Chapter 11: Strange Manifestation

I blinked once, I blinked at first, not comprehensive about what [Morpheus] was talking about.

"Explode, you mean erupt with power now that I've finally refined my chakra, right?" I inquired hopefully, one surprise after another had me worried about my luck right now and I need some assurance to complete my first Chakra refinement.

But sadly, my hopes were dashed.

"Nope! Explode as in your body will collapse in on itself before igniting and turning into a myriad of colorful lights and flames that will kill everything in 50 meters." [Morpheus] looked at [Ryze] who was silently communicating with him.

I blinked Twice, watching as [Morpheus]'s Serious face and the atmosphere slowly plunged.

I blinked thrice, and finally, I fully comprehended what he had just said, then I exploded from where I sat.

Well, not literally but you get the point.

"What?! What the hell do you mean I'm about to explode?!" I shout in desperation.

"Explode?!" Everyone else was shocked as well.

"Don't get too excited! [Yggy] says it's not as bad as it sounds, we are already working on a solution!" [Morpheus] signaled with his hands for me to calm down.

But how could I possibly calm down, who can do that when they are told they're about to blow up? But As I stood up in my panic, the Tendrils of Mental energy suddenly rioted and began to writhe and thrash wildly!

Somehow resonating with their tangible form from the Devil Mirrors illusion, they began to whip around and generate tangible bouts of wind from me at the center.

Surprised but not unprepared, Grandpa and Grandma immediately took action to guard Akane and Akiko against the blustering currents, taking large sweeps with their arms and dispersing them.

I didn't have much time to pay attention to them because soon I felt a pain spike in my skull! I slowly dropped to the ground in discomfort and cold sweat as I felt like several needles begin digging into my head, my eyes popping and my hands clutching my head and pulling hair.

"Kekkai!" Panicking Yoshiko and Hak-Or screamed and immediately ran to my side,

"Fuck! I said don't move! Guys! Help me out before this fucker kills himself!" [Morpheus] yelled in panic, looking to his friends and asking for them to aid him.

Nodding to him and looking at me in concern, the rest of the group redoubled their efforts as the Mental Energy tendrils soon returned to normal and dispersed my pain as well.

"What…the… hell was that [Morpheus]!?l" I gasped intermittently as the needle-like pain disappeared, but I still felt as if my head was tender like I just had the biggest migraine of my life!

This isn't supposed to happen! I've heard about over-refinement killing you when you push your body too hard. But I've been training my body since I was born! Hell, My body is strong enough to fight Akane and Akiko who are geniuses in the clan who've managed to refine chakra since they turned six and three years old!

"I thought that everything was fine at first, your will and life force began to merge and flow into a singular force which should be beneficial and help reinforce your body and life. But then, when that energy met your Tenketsu Meridians they were sucked up like a straw and changed into something else that reinforced and began to assimilate your nerves and circulatory systems Merging them into one! But in doing so it's eating away at your natural circulatory systems which should have held your originally potent Mental and Physical energies as well!" He hurriedly explained

"Then I'll stop it! If it's killing me I don't need it!" I say furiously and began to concentrate on stopping the merging of my mental and physical energies within myself.

"Don't do that!" Grandma Chiho hurriedly stopped me from the side.

"Why?! This stuff is eating away at my body!" I turned to look at her in confusion.

"That's your Chakra Meridians mapping themselves, as you get older they'll begin to grow with you. Your Chakra needs a platform that can hold and refine it at all times if you stop the process you're Meridians will become malformed and you won't ever be capable of molding Chakra normally!" Grandma Chiho explains to me while stepping closer.

"But if he doesn't stop, it'll kill him because as you've seen, his Mental energy is too much for his Chakra network, if we let it assimilate into his body and relax for just a second, it will flood back into his body looking for its former housing and blow up every Chakra Meridian in its path!" [Morpheus] commented with a dull tone.

