Isamu maintained his distance from the others, occasionally sending out a Blood Clone to try to damage their forehead protectors.
But the tightly guarded teams stopped every one of them.
As the temperature continued to rise, Isamu’s Blood Clones were also approaching the end of their effective period.
Isamu controlled his final five Blood Clones and launched another assault.
After breaking through the defensive line, they once again managed to damage ten forehead protectors.
At this point, thirty-two of the students’ forehead protectors had been damaged.
However, Isamu had no idea how many results his Blood Clones had achieved.
To avoid having the memories transmitted back by a large number of disappearing clones interfere with his mental state, Isamu always stayed far away from them.
Naturally, without receiving their memories, he had no idea what was happening at the camp either.
[Chakra: 41/634]
Isamu looked at his chakra reserves and sat down cross-legged to recover.
More than two months ago, when he had first arrived in Konoha, his chakra capacity had only been 430.
Now, it had reached 634.
In a relatively stable environment, Isamu’s growth was extremely rapid.
A single Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique consumed around twenty points of chakra.
Based on Isamu’s estimates, an ordinary Genin probably had a chakra capacity of roughly forty to fifty points.
As for Isamu, he already had more than ten times that amount.
Even a Konoha Chūnin couldn’t match Isamu in terms of chakra reserves alone.
My numbers are far above yours.
Moreover, Isamu could use his Modification talent to stimulate his cells, temporarily increasing the efficiency with which he extracted chakra.
If he was willing to sacrifice several days of his lifespan, he could even completely replenish his chakra within an hour.
Isamu sat cross-legged and began restoring his chakra.
His Blood Clones had nearly drained his chakra reserves.
Each Blood Clone was allocated fifty points of chakra.
Combined with fifty drops of blood, that was enough to create a clone capable of briefly fighting a Chūnin.
As expendable units, they worked quite well.
Unfortunately, Isamu’s mental strength still wasn’t great enough to withstand the memory feedback from multiple clones.
Otherwise, he could stockpile a batch of Blood Clones and charge in with a dozen or even twenty of them, simply tearing every forehead protector off the students.
But the ambient temperature had already risen.
Using Blood Clones again was no longer appropriate.
Isamu thought for a moment before stimulating his cells, exchanging some of his lifespan for a greatly accelerated rate of chakra recovery.
As his chakra returned, Isamu began creating ordinary Shadow Clones.
He allocated fifty points of chakra to each Shadow Clone.
Once he had accumulated ten of them, he sent them out in different directions to simultaneously attack and harass the students
“I’ve figured it out.
It’s the food!”
At that moment, Nara Shikaku finally discovered the problem.
Gathering everyone together could indeed prevent Isamu from attacking them.
But
They had no food left.
Under normal circumstances, more than a hundred provisional Genin could simply go into the river and catch enough fish to feed themselves.
But things were different now.
With so many people concentrated in one place, their efficiency at gathering food had been drastically reduced.
Yet if they split up, they would once again become vulnerable to Isamu’s surprise attacks
If this continued, they wouldn’t even be able to guarantee their most basic food supply.
This was Isamu’s sunlit strategy.
They could only choose one of the two.
More than a hundred people had been firmly pinned down here by Isamu and his Shadow Clones
Why are his Shadow Clones so strong?
Their strength is almost comparable to his main body.
Shikaku compared Isamu’s Shadow Clones with the Isamu he had encountered more than a month earlier and discovered that these Shadow Clones were no weaker than the Isamu of a month ago.
He had no idea that his opponent was essentially a cheat.
In the span of just one month, Isamu’s strength had increased dramatically.
Combined with their lack of information about Isamu’s Blood Clones, this had led Shikaku to reach such a conclusion.
He really wanted to abandon the idea of gathering food and simply have all one hundred-plus students form up and search for Isamu.
But when he thought of Isamu’s seemingly endless supply of Shadow Clones, his head began to ache.
The Forest of Death was simply too large.
Even if more than a hundred people spread out and conducted a thorough search, it would probably take them an entire day to finish.
And Isamu could use his Shadow Clones to lure them in the wrong direction.
Ultimately, the problem was still that Isamu’s Shadow Clones posed too great a threat to them.
How exactly was he doing it?
As Nara Shikaku was thinking
Isamu’s clones came again.
This time, there were ten!
Ten Isamus burst out from different directions simultaneously, their targets being the students’ forehead protectors.
Almost trading their lives for forehead protectors, they once again managed to damage thirteen.
“You bastard!
If you’ve got the guts, come out with your real body!”
An Uchiha youth shouted angrily.
His own forehead protector had been slashed just moments ago.
To guarantee the safety of the group, Shikaku could only find Hyūga Hizashi and Uchiha Toki and ask them to take turns activating their dōjutsu to keep watch over the group.
And so, one with the Byakugan and one with the Sharingan began taking turns standing guard.
As for Shikaku, he assigned the students whose forehead protectors had already been slashed to serve as guards along the outer perimeter.
An hour later, Isamu’s Shadow Clones came again.
This time, the students were prepared and successfully stopped them.
But when the Shadow Clones tried to use kunai to trade for more forehead protectors, they discovered something strange
Why were all these people’s forehead protectors already slashed?
This time, the ten Shadow Clones only managed to damage four forehead protectors.
It was a blessing in disguise.
“Shikaku, the Shadow Clones Isamu sent this time are different.”
During their brief exchange just now, Hizashi had discovered that Isamu’s clones actually came in two types.
The special clones containing blood were clearly more durable.
The other type consisted of ordinary Shadow Clones, whose strength was far inferior to that of the special clones.
“Blood”
A thought flashed through Shikaku’s mind.
If Isamu could use blood to create stronger clones, then there had to be a limitation.
A person’s blood supply was finite.
Isamu couldn’t possibly create these special clones without limit.
Blood remained viable for a certain amount of time after leaving the body.
If Isamu had some method of using that connection to create clones
Wait!
Shikaku suddenly thought of something extremely important.
The viability of blood!
On the first day, they had fought that special Blood Clone at around eight in the morning.
On the third day, the Uchiha team had encountered Isamu’s Blood Clone at around seven in the evening, and the previous day had been overcast.
Even today, their final encounter with one of Isamu’s Blood Clones had occurred before nine in the morning.
The viability of the blood was the key to creating those special clones!
Shikaku looked up and saw the sun directly overhead.
It was the temperature!
The factor limiting Isamu’s Blood Clones was the ambient temperature.
The reason those Blood Clones were so powerful was because they relied on the active components in Isamu’s blood.
As the temperature rose, the blood would rapidly lose its viability.
And once that happened, the advantage of the Blood Clones naturally disappeared.
That was why Isamu had begun sending ordinary Shadow Clones.
Isamu
I’ve found your weakness.