Chapter 160: When in Doubt, Lie on the Floor and Pretend You’re a Genius

Chapter 160 - When in Doubt, Lie on the Floor and Pretend You’re a Genius 'First off, my speed is too slow.' That was the first thought that came to Ren's mind. Even though the Flying Thunder God was the fastest jutsu known in the world, he wasn't referring to the speed of the technique itself, he was talking about the activation time. Right now, he had to locate the seal, create the spatial pathway, and only after that could he actually teleport. The entire process of locating the seal and forming the spatial conduit took about a second or a bit more. That kind of delay wasn't acceptable in a real combat situation Although he wasn't planning to reveal his use of Flying Thunder God unless absolutely necessary, he still wanted it to be combat-ready. In its current state, it wasn't. That brought him to the second problem. This version of the jutsu wasn't feasible for battle. If there ever came a time when he was forced to use Flying Thunder God, that would mean his chakra was already low and his condition would be bad. And in that state, if he had to spend that much chakra just to escape, he simply couldn't. 'I either need to find Minato's version of the FTG or improve it on my own,' he thought. 'The base concept would be the same, but I have to do something to eliminate the two biggest drawbacks, activation time and chakra cost.' He paused, narrowing his eyes. 'I'll check with Utakata-Sensei first. He and Dad were Minato's teammates, so there's a chance he knows something about it. Even a small piece of information could help. If not, I'll just keep using clones to think and think until I figure out a feasible solution.' With his plan set, he shifted focus to the jutsu itself. 'Hmm, that higher intelligence bastard cursed me out a bit,' Ren thought to himself, 'but he was right, I really shouldn't have hoarded those chakra control points. It's literally the foundation of every jutsu in the shinobi world.' Flying Thunder God had required way more chakra control than he had expected. Though he had been able to create the chakra tube and hold space particles inside it, to form what he now mentally called a "space pipe" he hadn't actually felt what happened inside that tunnel, or how the teleportation took place. Still, he made an educated guess, 'If I had to describe it, it'd be something like a transit channel. A sealed space pathway used for teleportation. And the reason I was thrown out the other end so fast was because the space particles rejected my presence since I am not a space particle, they pushed me out of their structure.' He frowned. 'No, that makes it sound like they were ejecting me like I'm some kind of virus.' He shook his head, correcting his own interpretation. 'It's more like, the tube only allows one-way passage. That's why I was sent from point A to point B so quickly. The structure of the conduit, is a compressed space so the only way I could travel was by using those space particles which boosted my travel speed to the level of teleportation.' Still, that was all speculation. He couldn't truly understand what happened inside the conduit unless he became more proficient in the jutsu or tested it on someone else. He stood up and created a clone, giving it 90% of his remaining chakra. That should be enough for two teleportations. Then he handed it one of the completed seals. There was another problem too. The seal platform. The current seal was drawn on standard Fuinjutsu paper, but it couldn't hold up during teleportation. Every time he used the jutsu, the seal would get ripped apart by the force of the technique. He needed to find a better material, or a way to embed the seal more permanently. While that thought remained in the back of his mind, the clone got ready to use the jutsu. A moment later. Poof. Ren dropped to his knees with a jolt of pain, eyes wide and hand clutching his chest. Without thinking, he activated a healing jutsu, though there was no actual injury. The pain wasn't physical. It came from the feedback of what the clone had experienced. Shaky breaths left his lungs as he steadied himself on the floor, sweat clinging to his back. "As I thought... clones can't survive inside the spatial conduit," he muttered. The feedback had confirmed it, the clone was compressed until it exploded inside the teleportation tube. The pressure had crushed it almost instantly. 'It seems only actual physical bodies with real flesh can enter the tube and survive.' And that lined up perfectly with what the higher-intelligence Ren had predicted earlier. That was also the reason why he hadn't tested the jutsu using clones. Not only would it waste precious time if the clone failed, but he also had absolute confidence in his process. Still, Ren had wanted to test it just once, just to be sure. Now he had an answer, and a head splitting pain. The clone hadn't even made it fully through. As soon as it entered the spatial tube, an unimaginable pressure crushed it from all directions, and it detonated like a balloon under vacuum pressure. 'Only a true physical body can withstand that force. That tube must naturally reject anything that is not completely solid, even though the shadow clone is solid, it doesn't have enough flesh which could resist the pressure.' His chakra was completely drained now. Even if he wanted to continue testing or refining the technique, there was nothing left to work with. His body was sore, his head was heavy, and the aftershock of the clone's destruction still echoed through his nerves. So Ren did the only reasonable thing. He laid down on the basement floor, arms spread out, letting the cool surface numb his skin. "I'll fix all of it later." he mumbled. Then, without another thought, he closed his eyes and fell asleep, resting both his chakra and his brain. ~~~ He didn't know how long he had been asleep, but the exact time didn't matter. What mattered was that his mind was clearer now. It felt like the intense mental activity from earlier had left behind a residue, something that had settled in slowly as he slept. His thoughts now flowed more like the ones he had while the intelligence boost was active. Not quite as fast, not quite as sharp, but still more refined than usual. That higher level of thinking had left a mark, and he could feel himself processing things differently, bit by bit. He sat up slowly in the basement, still feeling a little drained, but functional. As he started going over the FTG experiment again, a few things clicked into place, thoughts that had begun forming before sleep but only fully took shape now. 'The reason only a physical body can move through the space tube is probably because of the kind of pressure inside it,' he thought. 'That compressed space is so dense and high-pressure that only a real body, with its own internal durability and a continuous source of vitality, can endure it.' He remembered how the clone had tried the same thing and instantly burst apart. That wasn't surprising anymore. It matched what he knew about clones, one strong impact, one serious disruption to the form, and they vanish. The tube wasn't something that damaged the clone like a punch or a blast, it just applied overwhelming, consistent force. Constant compression from all directions, a pressure that didn't break bones or rupture organs but instead broke the very idea of "existence" in that space. It made him frown. 