Ninjas Who Follow Empiricism

Ever since Naruto learned Chakra extraction, he still came to Riverside Grove every day to punch trees.

After several days in a row, he was practically forming a habit.

He would wake up in the morning still half-asleep, and his body would automatically walk to Riverside Grove.

By the time he came to, he would find himself already going 'bang,' 'bang,' 'bang.'

Unfortunately, he still hadn't gotten anywhere with the Clone Technique.

When he watched anime in his previous life, ninjas had always used clones as easily as breathing.

But when it was his turn to practice, he discovered that not only did he need to remember the route Chakra took through his body, he also had to control its output.

Using too much or too little Chakra would affect the technique's success rate.

And the greatest source of interference was that Big Fox in the Sealing Space...

Although Kurama had reined in his Chakra, some Red Chakra still mixed with Naruto's Blue Chakra.

This meant that the amount of Chakra Naruto originally put in was just right...

Yet every now and then, some of Kurama's Chakra would get drawn in as well.

The first few times, because of this, the clones Naruto created were completely missing arms and legs, without even a shred of consciousness.

They looked even worse than the ones Naruto had made in the original story.

In the later attempts, Naruto learned his lesson and deliberately reduced his Chakra output...

But that Red Chakra was utterly uncontrollable!!

Sometimes it was there, and sometimes it wasn't...

Now he finally understood why Naruto in the original story had struggled so much...

The Big Fox might not even have been deliberately disrupting him.

It was simply because the amount of Tailed Beast Chakra was too great. Even a tiny leak was enough to disrupt an adult ninja's Chakra.

Being able to use ninjutsu under these circumstances was already quite impressive, even if he failed...

Naruto consoled himself with that thought, but he still expressed some dissatisfaction toward the Big Fox.

The fox spirit in his stomach had been laughing ever since he started practicing the Clone Technique and had not stopped once!

Listening to the mocking laughter by his ear, Naruto looked at one clone's upper body and another clone's lower body on the ground, and finally snapped.

"Big Fox! Can you stop laughing already?!"

"It's because you keep distracting me that I can't succeed!"

"Hahahahahaha!"

"I've never seen such a hilarious clone!"

The fox ignored Naruto entirely and laughed at the top of his lungs.

Naruto was so furious he felt like exploding. Stubbornly, he began practicing the Clone Technique again.

His Chakra was enough for him to practice for an entire day and night anyway!

In his previous life, he could grind away at project proposals for days and nights. He refused to believe he couldn't grind out one measly Clone Technique!

And so, the sounds of 'bang, bang, bang' filled the area as clones constantly appeared and vanished.

Naruto went through failure after failure.

Inside the Sealing Space, Kurama stopped laughing when he saw how hard Naruto was working.

On his thousandth attempt, he finally created a somewhat normal clone...

Although it looked like a miniature version of himself, it was gradually approaching success, at least.

After another five thousand sets of hand seals for the Clone Technique, on the five thousand and first attempt, Naruto suddenly felt a flash of inspiration strike his mind, and he understood.

Since Tailed Beast Chakra would interfere with him...

And the Clone Technique required a fixed amount of Chakra...

Then all he had to do was calculate the fixed amount of Chakra required, calculate the variable amount of Tailed Beast Chakra, and add the two together until they reached the Chakra requirement for the Clone Technique!!

The scroll the Third Hokage had given him did not say how much Chakra was needed to perform a clone.

It only described the routes within the body, the hand signs, and the clone's uses. Then there was nothing else.

To learn a ninjutsu, one had to keep experimenting until they found the minimum amount of Chakra needed to perform it. Only then could it be considered mastered.

Wasn't that straight-up empiricism?!

Naruto felt that most ninjutsu in the ninja world might work this way. It was basically all I reckon and similar methods!

Ninjas learning ninjutsu were essentially going through trial and error. Those who needed fewer attempts were called geniuses.

No wonder Naruto in the original story had taught Konohamaru ninjutsu that way.

The fact that Konohamaru had managed to learn it really did make him a genius.

Overall, it felt like a recipe saying "a pinch of salt," or the vague descriptions of cultivation methods in martial arts novels.

The whole thing was just absurd.

"Big Fox!"

"Does Chakra have some kind of unit?"

Although Kakashi had compared himself to Naruto in the anime and was later called a unit of Chakra measurement, that was purely a meme everyone was joking about, and that approach was also empiricism.

Afraid Kurama would not understand, Naruto rephrased it more simply.

"I mean... something for calculating Chakra."

"Like how much Chakra a clone needs."

Kurama froze instinctively at the strange question.

What did he need that for?

His Chakra was inexhaustible anyway. Why would he ever think about such a thing?

Still, Kurama began recalling Hashirama and Madara, as well as every ninja he had ever seen, and finally realized that no one had ever cared about this question.

"What do you need that for?"

"I've never seen anyone care about it."

Well then...

Case closed!

Once Naruto understood this, his expression became extremely strange.

The ninja world had been developing for a thousand years, hadn't it?