"Stop spacing out and get running!"
Seeing Naruto still standing there in a daze with the weights in his hands, Hagoromo smiled and spoke.
Naruto hurriedly snapped out of it. Although Hagoromo was smiling, Naruto felt that his teacher was dangerously frightening.
Startled, he quickly strapped the weights to his legs and started running.
The moment Naruto took his first step, he felt an overwhelming heaviness.
Seeing that Naruto had started running, Hagoromo found a place to sit down.
With Naruto here this time, he naturally couldn't practice the Shuriken Technique he hadn't yet mastered.
With that thought, Hagoromo took a balloon out of his ninja tool pouch and filled it with some water from a nearby faucet.
He then held it in his hand, gathered Chakra in his palm, and began rotating it in an orderly manner.
That was right. What Hagoromo wanted to practice was the "Rasengan" Jiraiya had taught Naruto in the original story.
It was an A-rank Ninjutsu representing the pinnacle of Chakra shape transformation, developed by the Fourth Hokage based on the Tailed Beast Bomb.
Pop~
The water balloon burst, sending water splashing out.
Hagoromo, who had been about to increase the force of the rotation, froze. Had he succeeded just like that?
A little skeptical, Hagoromo made another water balloon. This time, he kept the Chakra's rotation orderly.
As the surface of the balloon rippled irregularly, Hagoromo closed his eyes and sensed his Chakra.
Huh?
In his senses, the turbulent Chakra, which should have been blue, had a faint golden glow mixed into its outer edges.
Like a navigator, it guided the Chakra as it rotated in an orderly manner inside the water balloon.
Then, pop~
Another bursting sound rang out, and the water balloon broke again.
Hagoromo opened his eyes, no longer able to suppress the strange look in them.
After some thought, Hagoromo called out to Naruto, who was still running. "Naruto, I'm going to buy something. Wait here for me."
"Okay, sensei!"
Naruto, who had already started sweating, couldn't spare the effort to look over. He gritted his teeth as he answered.
The moment Hagoromo heard his reply, he vanished from where he stood. He was eager to try it out now.
He had originally thought that breaking the water balloon would be the most he could accomplish today, so he hadn't bought any rubber balls at all.
To verify his guess, Hagoromo felt he needed to try it right away.
After buying a bag of rubber balls from a shop in Konoha, Hagoromo returned to the training ground, looking excited.
He hurriedly pulled out a rubber ball, paying no attention to Naruto, who had already run himself to exhaustion and was lying on the ground watching him.
A large amount of Chakra gathered in Hagoromo's hand, covering it in a blue glow.
The second stage of Rasengan training: power.
Simply put, it meant building on the rotation from the first stage by further increasing the rotation and power of the Chakra in his palm, causing it to burst the rubber ball.
As the Chakra gradually contracted, the rubber ball, which had been firm, slowly compressed into an oval shape.
Hagoromo frowned. Was he releasing too little Chakra?
He immersed himself in sensing the Chakra inside the rubber ball in his hand again, and only then did he discover the cause.
It was too orderly. Guided by the golden glow, Hagoromo's Chakra was moving far too smoothly, leaving the power inside unable to break free.
Then... how about this?
The next second, Hagoromo directly communicated with his Chakra.
Boom—!
The rubber ball exploded instantly, and the Chakra compressed inside it expanded outward.
In an instant, it was as if a fierce wind had swept through the entire training ground, making the surrounding branches and leaves sway.
The iron fence creaked and groaned.
Naruto, who had been lying on the ground, felt as if a heavy weight were pressing down on him, and his face slammed into the ground.
"Sensei... I can barely... breathe..."
Naruto's halting words brought Hagoromo back to his senses.
He looked at the ball of Chakra he had instinctively raised over his head. It was gradually growing larger.
If he didn't stop it, the entire training ground might be leveled.
Hagoromo immediately injected more Chakra, but this time, a golden glow appeared along with it.
It then wrapped around the outside of the Chakra, gradually forming a membrane around the volatile ball.
When the last gap was sealed, the whirlwind stirred up by the spinning Chakra ball stopped, and the training ground returned to normal.
Hagoromo looked at the enormous Rasengan in his raised palm.
So... not only did I master the Rasengan? I even mastered the advanced version, the Big Ball Rasengan?
"Sensei! That's amazing! So cool!"
Naruto, who had just gotten to his feet, shouted as he looked at Hagoromo holding the Big Ball Rasengan aloft, his eyes shining.
Naruto felt that this was just what he had imagined Ninjutsu to be.
Cool and stylish.
"Like it?"
Hagoromo turned to look at Naruto and asked with a smile.
"I do, sensei! Can I learn it?"
Naruto hurriedly nodded, looking back and forth between the Big Ball Rasengan and Hagoromo as he nodded repeatedly.
If Hagoromo-sensei teaches me, I'll definitely be the coolest kid in class!
"You're not qualified yet. Train hard, and I'll teach you later."
As Hagoromo spoke, he dispersed the technique.
Naruto had been discouraged by Hagoromo's words, but when he heard the last sentence, he quickly nodded.
Seeing that Hagoromo had canceled the technique, he hurried over and spoke.
"Sensei, what was that Ninjutsu called?"
Hagoromo took a bottle of water from the backpack nearby and handed it to Naruto.
Hearing Naruto's question, he thought it over for a moment before saying, "Let's call it the Big Ball Rasengan."
Hagoromo wasn't any good at naming things himself, so he might as well stick to its original name.
"But what you just saw was the advanced form. Its original form is this."
Before he had finished speaking, a Rasengan had already appeared in Hagoromo's palm.
Like the Big Ball Rasengan from before, it had a golden glow circling the outer membrane of light.
Hagoromo now understood what the glow was: the product of his Yang Release Chakra combining with the Nine-Tails Chakra inside him.
Although it was still Yang Release Chakra, it was different from before, at least in terms of power and function.
His success in mastering the Rasengan in one go today could be attributed to the help of this mutated Yang Release Chakra.
Perhaps he wasn't so ordinary after all.
At the very least, he was now qualified to stand at the pinnacle.
Hagoromo turned to look at Naruto, who was studying the Rasengan in his palm, and smiled.
Then he attacked a nearby tree.
Boom—
The great tree, so thick it took three people to encircle it, seemed as fragile as a thin shell before the Rasengan in Hagoromo's hand.
First, it broke through the bark. Then the fibers inside disintegrated, until the Rasengan in Hagoromo's hand vanished.
A huge circular hole had been torn through the trunk of the tree before Naruto's eyes.
Hagoromo walked slowly back, and a sound came from the tree behind him.
Rumble—
Dust filled the air.