(28 April, year 54 AK)
Another thirty three-day-cycles or so Yuta spent training his sound based genjutsu until he felt finally satisfied with the results.
'Well, it doesn't seem like I can significantly improve it any further, might just stop at that for now.' Yuta analyzed his results, 'I'm casting the targeting part for the chakra-infused sound seamlessly now, and I had reduced the number of hand seals required for the Shadow Cloak jutsu to one, but it doesn't seem like I can get rid of that last hand seal with my current chakra control yet, since without the final hand seal I would require about twenty seconds of concertation to mold the chakra directly with my current chakra control alone.'
'Anyway, the sound based genjutsu was worth all the effort I had put into it.' Yuta thought excitedly, 'Utilizing sound makes my Shadow Cloak genjutsu, or any other regular genjutsu, be able to target the enemy in a much greater distance, as long as my voice is able to reach the target. Also, it is much more subtle, meaning the even enemies, that are sensitive to chakra, would have a harder time detecting it.'
'Sound also makes genjutsu more potent, since it allows it to bypass some of the natural resistance of the chakra network, since it infiltrates the sense of hearing and bypasses the first layer of natural resistance, that regular genjutsu usually has to overcome to succeed.'
'Although, the Shadow Cloak genjutsu, even upgraded to the sound variant, is still a subtle type genjutsu, means that it's still remains easy to dispel, as any subtle type genjutsu is, so the only benefit from increase of potency it has, is that it becomes more efficient and will require less chakra to achieve same effect.'
'I absolutely must develop my first forceful type of genjutsu to capitalize the benefits of using sound to its fullest potential. But I probably should leave it for the last thing I do in this time-loop, since it will require a lot of chakra, I'll let my chakra grow a little bit more before I get to it later.'
Coming to that conclusion, Yuta decided to train with the three basic academy jutsus to get a better mastery over them and to try to get rid of the hand seals requirement.
After having some experience with reducing the hand seals requirements with his Shadow Cloak genjutsu, it was quite easy for Yuta to get on the right path with these jutsus.
After ten more cycles of training, Yuta successfully reduced the hand seals requirements on all three jutsu to the final one hand seal, but to completely get rid of it was turned out unexpectedly hard.
'Hm, it's seems that it's a common trait for all jutsu, the final hand seal is always the most chakra intensive, it helps to mold all the already half-molded chakra to the final stage and completes the jutsu. I can reduce the number of hand seals for the jutsu by memorizing how chakra was being molded with hand seals and then reproducing the same process by directly molding chakra with my chakra control.'
'But the final stage and the final hand seal for every jutsu seems always multiple times more complex than all the previous ones, I'm sure is able to replicate it without the hand seal, but it requires time and full concentration to do so, for example, for now I need about ten seconds to perform each of the three jutsus without hand seals altogether, and for that ten seconds I can't really do anything else...'
'I was able to almost completely reduce the concentration time required for my nameless jutsu that directs sound waves, so I guess I could try to do the same here. Although the complexity of the chakra molding for my Shadow Cloak jutsu was too complex for me to reduce the time needed to less than twenty seconds, but the three academy jutsus are simpler, I should give it a try.'
Another thirty cycles or so had passed while Yuta was training with the academy jutsus.
'Well, I think it's as far as I can push it at the moment.' Yuta thought tiredly as he was resting and eating grilled meat in Yakiniku Q restaurant.
During his time in the time-loop Yuta was pretty much tried out almost all restaurants and food stalls in the village, including the Ichiraku ramen, but although he found Ichiraku ramen quite delicious, he more preferred grilled meat at Yakiniku Q or yakitori at Shushu-ya, but Shushu-ya is more of a sake pub than a restaurant and people there usually stare at Yuta disapprovingly whenever he eats there.
'I still need a full second to cast any of the three academy jutsu, it's two times longer than if I use hand seals, maybe later on when I have better chakra control I could push it further, but for the past who knows how much days I didn't manage to reduce the time at all, I'll leave it at that for now.'
As Yuta finished his meal and paid up and left, he thought dejectedly, as he looked at his empty wallet, 'A shame, it's so expensive here, no wonder it's a most popular restaurant in the village, until I start completing higher rank missions, the only way I could afford it is by time-traveling...'
But despite his internal complaining, for most of the time in this time-loop, Yuta was still eating at Yakiniku Q at least twice in each cycle, once by paying with money, and another one by escaping with time-travel at the end of each cycle.
As Yuta returned to the training grounds, he inspected his own chakra.
'If my estimations are correct, I now have about 5 average Genin's amount of chakra, or 5G for short, it has being more than a year since the time-loop started, don't know how much time passed exactly, but it should be less than two years.'
'It should've been about a little more than a year that took me from 2.5G to 5G, doubling my chakra, but with how it goes now, it would require more than that to double it again, maybe two years or so. It seems that the accelerated rate of my chakra growth will sharply decrease after I reach 10G or 1C – a Chunin amount of chakra.'
'With how it goes, I'm afraid that reaching a Jonin level of chakra would be quite difficult, and any higher than that – even more so. So far, my chakra level grew almost exclusively through my spiritual energy growth, but sooner or later the disbalance between spiritual and physical energies will become a problem, huh...'
'But how do I can fix my average physique problem? There are surely ways to do so, I just have to figure it out what I should do about that. I remember Kabuto had the same problem and he experimented the heck out of his body and enhanced it to a great extent and even attained the Sage Mode. There was another guy who created Chimera jutsu to absorb other people's Bloodlines, he was talentless but became strong due to that jutsu. There should be other ways as well, like Hashirama cells implantation for example...'
