this week, I wonder why the shouty one is missing? - I ask my friends casually.

I don't forget to pick up a piece of obento meat prepared for me by Tsume with my chopsticks. 

Literally every day, the dishes prepared by my eternal rival are tastier and tastier. The first month I had to suffer, of course, and there were even cases of indigestion, but it was worth it. 

- Kushina-chan said that her grandmother was going to teach her 'Super Cool Technique!"," Uchiha Mikoto mocked her friend. The girl had only recently joined our friendly digs, but she wasn't as embarrassed as before. What can you say about her? She was a normal girl, nothing like that, no explosions of anger or anything of the sort that all Uchiha were known for. 

One day, Kushina brought Mikoto to us and made us realize that she was going to be with us from now on, much to Tsume's displeasure. The eternal rival considered herself the main one in our company and constantly fought with Kushina, who tried to take over the "power". It was like a kindergarten. 

- Super Cool Technique? - Minato reacted immediately. His blue eyes flashed with interest. Always calm, he wasn't like himself right now.

- I wish I knew what kind of technique. I'd like to know what kind of technique it is," Minato ruffled his hair. 

- Pfft. Who cares about scribbles! - Tsume waved her hand dismissively, "This is like the cool jutsu my father taught me. That's what I mean, wasn't it cool, Kuromaru?

- Woof! - partner Tsume confirmed. 

Everyone nodded their heads. Still, the technique Tsume had shown us recently was impressive. Turning a puppy into a copy of herself and then using her Double Claw of Destruction was powerful, though costly. Tsume, she said, can only perform this jutsu two times in a row, the third would result in chakro exhaustion. 

Another piece of pork goes into my mouth. Chewing. 

- Let's check on the redhead," I suggest. 

- Uh. Aki-kun, but she's staying at Uzumaki Mito-sama's place. That's, like..." Mikoto fidgeted uncertainly. 

- The Uchiha is a coward? - Scoffed Mikoto Tsume. 

- Some people have been afraid to visit me for a year. And my mom isn't that famous or powerful," I mocked the Eternal Rival.

- That's different! - Inuzuka blushed, either from anger or embarrassment. 

Unexpectedly, a Charm passed from Mikoto's side. 

"Just what I needed! Dibs on me, dibs on me! I've had enough of these rabid groupies screaming Aki-kun this, Aki-kun that," I pleaded. It started unexpectedly in my penultimate year of the Academy and has been going on for almost a year now. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, these fools are still annoying. They even organized a fanclub! If you think being overly popular is a good thing, then come closer and let me punch you in the jaw! Tsume, who doesn't tolerate strangers in her territory, and Kushina, who's no stranger to fist-bumping offenders, helped out. And the red-haired girl had plenty of offenders. 

- I think it's the right thing to do. Mito-sama is a good-natured man, and he wouldn't kick out or scold his ward's friends. I'm in favor of going," Minato said. 

- Well, I guess it won't be a big deal..." replied Mikoto uncertainly.

- I'm in favor! - Tsume stood up from her swing and nodded her head confidently.

- Woof! - Kuromaru barked in his partner's tone. 

The last of our group, Uchiha Fugaku, who had joined only a week ago and only because of his fiancée, for whom he feared, was as usual speechless. He shrugged, saying he didn't care. 

So we all went to Kushina's house uninvited. To see her.