Chapter 99: Materials for Puppets
With the shield puppet as a reference, developing the initial version of the "mecha puppet" wasn't difficult. The tricky part was that the materials were hard to find; many couldn't even be bought with money. Puppet materials generally need to be lightweight yet high-strength, corrosion-resistant, and have a certain degree of chakra conductivity. Finding materials that met all these contradictory conditions was a Herculean task.
The only things that fit were the scales and bones of summoning beasts and some rare woods. Of course, ninja corpses were also excellent materials, but that was taboo. Umino Sasuke couldn't go to the Land of Wind to hunt beasts, so he could only use existing materials: the puppet parts he had confiscated and the giant lizard's corpse.
The parts could barely reconstruct half a mecha. He decided to use all the lizard's scales and bones to make a single, large puppet. One powerful unit that could face an elite jonin was better than several weaker ones. This was why six of his shadow clones were fully dedicated to this research.
Meanwhile, his original body continued practicing. In addition to daily Wind Breathing, he practiced the Spiral Wave and Konoha-Ryū: Yanagi.
His progress with Wind Breathing had been rapid. After ingesting a large amount of the lizard's meat, the amount of Wind-attribute chakra in his body had increased considerably, getting closer and closer to the 0.5 "card" limit of a jonin.
As for the Spiral Wave, with the help of his clones, it could already be used in combat. The attack range reached ten meters, but the actual effective range was only three. To fully develop it, he identified three directions: increasing the amount of chakra, compressing the wave's diameter, or adding changes in Wind properties. Improving his chakra and control was a slow process, and for nature transformation, he discovered that using the Spiral Wave to cut iron rods was a more effective training method, although it consumed more energy.
Fortunately, by devouring the beast's meat, his digestion technique had evolved into "Taotie Technique 3.0," which could now enhance Wind-attribute chakra recovery. This gave him a new idea: to search the black market for the cells of the Gold and Silver Brothers, Kinkaku and Ginkaku, to analyze how they absorbed the Nine-Tails' chakra by ingesting its meat. His goal for Taotie Technique 4.0 was to be able to directly absorb and refine chakra from beast meat.
Eating a large amount of beast meat not only allowed him to accumulate data but also improved his physical condition. In terms of pure physical abilities alone, without opening any of the Eight Gates, he felt confident he could compete equally with Might Duy. This improvement had also increased the speed of his Konoha-Ryū: Yanagi by at least 30%. He already mastered the illusion part; all he lacked was more time to perfect his swordsmanship.
And time was precisely what he lacked. He knew that Ebizo wouldn't wait for him. He could send a more powerful Sunagakure ninja to counterattack at any moment.
- - - - -
Big News!
Thanks for reading! Your support this week on both Webnovel and Patreon has been incredible.
As a result, this week we'll have 4 daily chapters on Webnovel and 8 daily chapters for paid Patreon subscribers.
Also, if we can reach 20 paid subscribers a month, the base number of daily chapters will permanently increase to 3 on Webnovel and 6 on Patreon! Your support on Patreon is key to making this happen!