'Anyway, it's too soon to worry about that. The only important thing left for me in this time-loop is the development of my first forceful type genjutsu, and also, I should learn how to hide my own chakra so it will be suspicious of me to suddenly grow my chakra so much overnight, I've seen Shisui do it many times, so I know what I suppose to do.'
After analyzing his progress, Yuta started to train to suppress his own chakra, so other ninjas who are able to sense it, won't sense too much of it.
After training for another ten cycles or so, Yuta mastered the chakra suppression and was able to maintain it all the time, to appear as if he only had about 2G of chakra instead of 5.3G, since after a while his chakra grew a little bit more, from 5G to 5.3G.
After that Yuta started to design his new genjutsu he was going to make.
'Since it would be a forceful type of genjutsu, there is no point to go after anything else than an obvious choice – paralysis. Forceful genjutsu has much stronger grip on the target's chakra, designed to be difficult or even outright impossible to dispel for the target on their own, so it's effect doesn't have to be subtle, and in the shinobi battle, even a second of paralysis would be enough to finish the enemy.'
'But the problem is, I don't have much point of reference of how exactly I have to do it though...'
Yuta started to work on the new genjutsu. For the next twenty or so cycles, Yuta was trying to modify his existing jutsu Shadow Cloak to increase its potency and power, establishing a strong and forceful grip on the chakra network.
Although using Shadow Cloak as forceful genjutsu won't be as effective as a paralysis genjutsu, for now Yuta was trying to accomplish one thing at a time.
'I think that is enough force.' Yuta thought as he was trying to dispel his own modified Shadow Cloak genjutsu that he hit himself with, but by continuously improving it he eventually reached the point where he can't dispel it anymore on his own. After some futile efforts, Yuta finally felt satisfied with the potency of his forceful genjutsu, seeing that he can't dispel it by normal means, he canceled the jutsu as its caster.
'I didn't think I would reach the point where I couldn't dispel my own genjutsu, this is great!' Yuta thought excitedly, 'Although it requires so much chakra to cast it, at this point I only can cast it twice at most.'
After accomplishing that, Yuta started working on the next thing – the paralysis component of the genjutsu, since Shadow Cloak is a really bad fit for the forceful type genjutsu, and he only used it to test it out. Since the forceful type of genjutsu requires many times more chakra than subtle type, using Shadow Cloak as forceful type turned out as Yuta expected – an ineffective waste of chakra, since it would be so much better to outright paralyze the target instead.
During the next twenty or so cycles, Yuta developed his first prototype of a genjutsu with paralysis effect.
'It should work this time...' Yuta thought as he started performing hand seals, and although he thought that way, he had thought the same way about ten times already, but up until now it was all ended in a failure.
As Yuta formed the hand seals and spoke some random sentence to use the sound of his own voice as a genjutsu medium, his body stiffened and he fell face first into the grass like a log.
'It works!' Yuta thought excitedly, while struggling and unable to move his body.
After just a second the jutsu broke, allowing Yuta to move again.
'Huh? It was supposed to last much longer with how much chakra I used...'
...
'I think I know what happened...' Yuta analyzed, 'Now I see why Kurenai used an illusion of a tree to bind and paralyze her enemies in her Tree Binding Death genjutsu... It is much easier to paralyze the body through the mind when there is some kind of an illusion going on that binds the target. What I did right now is just a simple paralysis effect without any illusions, I thought it would be more efficient this way than playing any tricks, but it seems I was wrong about that. The tree in the Kurenai's genjutsu was there for a reason, I guess...'
'Damn, it was so long, I think it's been about two years since I last saw my team, I wonder how they are doing... Huh, where that thought even came from, what am I even thinking? For them it was only three days...'
After that, Yuta spent another 10 cycles or so, developing the final part of the new paralysis genjutsu, and then he used it on himself.
As Yuta finished forming hand seals and had spoken a random sentence, he saw how his own shadow instantly rose from under his feet and turned into pitch black chains that instantly binded his whole body, firmly constricting him and he was almost completely unable to move, the only parts he still could move is his facial muscles and fingers, while his arms, legs and torso was being restricted firmly.
'It finally works.' Yuta thought as he stood in place, unable to move. He tried to dispel the genjutsu, but his efforts were in vain, then he tried to struggle, but his movements were almost completely restricted.
After twenty seconds the jutsu broke, allowing Yuta to move again.
'Twenty seconds, that's plenty!' Yuta thought excitedly, 'I'm quite tired from this time-loop already. Although there is still some things I could train in this loop, like I could've trained to reduce the hand seals required for my new genjutsu, as of now it requires eight hand seals, but I perform the hand seals fast enough, so I could train to reduce them later.'
'As for the name of my new genjutsu, let it be something simple, the Shadow Chains, yea, I like that.'
As of why Yuta chose to make it an illusion like that for the restricting component of the genjutsu, it was since he named his first original genjutsu – Shadow Cloak, he thought it would be fitting to stick with the shadows for the theme of his original genjutsus and he was just picked something that comes first to his mind, that how he come up with the idea of shadow chains.
And since it's a genjutsu and not Nara clan's hiden jutsu, Yuta doesn't really need for the shadows to actually be there, his genjutsu would create shadows for the chains on its own if it needs to.
"Phew... Finally, it's time to go back and end this loop... Although I would miss my frequent visits to Yakiniku Q" Yuta said as he laid on the grass and watched the clouds in the sky, resting after a job well done...
--- AN ---
Damn, almost 2.4k words in one chapter instead of 1.5k, I think this one is the biggest chapter so far, but I wanted to end the time-loop in this chapter and not drag it into the fifth one, so I was writing this chapter until I was able to end the time-loop.
And although I was enjoying writing such a theory-heavy and in-depth chapters, I'm already tired of it by this point, it took much longer to finish this training arc that I thought it would, ngl. Probably I should shorten it for the future training time-loops though.
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