"Rasengan!"
"Rain Cutter!"
A blue ball of chakra was lightly sliced by a blade flowing with transparent rainwater. Like a balloon with its skin punctured, the rapidly spinning chakra drained away in the blink of an eye.
It looked as though it had been extinguished with a single slash—extremely cool!
"So, does this count as mastering it?" Hozuki Mangetsu asked, shaking his hand.
"Mm..."
Araki carefully contemplated the sensation of dispelling the Rasengan in that instant, then said thoughtfully:
"I feel like the chakra consumption can be reduced even further. There's no need to use an equal amount of chakra to cancel it out one-to-one. We only need to destroy the structure of the ninjutsu, and the rest of the chakra will naturally collapse."
Because of the complexity of practicing the Rain Cutter Technique, Araki had divided it into three parts: dispelling the five basic elemental releases, dispelling non-elemental chakra, and dispelling Yin-Yang Release, if such a need ever arose in the future.
Among the five basic elements, Water Release was the easiest to handle, since Zabuza could serve as his sparring partner. Ringo Ameyuri helped with Lightning Release, Kisame Hoshigaki helped with Earth Release, and he could practice Wind Style against himself. Only Fire Release had him completely stumped; he could not find anyone to serve as a sparring partner.
Since that was the case, he changed his approach and skipped practicing how to dispel Fire Release for now. Water naturally countered fire anyway, so he would have the advantage whether he could dispel it or not.
Thus, he went straight to Hozuki Mangetsu to practice the part involving non-elemental chakra.
Non-elemental ninjutsu was actually quite rare. The best option would have been practicing against a Jinchuriki's Tailed Beast Cloak, but Araki did not have that kind of clout