Chapter 74: Unraveling Mysteries
After a week of fighting off and on, Natsume began to notice something with her Sharingan. At first, she would win every exchange with her techniques. After a few days, Saru had caught up to her and their fights would either end in a tie or their score would always even out to a tie. At the end of the week, Natsume noticed that he was holding back. The next day, as they prepared to spar once more, she spoke first.
"Don't hold back anymore." Hearing her words, Saru had an awkward expression and scratched the back of his head. It's not that he had any strange thoughts like trying to protect her pride. When he was just a regular monkey, it was instinctual to not overdo it when playing. Saru didn't think it would be fun anymore if he was always winning.
"Yes." He said and his expression turned serious. Saru only entered the Sage path recently and was still learning to think differently. Natsume never went easy on him when he was weaker, and that pressure pushed him to grow stronger. Therefore, he decided to go all out in hopes of doing the same for her. Like that, the intensity of their spars increased significantly.
Since Saru didn't hold back, he began to nurture his ferocity. The true technique of Monkey Senjutsu was relentless strength. In order to perfect this technique, the sage would have to continuously absorb Nature energy in combat. It was broken down into sections starting with just utilizing the Nature energy stored in the body previously.
The strength of his attacks began to increase exponentially, refining Natsume's battle sense. The attacks were very lethal, and it seemed the Saru had no intention of holding back at all. This caused her to brush death a few times. Fortunately, the gap between them wasn't so huge that she couldn't at least protect herself. But to do so, she deployed every skill she possessed except for her Mangekyou Sharingan.
Natsume was already a natural born sensor, combined with her Sharingan, she could easily track the movements of another shinobi. However, as Saru began to improve his senjutsu, she found it nearly impossible to track him with her current abilities. His chakra blended in with the surrounding Nature energy, completely disguising his presence.
After a month of intense competition, Natsume leaned against a tree panting heavily. Saru was on the ground with a look of confusion on his face. Just then, he had completely dispersed his chakra and hidden away from Natsume, a technique he eventually developed against her. However, just as he was going to land the winning blow, she countered him and slammed him on the ground.
Realizing what had just happened, Natsume smiled and raised her eyebrows in excitement. In that moment, just before he hit her, she sensed something. After Saru started actively hiding from her, she could no longer track him. Instead, she was always reacting to his attacks as they were executed. This gave her no shortage of bruises. However, she never gave up trying to track him. At that moment, she could detect the slight difference between the Nature energy around her and the Nature energy inside Saru's body.
This wasn't just useful for improving her tracking and sensing abilities. Any improvement in perceiving Nature energy was a step forward in mastering Senjutsu. Although they didn't finish the fight, Natsume looked around her and started to see thousands of transformations happening in an instant. Nature energy wasn't a static, uniform system. Every living thing had chakra, but everything also contributed to Nature. She sat down and closed her eyes.
The sensation she experienced was like seeing color for the first time after living in a world of black and white. The uniform amalgamated grey Nature energy of the past became like a kaleidoscope of colors. Sometimes they would mix and other times they would separate. She sensed the transformations happening for a long time. Unknowingly, several days had passed. It wasn't until her hunger had reached a limit that she woke up from her meditation.
Saru had long brought her food for when she woke up. Seeing the tray of fruits and vegetables, she began to eat. Fortunately, the roots that grew on the mountain could replace meat, otherwise she would not have grown as much as she did. The only downside was that the roots in question were a bit unpalatable. After ripping off a large chunk of the tuber, she immediately bit into the flesh of a sweet fruit to offset the taste.
While she ate, she pondered over chakra. In her previous life, humans did not have any chakra. And according to the memories, there was a time in this world where humans did not have chakra either. However, once Kaguya ate the fruit and was dealt with by her sons, everything eventually came to possess chakra. In fact, it became such an integral part of the world that losing your chakra would ultimately kill you.
However, chakra was formed by the combination of physical and spiritual power in the body. Those without the aptitude would only possess a small amount of chakra to keep them alive. In that case, how could humans survive before chakra? Natsume organized her thoughts and memories. Humans did not need chakra to survive, but once they had chakra, they could not survive without it. The Chakra Fruit was created by the God Tree, which is a parasitic plant that feeds on the vitality of the planet.
In other words, Chakra is a power system from outside this world originally. Therefore, chakra was more of a curse to all living things in this world than a boon. A chain that attached them to their progenitor. However, being born in this world, they were given the chance to surpass the oppressor. Despite these thoughts, Natsume did not have a grand scheme to save the shinobi world.
However, the ideas she had today could potentially nurture a hero in the future. Natsume pondered the mysteries of reincarnation as she finished eating. She stood up and stretched her back before heading to her cave abode to rest.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Pengincognito
Pengincognito This will probably be the trend going forward, I'll release a chunk of chapters in a short time, with 1 or 2 here and there, and then not have time to write. I'm still thinking of y'all though <3
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