Finally, it came time for the team to emerge from their long soak, and as he directed his attention inward, Hazō could now definitely feel that something was different. His chakra felt… calmer. He felt like he could drop into his technique hacking trance in an instant if he needed to. Experimentally, he tried channeling chakra to his shoulder and marveled at how his arm snapped up. Not at how quickly it snapped up – it was no faster than usual. Instead, he marveled at how smooth it had felt. Normally, he felt a burning sensation when he channeled his internal chakra to move faster than an ordinary human could. Instead, he felt nothing. It was like he had been a wagon's axle coated in gunk all this time, and someone had finally cleaned and greased him.
Is the grotto natural or an ancient clan's training facility? Are the chakra beasts weirder than normal? Adapted to a weird place or artificially bred?
"They're not there!" Noburi whispered back. "I mean, I'm trying to pull their chakra but they disappear from my senses when I do!"
Strong against Kisame. Has Orochimaru reverse engineered this effect? Can Noburi?
"Nope," Hazō said, scowling and tossing the translucent hunk of crystal he'd been examining into the lake, where it landed with a satisfying plop. "They're useless. Nothing but rocks."
"Did you figure out why they're glowing and changing color?" Noburi asked.
"Also nothing. Well, there's some weird chakra effect going on inside them that I could see on Kagome-sensei's chakrascope, but that doesn't help us understand it. The piece I broke off went clear and dead as soon as I separated it."
"Could there be light coming from their base somewhere that's illuminating them?"
"I don't… huh," Hazō said. "Maybe. Let's check."
They found a node of crystal on the ceiling barely bigger than either of their fists, and watched as it cycled colors. Pink, blue, green, yellow, back to pink.
Hazō placed his chisel and hammered the crystal free from the wall. It immediately went clear. The wall where it had sat was just bare gray-brown stone.
Hazō tried to channel his chakra into the crystal, then tossed it down into the pool to join its useless brethren. "Nope. The crystals just glow."
Pink blue green yellow. The colors Mason, what do they mean?
Putting a link to the colors of the sky in the 7th Path aside because that thread is hard to pull. Could it be connected to elements? This
chart colors Boil element pink, Water blue, Wind green and Lightning yellow. Is the grotto a convergence of these elements? The water in the lake is noted as warm. There is a lake. Air is everywhere, but the grotto specifically is in the land of Wind. Nothing that counts as a strong source of Lightning except a source we did not find or the creatures swimming in the lake? No red for Fire. Now, it is a cave and there are crystals so why no brown for Earth? Well the crystals are pointed out to not work as substrate, which could mean the Honey cave was aligned with Earth element chakra in a special way this cave fails to copy.
My running theory is that chakra dense places like these could be like notable spots in the primordial chakra soup. When everything in the soup aligns for abiogenesis, you get a chakra golem. When you only have some elements but not others - the nature chakra analogues for free floating organelles or phospholipids or nucleotides, you get the effects in the places Orochimaru pointed us to.
"It has to be," Noburi said. "Clone coils don't generate chakra, but physical chakra coils do. I couldn't tell you what the difference is, but hey, maybe I'll figure it out while I'm investigating whether I can cast shadow clones safely. Speaking of which, I will probably need a stipend out of our chakra budget for that, if only to get to watch someone cast the technique a few times per day and monitor their clones."
If coils generate chakra by generating an energy gradient, makes sense that chakra construct coils, being made of chakra, could not make a gradient the same way. Like cell walls made of salt. Stronger coils generate a grainier gradient. Maybe hacking clones to be cast incorporating physical coil substitutes could let them regenerate on their own.
Yes… it hadn't resisted his ninjutsu, but it hadn't taken his chakra either. He could vaguely feel the outline of it like the void of Earthshaping chakra left behind by a piece of metal – the crystal jutting out of the rock face, then root-like tendrils embedding it in the wall of the grotto.
What kind of crystal? Doubt the Sannin harvested the old crystals to crash the gem market and these since grew back. Did they leave them for a reason?
What happens if we soak substrate in the water? Or shape the substrate into the earth with tendrils like the grotto crystals? What happens if we dig out a new pond and slowly reintroduce elements from the lake to it? Would it regain the grotto's properties?
The pool makes all chakra use except for summoning 20% less expensive (so boosting and dispelling cost 4CP instead of 5CP, and Pangolin Earth Armor (Effect:3) would cost 64 CP instead of 79). Rune infusion also is not discounted.
The effect lasts for 10 days, so you can soak in the pool and have time to travel pretty much anywhere in the EN and do a mission while you're there.
Weak evidence summoning and infusion take a flat chakra cost no matter how juiced your coils.
Interesting to think about how to balance different chakra discounts.
Always Some in the Tank.
When out of chakra, free chakra boost up to half your max. Boosts staying power against teams of weaker ninja but not that strong without cheats to raise max boost. Hrm, we should ask Tenten what Gai taught her about opening the 8 Gates.
Last Gasp.
Recover 5 chakra every turn you have less than 5 chakra. Looks weak - broken when you have a Noburi.
Second Stomach for Desert.
When out of chakra, one free Substitution every turn on a supplemental. Cannot be exploited the same way as Last Gasp.
