章 54: Naruto : Domination: Chapter 54
"That raises the question of how the fuck one does get contracted with a mythological animal" I wondered. The elephants were walking towards the setting sun, and I started running after them.
"Like hell I'm going to miss a summoning contract." I muttered.
...
With my steps raised little clouds of dust while I was running, I took in the parade. Surprisingly enough, there weren't outlandish colors, even if I could spot the absolute whiteness of the one leading them. Their growing forms looked... ordinary. Shades of gray, tusks, bigass ears.
Their chakra, from my limited sensing, was fucking vast. My sensing range was around 10, 15 meters. That I could feel them from kilometers was just insane.
Another low rumble shivered over my chakra. It was intentional.
"Well, it explains why I can feel their chakra." I muttered. The elephants were broadcasting their presence. Basically exuding chakra. Scaring off others maybe?
Coming closer, I identified the head of the parade and kept running towards him.
When I was close enough, I faltered.
It wasn't the whole parade who was throwing around chakra like a fountain, only the male leading them.
Thinking about it, I shouldn't have been surprised, but huge did not even begin to describe him. I knew that toads snakes and slugs were fucking enormous summons, but the one at the head of the parade dwarfed them.
He was white, easily twice Gamabunta's size, I had to keep up my sprint to keep up with the 'walk' of the parade.
The rumbling stopped, and the eye of the titan in front of me took in my presence with a distracted glance before returning to lazily observe the surroundings.
"Human." he spoke. His voice was the rumbling of a landslide, deep, overwhelming, and yet without any inflection.
There was no curiosity, no welcoming warmth, no wariness. He had apparently already deemed me 'not-a-threat', so chit-chat wasn't a problem.
I kept running, the rest of the herd was quiet. As quiet as at least fifty behemoths could be while walking.
Seriously, the air movements they were causing either with their breathing or simple walking was buffeting me.
I didn't know how to exactly react to the honestly unreadable welcome. Should I answer 'Elephant'? Call him sama? Just ask for the contract?
Eh, I'll just go with the flow, they look like laid back people. Hell, I would be if I had no natural predators. Well, lions would attack a lone elephant, but Discovery Channel isn't helping me here.
I tried to gauge something from the white elephant expression, but, and here's the kick, whatever humanization chakra brings to summon animals, it was absent on the behemoth.
"Elephant." I answered.
I ran at his side for a couple of hours, while he kept leisurely walking across the savannah. I wasn't in a hurry, and it felt somehow the right thing to do.
"You know of patience, human." The white elephant spoke, his eyes roaming over the horizon.
I shrugged, glad that he had begun the conversation.
"My name is Daiki." I answered, hoping that I passed whatever test they were going to grind me through.
"Why are you here, Daiki?" The white elephant asked.
Wow, no -san? No -kun either? Did he already dislike me?
"I want to become a sage. Signing a contract is the only way I know that would make it possible." I shrugged, playing the honest card.
I didn't really need to summon giant elephants around, even if the whole Kuchiyose no jutsu had it's own kind of magic appeal. I kept running at the side of the titanic animal for another twenty minutes before he answered.
"Why should I allow it?" He asked, his voice unreadable as always.
Wow. That is unexpected. Not 'How do you know about it?' 'Why do you want to be a sage?'
Fortunately, I was ready with a lot of points in my favor.
"Do the animal summons need chakra for their self-awareness and intelligence?" I asked as an answer.
The white behemoth did not deign me of an answer, but given the fact that we were talking with intervals of at least twenty minutes, maybe he was just thinking about what my question could imply.
"Does it look like we need more chakra?" he questioned. I couldn't tell for sure, but he was almost sardonic.
"Did the animal summons exist before Kaguya Ōtsutsuki made a mess with the sacred tree and her son started to teach people how to use chakra?" I asked.
Now, That surprised him. He didn't falter, I didn't even want to think about the kind of damage he could do if he tripped.
