NRaO Chapter 63 (Patreon)

Onoki’s Point of View

I lost my arm in a sneak attack. Since then, I have felt a constant threat to my leadership, as I was the weakest I had ever been since I took over as Tsuchikage. My dust release didn’t require hand seals, but the lack of hands still increased the time it took to perform any of the specialized attacks I developed by over 200%. If my sister hadn’t disappeared I’d have given her my position as I worked on growing strong enough to rule again.

I had to go through a risky procedure to have a prosthetic arm made for myself. It would be the first time since I became Tsuchikage that I’d be at the mercy of others, completely knocked unconscious as they fused the wood to bone and made sure the chakra channels aligned properly. It would be more than hours of surgery to do and if pain was the only thing staying awake then I’d have forgone the anesthetic.

Unfortunately, if I was awake my body could instinctively fight back on the changes which could cause far worse problems, even chakra corruption that would make it impossible for me to use any ninjutsu in the future. That was if I didn’t just die from having the chakra rebound to my heart and kill me outright. So I needed to be put to sleep for the operation.

I had no strong allies, the few Jonins I could trust had to deal with creating the subterfuge so my enemies and rivals didn’t know I was undergoing the surgery. Our village only had fifteen Jonin, it was about half of what the Hidden Leaf had in comparison which we made up for with our numbers. Sixty thousand shinobi before we raided the village hidden in the whirlpools. We lost five thousand in the assault. Almost ten percent of our ninjas lost for nothing.

Not even nothing, we made enemies with the survivors of the attack and the tentative alliance we had between the other villages until we dealt with them and Konoha had grown far more fragile since then with the hidden sand village attacking resources at the border since they knew I was injured. Out of the fifteen Jonin, more than half would celebrate my death as it would give them the chance to become Tsuchikage.

If they weren’t so strong, if I didn’t need them to fight in our wars I’d have killed them or sent them outside the village until my surgery was completed. I couldn’t though. If I attempted to send more than four of the Jonins that were against me politically it would be viewed as me being weak and they could outright attack me in an attempt to take the leadership for themselves. It was a balancing act of sending out the most dangerous to me while keeping those loyal close.

The surgery began. I felt my eyes grow heavier and heavier as I hoped I would wake up once I fell asleep.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

I sighed as I piled up the doctors' bodies in the corner of the room as I prepared the Tsuchikage’s body for consumption. I was going to enhance him as far as I possibly could, shortening his life which wouldn’t matter to me to strengthen his potential. I would get dust release from consuming him but it could be weak enough that I would lose most of its utility.

Strengthening his elements with freshly created life-shortening elixirs gave me the best chance of not losing the ability to fly, shoot out particle beams, or disintegration boxes. Strengthening his bloodline would shorten his life by decades, his brown hair slowly changing to grey a clear sign of that, but since he was dying anyway it was best to stretch out as many benefits as I could get from his body.

I could feel my very being shift and change again. If consuming the Uzumaki made my blood boil I felt a tingling sensation on my skin that made me feel the shifting air currents from consuming the short man. Particle release was one of the only kekkei tota known, the only one that existed in this period and wind chakra did the bulk of the heavy lifting with the combination.

Palming my two hands together as I make a particle beam I feel it pull on my fire chakra far harder as my body almost burns up at its sudden activation from its usage. My large chakra pool and perfect chakra control were the only reasons I could do this on the fly without a teacher guiding me through the process. The beam strikes the wall digging through a decent amount before finally calming down as the beam reaches the height of a mountain.

The only reason I was fine using the unique jutsu was because there was only a single person capable of doing so in the entire world, that person was now me. Moving over to the pile of bodies next I feel my chakra shift again pulling heavily on my earth chakra as it creates the disintegration box. The corpses vanish in an instant as I also eat a chunk out of the wall as I didn’t have perfect control over the usage yet.

Already with just two of the jutsu, I was feeling the heavy pull on my total chakra. Using the kekkei tota had a hidden weakness I noticed. It wanted to be used. I wanted to fly, not just fly for a short time, it was a new unlocked natural instinct that my body was pushing out naturally. My resolve is the only reason I don’t start floating right away. I would need to train this up before it was as useful at the version the previous Tsuchikage made it.

It was too costly right now, too expensive for something I could accomplish for much cheaper with more basic jutsu. Even just manipulating gravity was expensive. Everything I gained so far came naturally, perhaps weaker than the original but still usable the moment I gained them. The Hyuga eyes gained the extra benefit of being able to be turned off and on and not changing my eye color as well. This was the first I’d need to work on, perhaps absorbing another few ninjas with high wind, fire, and earth chakras to completely master.

I floated up and felt good. It was only a few seconds and as I landed I was already craving the air again. I wanted to be as natural as Onoki was, floating more than he was on the ground. I was constantly improving, constantly pushing the bounds of ninjutsu, making new ones, and mastering those deemed difficult. I felt that soon people would show up. My puppet could mimic his chakra and pretend to be him but it would be extremely expensive without his body inside.

I just left, I saved enough chakra that teleporting to the boundaries of hidden stone was possible. As I made my way out of the village, I was excited to see what the disappearance of the Tsuchikage would do to the village.