AN: Sorry about that sudden hiatus, guys. Two Mondays ago, I found my Grandfather dead in his bed. Ever since, I’ve been comforting my mother and helping with things around the house for her. Then the funeral happened on Friday and that was an all-day affair. Then I had to work for five days straight after that so I could spend Thursday-Monday with my Dad by spending time in Florida for July 4th. Then I had to work another five days in a row to make up for the sudden vacation I had with my Dad. I didn’t have any vacation days yet, and me and Dad always spend the 4th of July together.
Now, though, I’ve finally come back to writing once more. Please forgive me for not talking to you guys for the last two weeks, I haven’t had the energy to even so much as think of talking to you guys. Except during the vacation, but I spent those days swimming with everyone and joining a local event where everyone shot each other with water balloons and water guns. There were even golf carts with a bunch of people in them that we splashed water on!
Also, another chapter tomorrow, guys!
Jack stretched himself as he and Taro got back to the town with the results of their hunt. Without Tea, they had to be very cautious with their hunt and get only one of those pink ostriches. Jack turned his head and waved at Taro, who was driving away to the butcher’s. “See ya tomorrow!” Jack yelled and saw Taro wave his hand back through the window.
Jack didn’t turn back down the road that would lead to his home, but, instead, turned towards the forest once more to head to a clearing for more training. He wanted to test some things he noticed during his use of Chakra for the past few days.
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Jack watched a leaf fall slowly from above. He could almost see the path that it would follow as the power of the Body Enhancement technique washed through him. He felt his hand quickly choose a place in mid air just a few feet below where he thought the leaf’s path would intersect. It fell and almost landed in his hand before seeming to have one last sway away from his hand and missing entirely.
He closed his hand to catch nothing, but he was still glad that he now knew what had changed.
His Body Enhancement Technique had improved. Yet, it didn’t improve everything. His ability to perceive everything and see its path was new. Alongside that, his speed also seemed to have increased. Using the Technique brought up memories of his fight with the bear, and he didn’t even try to bring them up. It seemed the spiritual parts of his Chakra can do more than he thought.
He didn’t really notice a jump in ability after his scuffle with that one hostile ostrich just a few weeks ago. Then again, he didn’t fight for as long or as hard as he did with the bear. He also knows that it has to be his spiritual side making him stronger because people don’t get stronger physically after a fight like he did with the bear. Not with the increase he’s noticed, anyway.
Perhaps it works like with his experience with eating the Tanaka Challenge Bowl. You know, the one that Jack would almost always eat when it was available because he gained spiritual strength through experiencing pain and still pushing through? He was kind of glad that the rationing was in effect, because he was getting diminishing returns for doing the same repetitive tasks every time he ate there for his Chakra.
Anyways, his fight with the bear did strengthen his spiritual side of his Chakra, because everything was a little bit better, and the techniques he used for his battle were a lot better.
As he said before, his Body Enhancement Technique gave him an increase in speed and a somewhat new ability for predicting paths in opponents while speeding up his perception to give him more time to think. Yet, his strength and durability (how hard you need to hit him for him to bleed) seemed to be somewhat diminished. His striking or attacking strength wasn’t diminished, but his lifting strength sure was!
He used to lift 300 pounds with some effort before, but now it felt like he had to struggle just to get a hold of that same rock he lifted in the beginning of his training! Remember? The one that helped Jack learn how to activate his Body Enhancement Technique? Yeah, he was back at square one for lifting strength.
His punches and kicks were unaffected, though! Meaning that this was more than just a drop in overall strength, it was a reallocation of stats. Jack couldn’t help but think back to Naruto Online for what this seems to be.
Naruto Online has five main stats that determine how strong a character is in battle. The ‘Attack’ stats were Taijutsu and Ninjutsu, but Jack just wanted to focus on Taijutsu for now. Taijutsu was a stat that increased the base damage for any physical attacks. Tsunade and Sakura Ninjas had high Taijutsu stats, since their super strength techniques allow them to be stupidly strong and hit like a brick. However, other Ninjas like Minato and Ay are stupidly fast, yet also have high Taijutsu, too.
This meant that the Chakra that Jack uses may be more like a video game than he thought. Perhaps Jack is heading towards a speedy Taijutsu build rather than a balanced one. He didn’t mind, speedy types usually have a passive that allowed them to dodge any one attack and then a percentage chance to-
Bah! He was getting distracted with thoughts of Naruto Online and all of the mechanics in it, going back to techniques.
Anyways, besides the Body Enhancement Technique, the other techniques he used in the battle also gained a ‘buff’. His Tree Walking Technique was incredibly strengthened when it came to its adhesion to surfaces. Everytime he used it during testing, he couldn’t help but remember the feeling of need he had when he was being shaken from the tree by the bear. He needed to stay stuck to the tree or else he’d be eaten. That echo of his experience seemed to now be ingrained in his technique.
He hung from a branch with only his fingertips during testing, just to see how strong his technique was per square inch of skin contact. He had to stop afterwards because his fingers couldn’t handle being stretched like that. His body weight wanted his fingers to go down, but his technique kept his fingers to the branch. If it wasn’t for the small durability boost his Body Enhancement Technique gave him, he wouldn’t have fingers on his hands in the first place, much less survive the pain of feeling his fingers being stretched to human limits.
It still required Jack’s focus to keep it up, unlike his Body Enhancement’s almost instinctive control. To go with the analogy of the image that he created for his Tree Walking Technique, he no longer had to worry about busting through the paper of whatever he was writing as it was now made of steel. He just had to focus on making what he wrote is legible. To stop writing is to fall from a tree.
His last technique to improve was his Piercing Fang Technique, and this one seems to have changed the most! His image, the thing that helped him to create his technique in the first place, was no longer that of a needle finding the crack of a concrete sidewalk, slipping in-between and hitting the soil where all of the weeds sprout from. Rather, it is now an image of a sewing needle going through cloth or fabric. More specifically, the hide of a teddy bear.
You see, it wasn’t until testing that Jack realized the sheer difference between the two images. The original image was alright, but all it did was create a ‘cautious’ image. A needle that had to be careful when it slipped between concrete, because the rock surrounding it could still damage its elegant form. Jack's use of this technique on the bear made him subconsciously aware that the image was false.
The world and his enemies were not like concrete, they were like fabric. What looks like a flat plain of fluff and plush was really just a bunch of really long string holding in all of the cotton inside. A sewing needle is so small and thin that it can just push aside any thread in its way so it can get past. Jack remembered a YouTube video he watched about how a bra company made the fabric for astronaut suits for the moon landing back in the 1960s. Their bra fabric thread was so tightly packed and so strong that air couldn’t get out!
Yet, a needle can still pierce through something even small atoms can’t.
That is what his new Piercing Fang Technique uses as its image, and Jack could feel the difference. No longer did he have to spend all of his concentration on maintaining the technique. A needle does not need to be careful about its form when everything is fabric. It didn’t make the needle stronger, it just realized that being careful was for the delusional.
He still had to drop everything to activate the Technique, but now he could use it alongside other Techniques once it’s activated!
Jack looked up at the sky, and saw that it was starting to turn dusk. He turned and headed back to town. Hopefully, he could see if the parents have done anything for Merci after what happened yesterday.
He also wanted something to eat that wasn’t dried jerky!
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At the south end of Maya Village, a young man on a bike pedalled into town.