The white-haired girl sat across the training grounds, a faint blue aura surrounding her. Slowly, carefully, she guided it toward the sharp object in her hand.
She opened her eyes, staring at the kunai resting in her palm.
'This is... kind of mesmerizing, honestly.'
The way the chakra flickered and pulsed along the metal's surface reminded her of those high-budget aura effects in live-action adaptations—except this was real, and way cooler.
Amai got up and walked toward a tree. She swung at one of its branches and noticed that the kunai's sharpness had slightly improved, along with a somewhat tougher exterior.
'I'm not even trying to concentrate chakra into the edges or use wind chakra, and yet it's seeing some sort of improvement. That said, this really burns through my chakra. It's only been around eight minutes, and I already feel like I'm running out! Maintaining this coating through every tenketsu at once is exhausting.'
With a tired sigh, she stopped releasing chakra, and the coating faded.
"I guess I'll try later."
She twirled the kunai in her hand before slipping it back into her pouch. Even if she wanted to keep going, her reserves wouldn't last much longer. Chakra exhaustion, as beneficial as it was for growth, wasn't pretty. Not at all. It forced one's chakra coils to adapt and expand, but even a week of overdoing it could lead to complete burnout.
That was why she only pushed herself until she felt tired—never to the point of total exhaustion and pain.
Chakra exhaustion was truly one of the worst pains a shinobi could experience.
Amai exhaled, rolling her shoulders to shake off the lingering fatigue. She noticed that due to the kunai's extremely low chakra conductivity, she could only push a limited amount of chakra. Anymore, and that would just come right off. Or maybe it's just her lack of skill at using this ability, who knows?
'Next time, I'll try a different method to do this. Actually, could I manage to coat my fists in chakra using the tenketsu in my hands? That way, I wouldn't suffer the backlash from chakra internally strengthening my muscles, and punching wouldn't damage my arms as bad.'
Her passive chakra field flared up, detecting someone about 16 meters behind her—along with the sound of approaching footsteps.
"Hey, I'm back! Brought the tatami mats. The shop was really busy with customers for some reason. Gotta hate full stores,"
Amai glanced over her shoulder, already recognizing the voice. She turned fully to see Sora walking toward her, two sealing scrolls in hand.
"I get that. I despise crowds, and especially when they hold up the line."
Sora scoffed, "Like you wouldn't believe. This lady kept debating over whether she wanted the blue or green tatami mats for a solid ten minutes. Then she asked the shopkeeper to bring out more options. It was painful to watch."
"Oooh. So that's why you took so long to get here."
"Mhm. Also, what have you been practicing? Just a few minutes ago your chakra was a bit above half, and now it's just a few fractions of what it was."
Amai wasn't really surprised at the fact that he noticed. Sora was a sensor just like her, after all. She assumed his range would be around 100 meters, just slightly below her.
"I'm just trying out imbuing weapons with chakra, and thinking that I could probably coat my fists instead, to give them more resistance whenever I strike and avoid the backlash that comes with the internal stuff."
Hearing that, Sora simply smiled, as if he had triumphed in some kind of competition. 'Good thing that I had chosen to learn this. Took me half a month, but in the end, it was worth it.'
"What's with that smile? You mocking my failures? I'll have you know that I can beat your ass right here and now."
"Nothing, nothing. It just reminded me of something."
Amai couldn't help but feel like there was some kind of underlying message behind that smile of his. It was really too bad that she couldn't feel emotions as a sensor yet.
"Okay, Mr. Mysterious. Do you have any tips for this, or anything helpful you can think of?"
Sora's smile didn't fade, but there was a hint of satisfaction in his eyes. "Well, if you're asking me... Since you've got a feeling for it already, why don't you later try with fewer tenketsu, and slowly work up until you can imbue the kunai with merely your hand?
