Bonus Chapters at 100 Power Stones!
"Normal Dialogue"
'Inner thoughts'
[Year X785]
~ With Shisui, in Crocus ~
As Shisui continued his leisurely walk with a snack in hand, a mory hit him mid-bite. His shadow clone, dispatched days earlier to explore the vast regions of Fiore, had dispersed, sending its gathered information flooding back to him. He finished his snack in one bite, eyes unfocused for just a mont as his mind sorted through the influx of new mories, separating them from his own experiences.
He found a nearby bench and took a seat on it, before the world around him faded as the forest mories took precedence in his consciousness.
His clone had been moving through dense woodland, the kind where the trees stood so close together that the sunlight could only reach the ground in broken patterns. The air there was different, thicker sohow. The forest floor felt almost like walking on a living thing, each step t with a gentle give of moss and leaves.
It was during the third day of exploration that the clone had ca across sothing unexpected. The trees suddenly gave way to a perfectly circular clearing. At the center stood a house, if you could even call it that.
The structure seed to have been grown rather than been built, its walls ford from wood that curved and flowed in ways that lumber simply couldn't. Vines crawled up its sides, not as invaders but as integral parts of the design. Windows of various shapes and sizes were scattered across its surface without any apparent pattern, and what appeared to be a chimney sprouted branches with actual leaves.
The clone had approached cautiously, senses alert for any signs of danger. The clearing humd with a strange energy that made the hairs on the back of its neck stand up. Not threatening, exactly, but decidedly not normal. It felt old, like standing in the presence of sothing that had witnessed decades pass by.
Just as the clone reached the edge of the clearing, its awareness picked up movent from the forest to the east. Soone was approaching. In an instant, the clone had vanished from the open, lting into the shadows of a massive oak tree.
Breath controlled, chakra suppressed, body perfectly still. Techniques ingrained through years of ANBU training.
The approaching figure erged from the trees. An elderly man who seed to be part plant himself. His skin had the texture of bark, and small vines grew along his arms. He walked with a wooden staff that appeared freshly cut, yet sprouted green leaves. The clone watched, perfectly concealed, as the man walked directly across the clearing toward the strange house.
Then, without warning, the man stopped. His posture didn't change, but sothing in the air did. A shift so subtle that only soone with the clone's training could notice it.
"I know you're hiding there," the man said, his voice surprisingly strong for soone who appeared so ancient. He did not turn, did not even glance in the clone's direction. "Whoever you are, I suggest showing yourself before I take your actions as a hostile one towards ."
The clone's first instinct was to retreat, to disappear deeper into the forest and circle back once the strange tree-man had gone. It was the logical choice. Revealing oneself to an unknown entity of clearly significant power went against every principle of shinobi operations.
And yet...
Sothing stopped the clone. An intuition that did not co with tactical training, but with experience. Shisui had always possessed what his comrades called "unnervingly good instincts," an almost supernatural ability to sense when the handbook approach was wrong. Those instincts now scread that running would be a mistake. That this encounter, unexpected as it was, might be important.
For three heartbeats, the clone remained frozen in indecision. The tree-man waited, patient as the forest itself, giving no indication that he would act aggressively but making it clear that he would not simply walk away.
The clone's hand hovered near the kunai concealed at its waist. A reflexive preparation for trouble. But another part of its programming, the part carrying Shisui's judgnt, overrode the defensive response.
"I an no harm," the clone called out, stepping from the shadows with deliberate movents that communicated non-aggression.
The tree-man turned then, his eyes a startling vibrant green that evaluated the clone. His face, weathered like old wood, cracked into a smile.
"I should hope not," he said, his tone suddenly lighter. "It would be terribly inconvenient to have to regrow this clearing if we had to fight. The trees here are just beginning to appreciate their arrangent."
The clone blinked, caught off-guard by the shift from warning to what seed almost like humour.
"I'm simply exploring," the clone explained, maintaining a respectful distance. "I didn't realize this area was soone's ho."
The tree-man studied him for a long mont, his gaze penetrating in a way that made the clone wonder if his disguise as an ordinary human was as effective as it should have been.
