Naruto- Secret Sage

A break

A break

There was a whole month between the qualifier tournament and the real thing which meant all the participants were getting in some last minute training to hopefully give them an edge. Kakashi took Sasuke and vanished for the month while Naruto ended up getting taught by Jiraiya. Lee was not taking his condition well however and insisted that he was willing to do whatever it took to continue being a shinobi but I flat out told him that without the procedure it was impossible. I also made it clear that I wasn't willing to perform the operation as the risk was not worth it in my opinion.-

During the next month I split my time between helping Karin by bringing her books on medical knowledge, working on my chakra projections and mastering the final B ranked jutsu I was on. Once I was done with the B rank jutsu I wasn't planning to move onto A rank quite yet. Instead I was going to create a bunch of shadow clones to vastly accelerate my improvements on my chakra projection. Right now I could create a stable layer of armor over my hand and forearm but getting past that point was proving to be a tedious process of trial and error.-

I suppose I shouldn't really be complaining considering the technique was easily in the upper limits of A rank at the moment and may in fact reach S rank when I complete it. Even the old man praised this "gauntlet" of mine as the closest he had ever seen someone get to mimicking a susanoo. The defense of the projection was frankly insane as I had placed struck it as hard as I could without any limitations and I barely managed to crack it.-

Comparatively my surroundings weren't so lucky as the power of that strike sent out a shockwave that flattened everything in a fifty yard radius. I escaped in a hurry at that point since this had definitely drawn some attention. Thankfully the damage was nearly identical to a wind release jutsu so the chance of this getting tracked back to me was miniscule. Still that little test told me that once I managed to fully cloak my body in the projection merely injuring me would become an effort in difficulty. It should be remembered that my flesh was nearly as durable as high carbon steel so I was already hard to truly injure but add on the chakra armor and that suddenly became a whole lot harder.-

I was already halfway done removing the need for handsigns for the water release jutsu i was learning, [Thousand needles of death]. The forty odd handsigns it originally needed to be used was reduced to eighteen at the moment which was still quite a bit but far more reasonable to be used in combat. I had decided to set the copying of my beasts abilities aside for the moment as the ones I was currently on were clearly not something I could copy in a short amount of time.-

"Surely you miss being able to just walk around and do stuff right?" I asked confused.

"I mean not really? Back at Kusagakure I was mostly locked in my room to begin with so I just got used to it. Having company is a nice step up for me." she said with a smile that hurt to see.

That wasn't a nice thing to hear at all and if anything made me feel bad for keeping her here like this.

"Hey you know how to use the transformation jutsu right?" I asked having an idea.

"Of course, it's one of the three jutsu all shinobi are supposed to know, why?" she asked curiously.

"Turn into someone else and I'll show you my favorite place to eat in the whole village." I said with a smile as her face lit up.