“This is an absolute milestone every shinobi must cross,” Tsunade noted, turning a deeply curious gaze toward Hideki Sato.
“Though I have to admit, kiddo, you don’t seem impacted in the slightest.
Kushina and Mikoto only deployed long-range ninjutsu and they could barely handle the psychological fallout, yet you were out there systematically driving steel into their throats.” “Perhaps my baseline resolve runs a bit deeper,” Hideki replied smoothly.
“Or maybe the extensive medical literature I’ve been digesting simply taught me precisely which anatomical vectors yield the cleanest, most efficient kill.” “Ugh, you know, you genuinely belong in Orochimaru’s department,” Tsunade drawled, shuddering slightly.
“The pair of you are practically cut from the exact same cloth.” “Are you truly prepared to watch a star pupil like me defect to another mentor, Tsunade-sensei?” Hideki teased.
“Besides, out of sheer curiosity…
did you lose your dinner the very first time you took a life?” Tsunade lunged forward, locking her arm around his neck to aggressively ruffle his hair into a nested mess.
“You crafty little brat, turning the diagnostic evaluation back onto me, are you?
Reflecting on it now…
while I didn’t outright lose my dinner, I couldn’t stomach a single plate of meat for days.
As for Jiraiya, that utterly useless idiot retched so violently he practically turned inside out.
Orochimaru, though…
he reacted exactly like you.
Completely unfazed.” Before their banter could prolong, Kushina and Mikoto finally drifted back into the clearing, their expressions thoroughly pale.
Judging by their lingering fragility, it required zero deduction to guess the duo would be adopting a strictly vegetarian lifestyle for the foreseeable future.
With the primary deployment successfully recorded, the cell returned to the Hidden Leaf Village to clear their paperwork.
The exact microsecond the mission was formalized, Tsunade sprinted off in a localized blur.
Given the feral, borderline manic glint in her eye, her destination required zero calculation: the nearest high-stakes casino.
It took roughly two days for Kushina and Mikoto to fully stabilize their emotional equilibrium.
Lacking any collective desire to throw a celebratory dinner, the teammates quietly disbanded to recuperate in their respective quarters.
Six months drifted past in a blur of continuous deployments.
Throughout the half-year window, Tsunade guided Squad Three through over twenty consecutive C-rank operations.
The repetitive exposure worked wonders; Kushina and Mikoto had transitioned from terrified recruits into seasoned Genin, capable of casually eating their bento boxes directly adjacent to a fresh corpse without experiencing a single ripple in their appetite.
Concurrently, Hideki’s progression in the medical arts was nothing short of astronomical.
His functional mastery had evolved to a tier where his diagnostic precision and treatment efficacy comfortably surpassed the vast majority of the resident faculty at the Leaf General Hospital.
Within the private quarters of the Senju estate, Tsunade stared at Hideki’s exceptionally refined features, a quiet murmur stirring in her thoughts.
This brat’s facial aesthetics and presence are growing increasingly dangerous by the day…
who knows how many hearts he’s going to systematically wreck in the future.
Clearing her expression, Tsunade extracted a heavy, ancient scroll from her cloak and placed it squarely on the low table before him.
“This is the summoning contract for the Shikkotsu Forest.
Channel your chakra and bind your signature to the lineage.” Hideki nodded without a fraction of hesitation.
Biting his thumb to draw a bead of crimson, he smoothly inscribed his full name along the parchment.
After all, the Shikkotsu Forest was universally recognized as one of the Three Great Unexplored Summoning Regions of the shinobi world.
Furthermore, there existed an exceptionally high probability that the Sage Mode deployed by Hashirama Senju—the undisputed god of the era—originated directly from this very network.
Structurally speaking, it made zero narrative sense for the Ryuchi Cave and Mount Myoboku to harbor specialized Sage transformations while the Shikkotsu Forest remained entirely devoid of one.
Scanning the historical registry of the contract, Hideki caught two familiar, prominent signatures: Tsunade, and directly preceding her, Hashirama Senju.
Seeing the seal formalize, Tsunade continued.
“You are already thoroughly well-versed in the mechanics of dimensional summoning.
Go ahead and attempt to manifest Katsuyu.” With the minor laceration on his thumb still active, Hideki rapidly wove the necessary sequence of hand signs, slamming his palm flat against the floorboards.
