The Fox 🦊

Chapter 10: Hope

The boy wakes up with a start his chest heaving and clutching desperately at his blankets. Naruto was drenched in sweat.

"Did it work, Kurama-sama?" He gasped out.

It worked. Take a deep breath, relax your senses and you'll see. He took as deep a breath as he could through his heaving lungs struggles. Trying to make himself calm down. Soon his shoulders slumped all on their own and he managed to calmly take a deep breath and centre himself.

The pathways were lit up in a whitish chakra hue, trickling gently throughout his entire body endlessly. The centre point of the pathways was no longer one huge pit of gathering chakra, but a point where more chakra was generated.

He giggles in spite of himself.

"We can train now, huh, Kurama-san?" His voice was the epitome of excited, if this was anything like magic training, though he had no clue what happens during said training then this would be fun, he loved magic and what it could do, learning is the absolute best thing in every world. He does have knowledge in the arts of ruins and the basics of fighting every librarian was required to have some training in both after all.

He imagines that training in this world is different though. Kurama chuckles softly.

This will be difficult for you, kit. Are you sure that you wish to begin so soon? The kitsune asked him.

He nods quickly hair flying as he does so.

Naruto regrets the decision to start three hours later. He'd had to go through a series of pre-exercises to stretch his muscles and then a series of fighting stances and kata's. Even with his running every morning, he couldn't move at all afterwards.

He lies limp on the ground of the dojo room he had equipped, every part of him felt on fire.

Not so easy, now is it, kit?

"Nah, this sucks." He inhaled deeply to calm his panting. "....I want to continue."

What!?! The shout had him wincing, grinning sheepishly he begins to rub at his arms to calm the shaking there.

"I have to get stronger. Not just for myself either. I want to help others. I want to fight, let me learn. Please." He begs then, he wants so much. In his old life he hadn't done anything but be a librarian. He's tired of sitting around all day and doing nothing but guard books and run in the mornings.

He, he wanted to help protect others.

The mighty beast sighed.

So shall we continue then? He beams eye sparkling.

"Yes!"

Let us continue with seals then. You know the basics of what symbols to use. Now let us apply it to paper. We shall continue physical exercises tomorrow. The rest of the day is spent with paint brush in hand trying different symbols and combinations of them.

Runes and seals are two entirely different things he learns then. Though both could be used for the same tasks roughly. Roughly being the operative word. Runes are complex but have set rules to them and could be used on their own.

They require just a small spark of mana to activate something everything living has. Even in this world mana was a thing, it was dancing along the edges of chakra however, he's surprised he can see and feel them, he hadn't been able to before. Maybe it's coupled with his ability to sense chakra now that he has an abundance of it.

Seals are different, they needed a minimum of two symbols interconnected on anything concrete and stable, where runes could be drawn in the air. Seals did not have any pre set capabilities and any symbol could stand for anything as long as you the sealer willed it.