Cold sweat poured down my forehead, and what [Morpheus] said was the straw that broke the camel's back as I immediately ignored my grandmother's advice and began to shut down the Merging Chakra within my body.

/Chakra or No Chakra, I have to live first before worrying about my strength!/ I murmured to myself as I tried to dowse the Chakra flame that had appeared within myself.

It was disorienting at first, Chakra itself is a manifestation of life force and willpower and the very notion of separating it from its main components of physical and mental energy is as difficult as unmaking cooked rice. Fundamentally it should be impossible!

After half a minute of fumbling, I gave up and tried a different method. Instead of worrying about the finished product, I'll stop the supply. Trying to settle back into the mentality that I had before the refinement I surprisingly found it easy to cut off the merging of physical and mental energy supplying my Tenketsu.

The flames flickered, dying down and slowly vanishing. But my face became uglier and uglier as they did so because from what I saw in my mind's eye The damage had already been done.

/What kind of black magic fuckery is this?/ I was stupified as I saw that my Blood vessels and nerves had shifted and twisted themselves around a spiraling structure running through my body like a branching coil.

They winded down it like an intertwined braid of nerves and muscles, looking weird and sickly.

"I, I don't know how to undo this. What the hell did it do?!" I whisper

"Let me see, it's likely not as bad as it looks. if worse comes to worst we will try to seal your excess mental energy for now," said Yoshiko as she places a hand against my shoulder to send her chakra into my body to check it.

Examining me for a minute, Seeing the entangled mess in my body she was at a loss for words.

"This isn't right, your Chakra network is working perfectly, but this, this isn't what it should look like at all!" Yoshiko explained while continuing her examination.

"It's because he was already on the path of refining his Chakra, which is his life force energy, inside his normal meridians. All he needed was to grow a few more years and he would be slinging Ki blasts everywhere. These so-called Chakra paths are a different thing altogether. They're unnatural, a way of a whole bunch of power systems combined into one for ease of access but not even coming close to accessing their true power!" [Morpheus] says disgusted

"What do you mean I've already refined Chakra? I just tried it today, you're not pulling my leg are you [Morpheus]?" I questioned with a raised brow.

"Chakra, Ki, Aura, whatever you would like to call it, was already part of you, and your mind and body were slowly refining it naturally. These things that you accessed our Chakra but it has a whole lot more added. I count four, no six, different power system conduits combined into one package! Whoever designed it was extremely ambitious, coming up with something like this. It's an inner Weave or Magic Circuit, able to use everything at once with ease if they understand it. But if somebody already has potential for a certain pathway like you, it has tried to kill it off in an attempt to turn it into a universal energy, turning you into a Jack of all trades And Master of None." [Morpheus] explains

"Uhuh, wait you said tried to?!" I asked surprised.

"Yep, just wait for a second. [Yggy] is trying to explain a plan to get around it." [Morpheus] confirms with a grin before turning to the Small Tree opposite him.

Having a silent conversation between the six of them, the demi-humans, animals, and trees covered with a series of humms barks, and rustling branches.

Finally, after five minutes, a series of grunts and nods and [Morpheus] clapped his hands and smiled with a wide grin.

"Oh, this is gonna be sweet! Kekkai, get ready, we're going to externalize your mental energy!" [Morpheus] alerts me before standing up to his feet.

"Externalizing? What do you mean by that?!" I asked while tensing a little.

"Exactly how it sounds! Since we can't leave it alone to merge with your Chakra Paths, we are going to assign it to a different task. Kind of like a computer running a large program in the background while running a smaller program. You'll be in full control of both but when we externalize your Mental Energy you will need to refocus and harness it, otherwise, it will just manifest randomly around you like a rogue Poltergeist." [Morpheus] explained

"Computer? What's that?" Grandpa Ryū asked

"No time to go into details old man. Just sit back and watch the show! Kekkai, your probably going to want to relax for a moment, this won't hurt a bit, I promise!" He dismissed me with a wave of his hand before looking at me eagerly

I had no clue what had gotten this Fighting Pervert so excited, but whatever it was, it must mean that whatever they were about to do would bring us massive gains to our strength.

