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Chapter 9 - Chakra 

(April, year 51 AK) 

 

"Sit on the floor comfortably, close your eyes and relax." Manabu said to Yuta after they entered a small empty room inside of the orphanage. 

As Yuta sat in the center of the room cross-legged and tried to relax, he felt how Manabu pressed hands to his back. 

"Now I start infusing my chakra into your chakra pathways through the tenketsu on your back." Manabu calmly explained, "Every living being in the world and every human has chakra. Chakra is a life energy that ninjas could use to form jutsu. It consists of physical and spiritual energies, that constantly being fused together into chakra inside your heart." 

As Yuta concentrated, all he could feel was some warmth from Manabu's hands on his back and nothing else, he became a little nervous as he was unable feel the chakra yet. 

"Try to concentrate and feel my chakra slowly invading your chakra pathways system." Manabu continued the explanation, "Spiritual energy comes from your soul and mind, physical energy comes from each and every cell in your body. After being fused together they form chakra that circulates inside your body through the chakra pathways." 

Yuta tried to clear his mind from useless thoughts and nervousness and concentrated on his back, he still felt warmth from Manabu's hands, but now he felt as this warmth continued spreading through his skin and reached deeper inside his body. 

'It's not just an ordinary body heat I'm feeling, this warmth must be the side effect of Manabu's chakra, or it is the chakra itself, I must focus!' 

"Chakra pathways have tenketsu points that regulate the chakra flow, 361 in total." Manabu continued, "Hands generally have a lot of tenketsu points, and because of it, and also because of how easy those tenketsu's relative positions could be rearranged, ninjas use hand seals to mold chakra and perform jutsus." 

Yuta felt as the warmth reached inside his rib cage and then he felts an uncomfortable pulling feeling, as if the warmth became something like a fishing hook that sank into something inside him, and now it is pulling it out forcefully, it wasn't painful but rather highly uncomfortable. 

"When you expend your chakra, you also extracting physical energy from your cells and spiritual energy from your mind and soul." Manabu continued, "Hence you will feel more and more exhausted doing so. Your body will tire, as well as your mind, even if all you do is just use chakra to form a jutsu. And if you use up all your chakra, you simply die, because that means using up all the physical energy your cells could currently produce, and that would kill your cells." 

As Yuta felt more and more uncomfortable, he instinctively tried to resist and push against whatever Manabu was doing. 

"That's right, resist." Manabu said, "I'm forcefully influencing and pushing your chakra with my own, you should be able to learn to feel and control your own chakra now, little by little." 

As Yuta instinctively tried to resist, he felt the uncomfortable feeling decrease. He vaguely felt something inside him flow and push back against the pull that the warmth from Manabu's hands created, the feeling was vague and elusive, and when he instinctively tried to control what he assumed was his chakra, it was hard to do, it felt slippery and almost unresponsive. 

This continued for a few more minutes, and Yuta starts feeling more and more tired, his concentration began to waver, and his chakra inside became sparse and hard to sense and impossible to command. 

"That is enough for today." Manabu said and removed his hands from Yuta's back, the uncomfortable feeling disappeared as if it was never there. 

"Huh?" As Yuta opened his eyes and tried to stand up, he felt weak and his body swayed to the side, and Manabu reached out and supported him by his shoulders. 

"It's only natural." Manabu said reassuringly, "You are too young, it is your first time to use up your chakra, you have very little of it after all as you only started training recently, it will take years to build up." 

"Years, huh..." Yuta said dejectedly, "Do I have enough chakra for at least the three basic academy jutsus?" 

"How do you know about academy jutsus?" Manabu instantly asked a little colder than usual. 

'Crap! My mind was sluggish and I said something without thinking!' 

"I heard something like that around the academy yesterday, I think some academy students talked about it and I overheard it." Yuta hastily explained. 

"Is that so... Well, I don't think you have enough chakra for those jutsus yet, or any time soon for that matter, and even if you did, it's too early for you to learn them. The Ninja Academy's curriculum consists of six years, and besides the three basic techniques it includes theoretical knowledge, taijutsu, ninja tools, survival, team tactics and all other things like that. There is no rush to learn the academy basic techniques, and neither they are the most important, so don't focus on those, instead better focus on the basics." 

