So what do you do when you barely have a yen to your name, no connections, and a scrap heap of materials to work with?
Well, you probably wouldn’t be parsing what little you could from your “funds” and buying the cheapest sake available just to have some modicum of comfort against the coldest winds.
No. You’d probably buy a room. Or at least some pants.
Instead, here was Yuuto.
Clad in what he generously referred to as “puppet armor,” which was, in truth, nothing more than the limbs and fragments of his broken machinations stitched together by ninja wire and faith. They had endured the journey so far. Why change it out now?
With nothing more than a campfire and warm sake, he'd contemplate on his odd life.
Fittingly, while living through one of the strangest times of his life, he found himself in one of its strangest predicaments.
Despite his moping, Yuuto began running through the past, scrying his mind for anything of value.
“Let’s see… I restocked my equipment. I went to the Land of the Frogs to ask Donyokaeru for help…”
Yuuto shuddered at the thought of the slimy frog who had brokered his initial deal to put him in line with the Frogs. It wasn’t that Yuuto lacked the right to summon toads, but the Frogs were different. Like kin. It was hard to explain.
Either way, without Donyokaeru, he never would have secured the allies needed to attack the second Primordial.
Speaking of that.
"What the hell was that thing? It was nothing like Chikako...". [First Primordial Lord Hunt]
Chikako was the Plant Deity of the Primordial Realm, the Abyss. She had been the first of his assigned kills, carried out to enact the vengeance of the abyssal Steward, Uzuaihanketsu. Chikako was sentient. She spoke. She was entirely cognizant.
But these other Primordials felt like wild animals.
Yuuto would have loved to ask Uzu for answers, but the less interaction with that being, the better. Uzu was a strange creature. It appeared as a maestro and was capable of toying with shadows and the souls of the dead alike. It was a truly formidable entity and the one who had blessed Yuuto with dark power.
To think that after all the trouble of relinquishing that gift and being purified by the Maiden of Raiden, he had been cursed again.
“Seems like they have no intention of letting us go,” he muttered. He lamented the dark realm’s hold over the Masaru Clan, like a constant storm cloud looming overhead.
He thought back to his first encounter with Uzu. The creature had initially tried to kill him, but after Yuuto fended off its attacks, it saw value in him. A Masaru who could be useful.
He had been given a time limit to strike the next Primordial Lord.
It was only through sheer conviction and the resources he had acquired from Titan that Yuuto had managed to complete the first hunt at all. Without Titan’s aid and massive support, it would have been impossible, which was why he involved the Frogs in the first place.
Yet the most concerning part of all this was not his defeat in the Abyss.
It was the lost time.
A block of memory was simply gone. It was tattered and shredded into endless loops and drifting moments swallowed by darkness. It felt as though something had been trying to change him. Invade him.
At first, he dismissed it as the sensation of unconsciousness within the Abyss.
But when he awoke, his body was different.
Yuuto flicked his hand outward and summoned his chakra with no restraint, no finesse, and no control. It was just raw, unfiltered power.
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That ominous chakra again.
It reminded him of when he was a Dark Sage, infected by the cursed power of the Abyss itself. Only now it was stronger, more potent. The twisted power was disturbingly natural, like breathing.
Needless to say, it was chaotic, unstable, and unrefined. Worse still, alongside this foreign chakra, he had lost much of his acquired power.
Most of his ninjutsu capabilities were gone, as if he had been severed from the vast elemental access and chakra reserves he once commanded.
Then there were the bloodlines he had carefully curated through the Chimera technique. They were now utterly destroyed. The Sharingan taken from a rogue Uchiha. The sound specialization inherited from the Hashigaki. Even the temporal power gained through absorbing a Seikon and crossing into the Shadow Realm itself, including his shadow manipulation once akin to the Nara.
All of it was gone.
At this point, Yuuto had little choice but to rely on puppeteering and Genjutsu. He would rebuild his ninjutsu in time, after remastering the Genjutsu senses and reconstructing his puppetry from the ground up.
He set aside his sake and reached down to the makeshift sled bound together by shattered puppet remnants. Most of it consisted of what remained of Katakuri, salvaged alongside him.
From between the bramble, he pulled a book.
“The Art of Borrowed Reality.”
Authored by Yuhi Enko.
The Hollowed Puppeteer, would sit in silence, the flickering fire being the only source of sounds until he turned the pages of the manuscript.