'The clones have the same physical stats as me, but that wasn't enough. Why?' He thought for a few more seconds, then answered himself. 'The only real difference is that I have something they don't. A steady supply of vitality. Chakra that constantly refreshes my body. Even if my muscles strain or break, the energy running through them patches things back together before collapse. The clone doesn't have that kind of buffer, it only has what it started with. Once that's pushed past, it's over.' He leaned his back against the wall, sighing slightly. It was logical. The clones mimic the body's strength and even its jutsu, but they don't share its biology. They don't regenerate. They don't have real organs or a blood system. They're stable enough for combat, but not enough for a space-based pressure system that threatens to crush the user down to atoms. That kind of stress required more than just good stats. Still, something didn't quite sit right with him. He narrowed his eyes. 'But the clones now have the restoration skill,' he reminded himself. 'That should've helped.' The restoration skill was meant to regenerate the chakra of the clone and chakra was the power source for all techniques and stamina. If a clone could regenerate its chakra, shouldn't it also be able to restore its physical stability, even in compressed space? 'Unless' he paused, then considered another possibility. 'Unless the space inside that tube doesn't have chakra at all, like a vacuum? Or maybe it disrupts the chakra network so completely that restoration isn't possible once inside. That might be why I didn't feel that pressure the same way, it only targeted what couldn't sustain itself in that space.' But then, how was he able to survive and continue inside it? That thought hovered in his mind for a while as he stared at the ceiling. He didn't try to answer it now. He'd reached the limit of what he could figure out at this level of clarity. But he wasn't worried. Answers like that would come naturally over time, once he kept practicing and getting more used to the way FTG actually worked. He'd already taken the first major step, and the fine-tuning could wait. For now, there was one more thing that needed attention. The timer. He pulled up the floating interface and checked the countdown for the intelligence boost. [02:51] Still the same. It hadn't gone down while he slept, that was good as the system kept its promise, as long as his base intelligence stayed at 79, the boost wouldn't decay over time. It was an active tool, not a passive buff and now that his mind had adjusted to the side effects of being at 99 intelligence for seven straight minutes, something else was happening inside him. He could feel it. That high-level thinking he experienced earlier hadn't vanished after the boost wore off. It had just slowed down. The thoughts he'd formed were still there, buried in his brain, and as he revisited them, they started making more sense. Not instantly or cleanly. But they were still coming to him slowly. That was why he could now think more clearly than before. That was why even without the boost, he was making connections faster. There was a kind of "lingering momentum" in his thought process that hadn't existed before. His brain, exposed to a higher cognitive level, was now pushing itself to catch up. He felt like his base intelligence might cross the 80-point threshold soon, purely from this indirect training effect. 'It's like my brain's trying to replicate what it experienced earlier,' he thought. And that made sense too. His chakra system had long adapted to pressure, weight, heat, and damage. It had adapted to training. So why not his brain? The mind was made of chakra as well, especially for a shinobi like him, who used it to fight, plan, and learn too much stuff. As he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, he let the thoughts drift for a while. This was the kind of analysis that his lower-intelligence self could never do. That version of him would've hoarded chakra control points out of caution or some vague plan to use them for yin release experiments later. And that had nearly slowed everything down. Now, he was starting to see things clearly. Chakra control really was the foundation of everything. Even Flying Thunder God, one of the most powerful techniques in the world, came down to extremely refined chakra work. Without that, it wouldn't even be possible to hold space particles inside a shaped chakra tube. He'd never actually expected the FTG to work that way. But now that it had, he understood that everything about the jutsu, every function of it relied on tight control and deep understanding of both chakra and space. And the tube, he still needed a proper name for it. Calling it a "tube of chakra that holds compressed space" wasn't exactly helpful. But he'd worry about that later. For now, he just called it the space tunnel. Simple enough to work with. His eyes drifted to the scattered papers and half-used seal tags on the floor. He'd need to figure out something else for marking. Fuinjutsu paper wasn't good enough, the seal was torn apart each time he teleported. If the seal got destroyed with every use, it couldn't function as a reliable anchor. There was a huge risk of the seal braking midway and him getting stuck in the space tube. He might need a metal surface or specialized reinforced parchment. Something more durable which is capable of withstanding space compression bursts like Minato's three pronged kunai. 'I need to talk with Dad or Utakata-Sensei about this, I really hope they have that kunai.' He thought. But all of that could come later. Right now, he needed to fully use the timer before his Intelligence involuntarily broke through to 80 points, that would mean wasting almost 3 minutes of highest level of intelligence possible and if he really did that he might curse himself to death. ~~~~~ {Please note that this is a very basic and rudimentary form of Flying Thunder God Jutsu which he developed from scratch. Yes, this is entirely new version of it, though I wrote him thinking that this must be Tobirama's version, I will tell you now that it is not. Though the seal is not his own, the rest is his own version, Ren Takahashi's version and I plan to develop it further in the future.} {Now then, tell me what you thought about it. As you know, I don't give full info dumps about new things at one time, I like to develop them slowly, taking time to explain stuff, so more details would eventually follow as he continued to perfect it, but tell me what you thought of stuff till now.} {Also, there are still 3 minutes left, wonder what new stuff we would see.} {If you want, you can support me on pat-reon} { h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / Z e e n o n } {You know what else} {280 Stones = Extra Chapter} {STONES!!!!}