Indexing

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

Shortly after the creation of his secondary base of operations within the land of lightning, Hiruzen had assaulted a ship belonging to the Order of Jurōjin. The intel he had retrieved from an information broker in Shakai Owari had been on point as expected. When on the ship known as the Lucky Deer, there had in fact been a relic from the ancient undocumented days that came long before the first shinobi clans started wandering the planet. Even with all of the years of investigating and unearthing he had been doing, he had only managed to figure out so much. The first and foremost thing he had learned about the ancient civilization was their language, something he owed to Hideo and Tetsuo, his grandfather and his childhood friend. Had his grandfather not sent him to the Temple of Raijin to take care of something for him, Hiruzen would have never reached the point he was at. After all, he would never have had anything to look into and nothing that required such extensive research. Once he understood the meaning to their glyphic writing, the rest came to him on it's own. Through understanding the writing, he managed to understand the meaning to the old charts he uncovered and even forms of chakra usage that were unlike regular Ninjutsu and were for that reason out of the reach of ordinary shinobi that did not possess his level of intellect.

Through his research, he came to understand that the special chakra known to many as the Gift of the Hermit Group was the key to unlocking and eventually mastering the techniques used by some of the monks that had been in charge of guiding humanity thousands of years ago. Knowing them only as the "Ancients", they were among the first people to turn the spiritual energies inside of their bodies for the sake of protecting that which they believed in and destroying any who threatened the spiritual bond that all people shared. The glyph walls beneath the Fire Temple and the Temple of Raijin had made it abundantly clear that the spiritual bond between all people was known as Ninshū, a gift coming from a divine entity that wanted all of humanity to be connected so they could better understand one another. The Ancient monks that used this link controlled massive quantities of chakra, protecting the people against those that would harm the chosen people. Battling what they called Demons that were seeking to destroy the balance by using the chakra for their own benefit later turned out to be other people that were part of the link, siphoning and controlling the energies in order to fuel their own power and arrogance. While most of these "Demons" were struck down by the ancient monks, the displays of raw power made others want to become strong too. Eventually, their own over-zealous actions to protect the link was what severed it and gave birth to the first Ninjutsu.

As much as all of the things the Ancients had left behind for him to find added up, he did not believe that there had ever been a divine entity that had connected the people together. In his opinion, it was a jutsu that had connected all of the people through their spiritual energy, a far more explainable thing in his opinion. As hard as it was to believe that all people had at some point been linked, the fact that he could unlock the Gift of the Hermit Group chakra without being remotely related to any of the monks in any of the temples he had visited proved to him that every living person had traces of the ancient chakra inside of them, waiting to be unlocked. All of the monks did not see things his way, believing that those that got blessed with the gift were chosen by the gods themselves. Knowing how dangerous it could be to try and shake a man's faith, he had chosen not to argue that it was in fact something far more explainable. Thanks to his seemingly unending capacity to store information, his understanding over the ancient language and the way in which their "Divine power" worked, Hiruzen had already figured out completely new hand seals and two distinct "Paths" of Hermit Ninjutsu. Calling them Bonnōdō and Hasshōdō after the spiritual teachings they were derived from, it seemed that his personal growth was inhibited only by the amount of new things he managed to unearth on his travels that further pushed his understanding of Chakra and Ninjutsu.

Still remembering every single thing he had figured out, all of the things he had read and all of the things people had told him over the years as though they had done so mere hours ago, there was no question that Hiruzen was the perfect man for this job. His inability to forget the good, the bad and the useful things he had come across in life meant that every bit of information he encountered would not need to be written down as his brain would be able to hold every piece of it. While the loss of memory induced by whatever means would set him back years, it kept his research out of the hands of others that might be hunting the same things as him. Right now, the only thing standing in his new base of operations was a single stone relic that he had liberated from the Order. It annoyed him that he could not figure out what it was for and why the design had been so odd. Looking it over and trying to figure out if there was something inside of it by letting his fingers run through the many cracks on the relic, it seemed to him that it was just some kind of ornament that the people of that time enjoyed looking at as it did not seem to serve any particular purpose. Putting it back in the opening in the wall, he decided that the best thing to do right now was to head to bed and try again in the morning.