"Ok, tell me what I need to do." I nodded

"Just sit there, you're going to feel a little, teensy bit of pressure. Like having a cold, build up for a while before releasing. Your job comes after, when it releases you need to concentrate on gathering it into a single object. Your mental strength should do most of the work alone but try to make something cool with it, you don't want to go dragging some turd-shaped object floating around you everywhere you go." [Morpheus] Advised mockingly

My face twisted a little in disgust at his last comment. Huffing a little, I immediately settled down and closed my eyes again for the fourth time. Relaxing so they could accomplish whatever they were attempting.

As I sat there, the long Tendrils of mental energy began to slowly wither and I slowly felt a buildup of pressure in my head, kind of like a common cold that blocked my nose or the buildup of pressure from riding an airplane.

Like a kettle that was about to boil, pressure built up and my eyes began to water and my nose and throat began to clog, fighting my instinct to panic and disrupt whatever was happening I waited as even though my senses were becoming more and more uncomfortable, My chakra that had only just been refined a few moments ago began to make movements as well as it left my chakra paths and began to forcefully pour out of my pores and form a Light blue mist around my body and spread around the room slowly.

As it did my senses expanded with it, giving me a slight out-of-body experience, an expansion of self as it spread more and more.

Tactile sensations of tingling and pulsating as it left my skin and shared how everything around me felt as if I was an exposed nerve, not too much that it would be painful but enough so I was aware of it.

The buildup finished and I felt a snap in my head and purple light with a slight aura poured out of my five orifices and shoot out in all directions gathering the scattered chakra as it bounced here and there off the cavern walls.

"Now! Focus it!" Morpheus commanded

Bringing my hand forward, although I didn't know what exactly to do I tensed and made a claw-like motion and focused on a single spot above my clawed hand. Sinking all of my attention to it to put myself into a trance, and as I did, the wandering light and Chakra began to surge once again.

*Swwooosh*

With a slight sound of a vacuum, that tiny spot I concentrated on was like a miniature black hole as both my inner Chakra and the Chakra that had pooled outwards were drawn into it.

As it did so, I felt it, a all to clear sudden sharpening of my senses, the slight displacement, the foggy out-of-body sense of touch slowly drew itself back into my body and the Object I was collecting above my hand.

The development of my 5 senses was already amazing since my rebirth, it leveled up twice the moment I started my Chakra Refinement, but this was something else!

It was like I broke through a freaking cultivation stage, my body began to slightly squirm and shiver as I felt my senses turn from a 6 to 11, and my skin crawled at the very feeling of my semi-dry clothing, my eyes catching every single mote of dust floating in the air, I could taste the stale air, and don't get me started on the smell!

My face turned ugly at the varying stench of sweat, perfume, and musk around me. Although hygiene isn't as ridiculous as in the middle ages in my old world, I know for a fact that everybody here took baths but the stench was so overpowering that I was almost convinced that I had even stopped breathing to maintain my focus and concentration on the task at hand.

Chakra continues to condense, from gas to liquid, coagulating more and more into shape, with a light pivot of my hand it changed as well and began to stream into a band of liquid, pinching my fingers in my other hand causing some to break off and recondense into the middle of the ring.

Condensing

Condensing

Finally, after another half a minute of concentration, an Amethyst Needle floating in the center

Of 2 Crystalline Cherry and Azure tinted rings. The size wasn't very large, about an inch and a half, but even so, I couldn't tell what it was exactly but the radiating pulses of energy I felt weighted itself in my mind.

As soon as the Object finished condensing the extreme feeling of heightened senses dampened and soon disappeared as well. Much to my relief, it was becoming a little painful from the hypersensitivity.

