Mastering the Shadow Clone Jutsu, Genjutsu Practice, Chakra Growth, the Math

Yuta started his practice of the Shadow Clone jutsu in a time-loop.

When he performed the jutsu for the first time after 3 months of chakra control training, Yuta found that manipulating the half of his chakra is not that hard anymore as during his previous attempt.

'Itachi was right, I was slacking in the chakra control before. I thought that I will improve it along with ninjutsu or genjutsu training later on, but it turns out I was highly lacking in it, especially after my chakra reserve was grown.'

As Yuta successfully performed the Shadow Clone jutsu, with a slight puff of smoke Yuta's clone appeared beside him, and both Yuta's starts to look at each other with curiosity.

'Hm, this is how it works huh… It's like I'm looking in to the mirror. Half of my chakra reserve is gone, and I feel the connection with the clone, I can feel that it's there and active, and while the clone is active its slowly drain my chakra to maintain the jutsu.'

"Your chakra is draining to, right?" Yuta asked his clone.

"Yes" Clone replied, "With this rate it will deplete in two hours, but I probably dispel sooner, as to maintain the shadow clone also requires some amount of it."

"I see. My chakra is draining much slower, It will lasts for around four hours in this rate." Yuta replied to his clone.

'I feel stupid talking with myself like that, It feels weird…'

"Hey" Clone suddenly spoke with a smirk, "Did you thought right now that you felt stupid talking to yourself?"

'This guy! This is good that there is no one here to see me talking with myself like that…'

With that thought Yuta dispelled his shadow clone. As he did that, shadow clone puffed and chakra that contained in clone returned to Yuta. With that the memory of the clone is returned as well.

'I definitely will not talk with my shadow clones anymore, it felt so embarrassing, especially when the memory of it returned to me. It's like enacting a scene with two characters, but I play both of them one after another, it's just so pointless to speak with your own shadow clone, the same thing as you speak with your own self.'

'Well, I was always curious to figure it out how exactly the shadow clones work, now I know. It's just the copies of me that will merge its memories back to me when dispelled. Right now I have the memories of me talking to a clone, and also me as a clone talking to my original, and both sets of memories are pretty much the same.'

'Memories of me as a clone, it felt pretty much the same as I feel now, the body felt the same, the chakra inside felt the same. There was only one difference – my clone didn't felt the Time Control ability at all, but this is expected.'

'The Time Control ability is belongs to my soul, and my clone didn't have my soul, just the chakra. There is a mix of spiritual energy in the chakra, that is originated from my soul, but that is not enough to poses the ability itself I suppose.'

'I used half of my chakra reserve to create a shadow clone, it sustained only a little time so chakra drain over time was insignificant, and right now chakra returned, but I still missing around 10% of my chakra, it means that from the 50% of my chakra that I spend, returned only 40%.'

'I need to practice the jutsu and try to decrease this chakra wastage if I can. I also need to practice Hell Viewing genjutsu with the shadow clone as well. I suppose it doesn't matter if I will be the one casting genjutsu on clone or the other way around.'

With that Yuta created a shadow clone again and let clone to perform Hell Viewing genjutsu on himself over and over, breaking genjutsu after a few seconds each time it start working.

Shortly after that the clone is dispelled and Yuta received chakra and memory.

'I see now. This time I created a clone while only having 90% of my chakra reserves and clone taken 45% of my chakra reserve. Clone performed genjutsu over and over, and when his chakra lowered from 45% to 35% of my maximum reserve - he suddenly dispelled. I spend 3% of my chakra reserve while maintaining the clone and dispelling genjutsu, and when chakra returned, now I only have 70% of my maximum.'

'That means that 20% of chakra I spend on shadow clone did not returns, and to sustain the clone, the clone needs to have 35% of my chakra reserve, if his reserve drops below that level, it dispels.'

'Well let see how much I can improve those aspects over time.'

With that Yuta continues practicing in time-loop. He meditate or work on Fuinjutsu seal designs while his chakra is restoring, then he creates a shadow clone and practices genjutsu by casting it on the shadow clone, that way he can deplete his remaining chakra before shadow clone dispels.

