Chakra

[Warning: your bonded companion, Kaguya Otsutsuki, is being attacked by an unknown energy.]

[She needs your help.]

No other thoughts could pass through Yuya's mind anymore.

The successive upheavals had almost numbed him.

As though he had heard nothing, he continued rocking his chair and humming a tune.

It seemed that, by doing this, he could numb himself into believing Princess Kaguya was still safe.

Through their bond, he could sense that Princess Kaguya was impossibly far away.

There was no way he could reach her now.

Besides, the battle was happening right now. Even if he reached her, what could he do with his strength?

Against an enemy even Princess Kaguya could not defeat,

would he charge in relying on his B-rank Gale Sword Technique, or his miraculous survival technique, Izanagi?

Perhaps he could die alongside her?

At that thought, Yuya tried to curl his lips into a self-mocking smile,

only to discover that the nerves in his face had already gone numb,

leaving him unable to perform even that simplest of movements.

He did not know whether anything would happen to Princess Kaguya. He had not considered it.

But despair and the desire for death were spreading through him, little by little.

A long while passed.

Only then did he let out a faint sigh,

and slowly sit up.

Dragging his ravaged body, he began activating Heavenly Secrets Calculation.

[Warning: you have already activated Heavenly Secrets Calculation repeatedly.]

[Activating it again will double the backlash and cause unpredictable consequences.]

"Activate."

He seemed not to have heard the system's warning.

His face remained expressionless, without the slightest ripple of emotion.

Activate!

The next moment, an image appeared.

A frozen world stretched out, blanketed in white.

Princess Kaguya stood amid Snow Mountain.

She seemed to be fighting some kind of strange beast.

But the beast was clearly no match for Princess Kaguya and was being driven back again and again.

At the same time, feedback came through Heavenly Secrets Calculation.

The probability of Princess Kaguya returning safely was ninety percent.

"As long as she's safe..."

Yuya murmured to himself.

"I never knew the Naruto world had Snow Mountain and strange beasts like this."

Yuya committed the beast's appearance to memory, his thoughts unreadable.

[Under the doubled backlash of Heavenly Secrets Calculation, your health has decreased by 100.]

[Because you forcibly used Heavenly Secrets Calculation multiple times, you will face an indescribable death.]

The system's icy notification sounded.

With it came the backlash of Heavenly Secrets Calculation.

At that moment, a burning sensation surged through his internal organs.

Blood flowed simultaneously from Yuya's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

Bleeding from all seven orifices, he looked utterly horrifying.

Excruciating pain engulfed him.

His organs and even his bones had begun burning, tearing him apart from within.

Yet Yuya remained expressionless, as though he felt nothing.

"So this is the threat of death?"

With a calm expression, he murmured those words.

At last, his body toppled backward.

His bones had already burned away and could no longer support him in a sitting position.

Flames appeared beneath him and spread up his body.

Yuya lay amid a sea of fire, but he made no unnecessary movements and did not struggle at all.

Or rather, with his meridians severed and his bones burned away,

he no longer had any nerves capable of making his body move.

He simply gazed at the ceiling, his eyes distant.

"Princess Kaguya..."

He spoke.

In the end, this Yuya turned to ashes in the flames.

Faint ripples spread through space,

like flowers reflected in a mirror or the moon upon water.

Another Yuya appeared in the rocking chair.

He rocked gently,

as though nothing had ever changed.

Only his eyes were different: at some unknown moment, his scarlet Sharingan had activated.

The three black tomoe rotated slowly.

A trail of bloody tears ran down his face.

Before activating Heavenly Secrets Calculation, he had activated Izanagi,

recording his body's condition at that moment in time.

In truth, he had not been certain whether it could evade the backlash of Heavenly Secrets Calculation.

"Princess Kaguya..."

He spoke softly,

and stood up once more.

He had used Izanagi to escape that indescribable death,

but the deduction to his health was real.

Now he was like a guttering candle in the wind,

seemingly ready to vanish with the next gust.

Yet, little by little, life returned to his expression.

His back straightened.

His robes fluttered, his figure stood tall, and his expression was calm and aloof.

