Murakami POV.
Skill proficiency.
A term that was never truly used or properly defined in this world's skill power system.
What determines one's level in regards to a Jutsu performed.
Ninjutsu. Taijutsu. Genjutsu. Bukijutsu.
No matter which branch you take, there should be a level of mastery from a beginner to mastery or perfection of a Jutsu.
I could understand why there hasn't been an in-depth study into this as everyone just focuses on how effective and efficient it is in killing the enemy with trickery backing them up.
That was the frame this entire reality was built upon.
That has been the way of things since the dawn of the warring states era. I know this because I have done quite a bit of study into the history of this world.
This was something not many transmigrators and reincarnators thought to do upon arriving in another world.
Understanding the world's past was the closest thing to reading its operating manual.
Most people arrived in a new world with their eyes fixed on the future; power systems to exploit, famous figures to befriend, catastrophes to avert, destinies to hijack.
They treated history as background noise, a prelude already concluded.
But history was not a prelude.
It was momentum.
Wars did not begin when the first blade was drawn. They began decades earlier in little decisions, in resource shortages, in grudges carefully preserved and passed down like heirlooms.
Alliances were not born from goodwill but from converging fears.
Betrayals were rarely sudden; they were cultivated over time.
The Warring States Era made that painfully clear.
Clans did not fight because they hated one another.
They hated one another because they had been fighting for generations.
Violence had become inheritance.
Children were not raised to choose war, they were raised inside it, taught its logic before they could even read.
Honor, revenge, survival, pride… all of it was simply the language people used to justify what had already become inevitable.
And inevitability was the most dangerous force of all.
Because once people believed something could not change, they stopped trying to change it.
That was how entire eras became self-sustaining.
Thankfully, Hashirama brought an end to the previous era and ushered in this new era.
The Shinobi era... It's called.
Most transmigrators assumed they could alter the story by inserting themselves at key moments; saving someone here, eliminating someone there, offering knowledge from another world like a cheat code.
But they misunderstood something fundamental.
A story was not built on such moments.
It was built on pressures.
Remove one warlord, another would rise to fill the same vacuum. Prevent one massacre, and the fear it was meant to instill would manifest elsewhere.
Even revolutions, once successful, often rebuilt the very structures they had destroyed, simply with new names at the top.
Systems resisted change the way bodies resisted infection.
Unless you understood what forces held the system together… you were not changing the world.
You were merely disturbing it.
That was why I studied.
Trade and finance. Marriage alliances and Clan bloodlines. Agricultural cycles and Geography. Religious doctrines and Population movements. Even folklore.
Especially folklore.
Stories revealed what people feared, what they admired, and what they believed was impossible. Those beliefs defined the boundaries of action far more than laws ever did.
And from his study of the world's history, he discovered that there has never been a group or individual who decided to sit down and study the relationship between chakra and Jutsu.
How chakra moves in specific patterns in response to a set of hand seals.
Why chakra only responds to hand seals.
Why certain bloodlines could bypass them entirely.
Why chakra manifests as bloodlines.
Why emotion sometimes distorted Jutsu output.
Why two shinobi using the same technique could produce wildly different results.
Well, maybe there were, but they're hidden knowledge kept by the powerful clans and organizations.
I entertained the thought before shaking it away. What matters is that not many people know of it of which I am a part of.
And that got me curious and during my meditations, I pondered on this.
With my introduction of Martial arts concepts into this world's energy system, I decided to think along those lines too.
Perhaps there were truly grades with beginners being when you could create the desired Jutsu effect regardless of chakra used.
There would be a gap before arriving at the level of perfection.
In this case perfection being a state of manifesting the technique at its maximum capacity with minimal chakra use.
This state was rarely shown in rare and genius level individuals and when it was shown, the reason was never truly explained.
Take the Flying Thunder God as an example, there are times when Minato and Tobirama needed a hand sign to activate the Jutsu, and there were times they didn't.
What and why was this?
The same applied to Bloodline superiority within clans.
