Haruto enjoyed his ramen after that with a slightly bitter taste in his mouth from failing to complete the mission, perhaps that was why he felt that his own ramen tasted much better when compared to Teuchi's, however ever the humble man, Haruto spoke with Teuchi at length about Ramen making techniques before calling it a night when the sun finally set.
After reaching home, Haruto lay down in his bed and firstly began to assimilate the new memories of chakra control practice that he'd just gotten from Megumin's mission reward.
After digesting the experiences for a solid ten minutes, Haruto woke up accompanied by a slight headache and entered the bathroom. In the end since he was excited to test out his new chakra control prowess he was a little too eager and consumed the memories a little too rapidly.
With the chakra control memories assimilated, Haruto tore out a small piece of a newspaper and stuck it to his forehead.
'Hmm… the chakra in my body is flowing much more smoothly now… while my control over it isn't exactly perfect yet, I can at least tell before hand how the chakra will behave if I try and command it in any particular way… giving me a sort of premonition of how the chakra will move through my body.'
Haruto then tested out something that even surprised him a little bit.
The piece of newspaper that was stuck to his forehead suddenly floated outwards as Haruto extended a chakra thread from the tenketsu in his forehead and manipulated the piece of newspaper around like a puppet on a string.
'Wow…'
'It feels… so easy now…'
Haruto could easily control how his chakra spread out in the air. While it was a little difficult to stop the thread from dissipating entirely, it was definitely possible.
Haruto stopped supplying chakra to the blue thread extending out of his forehead to test how long it would take for the thread to dissipate and it stayed around for a surprising minute before it became too weak to even hold up a piece of paper and caused the paper to fall down.
'Nice!'
'Thank you Megumin!! Your mission reward was awesome!!'
'Fufufu! No need to thank me!! This is what you deserve for introducing the path of explosion magic to more innocent lambs!'
With nothing to stop him from expressing his happiness, Haruto rushed to the Dark God's shrine to thank him for this opportunity.
***
"How did his chakra control suddenly improve so much?" Kushina asked with a puzzled expression on her face and some obvious fear.
Tobirama too frowned in silence, completely in disbelief at how Haruto's chakra control stat in his statistics panel had jumped from Genin level to Chunin level in the span of a few minutes.
Hashirama however looked excited.
"See!! I told you guys before!! It was the Dark God!! Haruto-kun even went to his shrine to pray to him!!! He's a real God!!! He's alive!!"
"....it would seem so…" Mito supported her husband, but even she was slightly stun locked.
"Perhaps there are other people like us in different rooms who gave Haruto-kun his improved Chakra Control ability? Like when we gave Haruto knowledge and experience about the Shadow Clone Jutsu?" Minato tried to reason out but even he had goosebumps on his arms.
"Possible…" Tobirama said calmly, "But why would they choose this moment to give Haruto his improved Chakra Control ability?"
Minato turned a blank at the question, he too couldn't comprehend why their supposed colleagues had gifted Haruto this ability now.
It was at this point that Sakumo raised a valid point, "Perhaps they work on a mission based system? They gave Haruto a mission and only now gave the reward because he only recently completed it?"
"Hmm… but what mission would that be?" Izuna asked, rubbing his chin, and he came up with an answer on his own, "The only things Haruto's done recently is to teach Naruto the fireball jutsu and eavesdrop on the people at the Genin in the Ramen Stall."
"Teaching Naruto the fireball jutsu?" Kushina asked with a frown, "How does that relate? Why would some random group want to teach Naruto the fireball jutsu…?"
"...maybe they felt pity at Naruto's condition and wanted him to get close to someone he could rely on? You saw how happy he was when he finally learnt it…" Izuna argued back.
"...that sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth… to think that Haruto might've only been nice to Naruto because of a mission from someone else… he'd be just like all the rest of the people in his life then…" Kushina said with a saddened expression after glaring at Hiruzen.
"I'm sure Haruto isn't like that dear… you've seen how he acted when he first met Naruto… he was like an older brother to him… I'm sure Naruto would've figured out by now if Haruto was using him because of his enhanced senses." Minato argued gently.
Kushina nodded, "I hope so… Maybe that's also how he got his idea for performing the split mind technique that he used to break out of Danzo's cursed seal?"
"Possible… since it uses one entirely new tenketsu that wasn't previously in the shadow clone jutsu as Haruto explained it to Kakashi…" Tobirama said with a frown, "This complicates things quite a bit… we need to work with them somehow… not against them."
"So do we still work on breaking Haruto out of the cursed tongue eradication seal or not?" Kushina asked and Mito responded, "While I wouldn't worry about any immediate harm… if Haruto isn't ever fast enough to dispel the split mind when Danzo commands him… he'll be in grave trouble… so it's still better we break him out of it completely."
"Got it…" Kushina sighed.
***
Haruto finally entered the Template Inventory Space after lying down on his bed once again.
He sparred with Unohana for a while before taking a short break to discuss their battle before going to bed.
It was during their discussion that Grindelwald brought up a new concern for Haruto to worry over.
"Your treachery and cunning in thinking up plans on the fly to confuse your enemies are decent Haruto… But it might not be enough… after all, the more people that fight you, the more they'll get used to your fighting styles."
"Really…?" Haruto frowned, as Unohana took over, "When fighting with you nowadays apart from your well thought out plans, things rarely surprise me anymore."
"But what can I even do?" Haruto groaned for a second before thinking hard and putting the wrinkles in his brain to good use.
"I have an idea… but it'll be hard to try out… it might not work out against you Unohana-san… but it'll definitely confuse a few shinobi…"
"What would that plan be?" Unohana asked curiously.
"I can use the wrong hand seals for performing jutsus… while I can perform sealless jutsus, I couldn't fake out my enemies before because using the wrong hand seals would cause the chakra pathways I need to get constricted… but with Megumin's mission reward of improved Charka control, I can now perform the wrong handseals and still perform the right jutsu."
"Hmm… while that seems like a good idea… I'd still recommend working on expanding your move set…"
"What do you mean?" Haruto asked with slight confusion and Edward interrupted to explain clearly, "What she means is that it's time for you to start working on another jutsu. One can never have too many moves on the battlefield to choose from… the more you master, the more wary your enemies will have to be."
"Hmmm… true… but it's hard to make a new jutsu out of nowhere…"
"Why don't you try learning the rasnegan now that your chakra control has improved and improving the rasengan like Naruto did in the original show?" Megumin helpfully suggested something that was easy.
But Haruto shook his head, "The rasengan is a chakra consuming jutsu… forget performing it once, just the chakra needed to train it would probably leave me exhausted for everything else and worse yet if someone spots me training the rasengan that'll be a hellish ordeal on its own."
"Then the only option that remains, however hard it is, is for you to make a new jutsu Haruto-kun…"
"Fine… I'll try… is there no reward from you guys this time?"
"I'll give you a reward Haruto-kun… how about the Bakudo number four from my world? Hainawa?"
"Oh!!! The binding technique!! That's bound to be helpful!"
***
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