Chapter 51: The Extreme Difficulty of Flying Thunder God

From the moment he started, Aoba understood why no one else in Konoha had managed to learn the Flying Thunder God technique over the years.

This technique demanded an extremely high level of proficiency from a ninja. It required everything from basic chakra control to spatial awareness, nerve reaction speed, and adaptability to spatial transitions.

If any one of these aspects was lacking, mastering the technique was nearly impossible.

His chakra was definitely sufficient. As a high-speed ninja with exceptional speed, he always felt his nerve reaction ability should be top-notch.

However, after reviewing the standards for Flying Thunder God, he immediately understood why Jiraiya had praised Minato so highly.

Compared to Minato, anyone seemed extraordinarily mediocre.

Even though, in the story, Minato appeared to use his Rasengan to overcome all opponents, this was only due to its efficiency. In reality, Minato was proficient in all elemental jutsu and had high skills in sealing techniques. His ability to use the Dead Demon Consuming Seal at the end was a testament to his mastery.

If the Fourth Hokage had not died and were alive today, it was hard to imagine how much he would have grown.

Moreover, if Minato had been in power, he wouldn't have to be so cautious. Minato was one of the few people Konoha could trust. Unlike the current leaders, whom he had no intention of revealing anything to.

The only comforting thing was that his spatial awareness was barely adequate. This was one of the minimum requirements for practicing Flying Thunder God. Without it, it was almost impossible to proceed.

The next challenge was adapting to spatial transitions. After performing Flying Thunder God, the user would experience dizziness or even nausea from the brief but rapid spatial travel.

In combat, ninjas are highly agile. You can't have someone teleport behind an opponent and then immediately start vomiting or collapse from dizziness.

This sensitivity, much like motion sickness, is related to individual physiology. For someone like Minato, he was completely immune to this dizziness. No matter how much he traveled through space, he experienced no disorientation.

As for Aoba, he didn't know if he could adapt until he completed his first practice.

Nerve reaction ability could be improved through practice, but even if he met the basic requirements, whether he could master it remained uncertain.

However, since he had started, he was determined not to give up easily.

He was focused on learning Flying Thunder God primarily to guard against Obito.

The current ninja world had many enemies: Nagato and the Akatsuki, the dark figures like White Zetsu and Black Zetsu, Obito, and the revived Madara, among others.

Among these foes, Nagato was the most direct threat, Madara was the most pressuring, and Black Zetsu and White Zetsu were the most troublesome.

But he was most worried about Obito. The crucial factor was that Obito, at this time, was truly ruthless.

This guy had killed countless innocent people for Rin, including even the Fourth Hokage and his wife, whom he had always considered as his own. He was truly scum among scum.

Most importantly, Obito was a fanatic. Nagato and Madara also had some fanatic tendencies, but theirs were more idealistic.

Obito, on the other hand, was a genuine fanatic. He was unreasonable and would directly infiltrate Konoha and kill Aoba if he saw any potential danger to himself.

With his abilities, Konoha's defenses would be useless. No matter how many trump cards he had, Obito could bypass them with his intangibility, making him exceedingly difficult to deal with.

So, he urgently needed Flying Thunder God. He needed a spatial technique to counter Obito's abilities.

Even if he couldn't kill him, at least he could ensure his own safety.

Kakashi, seeing Aoba practice so desperately, seemed to be inspired and started practicing as well.

Originally, Kakashi had no chance of learning Flying Thunder God due to his insufficient chakra.

However, after Aoba made that sealing tool for him, the consumption of his Sharingan was minimized.

Without the Sharingan's drain, Kakashi's chakra was just enough to perform Flying Thunder God, though he couldn't achieve the same level of constant teleportation as the Fourth Hokage. It was still useful for self-preservation.

Both Aoba and Kakashi practiced together, and their progress was... quite slow. In fact, there was not much to verify because currently, no one in Konoha knew how to perform Flying Thunder God.

It was said that the previous Hokage Guard team could use Flying Thunder God in combination, but that technique wasn't particularly helpful for individual practice.

Thus, both Aoba and Kakashi struggled with their training.

However, it wasn't entirely without results. Aoba, who had practiced chakra control for years, quickly mastered the mark placement for Flying Thunder God.

He could now mark someone with a touch of his palm, but he still didn't dare to attempt the actual teleportation.

Indeed, he didn't dare.

At this stage, he discovered another difficulty with Flying Thunder God: the fear before spatial travel.

In the moment of travel, one's body leaves reality and enters a sort of spatial gap before reappearing at another spatial point.

It wasn't a straightforward teleportation or an open spatial rift; the user actually squeezed out from a spatial gap. This was the primary source of the disorientation experienced with Flying Thunder God.

Aoba always felt a fear of falling into the spatial gap and not being able to get out before performing the technique.

He knew this was a psychological fear, but his experiences with spatial transitions seemed to have caused a psychological issue. This made him realize he might have been a bit too hasty.

So he decided to temporarily pause the Flying Thunder God training and turned his attention back to studying the changes in his Rasengan with wind nature transformation.

After Kakashi joined, Aoba now had plenty of ninjutsu, but he still needed to learn powerful attack methods like the Great Ball Rasengan.

He also tried to have Kakashi practice Sage Mode, but unfortunately, Kakashi lacked the talent for it. Even with his assistance, Kakashi nearly turned to stone and had to give up.

Time flew by.

Kakashi no longer focused on what Aoba wanted to do because Aoba was now only training and saving money to rebuild his laboratory, showing none of his previous ambitious demeanor.

One day, Kakashi came to Aoba.

"Guy wants to invite us to dinner?"

"Yeah, he's taken on a team leader role this year. It looks like he has found some promising young ninjas. He wants to celebrate with a dinner."

"Sounds good. Let's go together tonight."

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Currently on Chapter 192 - Jiraiya Appears