The Uchiha for example.
Why do some awaken the Mangekyo while others halt at the Three-tomoe?
Why was it that only an intense emotionally traumatic experience could awaken the Mangekyo sharingan?
Why was it that upon awakening, it mirrored the individual's emotional desire?
Why would exchanging pairs between families awaken the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan?
Why was it never discovered over the centuries gap between Indra and Madara?
Why was it only discovered by Madara?
Why is that the only progression?
Hell, must the Mangekyo be awakened only by emotional trauma?
Why not joy?
Hasn't someone cried tears of joy and awakened the Mangekyo sharingan?
Why was it only recorded that the Izanagi and Izanami were the only supreme techniques of Mangekyo?
Why was the Susanoo the only common technique of Mangekyo?
Why were all the Susanoo manifested in the form of a tengu?
Now this was not the most curious but it was up there.
I mean, couldn't someone manifest a lovely giant lady? A scholar? Animal?
There was also the tailed beasts issue.
Where were they before being targeted and subsequently captured by Madara and Hashirama in general.
From the personalities shown by each of them in the anime, it's safe to assume that these guys were just chilling by themselves away from human disturbance.
Then another question arose…why Madara?
And the answer flowed out on its own.
Zetsu.
The Grand Mastermind.
The main person behind me wanting to remain low-key.
Anyways, why did nobody ever bother to make a system for all these?
These questions had me ruminating over them time and time again and with time, I came down to a new system which I follow.
Similar to how I practiced my Katas, I went through the hand seals of all the techniques I knew until my chakra could move accordingly with a thought.
Beginner. Familiar. Experienced. Completion(Mastery). Perfection.
Beginner as starting point was where basic katas and hand signs are learned.
Familiar is the stage were they are practiced enough to recognize and apply consistently but still relies on conscious effort.
This is the level of most students and Genin.
Experienced is the stage were they are performed with greater confidence, speed, and accuracy.
In this stage, one begins to understand the practical applications and context of techniques.
Completion or Mastery is where the technique is fully internalized, and one is capable of achieving consistent and reliable performance even under pressure.
This level represents a high degree of technical and mental proficiency.
I haven't been able to observe Jonin to know how right this rating is, but going from my own progress, this is where Jonin rank Shinobi stand.
As for perfection, this is the highest level, where the technique becomes second nature and can be adapted fluidly to any situation.
At this stage, chakra responds directly to intent, allowing the technique to be altered, condensed, or applied in unconventional ways.
All my techniques are all at the third stage of experienced and I had a feeling it came easily because I was a sensor and not just because I was consistent.
The visualization technique I used to create illusory opponents played its part in getting me to that stage.
Should things continue progressing in this manner, gaining a mental realm, or mind scape would be a possibility, but I digress.
With repeated familiarity to the movement of my chakra for each technique, I found that performing a technique without seals made the technique noticeably weaker.
And the reason behind this was manifesting the technique from a mental construct into the physical world.
Take the fireball technique, a C-rank technique, no matter how much you imagine it, if you can't move the necessary quantity of chakra, you'd end up hurting your throat.
An adequate level of control of chakra was necessary.
The same also applied in reverse.
Even if you control your chakra adequately, without a proper mental construct on the power and density of your fireball, it would come out randomly.
It could be massive but lack force or heat.
This also explains the discrepancy between the D-rank Clone technique and B-rank Shadow Clone.
One creates an illusory double while the other creates a physical construct.
The level of mental resolution necessary to create such a technique would be immense.
That was no longer the realm of imagination or willpower but Resolution.
A clone was just chakra shaped like you. A shadow clone was chakra convinced it was you until an attack tells it otherwise.
Of course, this was just speculation from my understanding of techniques at the B-rank, but there was surely a reason the Shadow Clone was designated a forbidden Jutsu despite being just B-rank.
I raised my hand and slowly flexed my fingers, and watched as the faint currents of chakra spiral between them like invisible threads.
