NRaO Chapter 25

Another week had passed and I taught them the basics of being a ninja. The chakra control techniques I learned and invented. The basic techniques they’d need to graduate and some better techniques that suited most situations. Finally, each looked at their chakra nature. 

Fugaku fire, lightning. 

Nawaki earth, water, space-time. 

Hiami wind. 

Gin fire, wind. 

Ami space-time, yin-yang.

Hmm, it was very uncommon to not have a chakra nature. She still had two very rare chakra types in her body. It was just surprising because I didn’t choose any of them for their chakra types. It was easy enough to build their regimens from what I learned. 

Their main body would be doing the physical work as clones couldn’t gain muscle. That left their clones to learn from me. We would alternate between doing missions for the village and working on chakra theory, techniques and ninjutsu practice before their main bodies would absorb the clones and actually practice the theories we went over.

The clones could learn new ninjutsu as long as they were taught but they wouldn’t have the fundamental feeling of doing it in their main body. Hundreds of little things you wouldn’t notice and minute adjustments to perfect the ninjutsu for yourself wouldn’t happen without real-life experience with their main bodies. As they expanded the amount of clones they could use they would also be expanding what I could teach them.

Nawaki and Gin were the first to have more than one. Nawaki could do four already. That left his real body working out, second body researching, third body doing missions, and fourth body gathering intel inside the village. He asked why. “Well, because you don’t have a team to fall back on. You should get used to having one clone out in the field gathering intel. You never know when the information they gather in your own village will come in handy.”

I had hired men to talk about robbing the Senju heirs in the bars around the village. He’ll have a week to overhear that information or I’d have deemed him a failure and have to teach him the basics of spy work and information gathering. Ami was still the weakest but it was clear things were coming together for her. She only had a quarter of the chakra needed to make a shadow clone when we started but she didn’t even need her special technique already.

Her body naturally adapted to the hard work improving at an unrealistic rate compared to the others. It was all mentality. She knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance and as much as she complained she knew she had to seize the chance. The physical training became harder again as they were all still standing by the end of it. Now while running around the track they also had to dodge wooden kunai and shurikens, they would slowly get strong enough that their bodies could handle the level of fighting the other taijutsu specialists did. 

It was good to learn you’re not king of the mountain just because you’re strong. If they were planning to look down at the children who were kicked out of ninja school, they’d be in for a rude awakening when they were getting their asses kicked by them. Slowly they all got stronger. I didn’t want weak ninjas who could die on missions, I wanted nightmares on the battlefield.

It was only another week before all of my students could make another clone. Ami was able to reduce the portion of her clones down to about half of their expected cost. Instead of expanding her chakra pool, which was a long and slow process, she adapted to the situation and used her chakra control to make the ninjutsu happen when it shouldn’t have been possible. She was working towards building her own ninjutsu. Having a massive hundred-plus shadow clones could be possible if they only had the chakra to run for ten minutes before they expired.

All my students were impressive but she had to adapt to being weaker and less chakra(two of the most important things to a ninja) than everyone else. I was happy because it meant I could start their specialized training. I talked to them again.

“So what do you think is the most important thing a ninja should learn after strengthening their body and ninjutsu?” They all gave me that dead fish tired look because their training was hard again. Nawaki responded. “Inner strength of will. The ability to keep fighting no matter what.” I answered him. “That’s a great answer but no.”

“If you’re fighting a losing battle and know you’re about to die, you should definitely run away and recover. Use all the knowledge you’ve gained from the fight to come up with an effective strategy of winning then ambush the biggest threat of the group you’re going against. That’s not the third most important either… Anyone else with a guess?” 

Once again they all give me dead-eyed stares enjoying the pause in their workout. I sigh as I answer them. “It’s specialization. All of you are strong, most likely stronger than the taijutsu specialist on a team. All of you are good at ninjutsu and know many that suit different important situations. Now you need a specialization no one else on your team has. Do you see why I recruited five of you instead of three now? Because each of you is going to learn something that you’ll do better than everyone else in the group.”

Ami screamed. “Nooooooo! Sensei, we need a break! I want to sleep and I bet these others want to see their families again.” I exaggeratedly sigh. “Fine. You all can take a break for the rest of the day then I’ll show you to your special training tomorrow.” All began to loudly cheer and Gin even began crying at the break. I split myself up into thirty clones and all gave me questioning looks.

“What? You thought I wasn’t going to visit your home with you? I’m your sensei now. At the very least I should get acquainted with your caretaker.” They only noticed the clones that stuck around. No one noticed that I had blatantly stolen one of my disciple’s techniques to make far more clones than I could previously. It makes so much sense but everyone who uses shadow clones had a collective brain fart and never reduced the chakra required to make them. 

Splitting your chakra is insanely ineffective as you would waste half your chakra pool if it is destroyed. Even at a tenth of the original cost these clones will last all day and I could produce ten times more than normal because of just thinking about the biggest problem with clone techniques through a little bit more.