Chapter 41: Sasuke's Training

After returning home, Karin, full and satisfied, surprisingly asked to go to the basement to study. This piqued Aoba's interest.

The two of them then went to the basement. It was a place sealed off by Aoba using various sealing techniques. No one, not even the likes of the Telescope Technique or White Zetsu's spying, could see into it.

"Aoba-nii, I've noticed something strange. There's this creature you mentioned, and it's been hanging around near our house recently."

"Near us?"

Aoba's heart skipped a beat. He realized he had overlooked something. Before, he hadn't been worried about White Zetsu's surveillance because he had been an unknown small fry. At that time, the active White Zetsu clones were limited, and there was no reason for them to waste energy on him.

However, after 'defeating' the Raikage, the Wind Chasing Sword had become a notable figure in the current shinobi world. Naturally, this might have attracted White Zetsu's attention.

Fortunately, he conducted all his important experiments in his isolated laboratory, so White Zetsu couldn't detect anything. Otherwise, it could have led to countless unpredictable consequences.

"Where is it now?" Aoba asked.

"I can't see it right now, but just before I came home, it was just under our house, only about ten meters away."

He understood. It seemed White Zetsu had noticed his secret laboratory. Being blocked by sealing techniques, White Zetsu would undoubtedly grow curious. It was now very close to the surface, wanting to know what this rising shinobi was secretly up to.

"Very well, Karin. Remember, don't focus too much on it. Just keep track of its location, but don't pay it too much attention. Also, when it gets right beneath our floor, let me know."

"Got it." Karin sounded excited. Children are always interested in ninja games. Kids who haven't graduated yet always fantasize about becoming great ninjas once they do, galloping across battlefields. But in reality, no shinobi on the battlefield doesn't long for the days back at school.

The ninja game was never a child's game. It was a deadly game intertwined with iron and blood.

After the New Year, in the final days of the holiday, he remembered a promise he had yet to fulfill.

By the river outside the village, Sasuke was waiting impatiently. He even began to wonder if Aoba had tricked him.

Before the New Year, he had encountered Aoba, who made a very strange request — to hold a party at the Uchiha family estate during the New Year and invite his classmates with whom he had good relations.

Sasuke had never received such an odd request in his life. It even felt like Aoba was deliberately making things difficult for him. After all, the entire village knew Sasuke wasn't sociable. But Aoba insisted on making him do something like this.

However, the jutsu Aoba had promised to teach him — one that could kill Itachi — was too tempting. Although Sasuke was prideful, after sparring with Aoba a few times, he became keenly aware of just how weak he still was.

At his current rate, there was no way he could kill Itachi. Driven by the urge for revenge and some other indescribable feeling, Sasuke finally agreed to the party at the Uchiha family estate before the New Year.

The entire time, Sasuke felt awkward, like he was sitting on pins and needles. But strangely, looking back, it wasn't as bad as he'd thought.

In fact, since then, his relationships with his classmates seemed to have improved. During the New Year, quite a few of them even brought gifts to his house. All in all, despite the Uchiha clan's disappearance, Sasuke had an unexpectedly decent New Year.

He also came to a 'terrifying' realization: he didn't seem to dislike the feeling of being at the party.

Shaking his head to rid himself of those thoughts, he reminded himself, I am the last Uchiha, a man burdened with a deep vendetta. There's no way I can get caught up in this kind of childish play.

"What are you thinking about, Sasuke?" A sudden voice came from behind him.

"About the next party." Sasuke immediately regretted speaking. He turned around quickly to find Aoba standing behind him, smiling.

"Oh, seems like the last one went well. Keep it up," Aoba teased.

"Enough, I've already fulfilled your request. Now it's time for you to keep your promise." Sasuke tried to maintain a cool, aloof demeanor, but in Aoba's eyes, it still looked like childish play.

"Alright, I don't go back on my word. I'm here today to fulfill my promise. I remember you have both lightning and fire attributes, right?"

