Chapter 40: Upgrading Water Thread
After Ishiro egged them on, the six from Team Two and Team Five got their jōnin leaders to treat them to a big meal. The lively feast ended with everyone heading their separate ways.
That day's exam had thoroughly worn Ishiro out, so he took the rest of the day off. Tomorrow, he planned to pick up his medicinal ration from the village and train in ninjutsu.
As a newly promoted chūnin, Ishiro was entitled to an extended leave – typically used to learn C-rank ninjutsu and focus on short-term power growth. Even during wartime, Iwagakure never canceled this tradition. Tanaka also needed downtime to master her Body Flicker Technique, so Team Five had no missions pending.
When Ishiro arrived at the training grounds to collect his medicinal rations, he was excited. For these sorts of chūnin training sessions, the village normally arranged a senior chūnin to come assist. But Ishiro's request had specified training related to Water Thread. Water-attribute shinobi were already rare in Iwagakure, and this particular "oddball" ninjutsu was even less common. Ishiro wondered if they could even find anyone qualified.
Still, that wasn't Ishiro's call to make. His goal wasn't to learn Water Thread from scratch – he'd already mastered it. His aim was to find someone able to guide him in upgrading it.
Ishiro's comprehension of Water Release wasn't deep. His advantage lay in extraordinary chakra control. From the moment he began practicing Water Release, it had been more a matter of "experience guiding understanding" than the other way around.
He'd first awakened a sense for Water Release via the Water Substitution Technique, and even that was done somewhat blindly. Then many rounds of repetition had led to a partial grasp of water-nature manipulation. But it wasn't nearly enough to let him develop new techniques.
Hence, he needed an expert, as opposed to just practicing on his own.
Sure enough, after ingesting the day's medicinal meal, Ishiro waited around for the chūnin mentor to show up – to no avail. Unconcerned, he proceeded with Water Thread practice alone.
Previously, thanks to enhanced control, Ishiro had started compressing water pressure into Water Thread. But that was still in its infancy. Without thorough knowledge of Water Release, he'd over-pressurize or under-pressurize it. Sometimes he poured in too much chakra for no added effect; sometimes too little to matter.
He spent half the day at it before someone approached from afar.
To Ishiro's surprise, it was a jōnin, not a chūnin – evidently the village hadn't found a suitable mid-level teacher. Ishiro tried to hide his excitement, greeting the newcomer calmly.
As expected, the jōnin strode over and said, "You must be Ishiro, right? You're quite young to be a newly promoted chūnin. I'm the jōnin in charge of guiding your Water Thread training – my name's Saiichi."
Ishiro gave a respectful bow. "Thank you for coming, Sensei Saiichi. I'm honored the village sent a jōnin to teach me ninjutsu."
In truth, Ishiro knew "guidance tasks" weren't popular. The pay was minimal, and the village was essentially hiring them to instruct.
Saiichi, an easygoing type, gave an awkward laugh. "Actually, the village couldn't find a suitable chūnin. You picked Water Thread, which only a few people here have ever learned. And I myself don't use Water Thread – the village asked me mainly to coach you in water-nature control."
Far from disappointed, Ishiro was thrilled. "Great! My mastery of water nature is shaky at best. I can cast ninjutsu largely thanks to my innate chakra control. Before you showed up, I was stressing over how to improve that side of things."
Ishiro then explained his entire perspective: his superficial grasp of water nature, the reasoning behind choosing Water Thread, and his intention to further develop it through pressurizing water flow.
Saiichi initially listened with the mindset of a teacher instructing a junior – but the more he heard, the more astonished he became. "A brand-new chūnin is already considering shape transformation and ninjutsu R&D? Not to mention, your talk of water pressure broadening the water's attributes…?"
By the time Ishiro finished describing his plan, Saiichi was silent. Ishiro waited expectantly. After a lengthy pause, Saiichi sighed. "I came planning to teach you – looks like you've already taught me. As a return favor, let me share what I know about water-nature theory. You can decide how to integrate it."
At first, Ishiro felt confused: When did I ever teach him anything? Then the latter half of Saiichi's statement made him quite excited. Typically, outside a formal master–apprentice bond, it's rare for an experienced ninja to impart advanced elemental theory for free. Ishiro had lucked out.
