"Lightning Release: Lightning Wall!"
With a quiet shout, Shin'un finished forming his hand seals. Centered on his palms pressed together, the chakra within him erupted into a surge of electricity, forming a thin, blue-violet curtain of lightning around his body.
"Bzz..."
"So this is Lightning Wall?" Shin'un gazed at the circular electrical barrier a meter away, which enclosed his entire body, and sank into thought.
Electricity had no physical substance. Could a wall made from it really provide defense?
"Hm?"
It was a new ninjutsu he had only just begun learning, after all. The moment Shin'un's concentration slipped slightly, the electrical barrier protecting him from every angle began to collapse.
Once it lost its user's firm control, the spherical barrier of electricity immediately disintegrated into scattered currents that attacked in every direction, leaving scorch marks on the surrounding flowers, grass, and trees.
Seeing the marks the electricity left around him after Lightning Wall collapsed, Shin'un's eyes lit up, and an idea struck him.
"This doesn't seem bad either!"
"I could modify this ninjutsu so its effect has two stages. The first would be the usual lightning barrier for defense, and the second would be a ring of lightning rapidly expanding outward to paralyze enemies and catch them off guard."
"What's more, I could use the very same electricity that formed the barrier. That way, it wouldn't consume any extra chakra."
Brow furrowed, Shin'un stood on the grass considering whether the idea was feasible. The more he thought about it, the more he felt it was worth trying.
"Only, this might delay my complete mastery of this ninjutsu by the better part of an hour."
"Just the better part of an hour?"
Shin'un could fully accept that amount of time. After seeing his improvements to the ninjutsu, Orochimaru probably wouldn't lower his assessment of him over it either.
His mind made up, Shin'un began experimenting.
His first priority was to become familiar with casting this ninjutsu, then begin making changes based on his actual ideas for it.
"Bzz!"
Another electrical buzz rang out, and a blue-violet electrical barrier lit up around Shin'un once more.
Under Shin'un's control, the electrical barrier was visibly much more stable this time. In some places, there were no longer even any scattered currents to be seen. The electricity had completely condensed together, surrounding him like translucent blue glass.
"Good." Shin'un keenly recognized the success of this attempt at Lightning Wall. This would help him begin testing his novel ideas for the ninjutsu as soon as possible.
"Next, I'll try controlling the electricity forming the barrier, keeping it stable as it forms a ring and spreads outward."
Shin'un considered for a moment, then began forming hand seals again, drawing on his shallow understanding of Lightning Release and his keen natural intuition for it.
"Rat, Ox, Rabbit, Monkey..."
Suppressing the Lightning Wall around him as much as possible while maintaining its stability, Shin'un tried forming hand seals according to his ideas.
Trial and error might have been clumsy, but it worked. Combined with Shin'un's innate intuition for Lightning Release, it made the process even faster.
After maintaining this rhythm for two or three minutes, just as the lightning barrier around Shin'un began to deform and was about to disintegrate, he suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of pleasure and rightness, as though inspiration had struck.
It felt like two gears turning, their teeth fitting into the grooves perfectly-a precise, exact fit.
"That's the feeling!" Shin'un committed the hundred-plus hand seals he had just formed to memory and pressed his palms together, making the electrical barrier around him respond.
As Shin'un pressed his palms together, the electrical barrier around him changed abruptly, its stable state gradually reverting to the inherent violence of Lightning Release.
Finally, as though it had reached some limit, the entire barrier burst outward, scattered currents sweeping across an area more than ten meters around him.
"An initial success, at least." Shin'un recovered some of the considerable mental energy he had expended continuously controlling the electrical barrier and examined the traces the electricity had left around him.
Numerous electrical scorch marks covered the area more than ten meters around him. If an attack of this power successfully struck an enemy, even if it couldn't kill them outright, the electricity would paralyze them for a long time, leaving them unable to control their body.
Seeing this, Shin'un nodded in satisfaction. It was enough to prove that his idea for the ninjutsu was entirely achievable.
"But... there are still plenty of things to modify."
With the terrifying observational ability granted by [Extreme Reaction], which made everything seem almost frozen, Shin'un had observed the entire ninjutsu in full the instant he released the electricity.
Now, comparing that with the marks the electrical attacks had left on the ground, he found many areas that needed improvement...
For instance, the electricity was far too scattered, rather than spreading outward in a ring.
Some places had been scorched pitch-black by electricity powerful enough to kill, while others showed no trace of electrical damage at all. Clearly, no electricity had reached those areas.
Another issue was that the hand seal sequence was far too complicated.
After spending a long time forming over a hundred seals, Shin'un had finally succeeded in putting his idea into practice with the electrical barrier around him.
That clearly wouldn't do. Every second in battle was especially precious. In the time it took to form over a hundred hand seals, an enemy ninja could complete the entire professional process of killing Shin'un, choosing his coffin, digging a grave, and burying him.
The excessive time required for the hand seals, combined with the uneven distribution of electricity, reduced this ninjutsu's practical combat value to a minimum.
"Hmm..."
Shin'un thought for a moment and found a direction for his modifications.
Those hundred-plus hand seals had to contain many ineffective seals, seals with minimal effects, and even seals that negatively affected the ninjutsu.
He could reduce the number of hand seals as much as possible through replacement, streamlining, and elimination.
As for the uneven distribution of electricity, he could improve it as much as possible through delicate control, assisted by hand seals.
That would greatly improve this ninjutsu's practical combat value.
"This is a big undertaking... Looks like I'll have to spend even more time refining this ninjutsu..."
Now that he had thought of solutions, Shin'un quickly threw himself into the work, hoping to complete his improvements to the ninjutsu in as little time as possible.
In the dense forest, beneath the shade of the trees.
An hour and a half after the test began, Uchiha Yūichi approached Orochimaru, his face weary and his body drenched in sweat.
"Teacher, I've finished mastering the ninjutsu." His voice was weak. Clearly, practicing the ninjutsu had been very hard on Uchiha Yūichi.
Hearing Yūichi's words, Orochimaru lifted his eyes from the volume in his hands and looked at Uchiha Yūichi standing before him.
"Uchiha Yūichi?" A hint of surprise crept into Orochimaru's tone.
"Am I the first to finish training, Teacher?" Yūichi failed to notice anything strange in Orochimaru's tone. After turning his head from side to side and finding no sign of Shin'un, he excitedly asked Orochimaru.
"Yes, you're the first to come to me." Orochimaru answered Yūichi, but his attention turned to someone else.
Turning toward an area on the other side, where electrical buzzing sounded from time to time, Orochimaru narrowed his eyes.
"So it wasn't Hirakawa Shin'un?" Recalling the information on Hirakawa Shin'un, Orochimaru murmured inwardly, Don't disappoint me, Shin'un-kun...