Hartuo practiced with the Jutsu for a while longer, trying to get it to blow up at the exact right moment, but it was proving to be more difficult than expected.
Eventually Haruto ran out of prekneaded chakra and ended up holding his knees with sweat beading on his forehead.
"That… was not very fruitful… I guess there is some trick to it that I'm missing… maybe Kakashi knows a specific tenketsu that'll make the balance part easier…"
Seeing there was still light in the sky, Haruto quietly calmed himself and pulled out the textbook he'd brought along with himself.
"Handseals… I need to practice them so that I can be at least a little more competent with my jutsu."
And so, alone in training ground seven Haruto stood there, making hand seals while compressing the correct set of muscles in his body while flowing chakra through different tenketsu as practice.
"The hand seals make this at least ten times easier…" Haruto mumbled.
The constricting of muscles helped constrict the chakra pathways which made it indirectly easier to control how chakra flowed through them.
After a while, when Haruto recovered his stamina a little bit he kneaded a little more chakra and converted it into fire nature chakra before expelling another fireball through his mouth.
Only this time, Haruto performed the Tiger handseal and constricted the right muscle groups in his body causing him to spit out the fireball in only ten seconds instead of the usual thirty!
"Let's go!!!"
Haruto trained some more, spitting out miniature fireballs and brought down the time of releasing the jutsu from ten seconds to just five seconds. Any further reduction would require him to get better at his chakra control and his handseal speed but this was already much better than before so he accepted it joyously.
In the end, a tired Haruto dragged himself back to his home where he took a quick shower, ate some ramen and collapsed into the bed without ceremony.
Except-
'Wake up Haruto!'
'Huh?'
Haruto recognised Edward's voice and woke up confused.
He entered the Template Inventory Space and saw Edward standing calmly without his robe on, exposing his automail in its full glory.
"Ready?" Edward asked.
"Ready for… what?" Haruto asked with a puzzled expression but Edward only smirked in response.
Clap
BBOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
In the next immediate seconds rows of earth spikes grew out of the ground rushing towards Haruto at high speeds.
"What the hell!!!!!" Haruto shouted out loud, jumping before running backwards as fast as he could.
But Edward was relentless.
The earth spikes that were trailing him suddenly morphed, combining into a giant hand that sped up suddenly and aimed to squish Haruto underneath itself.
Haruto dodged by jumping sideways to the ground, rolling to a stop, barely moving out in time for the gigantic hand to come down in his place and grind all the stones there to dust.
A chill ran down Haruto's spine as a cloud of dust was kicked up into the air covering his entire sight.
'Is this… training!?' Haruto suddenly realised.
'But this seems more like a killing!!!'
Haruto quickly brought his hands together into hand signs as the dust began to clear from the air.
'It'll take me five seconds!'
But Haruto wasn't given that time.
As soon as the dust cleared, Haruto found himself staring at a mad shrimp jumping over the earthen constructs on the battlefield holding a spear running right at him!
Haruto nearly closed his eyes at the thought of being pierced by the spear but managed to keep them open until the last second when he opened his mouth and spit out a fireball.
The fireball wasn't particularly fast, but it was hot. Coming anywhere near the fireball would result in Edward's clothes heating up and catching fire. But Edward wasn't one to back down so easily.
Edward clapped his hands and slammed them onto the earthen construct he had just climbed over, causing it to mutate and raise into a new solid earthen hand that shielded him from the fireball by grabbing the flaming hot ball and snuffing it out of existence.
"Ha!" Edward smirked, smug as he gazed down at Haruto.
Edward jumped down from the earthen construct he was standing on before pointing the spear's blade in Haruto's direction.
"Game over."
Only, Haruto smirked. "Game over indeed."
From behind Edward another Haruto finished forming the handseals of a new Fire ball jutsu and spit out a miniature fireball point blank in Edward's direction.
But before Haruto could spit out the fireball, Edward pushed the butt of his spear backwards, right into Haruto's stomach, causing him to pop in a puff of smoke since he was a shadow clone that Haruto had created.
"Game over." Edward said again, smirking wider this time causing Haruto to sigh as he felt the cold blade pressing against his neck.
"That was unfair…" Haruto mumbled out.
"The enemy won't play fair when they decide to kill you." Edward said wisely, causing Haruto to nod.
"Alright… you win… but what could I have done better?"
Edward placed his spear to the side, thumping it on the ground as Megumin who had been absent till now appeared on the side.
"Haruto was really good! It's just that Edward-sensei is cruel and unforgiving."
Haruto laughed as he watched a tick mark form on Edward's forehead before the man slapped Megumin's head with the flat side of the blade.
"Ouch!!!" Megumin crouched in a delayed dodge as she clutched her forehead in pain.
"That's what you get for running off your mouth you brat! I was training him seriously, what's the point of going easy if he just dies when his enemy attacks him?"
Megumin rubbing her swelling forehead looked up at Edward with a teary eyed gaze before Haruto spoke up.
"He's right Megumin… I need to train hard now so that I have better chances of winning against people like Hiruko…"
"Hmm… so you do get it. Good… let's leave it here for today… think about what you could do better and we'll fight once again tomorrow… you'll slowly improve and in the end, you'll become just as good as me."
Haruto cracked a smile at that and nodded.
With a sigh Haruto left the template inventory space and finally relaxed in his bed.
'I should've created a clone while I was hidden by the dust instead of shooting a fireball… Edward-sensei probably spotted the clone once I created it after the dust settled which is why he was able to respond so easily to my trap…'
'Not everyone is as dumb as White Zetsu I guess…'
With that thought, Haruto finally fell asleep.
The next days of the week were a mundane repetition.
Haruto went to the R&D Department to monitor the training of the convolutional neural network while reading Kakashi's fire release training journal. Sometimes Hiruko would ask him for his Scorch Release chakra which he would graciously provide. Hiruko even tried several more times to read Haruto's memories through the chakra he provided, but all he found were shouts of explosion and nothing more.
In exchange however, Hiruko gave Haruto two more scrolls that would help him improve his physical and spiritual energy density.
In the meantime the clone at home practiced Leaf concentration exercise while also creating more shadow clones and practicing the three basic academy jutsu by pointing out any mistakes they could see in each other's transformations. This didn't improve the three basic academy jutsu by much since they were already refined by Tobirama's experience but it did help Haruto improve his eye for detail.
Once the R&D department work was done, Haruto went to Training ground Seven to practice his fire release jutsu. He still hadn't gotten a grasp of the speeding fireball release jutsu, but he felt like he was getting close and was only missing some sort of trick to it all.
During the nights, before he fell asleep, Haruto always sparred with Edward once to improve his combat awareness and his ability to use his jutsu in combat.
***
"Hokage-sama, I have something to report…" Kakashi said, kneeling on one knee in Hiruzen's office.
"Yes? What is it about?"
"...." Kakashi stayed silent for a few seconds, unsure about how he would say the next words, but manned up the courage anyway, "Clan Head Fugaku wanted me to inform you directly about the missing children in the village."