Rasengan

Professor Dumbledore was, unsurprisingly, easy to talk to.

Kyle only briefly mentioned the three-headed dog to the kindly old man before the matter was easily resolved.

A creature like that, sitting at the very top of the Ministry of Magic's dangerous creatures list, naturally could not be secretly raised by Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest.

The students of Hogwarts, especially the little lions of Gryffindor House, were the most courageous and curious.

Although Dumbledore repeatedly stressed that anyone who did not want to die horribly should stay away from the Forbidden Forest.

There were always young wizards who loved courting death and enjoyed exploring the Forbidden Forest.

Such as two certain Weasleys.

And one Dumbledore, who had followed someone straight into it this morning.

If Hagrid were allowed to keep the three-headed dog free-range in the Forbidden Forest, then perhaps one day a professional team would have to deliver some unfortunate young wizard who had encountered it back to their family.

So Dumbledore needed to find Hagrid a place where he could raise the three-headed dog without worry, and Kyle's Bag End suitcase was a good option.

But that was Dumbledore's concern, and it no longer had much to do with Kyle.

Right now, he had more important things to do.

After leaving the castle, Kyle headed straight for the distant Black Lake. He had a few ideas about magic that needed testing.

If the essence of magic truly was as Professor Flitwick had said—wishing something into existence, or rather, magic power altering reality under the influence of will...

Then could tools that assisted wizards in casting spells, such as wands and hand seals, be discarded entirely?

Wouldn't that mean clapping his hands and calling forth whatever he wanted?

Standing by the Black Lake and watching layer upon layer of rippling waves rise with the wind, Kyle controlled his magic power and gathered it beneath his feet before stepping out onto the lake's surface.

If Newton had been lucky enough to witness this scene, he would definitely have leaped out of his coffin.

The lake surface, which normally could not support a person's weight, felt as solid as flat ground beneath Kyle's feet.

Once he reached the middle of the lake, Kyle focused fully and mobilized the magic power within him, then brought his hands together in a heavy clap.

"Water Style Ninjutsu! Great Exploding Water Surge!"

Magic power flowed through Kyle's body and surged madly into the Black Lake beneath his feet. In an instant, towering waves rose from the lake.

It really works! Clap my hands and call forth whatever I want! Kyle roared excitedly in his heart.

But the very next second, his joy turned to sorrow.

Overwhelmed by excitement, Kyle lost control of the lake water. The thirty- to forty-meter-high wave before him came crashing down like a landslide and tsunami.

"Holy sh—!" That was the last thing Kyle managed to say before the lake swallowed him.

A moment later, a thick squid tentacle curled around the still-shaken Kyle and delivered him to the shore of the Black Lake.

Fortunately, his experiences over the past few years had forged nerves tough enough to withstand this, and he quickly calmed down.

His messy golden hair clung wetly to his scalp. The chilly February wind blew over his soaked robes, and the cold made Kyle shudder.

Yet that bit of cold was utterly incapable of suppressing the burning excitement in Kyle's heart.

He had previously assumed that performing ninjutsu required hand seals—of course, he meant normal ninjas like Kisame Hoshigaki, not cheating monsters like Hashirama and Madara.

During his five years of wandering, he had successfully figured out the hand seals for seven or eight Earth Style and Water Style Ninjutsu techniques.

For that, he had even been grateful that, when watching Naruto in his previous life, his blazing teenage-chuunibyou spirit had driven him to specifically learn the twelve hand seals from the series.

But his successful attempt at performing ninjutsu without hand seals had overturned his preconceived notions about it.

If that was the case, then another one of his theories could also be proven—attribute-less magic power could allow him to perform every elemental style of ninjutsu.

Of course, the most urgent matter now was not trying other elemental styles, but drying his clothes first.

If he stayed in the cold wind any longer, Kyle felt like he was going to catch a cold.

Before long, a pile of firewood had been stacked by the Black Lake.

Magic power gathered in Kyle's throat. "Fire Style! Great Fireball Technique!"

A stream of flame burst from his mouth, then expanded in midair into an enormous fireball. The blazing heat instantly ignited the pile of wood in front of him.

This was the first time he had used a style other than Water or Earth. Since Fire Style worked, it meant his own thinking had limited him before.

The roaring campfire brought warmth. Kyle took off his sodden wizard robes and hung them on a wooden pole beside him.

"Just now, I directly converted magic power into flames. Logically speaking, the process of fire burning should require fuel..."

Kyle muttered to himself as he sat by the campfire, warming himself.

"If Fire Style magic can skip the step of requiring combustible material, then when using Lightning Style Ninjutsu, could I directly gather electrical charges without needing any power storage device?"

Kyle held out a finger and stared at it, imagining countless electrical charges gathering at his fingertip.

Driven by Kyle's thoughts, his magic power silently drew the free charges in the surrounding air toward his fingertip.

Ten seconds later...

"Aah! Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Kyle clutched his finger, burned by the electric current, and spat out several elegant C-language obscenities.

His original idea had been that, as long as he could gather a large amount of lightning in his hand, he could perform Sasuke's signature ninjutsu—Lightning Release: Chidori.

In the future, it might even be possible to develop Lightning Cutter based on Chidori.

But now it seemed that although he could gather massive amounts of charge in his hand, his hand would probably be charred black by the powerful current long before Chidori could take shape.

That meant he would have no future with those unbelievably cool high-level Lightning Style Ninjutsu techniques.

Kyle lay flat on the ground, looking utterly dead inside.

He had even imagined wearing Lightning Style Armor and fighting dragons head-on in the future.

If Chidori was a dead end, did that mean he would have to make balls like Naruto from now on?

Gathering Chakra in one's hand, making it flow continuously in different directions and compressing it to form a rotating, dense "Chakra sphere"—that was Naruto's ball.

Rasengan was a ninjutsu that ran through the entirety of Naruto.

No matter what enemy he faced, Naruto would charge in and throw a Rasengan.

Even against Kaguya Otsutsuki, Naruto, that liver-grinding maniac, had charged in with all sorts of balls.

If one ordinary "kidney-liver ball" could not solve the problem, then it was "kidney-multi-liver balls."

If that still did not work, then it was "I-fucking-kidney-liver," "kidney-hand-chew," and "super-I-fucking-kidney-hand-chew"...

The balls got bigger and cooler with every kneading, but it was still just that one move, used from the moment he learned it until death...

Kyle thought it was a little lame.

What he truly wanted was to become a battlefield rose like Lord Madara, dancing in battle and declaring things like, "I will never use the same ninjutsu twice"...

But now, it seemed there was no path other than making balls?

After adding several logs to the campfire, Kyle stroked his smooth chin and pondered the various stages of Rasengan training.

First, one had to learn to gather Chakra in the palm.

Then one placed a water balloon on one's hand and released Chakra, causing the water inside to move irregularly until the balloon burst.

The next stage was replacing the balloon with a rubber ball.

Once the user could burst the rubber ball, the Rasengan would possess basic offensive power.

Back when Kyle was still in the United States, he had already begun training Rasengan to make up for the lack of offensive power in the ninjutsu he had mastered.

But even now, he had not managed to burst the rubber ball.