Chương 23: Secrets of the Shadows

As I came to, I looked out the window to see the sun already halfway in the sky. Seeing that it was the afternoon, I got out of my bed and turned to look at my desk. Upon glancing at the desk with bleary eyes, they immediately shot open, and I appeared in front of the desk so fast that I thought I had used the Flying Raijin for a second.

"This is the shadow clone jutsu dad promised to give me," I mumbled as a huge smile blossomed on my face.

Looking over the scroll he had left for me, I noticed a section of the scroll had a different jutsu on it, and looking closer, I nodded in understanding at what it was. This second jutsu was the multi-shadow clone jutsu.

'I guess my dad thinks that I can handle making more than one shadow clone at a time at this point.' Looking further down the scroll, I noticed a handwritten note.

"Up to this point, I believe that you'll be able to handle only 2 shadow clones, so don't go over that limit. At least not without having a trained ninja around to evaluate you and make sure you don't die while creating more than 2 clones." Nodding my head, I decided to listen to my dad. He's had so much experience in the shinobi world that he probably knows what's best for me, at least at this point in time.

Smiling as bright as the afternoon sun, I practically floated down the stairs into our backyard to start the practice for this jutsu and also to get started on the training for the day.

'Let's see, so the scroll said to just cross both of my hands' index and middle fingers over each other and mold the chakra to the center of my being. After doing that, I then need to release that molded chakra into the air all at once while infusing my will into it to create a shadow clone.'

Closing my eyes and gathering the chakra into the middle of my being, I gave it will and then expelled it from my body.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu," I exclaimed while opening my eyes to see a puff of smoke pop up next to me. Looking at the perfect reflection of the clone, I was stunned for a couple of seconds before I came back to my senses.

"Now it is time to experiment with this jutsu a little and push its limits," I spoke to the clone standing next to me as it nodded its head in agreement. With that, my experiments on the shadow clone jutsu began.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted. Creating clones just to dispel them and then meditating to get my chakra back up after expending it all on clones was a very tiring process to go through. On the bright side, I learned quite a few things from my experiments.

The first thing I learned really quickly was that you could decide how much chakra was given to each clone. This rule applied to both the regular shadow clone and the multi-clone variant. The amount of chakra that was given to a clone determines how many jutsus it could produce. The amount of chakra put into a clone also resulted in a positive correlation with how many hits it could take as well.

The second thing that I learned from the experiments was that no matter how much chakra was put into a clone, you only got around 95% of the remaining chakra in the clone back when it was dispelled. This means that if I gave a clone 200 units of chakra and he used 100 units before getting dispelled, I would only receive 95 units of chakra back.

Another pretty important thing that I learned was that pain is not transferred back to the user of the shadow clone jutsu. When I tried this out, I honestly expected the pain to transfer back to me, especially when the clone is supposed to transfer everything back to the user. But, when I stabbed my clone in the foot with a tree branch and he dispelled, I just got the information of how he was dispelled, not the pain itself.

Speaking of the information being transferred back to the creator of the clone, that is very much real and also very exciting because that means the way that Kakashi had Naruto train would work for me as well. Granted I don't have the chakra to make thousands of clones for training purposes it can still help tremendously when I'm trying to get stronger.

The information influx also helped put the original Naruto's training into perspective. The transfer aches like crazy and I only had 2 clones physically training, not even with jutsus. However, when I dispelled them I had gotten a huge headache from it. Thinking of the thousands of clones that Naruto was able to use and dispel when he was training made my eyes cross.

The last thing I need to test out is if my body can physically improve while training using shadow clones or if it's only just a mental thing. This one will take some time to find out, but I suspect that physical training will have to be done by the main body and not the shadow clones. If this is the case, and only the memories are transferred, that means I'll need to have my shadow clones focus on things that take mental power and muscle memory, instead of physical training. That could include things like taijutsu katas, jutsu training, seal practice, and shuriken/senbon throwing as those things are focused on muscle memory instead of physical training.

'I'm glad I figured all these things out in only a day of work. It leaves me with the time until my dad gets home from attending clan meetings today to practice whatever I want. Then I'll have to go inside and spend time with my family; otherwise, my mom will hit my ass with a lightning bolt,' I thought to myself as I contemplated what I should train for the last couple of hours.

Making up my mind, I decided to try and work on the rite of passage seal that I needed to do for my dad to get me sealing training and also for the clan to recognize me as one of their own.

Creating two shadow clones, I sat down in the middle of the yard while the other two followed my lead. My reason for doing this was so that we could form ideas and bounce them off each other to hopefully speed this process up a little.

"I think that the first thing we have to do is understand the essence of a seal," Clone One began.

"Thinking about how Dad said the seal was formed, I think it's easy to say that this seal is not only just about the physical form but also the intent and energy that it embodies," Clone One continued.

I nodded my head, agreeing with my clone. When my dad explained the seal, he not only described what it should generally physically look like but also that it should have the sealer's intent and emotions sealed within it as well.

"Our chakra seems to be the key in this situation if that's indeed the case. It carries both our will and our spirit. If we can imprint that into a surface with just our chakra, we may somehow be able to shape the way it looks. Or it could be that our hopes and dreams for the clan and family somehow morph the seal naturally to form the spiral." I said while we were all spitballing ideas.

As the time went on, so too did the brainstorming. Before long, my dad had arrived home, and upon seeing me

out in the yard talking to two more of myself, called me back inside the house saying that mom had dinner ready and they were waiting for me.

Calling backward, saying I'll be right in, I dismissed my clones and walked into the house to wash my hands for the delicious-smelling dinner my mom had prepared.