18 Man this is Hard (2/2)
He looks at me and seems to smile at my question, ”Hm, I am surprised, most would take this opportunity at the drop of a hat, especially given the speed. Very well, the side effect is that you will slowly turn into a dragon every time you use your sage mode.” Well I am glad he was honest with me, actually this dragon reminds me of myself, or maybe I'm like the dragon?
We both are open with anything, but if someone doesn't ask then we won't tell. Or rather we won't its more so we don't think it matters too much until it's mentioned. I nod at the dragon and give him my answer, ”Well I quite like my body as it is so I will naturally learn sage mode then.”
He looks at me and reveals his teeth in a quite terrifying smile that then evolves into laughter, ”My my, you surprise me more and more, first you summon 2 legendary beasts out of the 10 of us in just one summon, then you get an easier method but still choose the method that is difficult? I like you more and more. Come and get on my back, if you are to do it this way then we need that tiger as well.” I look up and raise an eyebrow and ponder for a bit.
After thinking I talk to the dragon, ”I could teleport the both of us there if you want?” He thinks for a moment before nodding at me, so I grab a part of his wing and flash him over with me to the tigers area.
Once we arrive the dragon calls out, ”Tiger! He has chosen the hard method instead of the easy one! He is worthy!” Wait worthy of what? I look to the dragon and try asking him what he meant but before I can there is a voice off to my side.
When I look to my left I can see a pair of eyes approaching while speaking, ”Hmpf, so he is worthy of receiving both of our styles for sage mode? The Dragon's mystery and the Tiger's dominance. Ha! I pity you honestly, these are some of the hardest ones to comprehend among the 10 of us, are you still willing boy?” I look into the eyes and nod my head, I have firmed my resolution and will do this.
The eyes squint slightly then glance to the Dragon before speaking to it, ”It seems you are correct, he is worthy to learn them at the least. Let's see if the boy survives though. You go and take him to learn how to absorb nature chakra first as I hate that step.” After speaking to the dragon the eyes disappear and silence fills the air.
I look back to the dragon and it seems to have a wry smile on it, or at least as wry a smile as a dragon can muster, ”Well we may as well get started. The best place to train nature chakra is at a spot on our mountain, if you get on my back and teleport us there I will take you to it.” I nod and climb up his wing that has been set down before I flash us both over to the mountain. Granted my teleporting is cheap but man, it does take a decent chunk of my chakra to teleport a dragon so far.
After he sees we are at the mountain he starts rising into the air by fully extending his wings then moving them up and down, causing us to gain more and more height until he then shifts his wings slightly (I assume) and propel us forward at intense speeds. I actually almost fell off at one point but thank god I left a mark on him.
After clinging to dear life for a few minutes he stopped and started slowly descending. I started feeling my hair and noticed it was all over the place without seeing it, I just sighed and accepted it. Once we touched down on the ground I looked around and noticed that it appeared to be a hot springs type area, but a natural one. Neat.
The dragon looks at me, ”This is where you will train due to it possessing all natures of chakra here, in fact this is the densest point of nature chakra which is why this is where we hatch our young at. Now the method to collect nature chakra into yourself is...” He starts going into a monologue for a few minutes and I don't really care to state every thing he said(A/N: Definitely not author being lazy...), but basically what I have to do it draw in just the right amount on nature chakra so that it forms a third of my chakra. Once I get it to the perfect point of it then my body will remember it faster and faster to the point that I would be able to enter sage mode in a second of preparation so long as I have some of my own chakra.
I moved and sat down on the ground in the middle of a large amount of the springs and summon as many shadow clones as I can, I am going to brute force this basically. All my clones, well into the thousands now, start drawing in nature energy. Some slowly, some quickly.
Actually there were a few that drew in too much so they unsummoned themselves so I could get my chakra and their memories back, then I summoned more to replace them with their memories.
This kept cycling around for several hours, clones popping and me replacing them, however I could feel myself getting close and closer to the sweet spot. I was personally taking the slow and steady approach to this and was slowly gaining the natural energy.
Eventually a day passed and I was exhausted, I wanted to stop and take a break but honestly I knew I was close. Some of the first clones I spawned, the ones going a little faster than me got the sweet spot down almost to a T, and I went even slower after getting their memories. Then I unsummoned all the clones I had left, getting their collective memories and exhaustion. I fight back barely though and summon over a hundred clones before I finally pass out.