"Is that it? I thought it would be" But before I could finish my question, all seven of my Spiritual friends suddenly glowed and then shot at the Floating Needle and rang one after another turning into multi-colored glowing plates that surrounded and stamped themselves around it shrinking it even more, turning the original finger sized object down two notches into a small plated marble.

*Plop*

And just like that, it fell silently into my open palm. A silent black marble sat there in the gaze of the audience.

A wind circulated throughout the cavern, and the image of the floating island began to shift and distort into a shifting dyed mist before becoming a cloudy white once again.

The most gathered completely and reformed into a hand mirror that rose from the ground.

It appears that the technique had dispersed, and the illusory landscape disappeared along with it. Grandma Cho walked forward and grabbed the mirror from the ground before placing it back on the pedestal with a complicated face.

"Is that it? A shiny rock?" Akiko asked, her voice slightly disappointed. Seeing that for all the special effects and up and downs for several minutes of waiting, all that excitement just to end up with a small pebble the size of the tip of her finger.

"I- it seems so…" Granpa Ryu states while stepping up to examine the black metallic ball in my hand.

I really couldn't blame them for their disappointed looks, but I had other things on my mind right now. It seems that the event has ended but there was a situation that made everything complicated once again!

-I can't feel them. I can't feel even feel Lost Paradise!- I panicked silently, whatever happened, whatever it was that they had done, it had somehow fully cut off my connection with my Tulpa, it even sealed off my access to my mental wonderland.

-I just can't get a break today!- I complained with a groan, glaring at the dead object while rolling it between my fingers.

"May I?" Grandpa Ryū asked with an open hand reaching out for the Marble.

"I... Sure." I hesitate for a moment before handing it over to his giant hand.

"Don't worry I won't break it." Grandpa Ryū chuckled, taking the object before bringing it up to his face to examine it with slitted eyes.

Although when I had introduced the tulpa earlier on, and explained that all of them meant no harm to my health and well-being. Seven strange creatures residing within his Grandsons mind and the repeated complications that aroused around a very simple Chakra Refinement, all of which could kill or even cripple the future of his grandson had the old man skeptical once again, and seeing the seven creatures transfer themselves into this small object convinced him to try and take a closer look once again.

Examining the small black pebble that divided itself into several plates that aligned themselves along the small surface, Ryō secretly exerted force to test the object's durability, but little did he expect that as he did so-

*Crick*

*POP*

Like a hollow foosball, the object instantly collapsed in on itself before scattering into a cloud of dust particles.

"....." Ryō was silent, stupified.

".....Grandpa... You said you wouldn't break it." I was silent, eye twitching, I really shouldn't have given it to this damn berserker. My heart pained and worried as I looked at the glittering remains.

*Pop*

The next second another pop sounded as another object poofed into existence in front of me. Before plopping down to the floor.

"....." everyone else was silent

Ryōs eyelid twitched. Looking downward he silently reached for it once again.

"...." I took it before he could reach it, placing it into my pocket, and glared distrustfully at the giant man.

"Hehe." Ryō could only rub his head with his stretched-out hand and chuckle dryly

"How do you feel? Is everything fine with your body now?" Grandma Cho suddenly interrupted, trying to avoid embarrassment for her husband.

"Hmm, I feel good, nothing painful, no exploding." I nodded, turning away from the lumbering oaf that was my grandfather.

"Hehe, I can see that, how about we leave the Mountain and have something to eat, it's getting late there has been a little bit too much excitement for today and you must be starving." offered Grandma Cho with a smile.

"I am, I SHOULD be eating pheasant right now but Grandpa decided to beat me like throw rug!" I grumbled while giving Grandpa Ryō a side-eye.

"Ah! I forgot that! I left it on the Firepit! It should be nothing but char now." Ryō slapped his head in realization.

I grunted in despair at this oaf, thinking about that perfect bird that could fill my belly being turned into a burnt barbecue made my already bad day worse.

