Chapter 39
Uzushiogakure.
Inside the Main Compound.
Kushina was slumped against the window frame, staring blankly outside. In her palm rested a condensed sphere of chakra, its insides rotating clockwise in a fluid, swirling motion.
It had been six days since her confinement began. And she was utterly bored.
Then there was her other problem: her new jutsu. For the past week, she had tried multiple approaches to evolve the technique, but the progress had been abysmal.
As she brooded over it, her frustration grew, and her precise control slipped.
The chakra sphere in her hand instantly began to destabilize. Her brows furrowed deep in concentration as she fought to keep it from popping.
She managed to force the sphere to stabilize, but its internal flow remained chaotic, the compressed chakra clashing violently against itself inside the shell.
Frowning, she focused her mind and reasserted control, forcing the wild energy to smooth out until the internal flow was rotating perfectly clockwise once more.
This sphere was one of the training methods her Aunt had invented for her. It was the pinnacle of extreme chakra shape transformation and control, as her father once said, and she completely agreed with him.
It had taken her three whole months to master it, and she still needed to concentrate just to maintain its inner rotation. Truly, her Aunt was a genius when it came to inventing things.
As she looked at the sphere, now completely under her control, a sudden intrusive thought popped into her head: what if she fed it more chakra?
'Now, that would be fun,' she thought inwardly with a smirk. 'But first, the training ground. I don't want another week added to my confinement.'
For all her eccentric behavior and mischievous nature, Kushina respected her father above all else. Because of that, she had never tried to leave the compound, even though there was no actual surveillance monitoring her.
She dispersed the chakra sphere, turned around, and groaned inwardly.
Her room was a mess. Various scrolls were scattered across her study table and her bed was littered with multiple fūinjutsu books, while her failed attempts at drawing different seals covered the floor.
She formed a hand sign, and with a poof of smoke, another groan was heard—only this one was entirely audible.
"Ugh. Not again," her shadow clone muttered.
"You know the drill," Kushina said with a smirk. The Shadow Clone Jutsu was by far her favorite technique.
"I will remember this grudge." her clone grumbled.
"Yeah, yeah. Just finish the job." With those parting words, she left.
***
A minute later, she reached their estate's private training ground, and she finally let her intrusive thoughts win.
With one hand extended, she gathered chakra in her palm. It was the size of a small ball, swirling in a perfect motion. Then, she increased the chakra output. Slowly, the small ball began to expand.
After a minute, it was the size of her head, and she was struggling to maintain its internal flow. After wrestling with it for a few more seconds, she decided to let go of her rigid control.
The chakra sphere instantly reacted. It began to collapse in on itself.
With a slight effort, she maintained its spherical form, but inside the sphere was a chaotic clash of chakra that threatened to shred everything it came into contact with.
She remembered asking her aunt where she had gotten the inspiration for this. Her aunt had told her that it was from the whirlpools surrounding the island.
At the time, Kushina had nodded in understanding because it truly looked like a whirlpool trapped inside a sphere.
But this thing she held in her hand didn't remind her of a whirlpool—especially now that it was the size of her head. It reminded her of a Bijuu-dama—those swirling masses of dark chakra—like the ones the Tailed Beasts fired when chasing her sensei.
She walked toward the wooden dummy and, with an audible gulp, pressed the sphere against it.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. But just as she began to relax, the wooden dummy splintered violently where the orb made contact. The destructive force expanded outward, enveloping the top half of the structure.
She took a few cautious steps back. The once-pristine training target was gone, reduced to a solitary stand. Its entire upper torso had been completely erased.
"What. The. Fuck!"
Kushina stood frozen, her mouth hanging wide open in shock. 'What the hell did I just do? Did Auntie actually know what this training method was capable of creating?'
It had been so ridiculously easy. In fact, it was infinitely easier than trying to maintain the perfect, rigid internal rotation she had spent months practicing.
All she had to do was maintain the outer spherical shell and let the chakra inside run completely wild.
Suddenly, her eyes widened as the puzzle pieces in her mind clicked into place.
"There is no fucking way..."
Driven by pure adrenaline, she formed a single hand sign.
She molded her chakra, converting its nature into lightning. But this time, instead of fighting to tame the erratic currents, she utilized her new breakthrough: she left the internal electricity completely unrestricted, focusing every ounce of her willpower solely on maintaining a stable, localized shape right around her palm.
For a second, the clearing fell silent. Then, a sharp, deafening, high-pitched chirping sound erupted from her hand.
Brilliant blue arcs of lightning chakra violently gathered around her palm, crackling like a thousand agitated birds.
She looked down at her hand, her eyes reflecting the erratic, blinding light.
'I—I actually did it!' A wild grin stretched across her face. 'Now, let's see what this baby can do.'
Locking her sights onto a fresh training dummy, she dug her heels into the dirt and charged forward, her hand cloaked in a blazing aura of lightning.
"Whoa—!"
The moment she committed to the strike, her speed didn't just increase—it exploded. The world around her instantly smeared into a blur of colors.
Completely disoriented by the sudden acceleration, she spectacularly overshot her target, zooming straight past the dummy and rocketing toward a massive tree trunk a few meters behind it.
Panic flared in her chest. She bracing herself to crash headfirst into the wood and shatter every bone in her hand. But to her amazement, her lightning-cloaked palm sliced through the dense, reinforced bark like a hot kunai through butter, burying itself halfway into the tree trunk.
With a sharp grunt, she planted her feet and hauled her hand backward, pulling it free from the wood. She stared at the smoking, charred puncture wound, and then back at the completely untouched dummy she had aimed for.
"A fatal flaw," she murmured, her breathing heavy.
The adrenaline was fading, revealing the truth of the technique.
