The walk back to the inn was slow. Not physically, he moved quietly and swiftly, but mentally, the pace was sluggish, thick with thought.
He kept his hood up, his face down, weaving through the sleeping alleys and between the scattered drunks and late-night gamblers. Above him, paper lanterns bobbed faintly in the breeze, their glow failing to truly reach the ground.
The man's death didn't sit on his conscience, not really. It was more like a notch on a wall. A mark carved into his personal ledger. He wondered if it was normal to sometimes feel like any other person, and other times feel completely cold and distant.
He told himself again, silently: 'If someone like that talks, I might really die, or worse… I can't let myself afford to hesitate and second-doubt.'
By the time he reached the inn, the lanterns had already been extinguished. He slipped in through the side entrance as silently as he had left. The room upstairs was as he had left it, quiet and clean with a futon neatly folded on the side.
Kurai stirred in her perch outside near the window, letting out a soft clicking sound, but didn't hoot as she came in through the open window.
Kuroichi sat on the floor, his back against the wall. 'I found it,' he thought. 'And if what that man said is true, I could find anything I'd ever need there. Weapons. Knowledge. Techniques… in the future perhaps even bloodlines.'
However, it wasn't a place to step into recklessly. He needed a plan, some kind of leverage perhaps. Plus, he needed a good identity.
The thought of crafting a new disguise, a new role to play within that den of criminals didn't daunt him. A chance to manipulate from the shadows, to blend in and take what he needed without ever truly being seen for who he really was almost excited him instead.
He always knew he needed to become a monster to not only survive, but thrive in this world. But now it was starting to become clearer what that really meant.
'I absolutely can't be reckless,' he thought. 'I can wait, gather more information and create a good cover. Build a role for myself in the underworld before even really stepping into that place.'
He decided that only then would he go.
He reached for the blanket, pulling it up as he and Kurai slid beneath it. However, sleep didn't come easily. Not because of guilt or fear or anything, but because his mind couldn't stop calculating. Planning potential steps for the future. Always preparing.
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Morning came too soon. The warmth of the blanket still clung to Kuroichi's body, but his mind had long been awake. Restless thoughts stirred with the light of dawn.
Kurai remained half asleep, her feathers fluffed against the crisp morning air coming from the open window. She cracked one of her eyes open as Kuroichi pushed himself off the futon, the blanket slipping down his body as he got up.
There wasn't any time to waste for him. Today, he had decided, wasn't for wandering the market or trailing strangers, but for brainstorming and planning.
He took a slow breath, letting it expand in his chest before releasing it in a silent but forceful exhale. 'I need to start refining my priorities,' he thought, sitting cross-legged on the floor. The room was still quiet and undisturbed, so he let his thoughts take shape, one by one.
Taijutsu came first, his yami kagerō style had grown over time. It was fluid and disruptive, but still relied heavily on openings, moments he had to create with cunning or misdirection. It wasn't enough. He needed better, faster movement, leveraging his smaller size against bigger opponents.
He also needed more power behind his strikes, and muscle memory sharp enough to attack and react with counterattacks at a moment's notice, without needing conscious decision making. That meant drilling and sparring, every day.
His kenjutsu was even more of a mess. He still had the ninjatō, well more like nodachi compared to his small frame. Unwieldy, yes, but he was also slowly getting more used to it.
The more he trained and fought with the awkward weapon, the more familiar he became with it, using it's greater length and reach to compensate for his smaller body, using low-flying strikes, swings and maneuvers to create beneficial situations.
Strength would come by itself, with effort and age that is. His fighting style would keep evolving with familiarity, so he'd need to continue practicing diligently. Slashes, footwork, unexpected grip changes perhaps, whatever it took.
He thought of the samurai and their swordmanship. He remembered from the story that while samurai don't use chakra for ninjutsu, some of them still seemed to be able to incorporate chakra into their kenjutsu to release flying slashes.
'Stronger samurai should be able to do that, but the ones stationed here that I've seen and sensed so far barely had any chakra in their bodies at all, so it seems they can't compare to the samurai from the Land of Iron.'
While the method of releasing flying slashes and enhancing his repertoire of skills intrigued him greatly, he was more focused on the basics of swordsmanship for now. Maybe he'd be able to find an opportunity to steal a manual from somewhere, buy it somehow, or even watch some low level samurai sparring. 'I'll check it out when it's convenient another time,' he thought.
Then came genjutsu. It absolutely fascinated him. He could already create minor shifts in visual perception without great difficulties, but what about something like auditory illusions? Maybe something like the sound of kunai whistling past someone's ear, phantom footsteps in the wrong direction or the clatter of movement when there really was none?
For a while now, his meditations and daily life had a new layer added to it; not just awareness, but control. He had been practicing walking while being constantly aware of every shift in his surroundings. Eventually, he believed, that with proper proficiency and knowledge, he could begin to adjust reality itself, switching all kinds of details not just within the minds of others using genjutsu, but also turn the illusions real, like the Kurama clan with their kekkei genkai could.
'Maybe I can also create a genjutsu that doesn't activate until some kind of trigger is met…' he mused. Imagine placing someone under a genjutsu and then releasing the effect right when they tried to attack. The various possibilities made his pulse quicken. Still, he needed more control to have the chance of successfully developing his own techniques in the future.
And then there was water release. The water wall jutsu was too limited, it protected him in only one direction at most. In the last battle, it had saved his life, but also almost backed him into a corner. What if he could form a full-circle dome? Perhaps a rotating barrier to withstand even stronger jutsu…
His water bullet jutsu, too, needed some refinement. He could condense and expand the bullet almost freely, but firing it in rapid successions was incredibly difficult. It simply wasn't how the jutsu was supposed to work.
He thought of changing some aspects of the jutsu so that he could shoot at least 3-6 shots within one use of hand seals. Maybe even change the shape from a bullet into senbon, making them more durable and enhancing their penetrating power.
'No that might not be ideal for me.. senbon won't create much damage unless they hit vital spots, and I'm not someone like Haku that could even identify individual pressure points and tenketsu. Maybe I should just change the shape of the bullet minimally, to increase aerodynamics, and then start experimenting which seals could be used to have the bullets continuously form instead of individually.'
'No that won't work either, I first need to work on my water nature manipulation and shape transformation abilities, otherwise I'll just hurt myself when modifying the jutsu.'
He had some insights from the scrolls as well as personal ideas on how to train in those areas, even in his room, so that was something he could look into almost immediately.
And of course, he thought, there were still his thoughts of the fog.
His mind drifted back to the fogveil civet and the beast's illusory mist. If he could even recreate the base of that, he'd gain a massive edge in combat. The hidden mist jutsu… yes, having that could have made things so much easier for him. But even that was just the surface, what he truly wanted was to build something of his own.
Images of a mist that twisted perception, deceiving countless enemies' five senses all at once without difficulties swirled in his mind's vision.
But first… he'd have to learn, or discover, how to create the mist in the first place.
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