"Then it's good that I had already prepared a nice boar for dinner! We will celebrate with a feast tonight, tomorrow, we will find out what Chakra Attributes you have and begin your training with your father and uncle. Come, come." Grandma Sighed before coming forward to grab me as well as Akiko and Akane and bring us out of the cave.

"Boar is fine, but what about training? We do fine on our own! Right Akiko, right Akane?" I raise an eyebrow as she guided us out. To which my two cousins nodded in agreement.

"Oh? So you don't want to learn the clan's Secret Techniques?" Grandma Cho raised an eyebrow and asked.

"No, we do! It's just that we usually have our plan." I whisper sheepishly, who wouldn't want to learn Clan techniques, especially in this day and age?

"Yes, I've heard you little ones have done well in training on your own, but Chakra is a very dangerous power and must be practiced with discretion! You can continue your training but it will be dangerous for you to not know the dangers of doing so alone! Akiko and Akane have already been warned about the dangers of Chakra practice and although you have some extremely acute aptitude for Chakra Control, it's something that can easily harm you, don't try to refine any more Chakra till your father and uncle explain some dangers to you. Understand?" Grandma smiled at first but became serious and looked deeply at me.

"Yes, Grandma." I lied with a nod, I'm going to be experimenting all night long as if I would allow myself to let this mysterious force swell in my veins without examining it inside out!

"Wait speaking of dad! Where is everyone else? Aren't they coming as well?" I stopped as I realized that only Grandma Cho had come out with us. Grandpa Ryō, Aunt Madoka, and my mother and father had stayed behind in the cave.

"No need, they're just discussing some unimportant matters, they'll catch up with us soon!" Grandma Cho dismissed us with a wave of her hand and continued to guide us out with a firm hand on my shoulder.

-Unimportant my ass! You just wanted to distract us so we can't hear what they were about to talk about- I rolled my eyes but stayed silent as she guided us.

*****

Meanwhile back inside the Cavern

"Is it a Bloodline Limit awakening? I've seen a lot of strange techniques but the raw potential in Genjutsu that he shows is astounding!" Aunt Madoka asked as soon as we left earshot.

"Not just Genjutsu, his talent in raw Taijutsu is astounding as well! You wouldn't believe it if you didn't see it, If it weren't for Akiko learning that Shunpo technique, he would have defeated both of them with ease! Two of the most potential girls in today's younger generation and he managed to bully both of them into depression without any Chakra of his own! Just his Chakra leakage from the first refinement is nearly the same as the Young adults of the Daimyo Clans!" Grandpa Ryō grinned sincerely in amusement and barely held excitement, he looked at his son-in-law Hak-Or and his wife Yoshiko in order to confirm.

"It's not the Jackal, my big brother doesn't have something so easy to get along with or control! Otherwise, my clan wouldn't be hunted and sold into slavery for our rampant blood limit. These entities are something else entirely. In fact, this is just a guess, but I think these beings are something higher. The Black wolf recognized me. I've never been able to awaken the Shift. The only way for them to recognize me, is something is for it to recognize me during THAT time." Hak-Or explained with a pained and dark expression.

"You mean-" Madoka asked with wide eyes

"Exactly." Hak-Or nodded

"Then this is even worse than him refining Natural Energy! if the Daimyos or the dogs of the Three Holy Lands find him, they'll cut him to pieces for just existing!" Aunt Madoka panicked

"No, the Heretic hunt has ground to a halt in recent years because of the National Tension, as long as the Onyx Court of the Crescent Star Empire exists, they wouldn't dare harm Kekkai overtly." Ryō shook his head and measured after a moment.

"And Covertly? Those Ninja dogs won't have the common decency to take that into account when collecting a bounty." Yoshiko asked calmly

"Simple, as we have always done, savagely beat the stupid beasts until they remember exactly why they are servants and not the master. Besides, with Kekkai's displayed prowess, do you really think those puppies wouldn't be scattered on the ground looking for their teeth if they dared to even look at him funny?" Ryō smiled as he said this, but his eyes were dark and cruel, like a savage animal hiding within.