Shiki fell into his decided routine of training with some slight modifications to account for the possible shinobi work on the horizon.
First, the shadow clone he had assigned to keep reading everything in the library in order moved from actual reading to skimming.
With Shiki's enhanced spiritual energy, his information retention was fabulous. So long as he read something with care, he would never forget it.
However, if he entered his Kukyo state, every single piece of information hidden within his mind, whether he was aware of it previously or not, was brought to the surface while data acquisition, processing and storage were all hyper enhanced.
So while skimming the scroll and book would not normally let him remember the information within them fully, as soon as Shiki entered Kukyo, the gaps would be filled.
With this in mind and considering he was developing Kukyo with the intention of being able to have it active as his default state, the boy decided to hurry the reading process for now and then reassign the shadow clone.
Its new task would be developing sensory jutsu.
Shiki had gotten a rather good grasp of how Mind's Eye of The Kagura worked from feeling Mito use it on him all the time.
While developing something comparable in a short time would be rather difficult, the boy was confident he would be able to produce something useful even if not as great.
But this was not the extent of the changes.
The shadow clone he had working purely on Body Flicker, Flicker Flash and Chakra Control in general was made to work on several other useful jutsu that did not contain any elements of nature transformation.
Although Shiki was somewhat worried about trying to obtain too many skills, spreading himself too thin and ending up with few usable ones, he was confident his talent and chakra control would help him pull through so long as he avoided his weakness of nature transformation.
Speaking of nature transformation, the boy figured he should at least get a handle on it so he risked overburdening his real self by creating another shadow clone to practice one D rank jutsu of each nature.
D rank jutsu were very simple and suitable for genin. Even when a shinobi lacked particular aptitude for a certain nature, he could still figure out D rank techniques even if they would be even weaker than usual in their hands.
The final adjustment was to what the actual Shiki would be doing.
Rather than spend all his time practicing the Five Elements Body, the boy decided to split his focus into three.
A third of his time would be spent on continuing with the Five Elements Body while another third would be contributed towards practicing bukijutsu, namely shuriken jutsu since Shiki was lacking in the way of ranged attacks and at his level, thrown kunai were still plenty deadly.
The remaining thing would be spent practicing taijutsu through sparring with Mito with additional anti-genjutsu training.
Basically, Shiki was planning on requesting for Mito to use genjutsu of increasing power during their spars for him to try and break.
The Uzumaki matriarch did not strike him as a genjutsu type shinobi but the boy was quite certain she could at the very least use some basic genjutsu.
As for the shadow clone studying fuinjutsu, its role would remain unchanged but while studying the fundamental principles of genjutsu, when it came to actual seals, it would be prioritizing ones that would be useful in the immediate future.
And so, with all the details hashed out, training began and continued monotonously.
Tsunade or Nawaki regularly passed by Mito's mansion, the latter because he had a new friend in Shiki and he felt somewhat guilty for not visiting his grandmother enough in the past.
The former on the other hand, had actual business with the Uzumaki matriarch who was starting to advise her on serious matters regarding village and clan politics as well as supervising her training.
It seemed the future Sannin was not quite up to the Warring States veteran's standard of combat readiness so Mito was fully intent on proverbially whipping her into shape . . . Or maybe literally if the blonde proved lacking in motivation.
Still, there were two notable incidents during the whole training period of four weeks.
*
It had only been two days since the training began.
The shadow clone practicing non nature transformation jutsu had just finished developing a variation of the Chakra Scalpel.
Rather than begin by learning the original technique, it simply used its training principles to create something else. Shiki called it the Chakra Cutter jutsu.
Basically, it sacrificed the precise and meticulous nature of the Chakra Scalpel Jutsu for more power and size.
With it, Shiki could form a solid chakra blade around his hand. Its cutting power was about the same as a top quality shinobi blade and it allowed the boy to clash with weapons using his bare hands while also being usable through his own weapons as an enhancement.
The lack of nature transformation meant its power was rather underwhelming when compared to something like Kakashi's Lightning Cutter, the level of chakra control and shape transformation required to create a strong, solid blade of pure chakra with no medium was also much greater.
Shiki felt the difficulty when making the technique, if he put a lot of chakra into it, a powerful blade could be made but it was not efficient. It took quite a bit of effort to make the jutsu potent without relying on a huge chakra investment.
But it was only after that Shiki realized the insane feat of chakra control and shape transformation he achieved by making such an efficient chakra blade.
Because when he finished this jutsu in two days, he moved on to the obvious choice of purely shape transformation based jutsu. The Rasengan.
And to his utter shock, it was disturbingly easy.
Shiki was confident in reproducing the Rasengan because it was the jutsu whose training method was the most well explained but before he went about buying balloons and rubber balls, he decided to give it a go as is.
'So the steps should be rotation, power and containment right?' Shiki remembered.
He put his right hand forward with his palm facing upwards and grabbed his wrist with his other hand for stability.
Flicker Flash had already trained his ability to focus and emit strong chakra from a single point so he mustered a powerful burst of chakra and tried to violently rotate in multiple directions.
The vague shape of a blue chakra ball began to form much to Shiki's shock at how easy it was but just as it seemed he was about to succeed, the sphere lost stability and dispersed creating a weak blast of wind.
"That didn't feel too hard . . ." Shiki mused out loud.
He tried again with more focus and power.
Chakra violently spun and formed a defined sphere shape that showed no signs of dispersing but it looked kind of anemic.
Shiki lifted up his "Rasengan" to eye level and realized he could see through it.
'It seems the compression is not good enough.' He determined.
Feeding the sphere with more chakra to maintain its size, the boy began compressing it further and despite a bit of initial struggle, a richly colored blue Rasengan now laid perfectly formed within his palm.
It was then that Shiki came to two startling realizations.
"This is why making the Chakra Cutter was so difficult!" He exclaimed
'Chakra does not want to maintain such a solid and stable state which is why the Rasengan uses rotation to help stabilize it.' The boy internally commented
'But instead of coming up with such a clever solution to solve the stability issues like Minato, I brute forced it with pure chakra control . . . And that means . . .'
Shiki had finally come to realize his 80% was not at all above average but most likely top grade even on a global scale. It did not mean he could only control about 80% of his chakra like he originally thought.
'And if this is the case, having a full 100% will likely allow for such intricate micro manipulation of chakra that feats that should be physically impossible to accomplish become rather doable.'
It only made Shiki look forward to the future more.
And now, secure in the knowledge that he could make even jutsu that were not supposed to work feasible through pure talent and chakra control alone so long as nature transformation was not involved, he believed the task assigned to this shadow clone would be easy enough.
His first order of business was to improve his Chakra Cutter with his new insights, using rotation, not in a violent multiple direction way but mimicking a spinning saw, the boy believed he would be able to increase the power and efficiency straight away.
After that it would be creating some Rasengan variations.
And like this, the first major incident of the training concluded.
+++++
Hey, Author here!
Just a reminder that you can read up to a FULL MONTH ahead of this site on pa-treon.
I'm trying to become a full time Author now and I'm not going to be starting any new novels just so I can make sure this one is properly completed.
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Find those sweet advanced chapters on pa-treon.com/lusoba without the -