Poof!
A dense, sprawling cloud of white vapor violently enveloped the living room.
As the mist drifted away, a massive slug roughly the size of a fully grown adult materialized in the center of the room.
Had an individual harboring a severe phobia of insects been standing in Hideki’s shoes, the sheer visual input would have likely caused an immediate cardiac arrest.
Yet, despite her thoroughly un-aerodynamic, soft-bodied aesthetics, the creature’s voice was remarkably melodious, carrying the gentle, soothing cadence of an affectionate elder sister.
“Lady Tsunade, what are your directives for this manifestation?” Tsunade gestured casually toward the boy beside her.
“The summon wasn’t triggered by me, Katsuyu.
Meet my star disciple, Hideki Sato.
He has officially joined the lineage of the Shikkotsu Forest.” Katsuyu smoothly rotated her sensory stalks, evaluating Hideki for a quiet moment before lowering her posture in a polite bow.
“I see.
It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Lord Hideki.
I look forward to our future cooperation.” Hideki immediately returned the bow with meticulous courtesy.
“The honor is entirely mine, Katsuyu.
Please look after me.” The absolute defining variable that separated Katsuyu from every other legendary summon in existence was her singular nature: the entirety of the Shikkotsu Forest housed only one massive, primordial slug.
Consequently, every single entity Hideki summoned was merely a localized division of her true, collective form.
If a shinobi possessed an essentially infinite pool of chakra, manifesting her complete, undivided mass would comfortably yield enough structural power to physically suppress a Tailed Beast.
Unfortunately, even a direct Senju descendant like Tsunade lacked the massive reserves required to anchor her full presence in reality.
Perhaps only Hashirama Senju possessed the absolute ocean of chakra necessary for such a feat—though truth be told, the First Hokage had zero practical need for such tactics; a simple clap of his hands could manifest a colossal Wood Golem capable of casually thumping the Nine-Tails into submission.
With the introductory protocols concluded, Katsuyu dissolved into a brief swirl of smoke, dispersing her localized division back to the Shikkotsu Forest.
The moment the clearing emptied, Tsunade’s expression turned business-like.
“While you possess an exceptionally potent primary variable in Charmander, and you’ve successfully anchored a contract with Katsuyu, your personal, unassisted close-quarters combat efficacy is still thoroughly lacking.
Therefore, I intend to pass down a signature art of my own creation.
I call it Cherry Blossom Impact.” Tsunade guided Hideki out to the private training grounds bordering the rear of the estate.
Halting in the center of the clearing, she casually raised her left leg and brought her sandal down against the earth in a sudden, deliberate stomp.
BOOM!
A deafening, thunderous shockwave rattled the clearing, the ground violently undulating as if a localized earthquake had ripped through the terrain.
The exact coordinate where her foot connected fractured into a dense web of deep, bottomless fissures that spiderwebbed across the stone.
Enjoying Hideki’s thoroughly stunned expression, Tsunade flashed a highly self-satisfied smirk.
“Cherry Blossom Impact relies on a hyper-precise burst of chakra to instantaneously stimulate the somatic cells, augmenting your physical strikes exponentially.
The operational theory runs parallel to the Lightning Style Chakra Mode utilized by the Hidden Cloud.
In my prime, I’ve systematically pulverized an entire mountain ridge with a single strike.
Master this art, and your baseline self-defense metrics will be absolute.” Hideki nodded like a chicken pecking at grain, his eyes radiating profound admiration.
Tsunade was officially clearing out her entire vault for him.
Short of the Strength of a Hundred Seal—which she likely hadn’t fully finalized yet—the Katsuyu contract and her signature monstrous strength were the absolute twin aces of her arsenal.
It was abundantly clear that after half a year of shared logistics, she had fully adopted Hideki Sato as the true inheritor of her legacy.
Unfortunately, while Hideki possessed an astronomical talent profile for the intricate, delicate threads of the medical arts, his adaptability toward high-output, explosive physical techniques was thoroughly average.
By the time the afternoon sun dipped below the horizon, after hours of grueling, repetitive trials, Hideki hadn’t even managed to cross the baseline threshold to trigger a single successful surge of the technique.
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