Did every snake in Ryūchi Cave, regardless of size or status, really love biting people this much?
The intense pain made Yuzuru's thoughts cut out again.
Putting Yuzuru's current predicament aside, Ryūchi Cave was already much more brutal than Mount Myōboku when it came to training Senjutsu practitioners. The toads of Mount Myōboku provided one-on-one guidance, while Ryūchi Cave's teaching method was simply "sink or swim."
Ryūchi Cave would directly inject an excessive amount of Natural Energy into a practitioner. If they could endure it, that meant they had the aptitude to learn Senjutsu. Otherwise, they would have to try again in their next life.
In this "dream," the White Snake Sage's treatment of Yuzuru was somewhat unusual, but not entirely so.
The White Snake Sage believed that Yuzuru lacked the aptitude to withstand Natural Energy, so she hadn't used the usual method. What she injected into Yuzuru was not Natural Energy, but her own snake blood.
Just think of the physical changes Yakushi Kabuto underwent after he deliberately injected himself with Orochimaru's blood. And that was only Orochimaru's blood. What had been injected into Yuzuru now was the White Snake Sage's century-old blood, from a snake who had lived for a thousand years. Its purity was off the charts.
The agony exceeded what his body and mind could bear. Yuzuru couldn't even cry out. He gritted his teeth, feeling every cell in his body burn and tear apart.
Worse still, for some reason, the more pain he felt, the clearer his mind became.
Death seemed close at hand. Yuzuru could feel his body undergoing some kind of violent change, but at that moment, he had no way to tell whether it was for the better or worse.
I have to think of something...
Yuzuru's mind grew more and more active. Suddenly, he seemed to realize something... In the next instant, he formed an idea—whether from an instinct hidden in the snake blood or from knowledge he had picked up in Orochimaru's lab.
Whatever the reason, his instinct to survive drove him to press his hands together and form an unusual hand seal.
As Yuzuru moved his chakra, his cells began dividing faster, an attempt to adapt to the power inside him through rapid metabolism.
From the outside, Yuzuru was crouched on the ground, shedding his skin over and over like a snake.
At the same time, a system notification appeared before his eyes.
"Warning: You are now undergoing a special plot event—Snake Shedding."
"Beyond the scheduled progression, you have come into contact with the world's source power."
"Your Chakra Spiritual Body is being eroded, evolving..."
"Note: A snake is a dragon in the making; a dragon is a snake that has reached its destination..."
What was "source power"? A power that had existed in the world from the beginning? Could it be Natural Energy?
It was a riddle, and not a particularly clever one.
Yuzuru's thoughts flickered through his mind amid the pain. As the chakra in his body continued to drain away, he could no longer remain fully conscious.
A while later, he finally lost consciousness completely.
He didn't know how much time had passed when the sound of rain reached his ears. He jolted awake, only to find himself back in the tree hollow.
"Whew, I'm alive."
This dungeon run had been unusual. Both entering and leaving the dungeon had happened in a rather inexplicable way.
The intense pain still seemed to linger in Yuzuru's body, so the first thing he did after waking was check himself. Once he confirmed he still had two hands and two feet, and hadn't undergone Snake Transformation from receiving the White Snake Sage's blood, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The weather outside was gloomy, and he couldn't tell what time it was.
Calm down. Let's sort out what happened at the end of the dungeon.
First, I was transported from Konoha to Ryūchi Cave... Just how large is this dungeon? Does it extend beyond Konoha?
The dungeon's boundaries are worth exploring.
Second, the White Snake Sage of Ryūchi Cave injected snake blood into my body. I don't have the aptitude to learn Senjutsu, and I can't even sense Natural Energy, so the White Snake Sage used her blood to alter my body...
Did the alteration succeed?
My appearance in the real world hasn't changed. Is that because I didn't kill the White Snake Sage and gain experience, so everything I went through in the dungeon was automatically reset after I left?
Yuzuru checked the dungeon's cooldown and found it was the usual seven days, not double that. That meant he hadn't died unexpectedly in the dungeon; the dungeon's duration had simply run out.
No, that's not right. There was a specific system message, so this probably wasn't an ordinary reset.
The me in the dungeon wasn't my actual body, of course. According to the dungeon's message, it should be called a "Chakra Spiritual Body." So did the White Snake Sage's blood change my Chakra Spiritual Body?
And taking that further, did every enhancement I gained in the dungeon affect that spiritual body?
Chakra is so strange. It seems to possess both physical and spiritual aspects, at the very least. I probably won't figure it out anytime soon... Orochimaru can even use chakra to resurrect himself.
Yuzuru couldn't get to the bottom of such a fundamental question about chakra right away, so he set it aside for now. At the moment, he only wanted to figure out what had changed in his body.
There's no need to overcomplicate things. I can start with what's obvious. The White Snake Sage is on the same level as the Great Toad Sage of Mount Myōboku. She's at least a thousand-year-old sage.
After taking in her Sage blood, my body underwent some kind of change. The most likely possibility is easy to guess... Can I sense Natural Energy now?
Yuzuru calmed himself and immediately focused his senses, carefully feeling the environment around him. After fifteen minutes, he finally sensed a peculiar energy pulsing around him. The energy passed through his skin and sank into his body.
"I really can sense it. Is this Natural Energy?"
Yuzuru hadn't suffered the White Snake's torment in Ryūchi Cave for nothing.
Does this mean I can get a head start on trying the Shinobi World's makeup—the painted-face version?
Yuzuru immediately thought of the Sage markings and Sage Mode when he sensed Natural Energy, but his excitement lasted only an instant before he calmed down.
Being able to sense or even use Natural Energy was a long way from being able to enter Sage Mode.
It was certainly not that simple. Entering Sage Mode required balancing physical energy, spiritual energy, and Natural Energy, which was a very delicate process. Even Jiraiya hadn't completely mastered it after decades of training. How could Yuzuru expect to manage it so easily?
Too little Natural Energy would prevent him from entering Sage Mode, while absorbing too much would turn him to stone or send him into a frenzy...
After carefully sensing the changes in his body, Yuzuru finally figured out what had happened to him.
He certainly couldn't enter Sage Mode. The change in his body was better described as Sage Transformation, Curse Mark transformation, or perhaps, more accurately—Jugo Transformation.
Jugo had been born with a Sage Body. According to him, it was a special ability shared by the people of his village. Later, based on his research, Orochimaru concluded that the source of this power lay in Ryūchi Cave...
Whether Orochimaru's research was accurate was another matter. At the very least, Jugo had the ability to absorb Natural Energy at any time. An excess of Natural Energy could even make him lose control and go berserk.
To some extent, Yuzuru's current situation was similar to Jugo's. The difference was that his body had been altered after birth, and the alteration had taken place at the level of his Chakra Spiritual Body. As a result, his body couldn't undergo the kind of drastic changes Jugo's could.
But it was also possible that this extra layer meant Yuzuru could control his absorption of Natural Energy. He could stop the process at any time...
Yuzuru began testing just how much Natural Energy he could absorb.
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