"Hey Amon! You leaving?" Audrey called out, her voice casual but laced with concern.
Crickets chirped softly in the distance, their song weaving with the calm hush of the night. Above, the moon hung high, glowing silver-white and casting long shadows across the training field.
"You go ahead, Audrey. I want to stay a bit longer," Lumian replied, not turning to look at her. His voice was quiet, calm.
Audrey hesitated for a brief second, eyes lingering on him. While they were training she had thought to ask about the incident at the hospital and how Lumian knew what would happen in the staff room. She shook her head placing that thought in the back of her mind. After a while, she gave a small nod. "Alright… don't stay too long." Her footsteps faded gradually into silence.
. . .
Soon, only Lumian remained. A lone figure on the empty field, surrounded by dirt and traces of marks that were left by him and Audrey.
He stood still as the night air brushed against him. The soft breeze stirred the edges of his hair.
A deep sigh escaped his lips as his shoulders slackened. The day's fatigue settled over him like a heavy coat. With slow, deliberate movements, he lowered himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged on the cool earth.
His previous feeling of pride and delight at finding out he was a Genjutsu powerhouse made him elated to find out he had a unique position in this world.
Despite that.....
That light was quickly snuffed out, replaced by a creeping weight that pressed against his thoughts.
My talent in Genjutsu does put me in a unique standard compared to others… However, there is an issue to my current situation…
He clenched his jaw, brow furrowing. In the quiet week before entering the academy, he had tried to advance. Every day, every night. Calculating. Reflecting. Acting.
But the progress was painfully minuscule. If he put it into a numerical value, the total advancement was just 3.5%.
Ridiculous. A ridiculously and pathetically small number. At this rate it would take him half an year to fully digest the potion.
He tilted his head upward, gaze falling on the full moon above. Its glow was soft, almost melancholic, like a silent observer.
. . .
Klein… he thought bitterly.
. . .
Klein took about a month to fully digest the Seer potion. But that was different. He had the castle above the gray fog, Sefirot Castle. He had the Seer Club. He had real clients - Real people seeking answers, feeding his acting every single day.
He was a Nighthawk, too...Constantly in the thick of the unknown among the civilian population of Backlund. He solved mysteries. He confronted madness. He was seen as a Seer, as he supported his companions. That helped him. That fed his identity.
That business tycoon haunted by a ghost... The corruption case with his sister's friend... Every event helped him become the Seer, not just play the role.
But Lumian? He didn't have any of that.
He couldn't divine people. Not publicly. It was too suspicious, too strange. No one in this world had even heard of a Seer. The only thing that he could do was pretend like he knew stuff, but instead be seen as a Scammer...
In most cases in Lord of the mysteries, for your average every day-to-day Beyonder..... Digesting your potion in half an year is considered an accomplishment. Just eliminate Klein and Madam Daly. They were unique.
But Lumian didn't have six months.
He clenched a handful of grass beneath his fingers.
He knew where he was. He knew the timeline. Based on everything so far, he was still in the relative calm before the storm. Before Obito joined the squad with Minato, Kakashi, and Rin.
The Third Great Shinobi War was coming.
And when it did, this fragile peace would shatter into blood-soaked earth and broken ideals. Everything would escalate. Powerhouses would enter the game. Deaths would stack. Tragedy would take center stage.
He didn't have time.
Audrey's been my only "client." But even then, it's... unreliable. There's only so much pretending I can do when she thinks were just playing a game.
The silence of the night pressed in again, comforting and heavy. The moon kept its silent vigil overhead, and the crickets sang on, indifferent to the boy beneath them, burdened by thoughts far older than his years.
. . .
Just then, a thought came to mind.An obvious one. One that had whispered itself into his mind before, only to be dismissed, pushed aside like a passing breeze.
His eyes widened slightly. Then he stood up—suddenly. The sharp motion stirred the night air as his blood began to quicken in his veins.
"What if… just what if… that would help me digest the Seer potion faster?"
His mind was racing now, connecting fragmented thoughts like threads on a loom.
