To be safe, Kaede Kitahara pulled a kunai from his ninja pouch, one that already had a Flying Thunder God formula carved into it, and handed it to his shadow clone.
"Just in case, I'll split off one clone every month to support you. Keep two shadow clones stationed over there long-term. That should be enough for most situations."
After taking the kunai, the shadow clone immediately leapt out the window and vanished.
Right after that, Kaede created another shadow clone and had it take the entire box of money. The plan was to stash it somewhere first, then once it was within Konoha's range, use Flying Thunder God to teleport it back home. That way, the money could be brought into the village without raising any suspicion.
Half a month passed like this.
One day, Hatake Kakashi called Kaede Kitahara out to a nearby forest.
"Thanks for everything before," Kakashi said. "Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura all benefited from your guidance too. I've been thinking it over, and I really don't know how to repay you. So… are you interested in my self-created jutsu, Chidori?"
Kaede froze.
He honestly had not expected Hatake Kakashi to offer to teach him his original jutsu.
This was an absurdly valuable technique. Its worth could not be measured by the reward of even an S-rank mission.
"Kakashi-senpai, I've heard of Chidori, and I am interested," Kaede said carefully. "But even if I helped you this time, that was just part of the mission. You really don't need to give me something this precious."
He could not make sense of it, so he chose caution.
Kakashi did not expect Kaede to be this level-headed. Faced with a jutsu being handed to him for free, he was still calm.
"Think of it as an exchange," Kakashi said. "You taught Naruto Rasengan, didn't you? Rasengan is my teacher's signature technique. The Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, created it himself. Do you know who Naruto really is?"
Kaede fell silent. He could not answer that directly.
The village had never officially announced Uzumaki Naruto's identity. No matter how he responded, it would be inappropriate. And the fact that he himself knew Rasengan was already enough to draw attention.
This was an A-rank jutsu, a trump card developed with the Tailed Beast Ball as a reference.
But Kakashi did not ask how Kaede learned Rasengan. Knowing about the diary's existence, he was well aware that Kaede carried countless secrets, including that diary and the reason his strength had grown so explosively.
Even awakening the Sharingan was not enough to fully explain it.
So Kakashi had no intention of digging deeper.
What ninja did not have a few secrets? As long as Kaede posed no threat to Konoha or to him, that was enough.
"After my teacher died, I sank into it for a long time," Kakashi said quietly. "I've always regretted not taking better care of Naruto. Teaching you Chidori is my way of making up for that. The ranks line up too. Rasengan is A-rank, and Chidori is as well."
Hearing that, Kaede accepted the explanation.
No matter how you looked at it, getting Chidori for free was a good thing.
Chidori had incredible development potential. Variants like Chidori Current were all powerful techniques.
With that in mind, Kaede asked, "There's something I've always wanted to ask, Kakashi-senpai. I've heard that Chidori once cut through lightning, which is why it's also called Raikiri. Is that actually true?"
This question had been stuck in his mind for a long time.
There was always talk that Raikiri and Chidori were actually the same jutsu, using the same hand seals and the same method of activation.
Even Guy had once said that Chidori was Raikiri.
But in many of Kaede's memories from his previous life, Chidori and Raikiri were treated as separate techniques. He was genuinely curious whether Chidori really was Raikiri.
"More or less," Kakashi said after thinking it over. "But not exactly. Chidori is an A-rank jutsu. When it's trained to a certain level, when its power reaches a certain threshold, it can cut lightning. At that point, it involves a deeper transformation of lightning chakra nature. Its power goes beyond A-rank and reaches S-rank. So yes, you can say Chidori becomes Raikiri, but they're not completely the same. I never bothered to strictly separate them, so people just kept using the names interchangeably."
Kaede finally understood.
Raikiri was a derivative technique built on Chidori. Chidori could branch horizontally into things like Chidori Current, or deepen vertically into Raikiri through advanced lightning chakra transformation.
It was like Rasengan and Wind Release: Rasenshuriken. One was A-rank. The other rose to an S-rank ultimate technique.
Even if he could not learn Raikiri directly, learning Chidori was already excellent. With Kaede's current talent, having this guidance meant he had a real chance of figuring out Raikiri or Chidori Current on his own.
More importantly, this gave him a perfect excuse. If he ever drew Chidori-related techniques from the system in the future, he would have a reasonable explanation for them.
