Chapter 22 Part 1
"And... one, and..." Holding my breath, I took a cautious step forward. "Two?.."
I exhaled with the words and let myself break into a happy smile: I'm standing! I lifted a foot and stomped down pretty hard — ready to react — but the surface under my feet was solid. Just a little springy. I waited a few seconds, stepped sideways, edging almost to the very edge. Stood a bit longer, then even hopped a few times to add some weight. And... no complaints!
Perfect!
"Yatta! It worked!" I shouted, bouncing through a brief, completely ridiculous "victory dance" on top of my new shikigami. I did it! I created a flying shikigami — strong enough, sturdy enough to carry extra weight. It looked pretty simple, almost plain: a big rectangle of swollen paper — two paces wide, just under five long. The "head" was an isosceles trapezoid, folded like the nose of a paper airplane. The pentacle of the five elements sat compactly in the middle of its "forehead" — vaguely like some weird single eye. Finishing touch: a long tail, about a meter long and ten centimeters thick. All in all — the shikigami looked like an abstract parody of a flounder crossed with a stingray. Drawn in the barest, most minimal style.
Yeah — I really should've spent a bit longer on the design. Still — looks aren't the point. The point is: the thing flies. Freely! Words can't express how happy I was. I'd been slaving over this creation — literally in three heads, almost nonstop!
"Alright — let's test it." I licked my lips, feeling the thrill. With a wave of the ritual fan, I directed the shikigami forward. The pentacle glinted dully, and the shikigami flew! Or rather — glided. The magical creation moved smooth and almost silent, like a graceful fish. Without any other command, it just cruised forward half a meter above the ground, slowly picking up speed.
A wave — a command — and the shikigami curved smoothly aside. Didn't lose any speed at all. Getting more and more pleased, I walked carefully across its surface — staying aboard took zero effort. Flying past some boulders, I angled the shikigami to brush them with its left flank and watched, fascinated, as the papery flesh of the magical familiar bent and slid over the obstacle like a jellyfish. It really is that soft. That flexible.
"Simply magnificent!" I concluded as the trials wrapped up. Tests showed my whimsical transport could cruise at bicycle speed — roughly 15 to 20 kilometers per hour. Though if I wanted, I could multiply that many times by feeding the familiar power directly. Maneuverability? Beyond praise — I'd used a fish spirit as the propulsion template, after all. Controllability? Absolutely perfect — the transport responded almost instantly, and steering it was barely harder than a toy RC car. The only "meh" trait: payload. The shikigami could carry about two or three times my weight without issues — after that, speed and lift dropped fast. Still — for now, that's more than enough.
Tests done, I gave the command, and the artificial familiar deftly folded itself into a small, dense rectangle of paper that darted into my hand. I stroked my new creation lovingly, tucked it into my sleeve, and started getting ready to head back. So much to do: check the traps and finally harvest those nature spirits I've been cultivating, track down some herbs, fix lunch, wake Naruko...
My-my — so many things, so many things~
Honestly... I've been thinking for a while about getting more serious with classical magic. Kind of embarrassing — but since leaving the temple, I've been way too relaxed. Sloppy with my practice. Partly my fault for focusing so much on the spiritual side — digging deep into Onmyodo. Partly just... a bunch of my knowledge got forgotten, or turned out to be flat-out wrong. Left me with not many paths for self-development.
The most practical route seemed to be compensating for my weak spots through elemental spirit work — a mix of Onmyodo and shamanism. But that takes time. Effort. Mostly time. Then certain events happened, and I had to cram myself into a shinobi mold fast. Not exactly great conditions for personal research.
Which is exactly why — now that I've finally got a solid stretch of free time — I've thrown everything into improving. Every field I can. Soon as the chance came — still feeling those vague approaching troubles — I started feverishly attacking anything that might make me better. Like the knowledge gods suddenly decided to show me some stingy favor. I've been sleeping barely four hours a night — trying to squeeze every drop out of this sudden windfall. On top of that — a mountain of other stuff, all demanding urgent attention. I'll admit: with all this, I've pretty much vanished from public life.
Which is exactly why the next events caught me so completely off guard.
That day started like any other: woke up, went through all the morning rituals, made sure Naruko did hers too, fed Naruko, sent her off to genin-duty, spent a couple hours on self-inquiry and special skills, then stretched my limbs — stiff from hours of sitting still — and skipped off to my little training ground to keep the experiments rolling.
The long wait had finally paid off. I was now the proud owner of several hundred minor spirits of the lesser hand. Individually weak and mindless — but they had one absolutely excellent trait: there were MANY of them. And they worked together beautifully — no matter how many — precisely because they had no individuality. Now that I'd formed a contract with these little ones, I could finally expand my reach.
To be honest — I've only ever been strong in Onmyodo and the more "peaceful" secret arts. So: no fireballs, no Armageddon spells, no earthquakes or epic special effects. Just not my field. Plain and simple. Sure — I could use blessings... or even curses. But in a straight fight? Not much help.
But now! Now everything's changed. The moment Hora and Horo became my familiars, I'd gained — through them — a limited ability to control water. Use that element through their authority. Against the backdrop of a handful of other minor spirits, that already looked damn solid. See — the real problem isn't catching a spirit and making it serve you. It's FINDING one. Spirit beasts like my twin carps aren't exactly hiding under every bush, y'know! So I'd had to make up for quality with quantity. But even then — catching a pair of spirits wasn't the issue. It was specifically a pair. So I'd had to set up specialized traps and wait. A very, very long time. To gather enough of the right kind of entities.
And that moment had finally come! In total, I now had about six hundred minor spirits at my disposal. Wind spirits, earth spirits, water spirits... about fifty kodama and a few more even smaller forest spirits, plus other odds and ends. Fire spirits were a problem — they like hot, sunny places. Deserts. Konoha doesn't have those. Lightning spirits were also sad: the last real thunderstorm was almost a month ago; outside of those, they're nearly impossible to find. But wind spirits? Perfect shape! They made up a little under half my total.
Now I could use spirits as living batteries — drawing on their power for my incantations, or amplifying them with my own. The possibilities were endless! Example: I'd gathered enough wind spirits to form several wind blades, or even whip up a localized storm... for about a minute and a half, across a hundred-meter radius. Downside: I couldn't use the possession-mode with them. They weren't intelligent spirits like my fish — and there were way too many to control that way. Plus — they were frankly too weak for that kind of strain.
So I'd been training like crazy with my new abilities. And that day — as I already said — was supposed to be no different.
Wasn't supposed to be.
But it was.