Chapter 24: The "Sage" of Shikkotsu Forest... (Part One)
"A thousand years ago, I was just a small, weak slug."
"At some point, gradually, something like awareness took hold. After that I began to sense a faint energy."
"I absorbed it instinctively and used it. A long time passed. Eventually I became aware of my own existence."
"Then one day something arrived on this continent from beyond the sky, and that changed everything."
In the hidden depths of the forest, the great trees swayed in the sunlight as though stretching. The enormous slug shared her story in that soft, rounded voice.
"You mean visitors from outside the planet?"
Furukawa Osamu had just turned eight. He was sitting on top of Katsuyu's head on his second visit to Shikkotsu Forest, and he asked the question directly. Katsuyu continued in the same gentle tone.
"Yes. I only understood that much later, after a great deal of learning."
She moved slowly through the forest, carrying him along as she showed him more of where she lived.
"Perhaps there was a battle. Perhaps something else went wrong. Either way, the visitors were injured."
"The scattered flesh and blood became nourishment for evolution. Looking back now, it wasn't flesh and blood at all. It was a form of energy I still can't fully comprehend."
She wasn't embellishing. She was simply sharing. She brought him up onto the branch of one of the great trees, and then paused with something like wonder in her voice.
"That energy is what made me what I am now. A weak little slug, growing stronger over time."
"After my body changed, I could absorb the energy of the natural world more efficiently. Later I came to know the toad clan."
"The white snake now called the White Snake Sage mastered the same ability. We used to exchange ideas back then, until this land changed again."
A faint sadness crept into her soft voice. She seemed to miss those times. Furukawa Osamu, turning something over quietly, asked another question.
"The change, is that what those enormous roots you showed me were?"
"It seems you've already worked it out. Lord Osamu, Gamamaru told us a monster had become a great tree and that the natural energy was weakening."
"We had no way to stop it. Many years passed. Eventually that tree bore fruit, and the natural energy began to recover."
"The Rabbit Goddess was the one who came from beyond the sky. She took the fruit, but the tree remained, and at one point transformed into a monster itself."
"That upheaval was eventually brought to an end, but the natural energy began weakening again."
Katsuyu's antennae shifted. She noticed that Furukawa Osamu's expression held no confusion, and something in her manner eased.
"The tree doesn't only absorb natural energy. It absorbs everything. Life included."
"More years passed. The Rabbit Goddess came to have two children, and it was around that time that Gamamaru's proposal led the three of us down different paths."
Furukawa Osamu looked out across the forest. The trees here were somewhat different from those in the Land of Fire, and the Essence he sensed from Gathering here seemed richer. The species were unfamiliar to him. Some of the leaves had small Katsuyu divisions moving across them, exchanging something between themselves. The whole place felt alive.
"The Great Toad Sage wanted to stop the tree from draining the planet's energy?"
Katsuyu seemed mildly surprised that he had followed so well. She swayed slightly in acknowledgment and continued.
"Yes. Gamamaru was worried that one day the goddess and the monster would drain everything. He wanted to act."
"But that approach didn't have my support, or the white snake's. Because when it comes to how we use energy, we chose different paths."
"Coexistence with nature. That has always been the toad clan's way."
"And the white snake wanted to pursue evolution. To become a dragon?"
"While I only wanted to survive." Katsuyu's voice was straightforward, unhurried. "Lord Osamu, you should understand. We both have the ability to absorb energy. True coexistence with natural energy is not something that comes easily."
Furukawa Osamu felt she had misunderstood something. He didn't correct her. He nodded.
Katsuyu seemed genuinely pleased to receive that response. She moved slowly onward through the forest, her voice carrying the same calm, unhurried tone as she continued laying out ancient history.
"In the end, Gamamaru chose to make contact with those two children. His ability to foresee events proved useful. The goddess and the monster both disappeared."
"But the roots that had spread across the entire planet remained. It took me a very long time to confirm where most of them were concentrated."
"The power behind that was beyond imagining. If the tree had been allowed to keep absorbing, this planet might truly have lost all its energy."
"After that comes the story of the one called the Sage of Six Paths, Otsutsuki Hagoromo. He seemed more powerful than the goddess, and yet he believed in peace."
"His descendants appear to have divided over his ideals and his legacy, and over the long passage of time, they became what are now called ninja."
Silence settled. Katsuyu let the information sit. Then she moved off the tree and back down to the forest floor.
"It was only through later study that I learned the tree was called the God Tree, and the monster was called the Ten-Tails, and the goddess was Otsutsuki Kaguya."
"Though I can't be certain of what happened before any of that, the energy that changed me was most likely chakra."
"As for my sage arts, they aren't suited to humans. Unless someone can produce perfect sage chakra within their own body, there can be no resonance between us."
She seemed a little awkward as she said the last part, because anyone who could already produce perfect sage chakra on their own probably didn't need her.
Furukawa Osamu dropped down from her head. A palm-sized Katsuyu division appeared beside him almost immediately and climbed to his shoulder, antennae swaying, waiting.
"Resonance, does that mean the Strength of a Hundred Seal?"
"You absorb natural energy and supply it to your own body. Have you ever tried compressing that energy internally?"
He wasn't throwing out random questions the way a child might. Katsuyu quietly relaxed again, and answered with something like delight.
"Yes, Lord Osamu, unlike Lady Tsunade, I can resonate with the sage chakra you concentrate. I can replenish your sage chakra directly."
"I have tried various approaches. Compressing sage chakra within my own body is something I've achieved."
"But doing so only results in increasing my size."
Something seemed to pass between them. When Katsuyu spoke again, her soft voice carried a thread of something old and sorrowful.
"Lord Osamu, natural energy cannot grant a living creature immortality."
"The three great sacred lands, perhaps all three of us are connected to that original energy. We were all changed by it. It feels more like a curse than anything else."
"Every living thing has an end. My only hope was to one day meet someone of the same kind."
"Even so, in another few thousand years, I will die too..." She paused. "Lord Osamu?"
She had sensed it, a sudden sharp shift in his emotions. The Katsuyu divisions nearby all turned at once. He had been about to say something comforting, but he could only manage a strained smile, screaming internally:
Please give me a portion of this curse!