"In that case, please teach me, senpai."
Kaede stopped being polite about it.
Kakashi nodded and began teaching him the hand seals for Chidori, along with the critical points and nuances.
These were things the Sharingan could never copy. The Sharingan could only replicate the beginner-level form of a jutsu. It could not copy the accumulated experience gained from years of use.
It was like when Uchiha Sasuke copied Rock Lee's taijutsu movements through Kakashi. Even then, Sasuke still needed an entire month to adapt, to improve his physical conditioning before he could reach Lee's speed and power.
That was why Hatake Kakashi, despite being known as the Copy Ninja who had copied thousands of jutsu, still only used a handful regularly. The rest simply expanded his arsenal, allowing him to respond to more varied combat situations.
This time, Kaede did not activate his Sharingan.
He wanted to test how much his natural talent had improved. He also wanted to experience what it felt like to be a true genius.
"Ox, Rabbit, Monkey."
Following Kakashi's instructions, Kaede completed the hand seals. Instantly, lightning chakra formed in his hand, erupting with a sound like a thousand birds crying at once.
"You succeeded on the first try?" Kakashi stared at him in shock.
But he quickly calmed down.
It made sense. Kaede had been able to redevelop his teacher's technique, Rasengan. How could his talent be lacking?
Or maybe after awakening the Sharingan and his Uchiha bloodline, Kaede's aptitude had jumped by more than a single level.
Kaede felt the boiling power of lightning in his palm. As he continued feeding chakra into it, the sound of Chidori grew louder and louder, the light more and more intense.
When Chidori was first developed, it was advertised as an assassination technique. In reality, it had never truly been used for assassination.
The sound alone was deafening. If the target was not already dead, they would hear it coming.
On top of that, Chidori's explosive burst was not actually strong enough on its own. It required a long run-up. Sasuke's fight in the Chunin Exams was a perfect example. He had to run all the way from the edge of the arena wall to build momentum, and even then it only worked because Gaara stood still and curled into a ball.
Seeing someone charge from far away with a mass of lightning in their hand, any enemy with a functioning brain would know how to react. That was why Chidori demanded extraordinary reaction speed and dynamic vision, so the user would not be countered instead.
The first time Kakashi used Chidori against an enemy, he nearly got himself killed. If Namikaze Minato had not been watching over him, he might have been gravely injured in his very first battle.
Under these conditions, Chidori's two most famous users took completely different development paths.
Hatake Kakashi deeply refined Chidori into Raikiri, and later, after losing his Sharingan, created a slower version of Raikiri known as Purple Electricity.
Uchiha Sasuke, on the other hand, developed an entire series of Chidori-based techniques. Chidori Current, Sage Art: Chidori, Chidori Sharp Spear, Chidori Kirin, Chidori Shuriken, Armed Chidori, Chidori Katana, and more.
Two geniuses, each finding their own answer.
"I've got some experience from teaching myself Rasengan," Kaede said with a smile.
"In that case, practice on your own," Kakashi replied. "If there's anything you don't understand, come ask me."
Seeing Kaede hold Chidori without the slightest concern for his chakra consumption, Kakashi suddenly felt awful.
He remembered Kaede saying he had six times Kakashi's chakra reserves. Comparing people really was infuriating.
What Kakashi did not know was that Kaede's claim of having six times his chakra was already outdated.
Now, Kaede possessed eight times the chakra of an average elite jonin.
In just half a month, his chakra had increased by an amount equal to twice Hatake Kakashi's current reserves.
This meant his development of the Uzumaki Clan's sage body had reached a much deeper level. You could almost say he was nearing the limit of the Uzumaki Clan's basic sage physique.
The growth was already starting to slow. By Kaede's estimation, he would probably cap out at around ten times an elite jonin's chakra.
But that would not be the true limit.
Even if he never drew another bloodline, relying solely on his Uchiha Clan bloodline and the Uzumaki Clan's basic bloodline, his chakra would still see a slight increase.
After all, he was only fifteen. His body had just entered a period of rapid growth.
Over the next ten years, he would go through a long maturation phase. He would never reach Uzumaki Naruto's absurd level, but he definitely would not stay at his current level either.
On top of that, the physique's incredible recovery ability was already at work. As Chidori continuously drained his chakra, his body replenished it just as relentlessly.