That same day, Neji poured out everything he knew. He started with Hyūga history, moved through the rift between branch and main house, and ended with the death of his father, Hyūga Hizashi. Useful details mingled with the aimless and raw.
Konome Taketori did not interrupt. She listened, the picture of patience, while another part of her mind sorted the training reports returning from her clones. Neji did not need consoling. After losing his father and being branded with the Caged Bird, resentment had been caged in him with nowhere to go. Now, facing Konome, he finally had a place to let it spill.
Two distracted people, and somehow the talk still felt easy.
Only when the night rain stopped did they part, with an agreement. Starting tomorrow, after class each evening, Neji would meet Konome beneath the great banyan in the Forest of Death and run Eight Trigrams drills with her.
Konome had no reason to refuse. High-grade main-house secrets would keep coming from Hinata. Mid and lower techniques Neji could copy. And she would gain a free Gentle Fist sparring partner.
Hyūga Gentle Fist was already as good as in her pocket.
She paused to take stock. She had been in Konoha not even half a month. From Might Guy she had taken Leaf Strong Fist and the Eight Gates. Now the Eight Trigrams forms were essentially in hand, with mastery only a matter of time. Add to that the Taketori-ryū body arts she brought with her and the Shikotsumyaku in her bones.
One S-rank forbidden art, two body-type kekkei genkai, three distinct taijutsu schools. The road to an unrivaled close-combat shinobi unfurled beneath her feet.
And that was not the end of it.
When the school clone dispelled, it warned her first. The harvest is big. Numb your nerves and brace for the upload. She had been giddy at once. As the other clones burst and their chakra rushed back, she barely heard Neji's grief for the flood of technique pouring into her skull.
As she sifted, her spirits rose. While her true body shadowed Neji these past days, her clones had not been idle.
By today the school clone had memorized every diagram obtained so far. In a few more days Hinata would complete the set, and Konome could begin practicing the full Eight Trigrams system.
The Water Release clone's shape-change work had leapt forward as well. Using water's pressure property, she had developed a new technique on the principle of a high-pressure water cutter.
In memory Konome watched the clone split a man-high bluestone slab in under three seconds. The cut surface shone like a mirror, almost no chipping.
Ecstatic, the clone tuned and retried until the technique set firm.
First, the merits. The power was brutal. If it landed, the target would be maimed if not killed. Testing against her own bones, at half an arm's length the stream severed a rib in two seconds.
And her Shikotsumyaku bones were harder than steel.
If it could slice her, it could slice ninety-five percent of shinobi in this world. A heavy strike indeed.
But technique cannot be judged by strengths alone. She ran broader tests.
The flaw showed as clearly as the edge. Before release, this high-pressure Water Release needed a long charge. You had to pack water chakra until the internal pressure climbed, which meant a long windup and slow startup. Easy to interrupt.
On a battlefield that was a fatal weakness.
Every Water Release she had crafted under the Three-Tails' influence was signless. Iruka had lectured it exactly so: hand signs make ninjutsu formulaic and mechanical. Once trained, you almost never misfire. The more complete the signs, the higher the success rate and the lower the risk.
The high-pressure cutter was the textbook example of a signless technique that begged to be broken. You had to draw a mass of water chakra in an instant, compress it to the limit into a high-pressure sphere, then open a needle-thin vent at its skin. The cutter would flash out and erase what lay ahead.
Think of how high that internal pressure must run if you want real bite. If something broke your focus mid-charge, the blowback would be a bomb in your own body.
And because its power came from pressure rather than mass, distance killed it. Beyond three meters the force dropped to less than a quarter of its peak.
In short, a very dangerous close-range jutsu. Slow to prime, but once charged the strike itself was blinding. Perfect for finishing when the enemy's movement was pinned.
Compared to her Shikotsumyaku: Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets, it was the opposite. The bone bullets had almost no windup and reached far, but after firing there was a long dead interval while new phalangeal bullets regrew.
Two offensive tools. The water cutter had a long windup. The bone bullets had a long cooldown. Both hit like a hammer.
She had two new finishers now.
The Water Release news pleased her, but not enough to drown out Neji's voice. Perhaps it was luck, yet after Water Release and Gentle Fist, the Wind Release clone brought victory too.
Just before Kazama Etsu signed his discharge papers, the Wind Release clone finally succeeded once at wind nature transformation under his guidance. Invisible chakra like a steel wire clung to a leaf's midrib.
There was a soft hiss.
The leaf parted.
Aside from the faint whisper of moving air, there was no sound. The torn edges were smooth as glass. Even the veins were sheared clean, as if the leaf had grown from the branch already split.
When the clone showed Etsu the perfect halves, he promptly sprayed the juice Konome had bought him and went visibly green.
He declared the deal finished. From now on, train your Wind Release by yourself. Do not come back.
Judging by his gloom, the blow had landed deep.
Shadow clones were outrageous. Memory, skill, and a body's worth of practiced instinct all poured back at once. Konome felt exhaustion threaded with a restless joy.
It was like a system from some past-life novel.
As the uploads finished, her mind drifted. It had to. The harvest of three clones training a full day, multiplied and dumped into one skull, was like quicksilver poured into a bowl. Heavy enough to stop thought. After parting from Neji she nearly fell asleep walking home.
As the gains multiply, so does the fatigue.
Shadow clones are not cheat-code gods.
But for Konome, they were more than enough.
Keep this pace. Keep moving.
The road to chasing the sun had begun to glow. With time to temper it, she would not need to wait long before becoming the one blazing sun of the shinobi world, the one all others must look up to.
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