"That's right."

"Good. The technique I'm going to teach you is a Lightning Release jutsu."

"Lightning Release?" Sasuke was confused. Based on his information, Aoba was a Wind Release user, known for wind-based ninjutsu.

"Heh, Sasuke, we're shinobi. You must remember to always keep an ace up your sleeve, a card that can turn the tables in a life-or-death situation. Only then are you truly a ninja."

"An ace… I understand."

"Good. Now, we can start. Before learning this technique, there's a prerequisite. You need to master the change in the nature of your lightning chakra."

"Change in chakra nature?" Konoha's academy didn't teach such advanced knowledge. In fact, for Sasuke's age, this was a bit early to learn.

If it were anyone else, Aoba wouldn't teach them like this. But with Sasuke, it didn't matter. As Indra's reincarnation, he was one of the world's greatest cheat codes. A little extra pressure didn't hurt.

Sasuke always thought of himself as a genius. In all the practical courses at the academy, he was top of the class. To him, those lessons were simple and easy to understand.

But after starting to learn Aoba's technique, he encountered real difficulty for the first time — overwhelming difficulty. For three consecutive days, he trained with all his might, but he couldn't even complete the change in chakra nature, let alone begin learning the technique itself.

In other words, he didn't yet qualify to learn the jutsu. This left Sasuke feeling a bit discouraged, but at the same time, hopeful. The harder the jutsu, the more likely it was that it could help him defeat Itachi. He now believed Aoba hadn't lied to him.

In fact, Aoba thought Sasuke's progress was remarkable. Normally, ninjutsu required gathering chakra and forming hand seals. The process of forming seals was essentially transforming chakra into the desired jutsu.

However, his techniques didn't require seals. In fact, all the techniques he developed himself were seal-less. Developing techniques with hand seals was extremely dangerous. Even if you understood the effect of each individual seal, combining them didn't always yield the desired result, and could even lead to backlash.

Thus, creating jutsu with hand seals was a risky endeavor. This is why the Second Hokage, Tobirama, stood out. He created so many forbidden jutsu, yet somehow survived the process, which baffled him.

As for himself, he wouldn't take such risks. Other than established jutsu, any techniques he developed would avoid using seals unless absolutely necessary. His bottom line was to use a single seal at most.

Currently, the technique he was teaching Sasuke was his trump card — Lightning Release: Flash, essentially the ninja world's version of a railgun.

The principle behind this jutsu was to use lightning to create an electromagnetic acceleration track and then launch a metal ball. It's well known that electromagnetic acceleration is incredibly energy-consuming, and this jutsu consumed a lot of chakra.

The most challenging part for him was that he couldn't complete the electromagnetic transformation and acceleration using the standard hand seals from the Naruto world. Even if such seals existed, it would require at least twenty of them.

In a real battle, such a complicated jutsu was impractical.

So, he opted for a simpler yet more direct method — using his extremely high chakra control to complete the entire process in his hand and fire the metal ball.

Performing the transformation and acceleration without any seals wasn't just difficult — it was absurdly hard.

Even with his near-superhuman chakra control and mental strength, it took him months to barely complete the entire process. It wasn't until a year later that he could reliably use it in battle.

And even then, he still felt it wasn't fast enough. Only when he could use it as effortlessly as Misaka Mikoto from A Certain Scientific Railgun would he consider it fully mastered. Moreover, the jutsu drained a tremendous amount of chakra, meaning that he couldn't use it more than a few times. For now, it remained his trump card.

While Sasuke trained, he practiced as well, working on the Rasengan. He wasn't worried about the Third Hokage noticing; in fact, he was showing off deliberately.

Rasengan is an S-rank jutsu, not because it's overly complicated. In fact, the concept behind the technique is very simple, much simpler than the Flash jutsu by a long shot.