He was thinking of that jutsu.
The cheat.
The unspoken hack of the Shinobi world—barely touched upon in the original series but revealed in its true glory during Shippuden.
The Shadow Clone Jutsu.
It was labeled a Ninjutsu, yes. But it didn't fall under any specific chakra nature. It was... fundamental. A manipulation of chakra at its core, divided evenly, reshaped by will alone.
The Shadow Clone Jutsu relied solely on the user's basic chakra —not transformation, not elemental affinity.
The user's chakra would be evenly split among the clones. Create one? You give it half. Create two? Each gets a third. It was direct. Brutal in efficiency. Demanding in scale. But beautiful in what it offered:
Experience.
Real, lived, simultaneous experience.
And unlike basic clones or transformation illusions—these weren't fake. These were sentient, aware, and shared everything upon being dispelled.
And more importantly...
He remembered what Naruto had once said.
That his clones, after dispersing, gave him everything they experienced—everything they felt. That was how he mastered techniques that should've taken years… in days.
. . .
Lumian's eyes sharpened.
"If I can create clones... and they carry out the acting method along with me…""If they each act out the Seer role, think like a Seer, live like one even just for minutes—""Then when I dispel them… Wouldn't that be my experience, too?"
"Wouldn't that help me digest the Seer potion faster?"
His heart pounded. The idea in theory was technically right. However it wasn't proven yet. After all he was the only Beyonder in this world. In addition, He wasn't good at Ninjutsu—he'd barely shown the ability to use even the most basic ones.
But the Shadow Clone Jutsu wasn't bound to a nature.
It was will. Control. Chakra. And most of all—imagination.
It demanded you visualize yourself as clearly as possible and breathe that image into being. Give it form. Let it live. Let it act.
And that, Lumian could possibly do.
He didn't know the mechanics. He didn't have scrolls or instruction. He hadn't been taught.
But he'd seen it. He'd remembered it.
He pressed his hands together, forming the rough shapes of the seal from memory. Sloppy and Unpracticed. But grounded in intention.
He drew on his chakra. Focused.
And then—
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
A burst of smoke exploded beside him, briefly blinding his vision.
When it cleared... a clone lay on the ground. Deformed. Its limbs were slack and its body pale, as if the blood had been sucked out of it. It was barely breathing—if it could even be called that. The eyes were blank.
A failed clone.
A shell.
A hollow.
It should've made him feel defeated. It should've proven that he wasn't ready. That the theory was flawed. That the dream was unreachable.
But instead... A grin tugged at his lips.
It wasn't much. But it was still a clone.
A failed clone. But a functioning one nonetheless.
And that was all he needed.
A spark. A starting point.
The grin widened as the clone fizzled into smoke.
. . .
If Lumian could practice every day, he could—in theory—force himself to learn it. Mastery wouldn't be easy. But it didn't need to be clean. It just needed to be real. Repetitive. Intentional.
And if he did learn it...If this theory proved true…If each clone's effort—each act of divination, each mimicry of insight—fed back into him...
Then he could digest the Seer potion acting solely on his own.No clients.No cases.No fate-driven opportunities.
Just grit, will, and acting.
He might even match Klein's pace. Maybe—just maybe—surpass it.
Lumian felt his chest tighten, not with fear, but with anticipation. The pressure that had loomed over him for days—the ticking clock of the Third Great Shinobi War.
This wasn't hope.
It was a plan.
A path.
He took a deep breath, his lungs filling with the crisp, night air.
The stars shimmered above like fragments of glass scattered across black silk. Cold. Distant. Yet for the first time in days, they didn't feel indifferent.
He smiled up at them.
The kind of smile that belonged not to a boy, but to someone who had seen what lay ahead and decided to meet it halfway.
His fingers curled into fists at his sides.
The clone had failed. The next might too. But it existed. And that was enough.
The moonlight cast a pale glow across the training field, glinting off his eyes.
. . .
Let the Grind begin
. . .
- - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - --
And thus- His training arc begins.
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