So Saiichi spent the next twenty days explaining water-nature fundamentals and guiding Ishiro step by step. In exchange, Ishiro would occasionally throw out his distinctive, "outside-the-box" remarks that gave Saiichi the eureka effect. Day after day, their synergy grew. They not only traded theoretical insights, but Saiichi supervised Ishiro's training, allowing him to glean an inside-out understanding of water manipulation.
The biggest surprise for Ishiro was how, at one point, Saiichi mentioned that water release can indeed incorporate some slicing power. He decided to teach Ishiro an advanced B-rank Water Release called "Freezing Surge," letting him study the concept of water's slicing potential more deeply.
With Ishiro's formidable chakra control – plus the short-term chakra boost from the medicinal meals – Ishiro succeeded in performing Freezing Surge at least once. He realized that, realistically, he couldn't use it in normal battle yet. The chakra consumption was massive for him. But it felt like opening a door to future possibilities.
At the same time, Ishiro also recognized one of his earlier misconceptions. He used to focus on just one property of water, wanting to amplify it – but water is water precisely because it has many properties at once. If you overemphasize a single trait, you might lose the essence of water release. For example, pressurizing a watery flow in Water Thread demands confining that pressure in a single direction, preventing it from dissipating outward.
Across these twenty days, Saiichi actually gained the most. By pondering Ishiro's wide-angle approach, he overcame several personal bottlenecks in water-nature training. He even created three new ninjutsu of his own. So while Ishiro strove to develop an "upgraded Water Thread" and never quite finished, Saiichi soared to near "elite jōnin" standard.
Still, Ishiro felt grateful. After all, he never even expected to learn a new ninjutsu this time – he only wanted to upgrade Water Thread and speed up his ninjutsu usage. Now he'd also gained the B-rank Freezing Surge. No reason to be dissatisfied.
Moreover, Ishiro's overall knowledge advanced immeasurably. In these twenty days, he'd effectively gone from "elementary-level water theory" to "high-school graduate" level. No more would books alone restrict him. Meanwhile, repeated practice cut down the number of seals needed for certain techniques, along with the cost in chakra.
The biggest harvest? His upgraded Water Thread was far beyond the old version. Testing revealed that the new Water Thread could penetrate the Earth-Style Wall he himself created – continuing onward to strike an enemy behind it.
Originally:
Water Thread (old):
- 12 seals
- 2.7 seals/sec
- 0.8C chakra
Now, if Ishiro cast the old Water Thread form, he only needed 5 seals at 3.5 seals/sec, burning 0.6C total. But the new "enhanced" Water Thread took 7 seals at 3.5 seals/sec, and cost 5.8C. In the end, after countless tries, Ishiro felt that his ninjutsu might finally be ready for real combat.
At last, their twenty days ended, and Saiichi took his leave. He had advanced so much that he planned to consolidate his new abilities and undertake missions showing his improved strength. Ishiro was as grateful as he was enthusiastic – soon his break from Team Five would end, and he'd be back on missions.
On the final day, Ishiro decided to drop by the Barrier Unit and see how the "Fire Domain" fragments were coming along. He hadn't visited in over twenty days and was curious to see whether the R&D there had succeeded.
Over the same period, the Barrier Unit was anything but idle. They had kept investigating the S-rank fūinjutsu's leftover fragments day and night, with triple-shift rotations. Though no decisive success was announced yet, the progress far exceeded anyone's expectations.
Months earlier, the village had discussed that plan of collecting random kid ideas from the Academy – which proved ineffective. Instead, dissecting the "Fire Domain" had given impetus to wave upon wave of fresh theories. Meanwhile, Iwa's command over fūinjutsu was already climbing after obtaining the Uzumaki scrolls. Now, with the impetus from analyzing those S-rank bits, they achieved further leaps.
B-rank specialists soared up to A-rank by the dozen. Even the top brass had lost track of exactly how many reached that threshold.
Ishiro's return was met with warmth. Countless new and old colleagues vied to share the project's latest breakthroughs with him.
After hearing them out, Ishiro felt overwhelmed. So many untested leads had multiplied. He'd thought that after weeks of experiments, there would be fewer things left to try, but ironically, the number of proposals had exploded. Each experiment triggered dozens of new sparks in the researchers' minds.
Listening to it all, Ishiro realized he wouldn't finish reading even a tenth of the new data in one sitting. Indeed, time seemed nowhere near enough.