…
Murakami remained seated for several minutes after opening his eyes.
The notebook still lay open before him with notes on the Shockwave Jutsu still fresh.
The conclusions were sound and improvements were real.
Yet his attention wasn't on any of that, It was on the blue moon, or rather, the place beneath it.
His fingers tapped lightly against the wooden desk.
The mindscape had proven to be far more useful than expected.
Useful enough to be dangerous.
Murakami wasn't arrogant enough to believe something that valuable came without limitations.
Everything had a cost.
The only question was whether he had noticed it yet.
After a brief moment of consideration, he closed his eyes again, his consciousness sinking inward.
The familiar still sea appeared beneath his feet with the blue moon hanging silently above.
Everything was exactly as he had just left it.
Murakami looked around calmly.
Nothing happened. There was no instability or visible changes.
The sea remained still.
The moon remained silent.
"...Fine."
If observation produced nothing, experimentation would.
Without hesitation, he recreated the twelve constructs from before.
The figures appeared one after another and charged at him and Murakami moved.
Palms.
Elbows.
Kicks.
Footwork.
The battle unfolded rapidly with construct after construct shattering apart under his precise strikes.
The moment one disappeared, another took its place.
Murakami continued.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Time had become difficult to judge here.
The moon never moved.
The sky never changed.
Only the battles continued.
What felt like nearly two hours of intense mental sparring passed in the mindscape.
When he finally paused and checked the real world by briefly surfacing his awareness, the sunlight in his study had barely moved.
No more than twenty minutes had elapsed outside.
"Time flows differently here," he noted. "Roughly three to four times faster, at least for now."
Emboldened by the discovery, he sank back in fully.
But before pushing the constructs further, he decided to test other possibilities.
He started with genjutsu.
The mindscape itself was already a world formed from spiritual energy. If genjutsu fundamentally targets perception, then this place should theoretically be the ideal environment to study it.
Murakami raised a hand towards the moon and the sea before him rippled.
A moment later, a second moon appeared beside the original.
Then a third.
The false moons lingered for several seconds before dissolving back into drifting particles.
Murakami brought his hand down and narrowed his eyes. "Interesting."
He repeated the process several more times.
Shadows stretched, horizon bent, the sound of distant footsteps echoed across the empty sea despite there being nobody present.
None of the illusions were particularly impressive, but they all shared one trait.
They felt natural.
As though the mindscape itself was assisting the construction.
Murakami made a mental note of it.
Genjutsu might be easier to study here.
Not because the mindscape granted mastery, but because it allowed him to observe how perception could be manipulated without risking backlash from a failed attempt.
Afterward, he turned his attention toward fuinjutsu.
Unlike genjutsu, which manipulated perception, fuinjutsu was calculus that imposed structure.
Concepts given form through chakra.
Murakami raised a hand.
A simple containment formula surfaced in his mind, one of the basic civilian storage seals he had made before.
Blue lines appeared in the air.
One stroke.
Then another.
Soon, an entire seal floated before him, glowing faintly beneath the blue moon.
Murakami's eyes narrowed.
It held.
Not only that, he could feel the chakra flowing through every line of the formula.
The seal wasn't merely an image.
It was functioning.
Interesting.
With a thought, he expanded the formula.
The individual components separated from one another and floated in the air like pieces of a puzzle.
Storage matrix.
Containment ring.
Activation trigger.
Stabilization script.
Each section could be examined independently.
Rotated.
Modified.
Reassembled.
Murakami spent several minutes dismantling and reconstructing the formula repeatedly.
The process felt remarkably natural.
As though the mindscape itself favored this type of work.
Eventually, he attempted a modification.
A small adjustment to one of the stabilization components.
The result was immediate.
The seal trembled.
The flowing chakra destabilized.
Then the entire structure collapsed into scattered particles of blue light.
Murakami wasn't disappointed.
Quite the opposite.
The failure had shown him exactly where the formula had broken.
In the real world, discovering the same flaw might have required hours of testing, materials, and repeated inscription.
Here, the answer had been immediate.
His eyes drifted toward the moon overhead.
A thought surfaced.
