Jiraiya waved a hand. He had little interest in all that official spiel:
"Alright, boss, we get it—the Hokage authorized this.
Just tell us how this thing works.
It looks pretty weird."
The owner choked up for a moment and coughed awkwardly, but for the sake of business, he patiently explained:
"Sure! It's simple! This is called a chakra-filled air gun!
See this? There's a sensing area on the grip. You need to steadily inject a certain amount of chakra into it—neither too much nor too little.
Then aim at the little objects on those targets and pull this trigger-like mechanism. The chakra you put in will be fired out as a controllable stream of air and hit the target!
The more you hit, the better the prize!"
Jiraiya picked up one of the "air guns," weighed it in his hand, and curled his lip:
"Isn't this just shuriken target practice with extra steps?
Why make it so complicated?"
"Hey! It's completely different!"
The owner hurriedly waved his hands and pointed at the distant targets:
"See those little balls and wooden boards on the targets?
They aren't ordinary objects!
Each one has a very simple Strength Recognition Rune embedded inside.
The chakra airflow you fire has to hit exactly the threshold needed to activate the rune before it can break or knock down the target.
Too weak, and it won't budge;
Too strong, and the blast will send it flying, which also counts as failure!
This tests how precisely and steadily you can control your chakra output!
Good aim alone isn't enough!"
After hearing that, Jiraiya blinked and suddenly said:
"Boss, it's a pretty good idea... but aren't you setting the bar a little too high?
Not everyone out shopping is a ninja, or capable of controlling chakra that precisely,