As soon as Tachibana consumed the potion, he felt like his body had been set on fire. It felt like several ants were crawling under his skin as his vision slowly started to swim and flicker between seeing himself from a third-person view and his normal view.
Tachibana quickly used cogitation to calm himself and contain the potion's effects as he slowly allowed it to merge and transform his body.
It took a while but the side effects slowly wore off.
Tachibana was sweating, almost as if he had taken part in a triathlon.
'I stink…' Tachibana complained but as soon as he found the sweat in his body irritating, it vanished. Not because it dried away, but because all the sweat was suddenly reabsorbed by his body. In its place, his body released a faint rose fragrance.
'....how convenient.'
With a simple thought, Tachibana found his entire body structure changing to become different people as he cycled through the appearances of several other people who looked wildly different from him.
He became an old man that was using a walking stick made out of his illusory abilities and then became a jubilant young child with bushy eyebrows before switching into Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura from his team.
And although Tachibana could become Sakura, he couldn't change his gender.
After performing his thorough examination and releasing that he could only change his height by a foot in both directions and only gain a little bit of muscle mass, he stopped testing the ability to morph his body into whatever organic shape that was as close to him as possible.
After all that, Tachibana quickly examined his powers and abilities that had been strengthened.
He found that he could now feel fire sources up to eighty-five meters away. This allowed him to sense the various small electrical halogen lights that lit up the pathway towards the Senju household.
It was a strange sensation since he felt he could cause fire to erupt from the filaments of the halogen bulbs before teleporting to its location and exiting the flames from the blowup bulb.
Along with his flame jump, his air bullets and his ability to breathe underwater were strengthened by about thirty per cent.
But the biggest gain for Tachibana was the change in his spirituality.
It had suddenly shot up through the roof because of his new potion.
His chakra capacity had increased to about three times that of Sasuke, which was a lot.
In more explainable terms, his spirituality which he could've used to only use Flame jump at its max distance for about thirteen times, he could now use it nearly thirty times in a row at full distance.
But suddenly, Tachibana had a strange thought, 'System how will I complete the ritual required to become a Marionettist?'
There was a slight pause before the system responded-
[The ritual for becoming a Marionettist used to require the singing of mermaids to maintain the sanity of the person advancing to the Sequence.]
[But the system understands that this is not easily possible and hence as a solution for the host, it expects the host to perform an alternative ritual.]
'Alternative ritual? What is that?'
[The host needs to create as many characters as possible and make more people believe that such characters exist. As long as the host makes stronger people believe in such characters the ritual to help maintain sanity during the consumption of the Sequence5 Marionettist potion will go smoothly without any lasting harm.]
Tachibana read all this and frowned a little.
'So I essentially need to act as someone else?'
'But aren't I already doing so?'
[Yes. Since the host has acted as the character of Tachibana in this world for a substantial amount of them and convinced a lot of people about this identity, the host has gained eighty-five per cent digestion due to pre-acting for the potion Sequence 5 Faceless.]
'Nice…'
A smile showed up on Tachibana's face before he hid it as he thought about what was to come.
'What will I do to fool everyone else and create new identities?'
'Hmmm…'
'Could I become a beggar?'
'But that wouldn't do much since I probably won't be able to meet any strong people because of my status.'
'Then do I disguise as an already existing person? I've done it once with Tachibana, but can I do it again? I could figure out a person that had visited the village a long time ago and transform into them to pretend to 'return' to the village after a long time as an old man…'
Tachibana thought about a few more things, but couldn't find anything suitable for him for now.
On the upper floor, Tsunade was looking at the floor with a suspicious expression.
'His spiritual energy suddenly increased…'
'How?'
Shizune was of the same thought as she looked at Tachibana's room and for a few seconds.
But after making sure that the house hadn't been broken into, Shizune dropped the matter. Perhaps it was a secret and Tachibana wouldn't want to share it with them.
But Tsunade wasn't as easy to let things go.
'Is he related to Orochimaru?'
'Was he also experimented on which caused him to gain all these new abilities regarding divination?'
'Or did the god he worships do something strange to his body?'
Tsunade frowned as she thought more and more about the issue. None of them gave her clear answers since she wasn't directly looking at Tachibana's body, and after a while, she decided she would examine him more carefully when she saw him tomorrow.
Tachibana in the meantime, looked at his system panel before speaking in his mind.
'I would like to cash out my reward of the Sefirah Castle.'
[Is the host sure about his decision?]
Tachibana only nodded.
There was a soft silence for a few seconds in which Tachibana heard the crickets outside ringing mercilessly before he suddenly felt a cacophony of mad ravings assault his ears.
Tachibana nearly collapsed when he heard them but he barely managed to hold on thanks to his supreme sense of balance as a clown.
And within moments, he found himself suddenly extracted out of hsi body, rather forcefully before he was sent through what looked like an ocean of grey fog whose boundaries were filled with the maddening screams and ravings of what sounded like people being tormented.
Finally, after about a second, Tachibana found himself standing in a vast empty landscape whose floor was shrouded in mystery by a thick grey fog that Tachibana was able to stand on somehow.
'Geez. A warning would've been nice.' Tachibana complained while holding his throbbing head.
'Where am I?' Tachibana asked.
[The host is inside the Sefirah Castle, above the grey fog.]
Tachibana looked around at the rather bland area before he thought about the vast halls that he remembered from the Tarot Club, and much to his surprise, a court suitable only for giants sprang up from the grey fog.
Thick pillars that towered over Tachibana rose high as they held up a massive dome all made from marble while giving an imposing feeling of vastness and grandness.
A comparatively smaller but still large table emerged from the foggy floor bringing along with it twenty-two chairs that were all representing the different standard pathways to the divine.
'...should I start a Tarot Club in this world?'
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A/N : Should Tachibana start a tarot club in this world? Who should the characters be? What about their roles in the club?