Chapter 203: Deidara's Version of Cluster Bombs
With a loud boom, the valley shook again.
Kenichi wiped the soot from his face and fell into thought. Across from him, Deidara stood stiffly, rubbing at his sleeves with nervous fingers. Including this one, it had exploded thirty seven times.
Deidara stole a glance at his idol, equal parts curious and uneasy. He had assumed that the moment he arrived, he would finally get to chase "art" together with him. Instead, Kenichi had him running one strange experiment after another.
"This is really interesting," Kenichi muttered.
At this point, he had a rough grasp of Deidara's situation. The Explosion Release bloodline really was unusual, and Deidara's chakra was unstable by nature. It felt flammable and explosive, like it wanted to ignite the moment it was released.
Kenichi also figured out why Deidara relied on clay.
Clay could hold that unstable chakra for a period of time.
In other words, if Deidara's Explosion Release chakra was like a strong acid, then clay was the container capable of holding it. Other materials tried to contain it and simply got corroded, losing stability immediately.
"Come on, Deidara. Try it again," Kenichi said, keeping his tone simple. "Gather your chakra like this."
He had already tested how Deidara's chakra distributed itself inside clay. Now he wanted to see whether copying that distribution directly, without clay, could form a more stable chakra structure and create a foundation for compression.
Deidara looked bewildered, but his talent was real. After a brief pause, he understood what Kenichi meant and carefully followed the instructions.
Soon, a small sphere of chakra appeared in Deidara's palm.
It emitted a faint white glow, spinning quietly, looking almost ordinary.
A success?
Kenichi felt a flicker of satisfaction.
Then Deidara threw it.
The sphere detonated on impact, instantly blasting out a small crater.
"Kenichi senpai, th this…" Deidara's eyes went wide with excitement. He had never imagined he could recreate the effect of clay without relying on clay at all.
"Do not get carried away," Kenichi said calmly. "We have progress, that is all."
This test looked promising, but it still might not develop the way he wanted. If the explosive power problem could not be solved, cluster bombs would remain useless.
"Deidara, now do it again."
Deidara condensed another sphere. Kenichi watched closely, then had him start compressing it. Before long, the chakra ball shrank down to the size of a peanut.
Deidara threw it.
The explosion left a crater that was essentially the same size as before.
Kenichi nodded.
So the power of Deidara's Explosion Release really was directly tied to how much chakra Deidara output.
"It is close to what I expected," Kenichi wrote in his experimental log, his pen moving steadily. "Deidara's bomb making is economical and convenient, but it comes with its own troublesome limitations."
In normal explosions, power depended on many factors, including the raw materials involved. But for Deidara, the Explosion Release output depended entirely on chakra quantity.
The more chakra he poured in, the stronger the explosion became. External factors barely mattered.
"So if that is the case…" Kenichi pressed his palms together, eyes narrowing. "Then Deidara's Explosion Release power formula can be calculated with extreme accuracy."
Different shinobi had different chakra reserves and different levels of control, so even the same jutsu could vary wildly depending on who used it.
Kenichi remembered something Orochimaru once told him.
There had been a shinobi in Konoha, a very special one, who used the Great Fireball Technique more than anyone else in his entire life. By the later stages, his Great Fireball Jutsu was close to the Peak.
With minimal chakra, he could unleash the strongest Fireball possible. He even pushed it further and created an A rank jutsu.
Fire Release: Great Firestorm.
Its effect was a relentless barrage of fireballs launched at extremely high frequency, giving the illusion of a storm that never ended.
Very few people learned it. Stronger Fire Release jutsu existed, and Great Firestorm consumed an absurd amount of chakra, so almost no one could justify it.
Orochimaru learned many jutsu out of habit, but he never used that one. For someone like him, its practicality was low.
But Deidara was different.
Deidara's Explosion Release was stable in its own way. If a fixed amount of chakra was invested, the explosive power was fixed as well. That meant an optimal output range could be calculated.
"Deidara," Kenichi said, rubbing his hands with visible excitement, "we need to run a test. I want to calculate the output ratio between your chakra and your explosive power."
"Yes, senpai!" Deidara agreed instantly, not even asking why.
Kenichi felt both amused and exasperated. A test subject this cooperative was rare.
Of course, he would never use this method on ordinary subjects unless they had something he valued, something special like Deidara.
And so, Kenichi and Deidara stayed in the valley, testing for a full week.
After seven days, Kenichi finally had a rough mathematical figure.
Through detailed, tedious trials, he had mapped out Deidara's overall situation.
When Deidara burned through nearly all his chakra, leaving only enough to sustain his life, his Explosion Release reached its peak output. After that, Kenichi had Deidara replicate the chakra consumption levels of the grenades and bombs he had used before.
Kenichi calculated the approximate power of each explosion, then summarized an optimal value.
The chakra output was not high, but the explosive power remained strong enough to meet the requirements of cluster bombs.
