WRIN - Chapter 21 - C Ranked Mission (Patreon)

It's been quite a while since I've written a chapter in this story. Even though I've never officially set it onto a hiatus, it's been on an unofficial one for months. For that, I apologize. I had gotten writer's block on what this C ranked mission would entail and anytime I sat down to write for this story, by brain would lock up and I end up not writing anything.

Luckily, writing these small chapter parts has been helping me stop overthinking it too much. I still planned out the general things I want to happen though, so hopefully this arc isn't garbage.

(Word Count: 1,434)

We met together back at the gates, everyone fully equipped in their gear. In addition to all the weapons we normally equip ourselves with during training, we pack clothes and supplies. We each had a small backpack to carry everything. Some would argue to just put everything into a seal, but there were pros and cons to that.

First of all, the inconvenience of having to open the seal everytime I wanted one specific item. I would have to unseal everything, search through it, then reseal everything. There didn’t exist such a convenient seal that allowed me to unseal one specific item in the whole pack.

Second of all, chakra paper was dense. Meaning that the tightly wound scrolls were heavy, so carrying a scroll large enough so it had enough space to store everything didn’t really do anything to reduce the weight. I would still have to lug around a large heavy scroll. It was only worthwhile for situations like Tenten, who carried around a large arsenal of weapons.

For now, at least.

Now that I was a seal master in my own right, one of my projects I wanted to research was the idea of infinite storage space. In general, the way seals work now was that the more storage capacity you wanted, the larger the seal needed to be. But I knew that it was possible to create full blown dimensions. Obito could do it, Kaguya could do it. Why couldn’t I do it?

The other related project was an “inventory” storage scroll. A scroll that would only act as a key to connect back to a much larger storage seal, ideally the infinite storage, where I could store and take out individual items. That was the bare bones idea that I wanted to make a reality eventually.

For now, those things were far out of reach, so it was best to do a mixture in storing the gear. Most ninja pack their backpacks with two or three small scrolls for the heavier items like bedrolls, camping gear, an extra supply of kunai and shurikens, or specialty items personalized to the ninja. In the pack itself were the lighter things, like clothes, or things that would be needed quickly.

Then, of course, there were the ninja packs, which held kunai, shurikens, explosive tags, soldier pills, etc.

This is what I had in my own load out, plus the addition of a scroll containing supplies to draw up seals, and a ninjato sheathed above my ninja pack.

As I approached, Shizune noticed something different. “Woah! Sakai, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you dress in such dark tones before!”

My haori was inverted to a dark green, leaving the bright color hidden on the inside. “Since we’re on a mission leaving the village, I thought it would be better to be a little more subtle.”

Tsunade and Kurenai showed up, carrying their own packs, but Tsunade had a huge scroll strapped to her back that was as large as I was. It had to be related to our mission.

“Alright, team! Now that we’re ready, our mission is to deliver this scroll,” Tsunade patted the huge scroll behind her, “to the border outpost on the Fire-Wind border. This scroll holds their supplies for the next few months. We shouldn’t see any combat on this mission, but the possibility is always there, so I want the three of you to be ready for anything. Is that clear?”

“Yes, teacher!” The three of us said in unison.

“Good! Let’s go!”

The four of us left the gates of the village and set out on the open road, walking casually. This wasn’t a time sensitive mission afterall. The base probably had another few weeks of supplies left.

I couldn’t help but feel a little excited. I had been outside the village gates before, I’ve done morning runs around the village everyday with Dai and Guy for years now, but this was the very first time I was actually leaving the area.

The ROOT base I was taken to doesn’t count.

“How long will it take us to get there?” Shizune asked. She was definitely the talker of our team, with Kurenai too shy to initiate conversations and I was more content to enjoy the silence.

“About 5 days at our current pace. Though if we want to push, we can get there today. But do you feel like running all day?” Tsunade asked.

Shizune shivered. “No, thank you. Walking’s just fine. Five days sound good.”

“Hey, Shizune, I have a question,” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“It’s about your Spirit Transformation technique. I know you can’t tell me how it works and all that, but I’d like to know what limitations it has. So Kurenai and I can cover for you and plane appropriately,” I said.

She nodded. “Right. The Spirit Transformation technique allows for my spirit to leave my body. As a spirit, I can then possess someone else's body to control them, or just directly attack them without them being able to defend themselves. There are several downsides though. The major one is that I have to leave my body behind, leaving myself vulnerable. Next is that I can only travel a limited distance away from my body, and I have a limited amount of time that I can be a spirit. If I travel too far or take too long, my spirit starts losing its form and dissipates, returning to my body. Lastly, it's a special kind of chakra, and it consumes a lot of it, so I can’t use it too often. I need time to restore my reserve of this chakra.”

I nodded. “Spirit Chakra?”

Shizune tripped. “What? How’d you know?”

Tsunade groaned. “Shizune, you’ve got to be more careful about confirming information like that.”

Shizune flushed. “Right.”

Kurenai glanced between me and Shizune. “What’s Spirit Chakra?”

Shizune groaned. “Oh man, uncle’s going to kill me.”

“Don’t worry about it, Shizune, I’ve already been exploring different chakra types. I confirmed Spirit Chakra existed before with Lady Katsuyu. You see these different colors on my seal?” I pointed at my forehead. On my forehead was a diamond segregated into four different colors: Green, the normal chakra; Black, the dark chakra; White, the light chakra; Yellow, the hermit chakra.

I had been dumping as much chakra as I could into my seal. The normal chakra was nearly full already, with the special variants not even a quarter full yet. It took a long time to stockpile them without damaging my mind.

“The different colors represent different types of chakra that I’ve been storing. Green is normal, Black is dark chakra, White is light chakra, and Yellow is a chakra called ‘Gift of the Hermit Group’.”

“I didn’t know there were other chakra types,” Kurenai said curiously, her brows furrowed. “How do you get them? Do you knead the chakra differently?” “You’re a genjutsu specialist, so you know about the Id, Ego, and Superego, right?”

“Right, it’s how the brain works.”

I explained what the differences were to her, and how to get them.

“And Ego?” Kurenai asked.

“Since Ego is your conscious thought, I haven’t dared to try and make chakra from it. With these unique types of chakra, you can only knead so much of them before you draw too much from only one part of the mind and cause an imbalance. That could lead to some serious consequences. But I do have a guess on the Ego Chakra. I have a feeling it would be particularly suitable for controlling others.”

“Okay, but where does Spirit Chakra come in? Doesn’t all of this use spiritual energy? That’s how we get chakra isn’t it? A combination of spiritual and physical energy.” “Well, think about it. All of these chakra types come from the mind. Where’s the spirit in it?”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No, we tend to mix mental and spiritual energies as being the same thing, but they’re different.”

“So,” Kurenai thought it through, before accepting it. She turned to Shizune, “when you use the Spirit Transformation, you mix your spirit into your chakra?”

Shizune looked very uncomfortable. “I… can’t say.”

“Oh, right.” Kurenai blushed. “Sorry. I just never thought about chakra like this before.”

“It’s okay. I’m sorry I can’t say more about it,” Shizune said.

“Do you think these chakra types would be helpful in my genjutsu?” Kurenai asked.

“Well, it’s very hard to get any decent amount of these types, but if you can get enough, I think dark and light chakras could be helpful,” I said.

She looked thoughtful.