This world taught chakra molding like clay sculpting.
Shape it, push it, force it.
But from everything I have observed… chakra behaved less like clay and more like cooperative particles.
It didn't like being forced, It preferred being guided.
Which explained why brute-force shinobi burned out faster and why some "weaker" shinobi could maintain techniques longer.
An example is Kakashi…
That guy has been said to have so little chakra, yet he's never not won.
So what made one capable of outlasting those stronger?
Compatibility.
Chakra has preferences like muscles has movement preferences, nerves has signal efficiency paths and the brain has thought shortcuts.
If you tried forcing chakra into a pattern it resisted… you paid extra cost.
If you aligned with its natural tendency… you gained efficiency.
That was the first hidden layer.
The second was mental construct stability.
Most shinobi formed a technique once… then maintained it through chakra expenditure.
But if the construct itself was unstable…Chakra is expended constantly to keep it from collapsing.
Like holding water in shaking hands.
I saw that Aiko was done with her attempt at trying to hit me and lowered into a slow seated posture.
The third layer… identity imprint.
This is the most dangerous and the least studied.
Why did Genjutsu work?
Because chakra didn't just carry energy, it carried information.
Information about intent, emotion, identity and presence.
At certain levels of control, Genjutsu wasn't just inserting illusions. At high enough control…Reality itself could be… negotiated.
I closed my eyes and took in a long, slow breath, still in thought.
If mental construct defined structure…
And chakra volume defined scale…
And identity imprint defined persistence…
Then Jutsu mastery wasn't linear.
It was three dimensional.
Volume.
Structure.
Identity.
Most shinobi only trained volume.
Some trained structure.
Almost none trained identity, and this explains bloodline techniques, the Mangekyo evolution and why emotional trauma triggered it.
Not because trauma was required.
But because trauma created the strongest forced identity rewrite event a human could naturally survive.
Joy…
Joy was expansive.
Trauma was compressive.
Mangekyo likely required identity collapse and reformation.
Joy rarely shattered identity, Loss did.
Which meant…
Theoretically…
If someone experienced overwhelming, identity-defining joy strong enough to rewrite their core self…
Mangekyo awakening through joy should be possible.
It simply… had never happened in recorded history. Or if it had…It was buried.
I exhaled the air slowly.
Then there was the final piece.
Intent speed.
Hand seals existed because most people couldn't align volume, structure, and identity fast enough.
From observation, hand seals were training wheels and external stabilizers.
Something to anchor chakra and thought to Physical rhythm.
Remove them too early… and most shinobi's chakra would collapse into nothing.
Which brought him back to proficiency.
After a series of trials and errors, I settled for this.
Beginner. Familiar. Experienced.
This was where the majority of Shinobi stopped before they meet their match and end up dead somewhere.
The completion level is the level Sasuke and Naruto both reached in their respective techniques.
Sasuke with the Chidori variations and Naruto with his Rasenshruiken.
As for perfection...
I opened my eyes slowly.
And then there is my created Martial technique.
I call it Martial technique because it really isn't like the Taijutsu of this world.
Because Taijutsu, as this world understands it, is simply physical combat enhanced by chakra.
Faster strikes.
Stronger blows.
Sharper reaction speed.
Greater durability.
At its core, it is still the body leading… and chakra following.
My Martial technique is the opposite.
It is not about using chakra to strengthen movement.
It is about using movement to shape chakra behavior.
In comparison, while Taijutsu in this world is an external expression, my martial technique is internal orchestration.
Taijutsu asks: How do I hit harder and faster?
My Martial technique asks: How do I make it so a hit was inevitable the moment I decided to move?
That is why I do not call it Taijutsu.
Because to call it that would be… an oversimplification.
…
A/N: Kind of an Info Dump. I suddenly had the idea to write this, this morning. I may continue introducing systems like this so you all should not be surprised when it happens.
Thanks, and happy Valentine's Day or whatever you all. And don't forget those stones. That I'm not asking doesn't mean I don't need them.