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The Index

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

No more than an hour after he went to sleep, he woke up rather suddenly, instantly launching himself out of the make-shift bed he had to deal with until he had the time to properly decorate his new base and home. For an unknown reason, Hiruzen had a dream that he had not had for years. When he first unlocked his Hermit chakra, he felt like an entity was reaching out to him in his dreams, showing him the exact same vision every single time. It showed how he was walking up a long stairway made out of stone that was leading up to a very old looking temple. When he looked around, all he could see was darkness, as if the temple itself was hidden far below the earth in some kind of massive cavern. The closer he got to the end of the stairs, the more he felt like something was empowering him from the inside. When he was at the end of the stairs and stood in front of the massive temple doors, he would touch the door while applying his chakra to it. As soon as he did, a loud rumbling and churning could be heard as they slowly opened. When they opened, a bright light came pouring out from inside, showing a golden humanoid figure standing on the other side of the slowly opening door before Hiruzen woke up.

For years, he had managed to block the dream from coming to him when he slept, though for a reason now known to him, it had returned. The reason why he shot out of bed so suddenly was because he knew exactly why the dream came back. The dream showed how his chakra was required to open the door to the large underground temple, making him remember how the monks of the Temple of Raijin and the Fire Temple undid the seal protecting their grounds to allow access only to themselves and those they allowed inside. Believing that he was subconsciously telling himself to try a similar approach with the relic. Putting some clothes on, the Uchiha wandered over to the wall where he had placed the stone ornament. Picking it up with both hands, he started focusing on his chakra, causing a faint golden hue to rise around his body. The moment Hiruzen made an attempt at channeling his chakra into the stone, it immediately reacted to his chakra, causing it to hum and vibrate at a frequency that even the human ears could pick up. Setting it down on the ground in front of him and taking a few steps back, he activated both his Sharingan and his chakra sensory mode. Having activated an unknown object, there was no telling whether it would explode.

Not reading any harmful levels of chakra, it seemed like some Hiruzen's chakra had been absorbed into it. Aside from the remnants of his own chakra inside of the stone, it seemed that he had awakened a dormant chakra inside of it that was now doing something Hiruzen could not predict. Staying at a safe distance, he watched as the cracks in the stone started becoming more and more clear. After a few seconds, it seemed that the stone was merely covering up another kind of far older looking rock that was hard and cold as steel. Once all of the stone fell away from the relic, all that was left was a black sphere with shiny golden glyphs all over it. Once the vibrating stopped and the humming became a lot more quiet, Hiruzen believed that it was just about safe to pick it back up. As he reached down and held the orb in his hand, his vision faded to black while his thoughts went silent. When his vision returned to him, he was looking at one of the walls with the sphere in one hand and a Kunai held tightly in the other. Having no time to wonder about what had just happened to him, he saw that he had carved an entire map into the wall with his Kunai. Hiruzen had absolutely zero recollection of doing such a thing, which meant that the sphere had made him do it. Whether it was some kind of possession or not, the sphere was no longer glowing and had lost all traces of internal chakra.

Believing that the sphere had been made by someone as a means of relaying information stored inside before losing power and becoming useless, he was lucky to have liberated it from the Order. Planning to put the sphere down for a moment, it crumbled in his hands, turning into a fine black dust, proving that Hiruzen's theory was correct. Taking his attention away from the sphere and back to the wall, it seemed that he had accurately drawn every single shinobi nation, yet left out all of the borders. The person that had stored the information inside of the orb had undoubtedly been alive in a time when the shinobi world was just one big land as opposed to one divided and controlled by various rich Daimyou. One of the things that stood out on the map was the fact that he had placed several X's in specific locations. Without any borders, figuring out exactly where he had to go in order to figure out what the X's meant, he first had to make some edits to the wall. As a rather accomplished wanderer that had seen most of the world, it was not that hard to carve on most of the places he had seen. As he was working on the wall, he decided that he was going to keep the thing even after he was done with it. Having a map on his wall would help him with a lot of planning and research.

Slowly but surely, the borderless map was starting to resemble the Shinobi world people knew in the present time. When he filled in all of the borders, he took out another Kunai since the one he held now had lost it's sharpness. With the new Kunai, he started filling in a lot of places on map, most notable the shinobi villages, the temples, the small towns and the location of his two underground bases. Finishing his work, he took a few steps back so he could look upon the entire map. If his additions were correct, something in which he was confident that they were, the X's were located in the land of Mountains, the land of Tea, the land of Birds, the land of Wind and finally the land of Whirlpools. Knowing for a fact that he would need to visit all of these places in order to figure out what he might find there, he already knew exactly which roads he was going to take in order to get from point A to point B in as little time as possible. Looking forward to visiting all of the places he had not been to yet for the sake of exploration, he could barely feel just how tired he was due to all of the excitement he felt. Sitting down on his bed for a moment, he quickly fell asleep without realizing it.

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Distinguished Wanderer
End of Thread