"You know many things humans have forgotten." He grumbled after a while.
"I need to become strong enough to stop Kaguya's third son from freeing her. I don't know how animal summons came to be, but I bet that animals mutated to adapt to active chakra pathways, and that somehow senchakra created the 'summoning plane'. If Kaguya comes back, she'll take back the chakra, all of it." I elaborated.
The white elephant took another two steps, then stopped walking. "I don't feel lies. And yet you speak of the impossible."
The rest of the parade moved over to the nearby trees, which were almost as tall as them, and cheerfully, from what I could understand, started eating.
They had all ignored me, likely knowing that I wasn't a threat, and that even if I was, their boss could more than likely simply splatter me.
"For everything that begins, there is an end." The white behemoth spoke, his eye, vast and terrible, zeroing on me. It was golden, and almost burning with life. How the fuck didn't I notice that before.
"Everything changes, the world should go forward, not eat its tail." I countered.
The white elephant took a deep breath and exhaled. With the effect of almost sniffing me up his trunk and blowing me away. He rumbled again, making my chakra shiver.
"The herd could teach you what you ask, but what can you teach in return?" The white elephant asked.
"I know many things from another world, things nobody else can tell you: History, Science, Poetry, Mathematics, Physics, Philosophy, Fables..." I offered. Who would they tell? The giant elephant was hardly going to sell me to Danzō. Besides, I needed a relationship based on trust, I needed them to make a sage out of me.
"Knowledge for knowledge." the white elephant rumbled. Somehow I knew that lying to him was an absurdly stupid thing to do.
"I do not wish for my herd to be called for battle. But if you manage to talk one of the adults into it, I will allow it." He rumbled.
Acutely aware that we were already negotiating the terms of the summoning contract, I focused on whatever shit I could use summons for.
In the meantime, another rumble washed over me, this time I felt the accompanying shiver... slide away? From me. And under my eyes, a dozen or so of baby elephants appeared around the area, playing around.
Well, baby elephants of the size of two-floor houses, but still.
With his always calm and paced voice that acutely reminded me how easily he could flatten me on the ground, the white elephant spoke again: "I protect my herd, you will stop what the third son is attempting."
"If I manage to find another summoning contract can I sign it?" I asked. Something like the hawk contract would allow me to send messages, it wouldn't be half bad.
"You can if you can afford it." The white elephant answered.
"What do you mean?"
"With chakra, and as you call it, our self-awareness and human intelligence, most species took up several of mankind traits." The behemoth explained.
I nodded thinking about the yakuza-ish behavior and appearance of Gamabunta.
"Among them, the constant search for power, that they obtain in the form of a blood and chakra sacrifice.
Our agreement includes a payment in knowledge, and the stopping of Kaguya's youngest. If the contract you sign will ask of you blood and chakra, you will be able to pay." The white elephant concluded.
I blinked, surprised by the lengthy explanation when I understood.
He is already taking up his part of the agreement, knowledge for knowledge. I thought.
"Knowledge for knowledge, I'll stop the third brother, and summon in battle only an adult I took an agreement with, and obviously I will not harm elephants." I repeated.
The white elephant rumbled in what I understood was... approval? With maybe a spark of amusement at the idea of me being able to hurt one if them.
"My name, young student and teacher, is Zōkīshiro." The boss summons introduced himself.
He brought his trunk against the tip of one of his tusks, lightly puncturing it and drawing blood.
Following my gut, I bit my thumb until I drew blood. Fucking hell it stings. I thought vehemently, but I schooled my expression.
Ōkīshirozō brought down his trunk until his wound stood bright in front of me, I touched it with my bloodied hand and watched with fascination as the contract wrote itself in impossibly complex seals around my arm.
I left my memories and grinned to my fellow sage, not being able to resist, I tried to mindfuck him: "I spied on Tsunade in an onsen and she punched me into the Summons Plane."
...
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