"Exploring, hmm? Well, explorer, I am Warrod Sequen. And you've wandered rather far from the typical paths." He gestured toward the house with his staff. "Since you've co all this way, perhaps you'd like so tea before you continue your... exploration?"
The invitation surprised the clone, but those sa instincts that had prevented it from fleeing now suggested that accepting might be the wisest course. There was power here, but no sense of imdiate threat.
"I would be honored," the clone had replied, following the man called Warrod Sequen toward the strange house.
Back in the tavern, Shisui blinked, returning to the present mont. The mories continued to unfold in his mind, but he had processed enough to understand the significance of what his clone encountered.
Soone had detected him despite his stealth techniques. Soone who could be connected to the very forest itself.
Soone worth knowing more about. Closing his eyes, Shisui took a deep breath before reviewing the mories once again.
~ Earlier with Shisui's clone ~
Inside, Warrod's ho defied conventional architecture even more than its exterior suggested. Furniture sprouts directly from the floor. Chairs with backs that resembled unfurling ferns, tables with surfaces smooth as polished stone but clearly made of wood. Shisui sat across from Warrod at one such table, a cup of tea steaming before him, untouched.
The silence between them was evident, neither uncomfortable nor comfortable, simply waiting to be broken like a surface of still water.
Shisui's senses remained on high alert despite the peaceful setting. Shisui may not have been an expert at detecting Ethernano, but the sheer pressure of Warrod's magical presence filled the room like an invisible fog.
It reminded him of standing in the Third Hokage's office during monts of seriousness. That subtle weight of power held in careful check, the feeling that what you were perceiving was rely the tip of sothing vast and deep.
Yet it was different. The Third's chakra had felt like fire reduced to embers but ready to roar to life in an instant. Warrod's energy felt more like the forest itself, patient and calming, but capable of sudden and overwhelming growth. If Shisui had to place it, Warrod's strength seed comparable to the Third Hokage. Though not in his pri, but rather in his later years when he had aged.
Warrod's fingers tapped against the table's surface. A small flower blood where his index finger touched, white petals unfurling and reaching toward the sunlight streaming through a round window.
"So," Warrod finally broke the silence, "what brings a young man with your particular... talents... to my secluded corner of the woods?"
His eyes fixed on Shisui with an intensity that betrayed his otherwise relaxed deanor. "There are no towns nearby, no job postings that would bring a mage this way."
Shisui took a careful sip of the tea, buying ti to consider his response. It tasted of honey and mint.
"I'm not what you would really call a mage," he said truthfully. "Just a traveler. I like to explore places off the beaten path."
"Just a traveler," Warrod repeated, amusent crinkling the bark-like texture of his face. "One who moves without disturbing a single twig and suppresses his presence so completely that even the birds would not notice him. Interesting skills for 'just a traveler.'"
Shisui offered a modest smile. "Just so things I picked up during my travels. The world can be dangerous. Learning to move quietly has saved my life more than once."
"Indeed it can, and indeed it has, I'd wager." Warrod leaned back, his chair seeming to reshape itself to better accommodate him. "And where has your quiet traveling taken you before you found your way to my doorstep?"
Here was the question that Shisui had been anticipating. The clone's heart rate increased slightly, though nothing in his external deanor changed. The reality was that he had been nowhere in this world except parts of Fiore. A month was not long enough to explore beyond the kingdom, especially when much of that ti was spent simply learning how this world functioned.
"Many places," he answered, mind racing through his actual experiences in his own world, translating them into sothing that would make sense here. "I've always had a restless spirit."
"Such as?" Warrod pressed, but his tone remains conversational, genuinely curious rather than suspicious.
Shisui set down his teacup, composing the narrative carefully. "There's a peninsula to the far east where the mist is so thick you can scoop it up like water. The people there build their hos on stilts that rise above the mist, and they navigate by the sound of bells placed at important locations." He was describing the Land of Water without naming it, the mory of a mission there years ago still vivid.
Warrod's eyebrows raised with interest. "I've not heard of such a place in Ishgar."
~ End of Chapter 05 ~
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