"Yes, Koboshi-sensei!" Yuta said, feeling relief that Manabu didn't question him any further. 

"Okay. We will continue this training once a day until you'll be able to sense and control your own chakra at all times." 

... 

After that Yuta's normal daily routine continued, with two usual training sessions a day by doing basic exercises, and one short but exhausting training session with Manabu helping him to learn chakra control. With each passing day Yuta felt that he could sense his chakra more and more clearly, and it became less and less unresponsive and easier to control, although it was still a long way to go. 

After two weeks of efforts Manabu finally said that his chakra control is good enough now to train it on his own, 

"Now I teach you the basic chakra control exercise." Manabu calmly said when they entered the small room where all the chakra training took place so far, "Here." Manabu handed Yuta a leaf. 

"Huh, a leaf, what about it?" Yuta said pretending to being confused, now he was paying much more attention to what he was saying and how he is behaving after that one slip-up with him mentioning the academy techniques while he wasn't supposed to know about them at all. 

"It called Leaf Concentration exercise." Manabu explained, "Place the leaf on your forehead and concentrate your chakra on the point of contact. You have to figure out how much chakra you have to concentrate so the leaf would stick. Then maintain steady and constant amount of chakra for as long as you can. If the concentrated chakra amount is too low, the leaf would fall, and if it is too much, the leaf would be blown away, and if your concentration slip - it will also fall." 

As Yuta sat down and placed the leaf on his forehead, he tried his best to guide his chakra to the point of contact, the chakra felt sluggish, and it took a lot of effort to move it to where he wanted it. 

"As of now your chakra amount is low and your control over it is poor, hence this exercise would be hard for you at first. But as you improve, you'll see that it is not as much about the chakra control in general, but about concentration and maintaining focus for a long time." 

"Understood! Koboshi-sensei, for how long I should be able to maintain the concentration on the leaf before... a... before it would be considered a good result?" Yuta asked. 

'Damn, I almost blurted out "before I could move on to the next exercise"! If I mention that I know about the Tree-Climbing exercise I won't be able to explain where I learned about it, after all they don't teach it in the academy, and the previous excuse won't work...' 

"Don't rush things and don't be so impatient!" Manabu said a bit annoyed, "This exercise is about patience, so you'll do it each day until I decide that it's enough. Forget about jutsus and about 'completing' this exercise, you have to work on your basics first, and that's exactly what you are already doing." 

"Yes, Koboshi-sensei..." Yuta said reluctantly. 

As Manabu left, Yuta tried his best to make the leaf stick, but no matter how he tried, it either fell off or was being pushed away. His chakra felt like the tiny rebellious streams of slow-moving water, that goes anywhere but not where Yuta tried to guide it. 

And when Yuta did manage to guide some chakra to his forehead, it was always either too much and pushes away the leaf or it is too little and leaf falls. And sometimes he felt like he gathered the right amount, but the leaf still falls as Yuta wasn't able to maintain the right amount of chakra in the point of contact for more than a second. 

After less than ten minutes of struggle, Yuta felt that his concentration started to waver and he was no longer able to guide his chakra to the forehead, he felt exhausted and tired already. He dropped the leaf, he was panting as if he ran a sprint a second ago, and his whole body felt heavy. 

'I picked the "average talent" myself, huh... Is this how the normal wannabe-ninjas train and learn stuff? I thought it would be easier!' Yuta thought with some resentment as he stood up with some effort and left the room. 

... 

'I still can't grasp my Time Control ability yet... But I feel it's getting closer!' 

 

 

 

 

--- AN --- 

For a long time, I believed that it was only Hyuga clan that could release chakra from any tenketsu, but now as I did some deeper research, it seems that it's not the case. Hyuga clan's uniqueness in the matter is that they can release chakra from all tenketsu Simultaneously, while other shinobi would need to do some special training to be able to release chakra from the tenketsu, different than the tenketsu in their hands and feet, and they won't be able to learn Hyuga clan's defensive jutsu at all. What do you guys think about that? Let me know in the comments. 

 

If you like the fic, please consider supporting me on patreon, currently there is a 1 advanced chapter on Patreon (patreon dot com /SycoreNovels), there will be up to 20 advanced chapters in the future. 

Big thanks to Loalola, Daoistbm0BeO, Dylan_Cardenas_843 and the others for your support with power stones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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