"Lord Danzō!"
Clad in a black cloak, Nonō Yakushi knelt on the cold stone floor, head bowed in solemn submission.
Danzō's bandaged eyes remained fixed on her, his voice as cold and unyielding as steel.
"What's the latest on Tsunade?"
Nonō answered with professional detachment.
"Due to the trauma of losing her lover, Kato Dan, during the Second Great Ninja War, Lady Tsunade has developed a severe case of hematophobia. The condition remains critical, just the sight of blood causes her vision to blur and her body to collapse with weakness. She's unable to fight and barely capable of basic movement. Recovery appears... unlikely."
Danzō nodded faintly.
"That mission is complete for now."
Then his tone sharpened.
"Today, you came into contact with a child named Sora Hanyu. He is Orochimaru's disciple?"
"Yes. Both Jiraiya-sama and the boy himself confirmed it."
"Submit the blood sample you drew while treating him at the hospital. Immediately."
Danzō instinctively touched his bandaged arm.
Orochimaru wasn't the type to take on students out of sentiment, certainly not for the offspring of an old subordinate.
If he'd accepted this boy, it meant he had seen something… unique.
"Yes, Lord Danzō."
Nonō bowed even deeper, her forehead nearly brushing the floor.
"From now on, your assignment is to observe and make contact with Sora. I want you to become the person he trusts most."
"…Understood."
Meanwhile, unaware that Root had already marked him as a person of interest, Sora flipped through the remaining scrolls with curiosity and intent.
For now, he decided to set aside the elemental ninjutsu.
What intrigued him more… was the art of genjutsu.
Beyond the unique advantage granted by his Door-Door Fruit, Sora's greatest strength was his extraordinary mental energy, far surpassing that of the average shinobi.
Genjutsu, after all, was a psychological weapon.
By subtly manipulating chakra, through gestures, sounds, images, or even objects, it could disturb an enemy's five senses and plunge them into illusion.
It was a direct way to weaponize one's mind.
Sora was eager to see just how far his genjutsu talent could take him.
He picked up the simplest scroll first: the Mist Servant Technique.
This D-rank genjutsu required only six hand seals. Its effect?
To confuse the enemy's vision by conjuring shadowy black phantoms in their field of view, illusions they could neither hit nor erase.
"Rat – Boar – Ox – Rooster – Horse – Rooster!"
Sora's hand seals were a little stiff at first, but after a few rounds of practice, he could manage one seal per second, not bad for a beginner.
"But… how do I know if it worked?"
Unlike ninjutsu, where one could simply check the size of a fireball to assess progress, genjutsu was harder to verify.
It relied on subtle chakra control and mental focus, and unless tested on a target, success was hard to measure.
"…Should I test it on myself?"
Once the idea entered his head, he couldn't shake it.
"Mist Servant Technique!"
He completed the jutsu and looked around his courtyard.
At first, nothing.
Then, a black silhouette appeared at the edge of the gate.
Its face was blurred, its gender impossible to tell.
It drifted forward silently.
Another emerged behind him.
"Hah!"
Sora lashed out with a kick, his foot passed through one shadow, only for it to split into two.
"Looks like it worked!"
He grinned, pleased with the results.
Then he stopped.
"Wait… how do I dispel this?"
That part hadn't been in the scroll.
Well, he knew that disrupting the chakra flow usually dissolved genjutsu.
Gritting his teeth, he forced his chakra to rampage through his own body, slamming it into disruption.
"Ugh!"
A searing pain shot through his chest, as if someone had punched him square in the sternum.
But the phantoms vanished.
The jutsu had been broken.
Sora exhaled deeply, rubbing his chest.
"Whew… finally got rid of it."
Then a grin stretched across his face.
"Looks like I've got a real talent for genjutsu."
To be able to successfully cast a genjutsu on the first try, without guidance?
Any Leaf Village ninja would be dumbfounded.
Among the three core ninja arts, ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu, it was genjutsu that required the most talent and control.
Many shinobi couldn't master even one genjutsu, even after becoming full-fledged chūnin.
It was by far the most difficult discipline.
"Cough!"
A jolt of pain shot through his chest again.
"I really shouldn't get reckless," he muttered. "Forcing chakra like that could've seriously injured my pathways…"
Then a thought flashed through his mind.
"Wait… could I use the Door-Door Fruit to dispel genjutsu?"
If he could store chakra inside a dimensional space, and then later open the door and release it,
Wouldn't that be the same as having an external force break the illusion?
The idea gave him pause.
"Isn't that just like the Strength of a Hundred Seal?"
That technique, used by Tsunade and Sakura, accumulated chakra over time in a storage seal on the forehead, releasing it in bursts when needed, especially for high-level jutsu and regeneration.
With such a seal, a ninja could wield several times their normal chakra pool.
If he could replicate that…
Sora began analyzing the possibility.
The true difficulty of the Strength of a Hundred Seal lay in creating a stable seal capable of storing chakra,
which required mastery of sealing arts and an almost surgical control over chakra flow.
He lacked both.
Even if he had the technique scroll in front of him, he couldn't train it now.
But he had something else.
He had the Door-Door Fruit.
And that… changed the game.
He focused intently on the center of his forehead.
With precision, he tapped it with his finger, a tiny door the size of a fingernail appeared, revealing a glimmer of green space inside.
Slowly, he began funneling chakra into it.
But to his dismay, the chakra dispersed and evaporated the moment it entered.
No matter how he tried, he couldn't retrieve or control it again.
He frowned.
"Maybe I need to combine it with a basic sealing technique… create a chakra barrier inside the door to hold the energy in place?"
Either way, it was clear, he couldn't avoid learning sealing techniques.
For now, he'd have to put the idea on hold.
With a sigh, Sora picked up the other genjutsu scrolls.
Hell Viewing Technique and Bewitching Fox Heart, both were common low-level illusions within the village, and neither posed much difficulty.
At least not to him.
He studied well into the night.
By the time he finally collapsed into bed, he was too tired to keep his eyes open.
<150 P.S = 1 Extra Chapter>