บท 50: Imprints

Yoko had me sit in front of her as she explained the requirements and process for creating seals on your hands.

"There are 3 different requirements you need to make sure you have before you can make the imprint of the seal that you want to, on your hand. The first is absolute proficiency over the seal in question. As I've said before, without having a deep enough understanding of the seal in question, it can cause it to blow up.

The second requirement is high chakra control, because of the intricacies of entangling this seal into your chakra pathways and network you need to be able to control your chakra to a great level as well.

The last is talent in the art of fuinjutsu, usually this is the deciding factor for many shinobi's. Either you have it or you don't, and luckily for our clan, seals seem to run through our bloodline, so we are able to have tons of people use seal imprints."

"So, practically only we can make sealing imprints on our body then since fuinjutsu flows through our veins?"

"No, anyone is able to do this, but the most important thing is talent, as I said. There have been multiple people in the past who have been able to use seal imprints, and I'm sure there will be more in the future. As for in the past, the most prominent figures would've been both the first and second Hokage."

I nodded my head as she told me this information. 'That makes sense, Tobirama had already made the flying raijin and Hashirama was able to seal the 8-tailed beasts away by himself (Shukaku had already been sealed by the Hidden Sand). They had to have been really talented in fuinjutsu to be able to pull off those monumental feats.'

"We already know that your chakra control is really impressive especially with how young you are plus your lineage. As long as you're confident with your knowledge on a seal you want to imprint on yourself then we can go ahead and see if you have the talent to make these imprints right now." Yoko said while she stared at me.

Thinking back on the different seals that I've learned so far, I decided to choose a seal that would come in handy if we needed to buy a couple of seconds in a battle. "I'm going to choose the 'Uzumaki Sealing Style: Barrier Dominion' so far it's the most powerful barrier technique I know, so I should probably have it imprinted."

She hummed and nodded her head. "It's a good choice for sure, able to protect you from both physical and jutsu-based attacks by sealing the chakra used to the ground underneath the barrier. Alright, let me show you how to create an imprint now."

Yoko took out a piece of paper and some ink and placed both on the ground. Looking back to me she spoke again. "The first thing you need to do is create a perfect version of the seal. Because of how seal imprinting works and how it becomes tied to your chakra network, there is no way to take the seal out of your chakra network once it's intertwined. This comes with a couple of benefits and disadvantages.

The biggest advantage being that this seal becomes ingrained into your being. This means that you can use any part of your body, like your feet, to place a seal anywhere you walk. Along with this aspect comes the benefit of being able to use the seals you have imprinted, in conjunction with your sealing chains. Our sealing expertise and this specific aspect of our expertise are probably the biggest reason we are feared in the ninja world next to our huge chakra reserves and life force.

The obvious disadvantage being that since it is imprinted into your chakra network, if you have a bad seal or it's not strong enough to hold up to the amount of chakra needed to intertwine itself with your chakra network, you can blow yourself up pretty easily."

My eyebrows raised a little, and I nodded along. 'I thought it would've been much easier, then again its benefits are really good especially if you can use something like the flying thunder god in conjunction with the sealing chains.'

"So, I'll ask you to create a seal that is strong enough and drawn perfectly, that way we can officially begin the process of imprinting."

I took the ink and paper and started to draw the seal I wanted to imprint onto myself. Breathing a deep breath in and out, I started to write out the seal. Using kanji, swirls, and rigid lines, I spent around 27 minutes creating a seal that resembled an abstract drawing of a Rubik's cube layered on top of a whirlpool with words written in a circle around the picture.

Yoko took the seal and inspected it while smiling to herself. "Very good, your sealing talent really is amazing, Shiran. Now the second part of this is to lay the seal onto your palm facing downwards (the ink side is laying on the palm), create small tendrils of chakra from the tenketsu points within your hand, and slowly pull the ink from the paper, in through those holes, and stick to your chakra pathways.

This step is when the actual imprinting happens, which means you need constant chakra flow to your hands to make sure the process is smooth. During this process you will feel an odd sensation but it won't last more than 5 minutes. Once this step is complete then you will be free to lay your palm on the ground and will the seal of your choice into existence. If you have the required talent, the seal will appear on the ground, if any of the previous steps were done erroneously, then you'll look as if Iwa's explosion corpse got their hands on you."

'Honestly, I would probably be scared shitless if I didn't know what was waiting for me on the other side, but it's kind of hard for me to be afraid of dying when I know I'll get reincarnated again.' I thought as I laid the seal face down on my hand.

Closing my eyes and focusing on my chakra, I made small tendrils that came up through the chakra nodes in my hands and stuck them to the ink. As I started to pull the ink into my body, it was remarkably easy, but as I neared the last of the ink, my control over my chakra became extremely unsteady and it started to feel like a sharp spike drilling through my hand.

My brow furrowed, and I put 100% of my energy into concentrating to get both the ink and my tendrils back under control and continued to pull them into my chakra pathway. Once I felt the last of the ink get sucked up, I opened my eyes with a look of confusion on my face.

'That is a really weird feeling, Yoko wasn't lying.'

Seeing the look on my face, Yoko chuckled a little, saying something along the lines of "I told you so."

'So all I have to do is think about the seal and will it into existence. That doesn't seem too bad!' And with that, I thought about placing the barrier seal onto the ground and smiled as I saw the sealing script sprawl out all around me and the green four-corner barrier become erected along the script.

"Wow, it's so much easier than taking a seal out mid-battle and placing it down." I said as I watched the B-rank barrier fuinjutsu shimmer in the evening sun.

"It is, isn't it? And now that we know you can do it, we should probably imprint a few more seals today. We also have to talk about what you want to specialize in as well so we can prepare you for the next sealing rank up."

"I've actually been thinking about this a lot, and I think that I want to specialize in barrier, offensive, and also tailed beast seals. Obviously, I plan to branch out but I think this would be a good focus point for now."

Yoko nodded. "That seems like a good combination there. You have offensive seals, defensive seals, and also seals for one of the most dangerous weapons on the battlefield. Let's start imprinting more seals then, I don't want to be here all night."

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