Chapter 72

After waiting a couple more minutes until the fighters jumped back, visibly tired and breathing heavily, I involuntarily paid attention to the booming under the thin fabric of each breast, but by an effort of will I suppressed the thoughts in my head and taking a couple of steps forward, clapped, attracting attention.

- Beautiful fight! Just beautiful! I have only one question - why didn't you demonstrate something like that against me?

Both kunoichi flinched and turned their heads toward me, smiles blossoming, though with their eyes blackened, bruised, and lips smashed from the blows, it didn't look good.

- You're back!

- Ryo-kun!

However, as expected, my question was simply ignored, preferring to abruptly shorten the distance.

- Ugh!

Squeezed from both sides by the bone-crushing hug for a normal person, I just shook my head at the women who managed to send each other murderous glances and began to treat their pretty faces, now capable only of frightening. However, such a look is very usual for the locals and none of the shinobi pay attention to it.

It took half a minute to fix the bruises that had already turned yellow, as well as to heal the minor wounds, so soon I was admiring their normal faces, ignoring the cackling and the hail of questions from both of them. Eh, it's always better at home.

For a couple of days after my return I just rested my body and soul, taking full advantage of the unexpectedly completely free days, idling and visiting few friends and paying attention to women. Soon enough, however, I was tired of wasting time, and I began to train harder in addition to my regular workouts, increasing my seals in order to regain at least my former physical shape, and resuming work with my rayton, trying to achieve the same level of affinity I had with my suiton.

The training scroll the Uchiha had given me came in handy. Of course, with my chakra reserves, the loss of a quarter of the amount of chakra invested in a technique wasn't very significant, but that was only for those jutsu below B-rank, but those above that couldn't be thrown around in a row without looking at the cost.

I spent the free time I had left on research. To be more precise, I was researching one particular technique found in the debris of the hospital library - Shikon no jutsu (dead soul technique). When I first got my hands on it, I had a small idea of how to modify and use it.

Only a recently deceased body could be used for this technique, which would be "revived" by the iryonin for a while and taken under full control for various actions, but I hadn't spent all my corpse supplies on hospitalization or dismantling for parts, so I had something to work with.

The essence of Shikon no jutsu was that the iryo-nin stimulated the fading body source and, with the help of his own embedded chakra, took control of the nervous system, allowing the still uncooled body to return to a semblance of life, but under external control, regardless of the state of the brain. This method could even be compared to Sunagakure's kugutsu no jutsu (puppet control), except that the puppeteer is usually unable to look through the eyes of the controlled creature.

But this technique was unexpectedly difficult to master - not to mention the requirement of very good control, for the mere actuation, it was necessary to know perfectly well the anatomy of the human body, so that the movements of the puppet turned out smooth and measured, and not like the twitching of a paralytic. And I'm not mentioning the need to control a dual set of senses at the same time. It's a very disorienting experience. At least now I understand the note at the bottom of the scroll recommending the user to mimic a corpse or hide very well, so as not to be distracted by their own safety and focus on technique.

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