"Senpai, what is this?" Deidara stared blankly at the logbook in Kenichi's hand. The writing and figures might as well have been another language. "Does this have anything to do with my jutsu?"
"Deidara," Kenichi said, chuckling as he patted his shoulder, "this is a chart of your current explosive output. It is directly proportional, but that is not the key part. Just remember this. With the chakra output equivalent to fifty three grenades, you can create a decent weapon."
Of course, reality was not that simple. Deidara would continue growing. That meant this chart was only accurate for the current Deidara.
Every year, the data would need to be updated.
In a sense, this was a long term experiment measured in years. There might even be unexpected gains later. For instance, Kenichi wanted to observe how a shinobi's chakra changed as they aged.
"Fifty three grenades worth of output… I understand, senpai!" Deidara looked strangely energized, though Kenichi could tell he was still confused, still wondering why any of this mattered.
Kenichi did not explain immediately. Instead, he gave him something more intuitive.
When the chakra equivalent of fifty three grenades was compressed, it produced the strongest explosive effect. After that point, every additional grenade increased the explosive power by only 0.5 percent.
Below fifty three, the growth was dramatic. Fifty three formed a dividing line.
"But senpai," Deidara asked, frowning, "what is the meaning of this? If I am facing a very strong enemy, should I not go all out?"
Kenichi explained slowly and methodically.
"Look. If you dump all your chakra, leaving only a little to stay alive, your total explosive power is thirty seven thousand."
Then he continued, feeling oddly like he had returned to his previous life, tutoring his younger cousin at a desk.
"But if you output in units of fifty three grenades, you can cast a total of…"
He almost laughed at himself.
Luckily, he had calculated the data personally, so he would not embarrass himself. In his previous life, he had once been a third year college student who could not answer his cousin's first year high school math questions, and it still haunted him.
But it was not entirely his fault. He had tried his best. He had studied advanced mathematics in college, but it was not his major. Unless you were a math major, most people forgot most of their high school knowledge within a year of starting university.
With Kenichi's explanation and the numbers laid out clearly, Deidara finally understood the significance.
His eyes lit up immediately.
Still, Kenichi raised a hand to stop him from turning into pure enthusiasm.
"Do not treat data as the only truth," Kenichi warned. "In the ninja world, creativity matters too."
Even if Deidara's output was relatively fixed, shinobi were unreasonable creatures. Sometimes they produced experiences so absurd that numbers stopped being enough.
Orochimaru's gene based comprehensive programming was crude and prone to problems, yet it surpassed the technological level of Kenichi's previous life in certain ways.
And even without any of Kenichi's mathematical derivations, Deidara still would have grown into an outstanding shinobi. Ordinary shinobi found him extremely difficult to deal with.
At the time, the fact that Deidara could fly had been disgusting to the ninja world.
If Deidara had never come down to fight head on, and instead simply bombed from the sky to harass villages and shinobi, the Akatsuki might have reached a very different outcome.
There was a so called Sky Ninja Village in the ninja world, but that belonged to a movie plot. In official storylines, flight was a nightmare for most shinobi.
Only a handful could fly, and most had clear limitations. Deidara's ability was far more convenient.
"Yes, senpai. I will always remember it!" Deidara said solemnly.
Then he pulled out a small notebook and began writing down Kenichi's words like they were sacred scripture.
Kenichi rubbed his face.
How was he supposed to describe Deidara?
He was capable, cooperative, easy to steer, but the one fatal issue was that Deidara idolized him far too much.
Kenichi had once casually said, "A bad pen is worse than a good memory," and Deidara had immediately gone out and bought a notebook just to record everything he said.
Kenichi even wondered if Deidara might someday publish a book titled Kenichi Amamiya's Quotations.
If it were an arrogant person, they might feel smug.
Kenichi only felt embarrassed.
"Enough talk," Kenichi said, standing up. "Deidara, make a cluster bomb first. We will test its power."
Kenichi looked at him seriously. He knew well that talk was cheap, and he refused to fall into that trap.
"Now we will see what it looks like when we take it out for a spin," Kenichi said.
Deidara immediately focused, using the chakra equivalent of fifty three grenades to craft a cluster bomb.
But his total chakra reserves were limited, so he still had to rest periodically. In the end, it took him a day and a half to complete a clay version of the Tech Bomb.
Clay was still necessary.
The chakra Deidara condensed was too unstable in open air and could explode easily. Inside clay, it became relatively stable, though it would still detonate if struck by even a moderately strong collision.
That actually matched Kenichi's requirements.
Cluster bombs existed for exactly this purpose. They were meant to blanket a wide area with bombing, achieving a broad tactical effect. That had always been their strategic objective.
Kenichi looked at the finished product, then turned to Deidara with sudden curiosity.
"Deidara," he asked, "have you made a flying clay bomb yet?"
If he had, it would save Kenichi a great deal of trouble.
If not, Kenichi would have to find a hot air balloon or an airship.
.....
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