Perhaps this realm wasn't meant for combat training at all.
Perhaps its true value lay elsewhere.
In Analysis, experimentation and understanding.
But the mindscape couldn't replace reality. A seal still had to be drawn, Chakra still had to be supplied.
But before any of that, a seal had to be understood.
And for understanding...
This place might be unparalleled.
Murakami nodded slightly.
The mindscape wasn't a shortcut but a workshop.
Only after these tests did he return to the constructs.
He increased their number.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Fifty.
The sea beneath him rippled slightly and Murakami immediately noticed it. His eyes narrowed. "Interesting."
The moonlight reflecting across the water seemed slightly dimmer than before.
Not by much…barely noticeable infact, but it was there.
And so, time passed as the battle unfolded.
Eventually the number of constructs reached one hundred.
Then two hundred.
The sea beneath him was no longer perfectly still.
Subtle waves moved across its surface.
The moonlight had dimmed further.
Not dramatically but just enough to feel different.
Murakami stopped and the remaining constructs froze. "...So that's how it is."
The mindscape wasn't limitless.
The realization wasn't disappointing, If anything, it was reassuring.
Limitations made things understandable and understandable things could be mastered.
He dismissed the remaining constructs, one by one they dissolved into drifting blue particles and the sea calmed slightly, but not completely.
Murakami looked up toward the moon and for the first time since discovering this place, he felt something strange.
A faint pressure, almost like fatigue, but it wasn't physical.
Mental.
It was subtle and easy to ignore if he decided, but it was undeniably present.
Murakami considered it quietly, then decided to push further.
Immediately, a second version of himself appeared several meters away.
The construct raised its palm.
Shockwave Jutsu.
BOOM.
The compressed force erupted forward.
Murakami created another.
Then another.
Then another.
Dozens of simulated releases followed.
Compression.
Layering.
Dispersion.
Correction.
Repeat.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The process became increasingly efficient.
Each adjustment produced new data.
Each failure revealed another flaw.
His understanding deepened rapidly.
Then suddenly, the sea surged and Murakami's eyes snapped upward as a wave rolled across the previously calm water.
It wasn't large in the sense of a wave, but it was unnatural.
The first construct flickered, its arm distorting briefly before returning to normal.
The blue moon dimmed further.
Murakami frowned. "...Interesting."
Then he looked at the dozen constructs in front of him.
As they performed the Shockwave Jutsu, the pressure increased.
The sea quickly became restless and the moonlight wavered.
One of the constructs lost an arm.
Another lost half its face.
A third dissolved entirely.
The instability continued to spread rapidly.
Murakami's expression became thoughtful, not in fear but analysis.
The mindscape was rejecting the load, or perhaps it lacked the energy to sustain it.
Which meant the question became obvious.
What powered this place?
The answer arrived almost immediately.
Spiritual energy. Mental energy.
Call it whatever name one preferred.
The result remained the same.
This realm was consuming something.
And judging by the growing pressure behind his eyes, It was consuming him.
Murakami nodded slowly. That made sense.
Nothing this useful would operate for free.
The moment that conclusion formed, the blue moon flickered.
Murakami's eyes narrowed sharply as he felt something shift, then, everything shattered.
…
His eyes snapped open.
The wooden desk appearing before him.
A sharp headache stabbed through his skull.
Murakami immediately pressed two fingers against his temple. "...I see."
The pain wasn't unbearable, but it was enough to confirm the theory and establish a limit.
The mindscape accelerated learning but excessive use consumed spiritual energy.
Push to far and the realm itself forcibly ejected him.
Murakami leaned back slowly.
The headache lingered, his thoughts felt slightly slower than usual.
Not dangerously but it was quite noticeable.
Which meant entering combat immediately afterward would be foolish.
A shinobi who couldn't think clearly was a dead shinobi.
The realization settled quietly in his mind.
Then, despite the headache, a faint smile appeared.
Because limitations meant structure, and structure meant optimization.
Now he simply had to determine how far he could push before the cost outweighed the benefit.
The experiment had been worthwhile.
Very worthwhile, and more importantly, It had revealed just how much he still didn't understand.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
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