[X] Action Plan: Reflection
I feel like it's either something Hazou rejects (which costs us nothing) or it's something that gets us either more TYS (and thus sealing) OR understanding of summoning scrolls (which is insane veterancy for what we need to do to save Akane).
Ironically given our past conversations, I think a strong reason not to do this now is
speed. Downloading a Sage-tier seal, on the two occasions we've done it, has always given us a Severe Mental Consequence. I remember doing the calculations when we Great Seal'd ourselves and figured that in the long run we gained more from SSA than we lost from FOOM over the recovery period, but that draw into relief that gaining TYS trades off short-term effectiveness for long-term power.
A Hazou with a Severe is not going to be as good at Sealing as a Hazou without, even if he gains TYS from the attempt. Calligraphy will also suffer without even any counterbalance. Hazou will spend in-universe months at a lower sealing ability before he actually benefits from the experience. And that's if everything goes
right.
So even in the optimistic case, I wouldn't pursue this angle anytime soon. We're explicitly on a time limit where we have to figure out necromancy before the Akatsuki does, and that relies on us leveraging our high Sealing skill right now.
This was because the effort required to produce the gold made it a boondoggle, IIRC. We literally produced a massive sapphire in - possibly the largest finished-and-cut sapphire to ever exist in the EN - in, what, an hour at most? Boondoggle that ain't.
The impracticality of the jutsu is why it languished in Leaf without ever being used or banned: it would never be worth the investment. The Wakahisa are uniquely situated to make use of it, by contrast, and
can expect to make a ton of money off of it. The reason Asuma believes it will weaken Mist is because he expects the Wakahisa to go full gold rush and devalue the price of gold in Mist, hurting their overall economy even as the Wakahisa enrich themselves. It's just making a shiny metal, after all, not producing value.
By rights, our gemstones would contain a similar worry. The value of a ruby can drop without limit as the supply increases, and if we went full ruby rush we could crash that market into the ground. It wouldn't be
quite as bad because ryo aren't made of rubies, but it's still not welcome. This is why coming to Asuma with it is such a good play: the economic think tank can decide how much is too much, and no ruby rush will ever happen. The markets will change but not crash, and Leaf will not suffer.
The iron markets are in an even better position than the gemstone market, also. The value of iron is in its practicality, not its rarity, so an iron rush provides an objective quality of life increase to everyone in Leaf even as it crashes the iron markets. Unlike gold, Leaf's economy is not built on the expectation that iron will be scarce. Unlike gold
or gemstones, there is reason to actively want tons more iron in the ecosystem. It should still be handled with care, but it's certainly no gold rush.
