"Now that you guys have learned this, we can finally start the actual fuinjutsu practice," Reina said, standing up after explaining every type of connection to them.
"Mom, can I ask a question?" Karin asked.
"Go ahead."
"At the end, you taught us anyway. So why did you ask us to check every type of connection by ourselves? I mean, wouldn't it have been easier to just teach us these things from the beginning?"
"Sure it would have been, if I wanted you guys to only learn some already existing arrays and be done with it. If you are satisfied with just reaching the level of a seal master, I don't have a problem with that as well.
But if you want to become a fuinjutsu grandmaster, then just learning one or one hundred already existing arrays is not enough at all. You should be able to modify them, adjust the ones you know according to the situations, or even come up with new ones when you don't have any arrays in your repository.
Do you think you will be able to do that if you don't even know how different types of connections interact with different types of seals?" Reina asked, her tone strict but at the same time simple.
"No, I am sorry for asking such a stupid question, Mom," Karin said, finally understanding that her mom was not wasting time on any of the tasks. On the contrary, she had a reason behind each of her actions. Kaida already understood this, and Yomi didn't care; for her, even getting a chance to learn from someone like Reina was enough to not complain about the hard work.
"Good, now as I was saying, we will now start the real fuinjutsu. Kaida, you said you knew some arrays. Can you show me one?" Reina asked.
"Sure." Kaida started drawing the simplest yet one of the most effective arrays every seal master learns for sure: the concealment array. An array made using various seals like sent binding seal, sound binding seal, light distortion, etc.
The array was completed in a minute, with enough precision to hide a ninja from a chunin completely, but some at Jonin level may sense something amiss because of the distortion caused by the seal.
Also, the light distortion only worked at night, and in daytime it was totally useless as well. But even with all these flaws, the array was still used by every beginner fuinjutsu user because of its effectiveness in most scenarios.
"Good enough. Now I will make a concealment array as well," Reina said and started drawing an array just next to the one Kaida had made. In just a few seconds, the array was complete.
"But how?" Kaida couldn't help but speak out loud his inner thoughts. Reina had used a similar number of seals, but somehow her array was more effective than Kaida's.
"I couldn't sense her, or anything at all in that area, like it's just a normal floor and nothing else," Yomi said.
Being trained under Yamanaka ninjas, she was among the few exceptional sensors in Konoha, and even she couldn't sense Reina even though she was standing just in front of her.
It was a surreal experience, and the thought of encountering something like this at night where the array would show its full potential by even hiding the person in darkness...
shudder
"Kaida, can you spot the difference between your array and mine?" Reina asked. Since Kaida was the only one who knew about the array, the question was only directed at him.
Kaida had to stop admiring the array to compare the difference between the one created by Reina and his own.
"It is difficult to say. Both of our arrays are similar; every seal in the array is connected to each other in harmony, but there is something different about yours. Mine is like a machine, where every seal fits like a part, while yours is like... a living being?"
"Hmm, that's quite a peculiar way to put it, but not wrong. Yes, what you guys are seeing is the perfect example of why Uzumaki were greater at fuinjutsu than others. We don't make a structure that just follows a task pre-ordered to it.
No, look closely—the connections don't carry chakra to all of the seals at an equal rate, but vary depending on the scenario. This seal, which both arrays have, works differently in each. In Kaida's array, this works as a sensor which just provides the information to the seal to work on a scenario, but here it gives each seal the perfect response to work depending on the situation... to adapt to it."
"Like a brain?" Karin asked.
"You can say that, though it is vastly inferior to something like a brain, though for the complex arrays the inferiority decreases significantly."
"And since every seal is concealed in itself, finding the core of the array to disable it is extra hard," Kaida was still analyzing the array, trying to come up with a way to counter it if he had found it on a mission or in a fight, and to his surprise, it was a very difficult thing to do.
"Yes. So get ready, we will now start with the learning. First of all, which seal has to be used as the power source for the array..." Reina started her teaching with detailed explanations of each part of the array.
All three of her students religiously took notes of all the points she was teaching. For a full day, Reina kept on explaining one topic after another, but even after a whole day of theoretical learning, the theory was not over at all.
"I don't even remember where we started," Karin said, clutching her head in frustration.
"That's why we were taking notes," Yomi said, trying to calm her friend down as she was also in the same boat. Kaida was barely holding himself together just because of his previous knowledge of the arrays,
though it could also be said that he was having the most trouble learning since he had to forget quite a lot of previous theories to learn this new one, as they were clashing with each other. Alas, somehow they were able to pull through all of the learning when Reina dropped the last bomb on them.
"Kaida, Hae was telling me that the colosseum you guys are building—nice idea by the way—will be over in four to five months?"
"Yeah, Aunt, the progress has been going smoothly. I think it may even get completed before the deadline as well," Kaida said.
"Good, that is enough time then."
"Enough time for what?" Yomi asked.
"Oh, for you guys to learn all of the necessary arrays. All three of you will be responsible for making the foundation arrays of the colosseum."
"..."
"?"
"?"
"What's with the look? With the speed you guys are progressing, you will be seal masters in no time, so foundation arrays shouldn't be a problem for you guys."
"That's not the point, Aunt... I think you have not seen the colosseum till now. That thing is massive, built to accommodate thousands of people at the same time. We were planning on hiring 20+ fuinjutsu seal masters for the foundation, so doing all of the work alone would be a little... hard."
"That would be the case normally, but don't you guys know shadow clone jutsu? That should do the trick, so no more excuses. This is the task you guys have to complete after learning the next part, otherwise I will not teach you anything after that," Reina said with a no-nonsense tone.
"Okay, Aunt," Kaida said. Aside from extra and boring work, there was no problem in doing that at all. On the other hand, it would actually be beneficial for them to do that, as it would save millions of Ryo that they would have had to pay to seal masters.
'But this request is way too sudden... there is no way Aunt Hae would have asked her to do this, right?...No way, that can't be true.'