Next time, use around 330 tenketsu instead of all of them, and that way you should be able to improve your control over that coating. Each time you do it, drop them by an amount you feel comfortable with. Personally, I think 30 or 40 is a good number."
Amai blinked at that. Was she lacking that much in common sense? Of course she'd have to try that! It's the same as any other technique—just use it, refine it over and over, gain experience, and level up to the point of being able to use it with ease.
She really needed to stop using video game analogies. They were in a world full of ninjas, for god's sake.
"That's actually pretty helpful."
"I know," Sora said, before opening up the scrolls and placing his palm on one of them. A small puff of smoke emerged, and once it dissipated it revealed around twenty tatami mats, all rolled up.
"You ready for Kenjutsu training?" He asked.
"Let's be real here. We just bought them to have some fun slicing stuff."
He chuckled at that. "Yeah, maybe you're right. I wonder how much money we could make if we introduced other things from back home into this world? Ice cream is practically everywhere thanks to you, and even Ichiraku has it as a dessert option."
"I guess. I might try introducing other types of cuisines, but for now, I think we have plenty of money saved up thanks to the Akimichi. Not enough for good weapons, but plenty."
Sora nodded in agreement as he set up the vertical post, and placed one of the moist tatami mats on it. "Yeah, those things are expensive. The cheapest chakra metal knife was at least two million ryo, I couldn't begin to imagine how much the actually good ones would cost."
"Ah, did you get the two blades I asked you to buy?"
"Of course. I wouldn't forget about such a thing. They costed around thirty thousand ryo together, but they have some decent quality," He said, before throwing the other storage seal scroll at her, "Catch!"
Amai nabbed it out of the air with ease, and unrolled it. She activated it, and in a small burst of smoke, two blades appeared before her. She grabbed one of them by the hilt, unsheathed it and lifted it to inspect its weight and balance.
"Huh... Pretty good. A little different from the tanto and a little awkward, but it feels really good to wield."
They weren't anything fancy, just well-crafted practice swords with a sturdy edge. She swung one a few times in the air to get a real feel for it.
"I honestly would've never imagined that we'd be able to get actual swords. If it were me back then, I'd be extremely giddy just to touch one. Swords are awesome."
"I didn't know girls liked them as well."
"Please," Amai crossed her arms, lifting one up and swaying her index finger around, "Likes aren't decided by gender. A girl could like Call of Duty just as much as, if not more than a guy."
"Fair enough. I guess swords are just objectively cool for everyone, who wouldn't want to swing one around?"
"Yup, you tell me." Amai grinned before tossing the other sheathed sword at him. He caught it by the hilt with ease, giving it a quick spin in his hand.
She exhaled wistfully, staring at her own blade. "One day, I'd really like to use ranged slashing attacks. You know, like the ones in One Piece?"
"Is that even possible here? I don't know as much as you do about this whole thing." He scratched his cheek as his eyes narrowed in curiosity.
'Nice indirect way of asking me for ways to get stronger. You're so lucky we are friends.'
"Of course it is," Amai said with confidence, gripping the hilt of her sword. "That's why I'm going to learn Chakra Flow. Wind-aligned techniques are the best for cutting power, so that's what I'll aim for. I think some of the samurai can do ranged cuts? And they also have extended range thanks to the energy itself."
Sora held his chin in thought. "I suppose that makes sense."
'Guess I'll have to add this to my arsenal. Coating my fists in chakra has been easy enough, but weapons are much deadlier. I could probably use lightning instead, and develop some kind of current with high area-of-effect damage.' He reasoned. His highest affinity was fire, but lightning would be much more effective in terms of offensive capabilities.
"Pretty cool, yeah?!" she said, her eyes practically twinkling. "Anyway, let's get to cutting already, I'm itching to try these ones out! The wooden ones at the academy suck."
"Sure. I've been really wanting to try these out since getting them from the weapon shop."
With that, they quickly set to work, laying out the rice straw targets and positioning them against a nearby tree.
Time to get moving!