NRaO Chapter 17 (Patreon)

Learning to absorb natural energy through meditation was the most difficult process to becoming a sage. I had been very close to just stumbling onto it with the way I controlled the essence poison in me. Poison absorption was one thing snake sages gained access to and my mother had it and gave most of her essence poison to me when she was attacked. If she had her poison well full of the essence poison she could have absorbed and even converted Manda’s poison into natural energy to fight Manda with.

She crippled herself for me. Giving me the best chance to survive and even after the essence poison was used to recover from a fatal injury there was still enough for me to make my own essence well. That is also why my mother didn’t die. What should have taken minutes to kill took decades because even with less essence there was still enough to fight against the poison.

With the first two parts done I it didn't take long to learn. Gathering natural energy wasn’t that difficult. The natural energy swirled around the poison well allowing me to store it and use it at any time. With the size of my poison well I could use three seconds of sage mode before I ran out of natural energy. Needing to build up natural energy by sitting still and meditating would be extremely useless in most fights.

I also needed to create poison channels in my body for the poison I ate or was injected with to be stored. I had been converting it into essence which was highly ineffective with the excess becoming chakra instead of being stored in a reservoir. It was essentially trying to catch the poison in my body the few seconds before the poison essence converted it into chakra. Storing poison would let me convert more of it and allow me to use the stored poison in snake sage attacks as well.

I needed to make channels to store consumed or injected poison to convert into essence to strengthen my well so I can have natural energy circle around it in my body that I can use to activate sage mode. It was convoluted and there were probably easier ways to do it but it was better than leaving a snake clone to meditate and then banishing it to enter sage mode. I don’t know what kind of idiot would do it that way. They'd have to have an insane chakra pool to do even one clone that way.

The growth method for snake sages was thus. Get injected with poison essence or make it yourself. Created essence well allowing you to store natural energy inside your body. Create poison channels with the essence poison shrinking your well. Use poison stored in channels to expand your well. Use poison in attacks if necessary. Use natural energy stored in the body if absolutely necessary.

That would be the method if I was a pure human though and I could skip a step in there. My body could naturally produce poison because I was a pseudo jinchuriki. I created the channels and as if they should have been there all along they began to fill with my poison. It felt natural to start converting my own poison into essence. It was going to take forever to build up a good amount though. 

I had only saved about ten percent of the original essence that was used to heal my body when I first entered this body. Even weeks after I had only gained about a second or two worth of natural energy I could store in my body. Getting even a few minutes was going to take years to get to. I was experiencing the snowball effect. It was hard to get started but once I had a large channel and well I could build both faster than before.

Learning what I could do while in sage mode made me want to increase the amount of time I could spend in it to at least five minutes. My mother, whose name I found out was Amaru, was taking her job as the future grandmother seriously and began spoiling my four concubines. She even ended up taking Manda who was the one to try and kill her under her wing and teaching her many things to keep me happy.

I decided by the end of my time here I wanted at least five poison channels before I went back to the village. Eventually I wanted twenty but five was something I believed was possible to pull off without focusing solely on making more channels. Each channel would hold a different poison. The first my own, my mothers, Manda, a mixture of the three and the fifth was for other poisons inflicted upon me.

The plan was to solidify my strength here away from everything. I was always a wind and earth ninja but I could feel both my water and fire chakras start to bud from the constant nourishment of changing natural energy into chakra. Even still I could feel two nodes growing that I couldn’t tell what they were for either. They weren’t part of the chakra natures. I could also feel changes happening to my wind chakra, like it was evolving.

I had gained even more unknown knowledge as very few people would have a poison well for long enough to convert that much chakra ever before. I could eventually gain all five nature releases and possibly more if I kept feeding myself the purified chakra. 

It felt like spinning plates. I needed poison essence for growing my poison channels and allowing me to store more natural energy but also converting to pure chakra. In order to get more essence I needed to convert poison. The easiest way to do that was to expand my poison channels so I would have more poison to convert but I needed essence for that. In order to practice the sage techniques I needed to have as much essence as possible and in order to increase my chakra affinities I needed to convert essence into purified chakra.

Days of training turned into weeks as I grew in strength. I spent almost every minute of consciousness training in some method. Still cycling chakra to increase my body's power while cycling, using the gates to injure my body so it would be stronger after it repaired itself. Making my poison channels bigger, growing my essence well and learning new ninjutsu for inside and outside of sage mode.

Even with all that I was working on making new ninjutsu along with everything else. Clones just didn’t have the mindset to come up with new ninjutsu so it had to be me. They were great at going down already treaded paths but couldn’t think up anything new on their own. It was hard, painful, exhausting and I loved it. Getting stronger was something I truly loved and I couldn’t do this in my previous world.

All of the powerful ninjutsu were locked behind a clan’s ability to use them. As an orphan I could only use the very basic survival jutsu all enlisted ninja received. Make a small fire, a gust of wind or a cup of water. If you were lucky like myself you became a construction ninja and did trench creation. That was the only reason I lived so long. I wasn’t on the front lines as a child and could grow into my power while I dug ditches and latrine pits.

I was already at a level far beyond what I could accomplish in my previous life with earth jutsu which was my specialty. No, it wasn’t even similar as I could alter the battlefield in minutes where it would take my team a day to prepare. The difference was staggering between worlds but we made up for it with firepower from muskets.

As I creampied my little snake concubine I could only smile at my second chance at life. It was amazing how things had already turned out as I looked at my four concubines. Pythi was the first I faced. Green hair and a motherly body and aura she would do well raising children.

Mamba was next. Brown hair and a slutty attitude. She was the one who pushed herself on me every chance she got. I loved filling her up as much as she loved being filled though. Ana was the last snake maiden and she had blue hair. Her bratty nature led me to treat her more like a little sister than a lover when I wasn't fucking her.

The final beauty was Manda. It went without saying but she was my favorite concubine. I loved teasing her in bed and she had quickly become much more submissive. Her previous haughty attitude broken by my dick. Her purplish black hair large breasts and unnaturally beautiful face might have also been why I liked her the most.

I still had my hands in many pies inside and outside of the village. As one of my snake clones was just unsummoned I was shocked by what the brief overview of information it sent back told me. With an evil smirk on my face I began to train even harder knowing full well that when I returned I would have plenty of work to do.