“My ninjutsu is… profoundly, absurdly wrong.”

  Link sat ba his bed, wearing a peculiar expression as he pondered deeply.

  It had beewo minutes since he first attempted a ninjutsu. His e Jutsu had sted barely ten seds before dissipating, likely due to his limited chakra reserves.

  When the e Jutsu ended, all of his body parts—regardless of where they had been—reassembled with a "poof" back to the position of his head.

  Which was why he’d ended up sprawled awkwardly on the floor at the moment of release. His neck still felt a little sore from the odd posture.

  Acc to the scroll, the e Jutsu creates a perfect illusion of oo fuse oppos.

  Hand signs, chakra flow—he had followed the instrueticulously. After studying the scroll for four or five years, there was no way he could’ve gotten it wrong.

  A… something was clearly amiss.

  Scratg his head, Li like his brain cells were dying from the sheer fusion.

  “Well, it’s irely bad,” he muttered, gng at his unscathed fingernails. If he remembered correctly, those nails should have been broken and bleeding after jabbing the floor earlier. Yet, there wasn’t even a hint of pain—almost as if the earlier disfort had been an illusion.

  Rubbing his fiogether, he felt a phantom pain. Shaking it off, he began to refine chakra again, f the seals for atempt.

  That bizarre sensation surged babsp;

  “If I rex even slightly, my body parts will fall apart,” Link noted grimly, quickly grasping the peculiarity of his "e Jutsu."

  The momeivated the jutsu, his limbs, head, and torso physically separated. Only through sheer willpower could he hold them together. The moment his tration wavered, they detached.

  “Hyah!”

  Grabbing his left arm with his right, Link swung it experimentally. Surprisingly, it worked quite well—especially with the left hand f a fist. The reach of his punches had effectively doubled.

  “Longer reach means strotacks!”

  “Poof!”

  A cloud of smoke marked the end of the e Jutsu. Link’s body reassembled, and he sank bato the bed to pte. With his current chakra reserves, barely meeting the minimum extra standard, he could mahe e Jutsu twi quick succession.

  But what if he used more chakra at onbsp;

  Gathering a rger amount of chakra, he repeated the seals.

  When the peculiar sensatiourned and his limbs began to feel unsteady again, he picked up a kunai and made a shallow cut on his arm. Blood trickled down.

  Ten seds. Twenty seds. Thirty seds…

  One minute!

  “Poof!”

  “Whew…” Link exhaled deeply, a little winded but still managing. If he tinuously used the e Jutsu, he could hold it for about five minutes before colpsing from exhaustion.

  “But the most important part is—”

  He examined his brooned arm, which bore no trace of the earlier cut. Even the blood had vanished.

  “It seems the literal effect of this e Jutsu is that it erases injuries wheeique is celed.”

  Li a surge of excitement. Sure, the e Jutsu had turned out strange, but if it was this effective, who cared? This ractically a miniature version of Izanagi! At the very least, it could erase minor wounds.

  “Wait… this could be a problem.”

  His excitement was cut short by a sudden realization.

  If this was how his e Jutsu worked, how was he supposed to get into the Ninja Academy?

  C his face, Li a whirlwind of emotions he couldn’t put into words.

  After a while, he calmed himself with a bit of self-reassurance. “Maybe this is my cheat ability. Who knows? It might have eveer uses. I’ll just rely on other jutsu for the entrance exam. One e Jutsu isn’t a dealbreaker…”

  “…”

  But a subtle premonitio into his mind: if this was the result of a "correctly" executed e Jutsu, what would happen with other ninjutsu?

  Taking a deep breath, he shifted his gaze to the eique on the scroll: Transformation Jutsu.

  Among the basic Three Teiques, the e Jutsu was the simplest. It required only enough chakra to create an intangible illusion and was sidered easy even among the most basic teiques.

  The Transformation Jutsu, slightly more plex, involved physical alterations and was thus ranked sed on the scroll. It was no longer just an illusion but involved slight physical ges to the body.

  While the e Jutsu could only create one’s illusory double, the Transformation Jutsu allowed oo fully disguise as another person—or even objects like animals, pnts, or ons.

  However, it remained a low-difficulty jutsu. The ges were superficial and relied heavily on chakra simution.

  “What should I transform into…”

  Uhe e Jutsu, which merely required creating a duplicate, the Transformation Jutsu demanded more thought and preparation.

  The execution wasn’t hard. Rather, success depended on the user’s skill and precision.

  For both the Geniification Exam and the Ninja Academy graduation exam, even the simplest successful e Jutsu was suffit to pass—proof of how basic the requirements for being a genin were.

  After all, genin-level missions involved no bat with ninjas. D-rank tasks like pig up trash, finding lost pets, or farming didly require fshy ninjutsu.

  Merely being able to perform a ninjutsu demonstrated adequate physical fitness—enough to be a useful bor forbsp;

  “I’ll transform into Dad.”

  After some thought, Link decided on his te father’s appearance: his height, face, and the familiar vest he often wore.

  Refining his chakra and f the seals, he activated the jutsu.

  Nothing happened.

  “That’s odd.”

  This time, Link closely observed the chakra flow. The chakra refined for the teique simply disappeared into thin air at the moment of activation.

  Where it went, or how it worked, was a plete mystery. The process was a bck box. Theoretically, however, the teique should have succeeded.

  Even a failed Transformation Jutsu should have altered his outward appearance, so why had nothing ged?

  Could it be—

  Adopting the same logic as his peculiar e Jutsu, Link focused his thoughts on transf his hand into a longsword.

  In the moment, his arm shifted and morphed into a gleaming bde.

  The hilt merged seamlessly with his shoulder, as though it had always been part of his body.

  After a few more experiments sting about thirty seds, the teique dissipated, and his arm returo normal.

  “I k…”

  Li out a long sigh. The Transformation Jutsu wasn’t for disguising; it was for reshaping his body. His head, however, remaiubbornly ued.

  The Substitution Jutsu was likely to follow the same bizarre logic.