Ingesting the lessons of a Genjutsu master.
Well, you probably wouldn’t be parsing what little you could from your “funds” and buying the cheapest sake available just to have some modicum of comfort against the coldest winds.
No. You’d probably buy a room. Or at least some pants.
Instead, here was Yuuto.
Clad in what he generously referred to as “puppet armor,” which was, in truth, nothing more than the limbs and fragments of his broken machinations stitched together by ninja wire and faith. They had endured the journey so far. Why change it out now?
With nothing more than a campfire and warm sake, he'd contemplate on his odd life.
Fittingly, while living through one of the strangest times of his life, he found himself in one of its strangest predicaments.
Despite his moping, Yuuto began running through the past, scrying his mind for anything of value.
“Let’s see… I restocked my equipment. I went to the Land of the Frogs to ask Donyokaeru for help…”
Yuuto shuddered at the thought of the slimy frog who had brokered his initial deal to put him in line with the Frogs. It wasn’t that Yuuto lacked the right to summon toads, but the Frogs were different. Like kin. It was hard to explain.
Either way, without Donyokaeru, he never would have secured the allies needed to attack the second Primordial.
Speaking of that.
"What the hell was that thing? It was nothing like Chikako...". [First Primordial Lord Hunt]
Chikako was the Plant Deity of the Primordial Realm, the Abyss. She had been the first of his assigned kills, carried out to enact the vengeance of the abyssal Steward, Uzuaihanketsu. Chikako was sentient. She spoke. She was entirely cognizant.
But these other Primordials felt like wild animals.
Yuuto would have loved to ask Uzu for answers, but the less interaction with that being, the better. Uzu was a strange creature. It appeared as a maestro and was capable of toying with shadows and the souls of the dead alike. It was a truly formidable entity and the one who had blessed Yuuto with dark power.
To think that after all the trouble of relinquishing that gift and being purified by the Maiden of Raiden, he had been cursed again.
“Seems like they have no intention of letting us go,” he muttered. He lamented the dark realm’s hold over the Masaru Clan, like a constant storm cloud looming overhead.
He thought back to his first encounter with Uzu. The creature had initially tried to kill him, but after Yuuto fended off its attacks, it saw value in him. A Masaru who could be useful.
He had been given a time limit to strike the next Primordial Lord.
It was only through sheer conviction and the resources he had acquired from Titan that Yuuto had managed to complete the first hunt at all. Without Titan’s aid and massive support, it would have been impossible, which was why he involved the Frogs in the first place.
Yet the most concerning part of all this was not his defeat in the Abyss.
It was the lost time.
A block of memory was simply gone. It was tattered and shredded into endless loops and drifting moments swallowed by darkness. It felt as though something had been trying to change him. Invade him.
At first, he dismissed it as the sensation of unconsciousness within the Abyss.
But when he awoke, his body was different.
Yuuto flicked his hand outward and summoned his chakra with no restraint, no finesse, and no control. It was just raw, unfiltered power.
That ominous chakra again.
It reminded him of when he was a Dark Sage, infected by the cursed power of the Abyss itself. Only now it was stronger, more potent. The twisted power was disturbingly natural, like breathing.
Needless to say, it was chaotic, unstable, and unrefined. Worse still, alongside this foreign chakra, he had lost much of his acquired power.
Most of his ninjutsu capabilities were gone, as if he had been severed from the vast elemental access and chakra reserves he once commanded.
Then there were the bloodlines he had carefully curated through the Chimera technique. They were now utterly destroyed. The Sharingan taken from a rogue Uchiha. The sound specialization inherited from the Hashigaki. Even the temporal power gained through absorbing a Seikon and crossing into the Shadow Realm itself, including his shadow manipulation once akin to the Nara.
All of it was gone.
At this point, Yuuto had little choice but to rely on puppeteering and Genjutsu. He would rebuild his ninjutsu in time, after remastering the Genjutsu senses and reconstructing his puppetry from the ground up.
He set aside his sake and reached down to the makeshift sled bound together by shattered puppet remnants. Most of it consisted of what remained of Katakuri, salvaged alongside him.
From between the bramble, he pulled a book.
“The Art of Borrowed Reality.”
Authored by Yuhi Enko.
The Hollowed Puppeteer, would sit in silence, the flickering fire being the only source of sounds until he turned the pages of the manuscript.
Ingesting the lessons of a Genjutsu master.