As Shadow Clone jutsu is very high chakra demanding, and the waste of chakra is still there, the actual training taken only small part of his time. Most of the time Yuta just waiting for his chakra to regenerate.

As Yuta decided to fully master the Shadow Clone ninjutsu and Hell Viewing genjutsu, he concentrated hard on it, repeating the same month of the academy over and over again.

Finally after 8 whole months in time-loop Yuta becomes satisfied with the results. But at the same time Yuta starts to hate the academy as a whole and the same dialogues repeating over and over again.

After this time-loop Yuta decided that he will never create another time-loop for training while he is attending the academy.

'Well, thank God this training is finally over! I feel like I'm going in circles for many years, I need to move on before I finally lost it!'

'My chakra reserve are grown a lot during this time, I feel like it on the solid Chunin level now. My spiritual energy also should be on the Chunin level, maybe even high-Chunin level. But my physical energy and strength is still on top-Genin level, well it expected.'

'What is not expected is that my spiritual energy is growing faster than it should. I become more and more convinced that my spiritual energy growth is boosted by my Time Control ability.'

'I practiced to reduce the amount of hand seals needed for the Shadow Clone jutsu, and reduced it to only one, the final cross-sign, but no matter what, I was unable to get rid of it. Molding such high amount of chakra in this special way to create shadow clone is just too hard to accomplish without the hand seal, so I will be using this hand seal for now.'

'As I become more and more accustomed to the Shadow Clone jutsu, the chakra wastage become less and less. If at the beginning it was 20% of chakra loss, now it only 5%. I feel like this number can be eventually reduced to zero, but it will take too much time to accomplish it right now. It will be more efficient if I practice it once more when I have much more chakra than now.'

'Yes, my reason is definitely the lack of efficiency! And not the fact that I hate academy more and more the every extra day I spend here…'

'I also have tested the shadow clone overall, it fascinating that the clone also copied my stash of seal tags and can use it the same way I use it!'

'If I draw the seals and then create a shadow clone, the clone can use his own seals, they will work the same way as the real seals, so that way only chakra is wasted but the original seals is preserved.'

'Same situation with all the ninja tools, clone can spam all the shurikens and kunais he have, along with smoke screens and seal tags, and it will not waste my original stash of it.'

'With that I start to think that it's actually a good idea to wear a tons of explosion tags on me all the time, that way I can create a shadow clone and send him to the enemy and clone can explode himself in close proximity with the enemy, that will be great move I think, hehe…'

'But I still feel a bit uneasy thinking about that… Well, I can store a tons of explosion seals inside a storage seal, that I can place on my own body, that way it will serve as additional layer of protection for me to not blow up myself.'

'Hm… Interesting, if I will be blown up but still fast enough to activate my time travel, will it work while my entire body is blown to pieces? I hope I will never to know the answer to that…'

'But the idea with storing a lot of explosive tags is great. I will place the storage seal on my body for it later on.'

'There is no problem to draw seals on the body, it can be easily removed. There is even a special kind of ink for draw a temporary seals on body in the shops. This special ink can sustain for a month and even water will not damage it, but it can be easily erased if I want with chakra.'

'Up to this point I was avoiding to waste time outside time-loop for drawing seals and do other stuff, so I can spend entirety of it on physical training, but now I can create a shadow clone for seals production, so it's time to update my arsenal I suppose.'

'As for Hell Viewing genjutsu, there is not much about it. I get rid of the need of hand seals and get used to casting a genjutsu and to precisely control the genjutsu on the target. But this particular genjutsu is just a crap, I doubt I will ever use it in battle, it's only good for start the genjutsu practice, that's all.'

After thinking about those things Yuta traveled back in time to the day when Itachi taught to him the Shadow Clone jutsu.

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[AN: 5 extra chapters ahead of schedule release on my patreon /SycoreNovels (sorry for my patreon subs, today I had too little time to write a new chapter for you)

Big thanks to yann schurmans for supporting me on patreon! (even if he unsubscribed right after that...)]