"Shadow Clone Technique."
A few days later, on a rare school holiday, Fujimoto Tōma waited until his condition was at its peak before forming the standard eight hand seals. As the last seal fell into place, white smoke burst beside him.
"Hey," the figure said calmly. "I'm you."
"Yeah. Hi," Tōma replied, instinctively checking his chakra and finally letting out a quiet breath of relief.
The cost was acceptable.
Forming a single shadow clone didn't drain him nearly as much as he'd feared. Judging from the loss, his current limit was probably three clones at most. Even then, doing so would leave his real body with barely twenty percent of its chakra. Basic techniques would become difficult, and for the clone itself, the situation was even worse. Maintaining a physical body consumed chakra constantly. At the minimum allocation, a clone couldn't use ninjutsu at all. Try, and it would collapse instantly.
Still, that had been expected.
Shadow Clone was infamous for its requirements, so even after learning it, Tōma had waited for perfect conditions before attempting it. Running out of chakra halfway through could mean dizziness at best, unconsciousness at worst.
But based on his recent study and Iruka's assessment, he'd been confident.
Chūnin used Shadow Clone routinely without issues. While Tōma didn't match their overall reserves, his maximum extraction in a single burst was close to theirs. Most shinobi didn't pre-stock chakra before casting either. If they could do it safely, one clone should be well within his limits.
Still, not zero risk. That was why he waited.
So far, he'd been right.
Tōma signaled to the clone with a nod. The clone dispersed immediately.
He frowned.
That had been intentional, but not that intentional.
What Tōma had actually thought was: Go do the house chores first, then disperse. He wasn't trying to exploit himself. It was an experiment. And now he had results.
Once separated, the clone possessed Tōma's thoughts as they existed at the moment of creation. Anything conceived afterward wasn't shared. In theory, the clone could probably guess his intentions, since they were the same person, but it had no direct awareness.
The returned chakra was slightly less than what he'd sent out. That meant two things. First, the clone consumed chakra just by existing. Second, a small portion dissipated upon dispersal.
Acceptable losses.
Distance likely increased that loss, but Tōma had no intention of sending clones far away for now.
Another question surfaced. If a clone ran completely out of chakra before dispersing, would its memories still return? Memories weren't abstract things. They were carried by chakra.
The answer clicked into place once he thought it through.
A shadow clone was a physical body formed from chakra, which itself was a fusion of physical and mental energy. Thought and memory were encoded into that structure from the beginning. When the clone dispersed, physical and mental energy recombined and returned together.
Meaning even if the clone burned through all its usable chakra, its experiences should still come back.
Which made the technique even more terrifying.
Unless, theoretically, a clone was isolated somewhere chakra couldn't return from… but that led nowhere useful. Creating such a place was unrealistic, and a clone would simply disperse the moment it sensed danger.
Pointless speculation.
Today's real objective came next.
Tōma extracted all remaining chakra and calmly formed the eight hand seals again. He didn't bother timing or compressing them. He wasn't planning to use Shadow Clones in battle. Efficiency here mattered less than reliability.
"Shadow Clone Technique."
The clone formed cleanly and immediately sat at the desk, opening textbooks and jutsu scrolls his mother had given him earlier.
Tōma himself did nothing strenuous.
This time, he was testing duration and recoil. How long could a fully powered clone last? How much fatigue would return? To isolate variables, he avoided training altogether.
At most, he handled a bit of light housework.
An hour passed.
The clone was still there.
That surprised him.
Even without actively using chakra, maintaining existence still required it, but the drain was far lower than expected. If this held, the technique was far more usable than most people assumed.
After some time, the clone looked up.
"Get ready," it said.
Tōma sat down on the bed.
A few moments later, the clone dispersed on its own.
Memory and fatigue slammed back all at once.
Tōma's vision blurred. His mind shook. It passed quickly, but the impact was undeniable.
"…Uzumaki Naruto," he muttered softly. "You're seriously a monster."
Now he understood.
Why only Naruto could use dozens, hundreds of shadow clones for training.
When a clone dispersed, all accumulated physical and mental fatigue hit the original body at the same instant. It wasn't gradual exhaustion. It was compression.
Normal people couldn't survive that.
Even other Uzumaki likely capped out at one or two clones. Using dozens was the equivalent of experiencing days of exertion in a heartbeat. Naruto's body could take it. Others would collapse.
In Tōma's case, the fatigue was tolerable only because the clone had been studying, not training. The strain was mental rather than physical.
And that, at least, was his strength.
Mental endurance was the one advantage he knew he possessed. That was the real reason he wanted Shadow Clone in the first place. Leverage what you're good at.
He could feel it clearly. With his current capacity, he could probably sustain one, maybe two studying clones. More than that, and his chakra would break before his mind did.
But even this was massive.
This test had gone almost perfectly.
Choosing Shadow Clone had been the right call.
Tōma's gaze sharpened. He already had ideas for the next step.
Unfortunately, his chakra needed time to recover.
And military ration pills were far beyond his budget.
For now, patience.