He stepped forward.

The sound of his footsteps echoed through the silent hall.

His retreating figure held traces of loneliness and desolation, yet he pressed onward without hesitation.

"The Crown Prince is so handsome. What's he doing?"

"No idea. It looks like he's climbing a tree..."

"Have you ever seen someone walk straight up a tree?"

"It's over. The Crown Prince must be delirious. He's gone mad..."

"No... I have to stop him!"

The maids chattered among themselves.

One maid seemed to make up her mind,

and jogged over to a large tree.

"Crown Prince, please calm down. If you do this, you'll..."

"Get lost!"

"You got it, bro!"

The maid immediately ran back.

"How did it go? Is the Crown Prince any better?"

"You could say he's absolutely no better."

"Then what did you go over there for?"

The other maids were speechless.

"I don't know. I just feel like the Crown Prince has gotten even more handsome. Ah, he's so cold. I love it."

The maid cupped her cheeks, her eyes dreamy.

Qingyi and the Young Guard approached and dismissed the maids.

The two remained beside Yuya to prevent anyone else from disturbing him.

Qingyi looked worried now as well.

"The Crown Prince... seems to have recovered, but not quite completely..."

"Haven't you noticed that the Crown Prince is stepping higher and higher?"

The Young Guard spoke calmly.

Although he did not know why Princess Kaguya was fighting a strange beast in Snow Mountain,

fortunately, she was not in danger.

The real crisis would come a year later!

[Warning: your Kaguya Otsutsuki is being consumed by an unknown energy.]

[Time remaining: 01 year, 02 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, 43 seconds.]

[Time remaining: 01 year, 02 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, 42 seconds.]

Every second counted!

Now that he had calmed down, his only option was to grow stronger!

This was Yuya's first time using chakra.

Controlling it was far more difficult than he had imagined.

Chakra was something extracted and refined by the God Tree,

a product converted from the Earth's primordial energy.

In later generations, chakra spread throughout the world,

transforming the bodies of those born afterward.

Then it could also be directly synthesized and extracted from physical and spiritual energy.

At present, Yuya's body contained a vast amount of chakra that Princess Kaguya had left behind.

To master its control, Yuya began by climbing trees.

This was the chakra-control training method Kakashi had taught in the original story.

Chakra had adhesive properties, and the feet had the most acupuncture points, making them the hardest to control.

Thus, concentrating chakra in the feet to climb trees was very helpful for mastering chakra.

This would affect Yuya's subsequent development and use of chakra.

When Yuya first tried climbing a tree,

he stomped a hole straight into its trunk.

Yuya's chakra was too immense.

Even though he had controlled it very carefully, he still stomped a hole into the tree.

He frowned, a rough conjecture already forming in his mind.

He closed his eyes where he stood, quietly reflecting on everything he had sensed while using chakra just now.

Only after a long while did he open his eyes.

He switched to another tree and climbed again.

This time, he walked straight up to the middle of the trunk.

After landing, thought and understanding flashed through his eyes.

He barely hesitated.

For the third time, he climbed again.

This time, he climbed straight up to the treetop.

According to the system's evaluation, Yuya possessed extraordinary comprehension.

He did not know what level or significance such extraordinary comprehension had in the Naruto world.

But on his very first encounter with using chakra,

he needed only three attempts to climb a tree.

In the distance, Qingyi was already too stunned to speak,

having watched with her own eyes as that figure, like an immortal descended to earth, climbed a large tree using nothing but his feet.

Even though he had fallen twice along the way, he had actually climbed all the way up!

The sight shook her to her core.

"Crown Prince... is he a god...?"

Qingyi blurted out.

"No, he is Otsutsuki Yuya..."

This is Otsutsuki Yuya...

The Young Guard murmured to himself.

To him, the name Otsutsuki Yuya carried a weight

far, far greater than that of any god.

He buried the fervor in his eyes.

This was the man they had sworn to follow for the rest of their lives, even unto death.

Yuya waved at them, and the two immediately went over to him.

"Qingyi, go get some balloons and rubber balls."

Next... let's try the Rasengan.