The difficulty of Rasengan lies in its chakra control. Compared to Rasengan, Aoba's Flash required dozens of times more precision and skill.

The difficulty of this technique lies in chakra control. In comparison, Aoba's "Flash" is likely more than just twice as difficult as the Rasengan.

This was because the original Rasengan does not involve any chakra nature transformation. It's merely a highly compressed ball of chakra. However, Aoba's "Flash" requires mastering chakra nature transformation just to get started, making it extraordinarily difficult.

But once the technique is executed, its power is beyond imagination. A metal ball can be accelerated in an extremely short time to Mach 10 or even higher. Its piercing force is indescribable.

Aoba developed this technique primarily to counter the Uchiha clan's Susanoo. After all, Susanoo is nearly an absolute defense. Once activated, regular ninjutsu wouldn't even scratch it.

However, the Susanoo is enormous and relatively slow-moving, making it an ideal target for an electromagnetic railgun. In this regard, this jutsu is perfect for dealing with Itachi, as long as Itachi activates his Susanoo first.

Of course, this technique is similarly effective against tailed beasts. With their large size, they'd have a hard time dodging such a high-speed attack, and the result should be quite good as well.

In fact, there's another use for this technique: as a sniper.

There are many long-range ninjutsu in the ninja world, but he hadn't seen anything that could be considered ultra-long-range sniping. The closest comparison might be the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, but even he would teleport himself to the target rather than sniping from a distance.

His railgun technique could theoretically snipe targets from several kilometers away. However, there's a significant problem with this.

That is, ultra-long-range sniping requires visual assistance, or else it's impossible to aim accurately. And that's something he can't do.

There are telescopes in this world, but a telescope and a sniper scope are entirely different things and Aoba uses his arm to perform the technique, so even a sniper scope wouldn't help much.

However, in the ninja world, this problem is easily solvable. The Byakugan is one of the best solutions. Imagine a Byakugan user detecting an enemy from kilometers away. Without moving an inch, they could fire an ultra-long-range railgun shot, blowing the enemy's head off while they're hiding in a tree hollow. That would be quite a sight.

But the reality was that he didn't have the Byakugan. Furthermore, the Hyuga clan is highly isolated. He has no connection with them, and if he were to suddenly show up asking to take in a Hyuga clan member as a disciple, they'd likely refuse outright.

Moreover, looking at it from another angle, the Lightning Release: Flash is an extremely dangerous technique. If it fell into the wrong hands, he wouldn't be able to sleep peacefully at night. There's no way he would teach it to just anyone.

Sasuke is the child of destiny in this world, so he could make an exception for him. But as for others, he wouldn't casually teach this jutsu.

"Alright, Sasuke, today's training is over."

"But, Aoba-sensei, I can still—" Sasuke wanted to continue training, but Aoba interrupted him.

"Sasuke, have you forgotten what I said? Haste makes waste. This isn't a technique that can be mastered simply by brute force. During training, you need to constantly find your weaknesses and adjust yourself accordingly.

Pay close attention to every subtle change in your chakra. When your body is utterly exhausted, you won't be able to do that. So, listen to me now—go home and rest. We'll continue tomorrow."

"Fine," Sasuke said, somewhat disappointed. However, his mood was still stable. As long as Itachi didn't come around to provoke him, Sasuke was still a good kid at heart.

In the original story, both Itachi and Sasuke were overly fixated on the Sharingan. Itachi would even drag Sasuke into the Tsukuyomi space from time to time, forcing him to relive the Uchiha clan's massacre for three days and nights. That was truly over the top.

In fact, from his perspective, awakening the Sharingan too early wasn't necessarily a good thing. Sure, it made one stronger, but it also indicated more extreme emotions in that particular Uchiha. Additionally, it put a significant burden on the body.

Aoba even suspected that Itachi's poor health was related to him awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan too early. Without the Eternal Mangekyō or Hashirama's cells, the Mangekyō's side effects were truly severe.

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