The sheer velocity had granted her severe tunnel vision, rendering her blind to her surroundings the moment she moved.
By all conventional metrics, a jutsu that made you miss a stationary target was a complete failure.
And yet, the raw metrics were staggering. She had crossed over twenty meters in a literal blink of an eye, and the piercing power was unlike anything she had ever seen.
Her gaze drifted back to the shredded remains of her first target, and then back to the deep hole in the tree trunk. Another intrusive thought sparked in her mind.
It was dangerous and could fail spectacularly but today, she decided to listen to it.
Reaching into her palm, she condensed a small, raw chakra sphere—nowhere near as massive as her first attempt, but just as unstable.
Holding the swirling orb, she stepped forward and with some hesitation, shoved it directly into the tree's puncture wound.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The chaotic chakra orb detonated deep within the confined space of the trunk. The pressure blew a massive crater through the center of the tree, sending sharp wooden splinters exploding out of the backside.
Deprived of its foundation, the massive structure groaned, gave way, and collapsed backward into the dirt with a deafening, earth-shaking thud.
Kushina stared at the fallen giant, the clearing suddenly turning dead silent except for the ringing in her ears.
"What the hell did I just create?" she whispered in disbelief.
***
Inside Medori's Compound.
"So, this is the second one from Ryūchi Cave," Tenka said as she looked at the second giant scroll.
Haru had signed two summoning scrolls; the first one was from Shikkotsu Forest and the second was from Ryūchi Cave.
"Yes, Kenji-sama received this Ryūchi Cave contract from Konoha a few months after the invasion, and he gave it to me," Medori explained.
As for why Kenji—the Clan Head—had given it to Medori, it was because when Kenji opened the scroll, he found it completely blank—devoid of any previous summoner's signature. However, inked into the corner in an ancient fūinjutsu script were the bold words: For the Child of Nature.
At that moment, only one person—or toddler—came to his mind.
So, Kenji handed it to Medori, the said toddler's mother.
"So, now we only need Mount Myōboku's scroll and we will have all three legendary Sage Regions!" Tenka said excitedly.
Medori rolled her eyes, while Konan simply shook her head.
Then, with a single hand sign from Medori, both the giant scrolls disappeared in a puff of smoke.
"Now, I have some work to finish. So, shoo, shoo. Be on your way, don't disturb me," Medori said as she shooed them out.
Tenka and Konan exchanged a look and shrugged. They headed outside, where Haruto had already left with Saki to practice the summoning jutsu.
The moment they stepped outside and walked some distance away towards the training ground behind the compound, both took a sharp breath at the scene before them.
A giant white eastern dragon loomed over Haruto. Behind him stood Saki, her hand resting on the hilt of her odachi, ready to draw.
The others knew the situation was critical the moment Saki Uzumaki prepared her primary weapon; she only brought out that particular blade when she intended to go all out.
***
The White Sage ignored the woman drawing the sword, even if she felt a slight threat radiating from her—especially from the strange mark on her forehead.
Instead, the dragon looked down at her summoner, who still kept one hand pressed to the ground, staring back up at her majestic form with sparkling eyes.
The dragon smiled unconsciously, though from the perspective of the onlookers, it resembled a sinister smirk.
In response, Saki drew her blade fully, shifting into a combat stance.
"I have been waiting for this summon," the White Sage said.
She brought her massive head down until it was only a few inches away from him. He was small, still a child, and her head loomed larger than his entire body. Yet, as she stared into his emerald-green eyes, she noted that he hadn't flinched. He looked back at her without a hint of fear.
Saki's grip tightened around the hilt, prepared to decapitate the beast at the first sign of aggression. The first summoning session with the Slug Sage, Lady Katsuyu, had gone quite peacefully.
Saki knew the dangerous reputation of Ryūchi Cave and the notoriously brutal methods they used to select summoners, but she had never anticipated a literal dragon appearing. She had never seen a dragon before, let alone fought one.
She remained on high alert. However, because the beast simply seemed to be evaluating Haruto, she held her ground and did not interfere.
Just as Saki suspected, the White Sage was testing him. Her gold-slitted eyes pierced deep into his emerald gaze, searching for something hidden.
Then, she gave a small, internal nod. 'Unawakened, but present deep inside,' she thought.
"I am the White Sage. From this moment on, you shall be my one and only summoner."
"Oh—I am Haruto. Haruto Uzumaki. I'll be in your care, then," Haruto replied politely, snapping out of his initial amazement.
With that declaration, the White Sage had fulfilled her end of the arrangement.
"Hmm?" The White Sage suddenly glanced toward the perimeter as two new figures arrived. "Are they your mates?" she inquired curiously, detecting that he had marked them both; they were covered in his distinct scent. Now that she looked closer, the older woman standing guard also bore his mark and a fraction of his chakra.
Haruto tilted his head. "Mates?"
"...."
The White Sage stared at him with deadpan eyes, then wisely decided not to poke the hornet's nest.
"Nothing. If there is nothing urgent, I would like to return to my cave."
Tenka and Konan reached the group just in time to catch the tail end of the exchange.
"Okay. You can go," Haruto said with a bright smile.
"Until next time, Haruto-sama."
"It will be my pleasure to serve a being such as yourself," she added, addressing Haruto directly in her native tongue. To the others, her words went entirely unnoticed.
With a massive poof of smoke, the white dragon vanished, leaving the training field empty.
Saki finally relaxed her stance, relieved that the encounter had concluded smoothly. Honestly, she had never actually believed the rumors that the White Snake Sage had successfully ascended into a dragon, but seeing was believing.
Given Haru's unique nature, she really should have expected the White Sage to show up personally.
****