Naruto- Secret Sage

There was a whole month between the qualifier tournament and the real thing which meant all the participants were getting in some last minute training to hopefully give them an edge. Kakashi took Sasuke and vanished for the month while Naruto ended up getting taught by Jiraiya. Lee was not taking his condition well however and insisted that he was willing to do whatever it took to continue being a shinobi but I flat out told him that without the procedure it was impossible. I also made it clear that I wasn't willing to perform the operation as the risk was not worth it in my opinion.-

During the next month I split my time between helping Karin by bringing her books on medical knowledge, working on my chakra projections and mastering the final B ranked jutsu I was on. Once I was done with the B rank jutsu I wasn't planning to move onto A rank quite yet. Instead I was going to create a bunch of shadow clones to vastly accelerate my improvements on my chakra projection. Right now I could create a stable layer of armor over my hand and forearm but getting past that point was proving to be a tedious process of trial and error.-

I suppose I shouldn't really be complaining considering the technique was easily in the upper limits of A rank at the moment and may in fact reach S rank when I complete it. Even the old man praised this "gauntlet" of mine as the closest he had ever seen someone get to mimicking a susanoo. The defense of the projection was frankly insane as I had placed struck it as hard as I could without any limitations and I barely managed to crack it.-

Comparatively my surroundings weren't so lucky as the power of that strike sent out a shockwave that flattened everything in a fifty yard radius. I escaped in a hurry at that point since this had definitely drawn some attention. Thankfully the damage was nearly identical to a wind release jutsu so the chance of this getting tracked back to me was miniscule. Still that little test told me that once I managed to fully cloak my body in the projection merely injuring me would become an effort in difficulty. It should be remembered that my flesh was nearly as durable as high carbon steel so I was already hard to truly injure but add on the chakra armor and that suddenly became a whole lot harder.-

I was already halfway done removing the need for handsigns for the water release jutsu i was learning, [Thousand needles of death]. The forty odd handsigns it originally needed to be used was reduced to eighteen at the moment which was still quite a bit but far more reasonable to be used in combat. I had decided to set the copying of my beasts abilities aside for the moment as the ones I was currently on were clearly not something I could copy in a short amount of time.-

Shiro's zero release for example was a mix of three different chakra natures and I haven't even fused two of them together before. Fusing chakra natures wasn't a joke either as if it were easy there would be a whole lot more shinobi using kekkai genkai running around. The ones we have currently inherited the things instead of getting them via fusion of two natures through effort. There was only a single person currently thought to be able to do so but hadn't because they chose a different route, the third Hokage.-

The man had done what few ever have and mastered the use of all of the chakra natures to the highest degree. Rather than try and fuse them however he chose the route of combination jutsu. This was when you sort of layered multiple chakra natures together outside your body to get extremely powerful attacks that don't lose out to kekkai genkai at all. Still I personally think it was a waste that he never tried to create a kekkai genkai or even go further for a kekkai tota.-

Maybe by the time he was confident in pulling it off he felt he was too old? Whatever the case was the man was the only person recognized as being qualified to fuse chakra natures in the world at the moment which should tell you how hard it is. Anyways I was nowhere near that level of mastery with all the chakra natures. In fact I was not even near that level in one chakra nature since I specialized more in pure chakra control more than anything else. Thankfully that was enough for me to copy most of my beasts abilities.-

Currently I was working on memorizing the molding of chakra and transformation to water nature that the handsigns for the jutsu caused. It was a matter of complexity more than anything else as I needed all the little changes each handsign made to pull off the jutsu. Naturally I was simultaneously getting faster and faster at releasing the jutsu the more I memorized how the chakra was molded. It was sort of becoming like muscle memory really as I got most of the molding done automatically and the handsigns now only cover the part I hadn't memorized yet.-

Karin was also making slow progress in learning medical information since unlike me she couldn't learn and retain a large amount of information in a short period of time. She was dedicated though I'll give her that as she spent the vast majority of the day reading the information I brought her all while training her chakra control by sticking coins to her body. At the end of the day we ate a meal that I prepared for us before going to bed and repeating the process the next day. She didn't complain about being cooped up in my house though which was surprising since most people would be going stir crazy by this point.-

"But you're here though?" she said with an odd look when I asked her about it.

"Surely you miss being able to just walk around and do stuff right?" I asked confused.

"I mean not really? Back at Kusagakure I was mostly locked in my room to begin with so I just got used to it. Having company is a nice step up for me." she said with a smile that hurt to see.

That wasn't a nice thing to hear at all and if anything made me feel bad for keeping her here like this.

"Hey you know how to use the transformation jutsu right?" I asked having an idea.

"Of course, it's one of the three jutsu all shinobi are supposed to know, why?" she asked curiously.

"Turn into someone else and I'll show you my favorite place to eat in the whole village." I said with a smile as her face lit up.