Fat Stack [Solo/Training]

Enrai was currently in the process of training himself. He had come in the early morning to the training grounds, since he learned that the lower levels of the training facility were open to visitors like himself, well at least as long as he was not being accompanied by an actual member of the village, at least. Still, this was enough for him, as it had a lot of lower tech stuff that he wanted to use to build up his foundation anyways. He was here to train up as many jutsu as he could, and in the process of learning them, he would train his chakra control and other abilities so that he would be able to defend himself if he needed to in the future. He wanted to make full use of his time here in the village, and although he was not going to join them, he was pretty firm on that opinion, he would still take advantage of their kindness towards missing ninjas and other people that could be considered wanderers. Enrai was currently in the process of training his chakra control, trying to slowly compress a large piece of dirt into more of a stone like substance, and after that, he wanted to change the stone to be more of a sculpture. He had done similar exercises before, but none at this small of a level and this level of detail. He had in his hand a piece of dirt the size of a softball, and he was changing it, slowly making it smaller and more compact. He was going to simply train with the ground itself, the earth around the village was plenty soft for his purposes, but there was some strange inhibition over the village, preventing him from using the earth for his jutsu, which surprised him, but he did not think of it too much, and headed towards the training grounds with a piece of dirt he simply picked up. He was glad that he could still pick up the earth with his hands, as he wondered how any earth users could properly train their jutsus if they could not use their chakra on the earth here. As he was comp[ressing the earth, he was very focused on it, intently staring at it, and this in turn got him many stares from the other people that were there to use the training facility also, but they soon got bored of looking at him when he had absolutely no response, and so he was essentially left alone once more. He did not like to be the center of attention, but he hated being purposefully ignored when he wanted to be seen, so it was a strange balance for the young man, and he was keeping up this balance for a long while. Currently, he was too focused on his training to bother with the people that were there, and simply kept sitting there compressing the earth. The training did not just involve compressing the earth and then sculpting, anyone could do that once they learned a couple of earth jutsu after they learned about their nature and shape transformation, so that was not the point. The point was to compress it as slowly as you possibly could, as this would stress the ‘muscles’ that you needed to manipulate chakra, and slowly you would get better and better at it. It was just like training your muscles, as you would want to do the reps slowly, as this would stress the muscles more and lead to more gains when you did it that way. The same principle was applying to Enrai right now as he slowly compressed the dirt clod into a ball, and then slowly compressed the ball by applying equal pressure to all sides. Occasionally he would see that a small portion of his dirt sphere would compress a bit inward further than the other parts, so he had to stop and recollect himself. After he recollected himself, he had a harder job, which was to compress the whole sphere minus the part that he compressed earlier, so there was just a small hole that was not being worked on and not getting smaller, to match the rest of the sphere with the part he messed up on. Because this was strenuous work, it was causing him to sweat quite a bit, but eventually the ball shrunk more and more, until it was the size of a ping pong ball. This coming from the size of a soft ball meant that he could now start using his chakra as a sharp blade and carving it like proper stone, even though it was simply compressed dirt, and no, they were not the same thing. Any self respecting earth user would never call dirt stone, or the like. As he was thinking this, he decided that he had finished the first part of his training, and would take a small break, drink some water, have some food, and then continue after that. He had already been there for a couple of hours, and so he was quite hungry, as he had been exerting himself just as much as he would have if he jogged that entire time, although this was mostly mental exhaustion instead of physical. He had a plan to train his speed later, but this was not quite as important as training his chakra and chakra control, as he was primarily a ninjutsu user. Enrai slowly got up and noticed that a lot of his body was quite stiff, and so he had a bit of trouble getting up, and started to gently stretch and massage his tired and stiff muscles. It was only then did he realize how long he actually sat there in a lotus position, doing nothing but staring at a piece of dirt. After a bit of stretching, it was time to rehydrate, and then go and find something to eat. There were plenty of shops around the area, almost as if people knew that there were going to be a lot of hungry people flooding out of this area all the time, and so the shops were all related to food and drink. Enrai came out of the training facility, putting the small sphere of dirt into his pocket before heading across the street towards some of the food stalls that were there. He wanted something light for lunch that would allow him to continue training, as he was not going to be training his body today, so it would be really bad to load up on carbs or things with heavy amounts of calories, and so eventually he chose a salad bar. There were quite a few strange things that he saw he could put on his salad as toppings, such as prickly pear flesh or fried cactus. He was unsure of these things, so he essentially got all of the strange toppings and got a Suna Salad, if one would give it a name. The person looked at him with a comical grin, as if he knew he was some sort of tourist and would be greatly disappointed at the flavor profile of the salad, but to his surprise, Enrai loved it. He was the opposite of picky, and could eat just about anything, and so he shoved the salad into his mouth, fork full after fork full until it was gone in a few minutes. Nothing crazy, but much faster than most people would eat a salad, and so the vendor of the salad bar was confused, especially when Enrai tipped him some ryo for the absolutely wonderful salad, and said that he would be back soon, and try to bring some friends later. The vendor thanked him with a confused smile 0on his face, and watched as Enrai stretched again and started walking back to the training facility. Enrai bid farewell to the man as he was walking away, and made it back to the training facility. He walked in, but was really slow about it, making sure to stretch and lunge most of the way, oblivious to the stares that were pointed in his direction, before making his way to his spot in one of the corners and continuing to sit down in the lotus position. After a bit of adjusting to prevent stiffness setting in so fast this time, he slowly pulled the stone out of his pocket and looked at it. It was almost perfectly round, but there were some imperfections, Enrai just could not figure out where the imperfections were and how to fix them. The sphere was almost perfect, but it was slightly oblong, making Enrai upset for quite a while, but this was something that could be perfected with time, and there was no reason to suddenly gut all of his current progress just so that he might be able to fix a small error, as he could always try again, unless all of the dirt disappeared in the village, but was impossible… or maybe he could say it was improbable to the highest degree. Now that he had everything ready, it was time for him to start shaping this thing with a different type of shape transformation, allowing him to make this thing turn into something else, like making a miniature statue. His goal was to make the most detailed cat that he could, for no other reason that cats were cute, but has a lot of fluffy fur, so there was plenty of things for him to mess with in terms of finer details. There could be the cat’s posture, claws, fur, eyes, or any number of other things that he might not be able to think about right now. First, he needed to cut off a large amount of the small sphere sso that he could get the general shape of the cat. This was actually more difficult for him than one might think, as he was not used to thinking in three d space, so he was sort of lost when he first started, and only took off tiny bits and pieces, until he got a vague shape of a cat on some sort of pedestal. The pedestal was a simple circle that was on a place, so it was not anything that required a large amount of precision, Enrai could think in circles, but then came the next task, which was to slowly chip away at the cat until some of the finer details were in place. He had not really sculpted anything before, and was going on the feeling that his mind had when it was moulding the chakra, so there was some sort of instinctual thing that helped him realize how to cut the earth away from the sphere in smaller and smaller increments. This was also pretty difficult for him, and there were a few moments when he cut far too much or far too little, but he had the mindset where he would not ever scrap the project until he was absolutely sure he had ruined it, and even then, he could probably learn from his mistakes if he kept it around as a reference, so he was going to put it on his dresser at the small apartment he was renting in the village. After he did this a few times, he could see the progress he made the more times he had done it, because they would all be sitting there on the dresser in chronological order, and he could slowly improve. He was not just going to do this exercise, however, as there were many different ways to train chakra control and chakra capacity, this one was just one of many that he knew of. There were a couple of others that he had learned from some people, and the next one he was going to try was to manipulate mud into various shapes and through various obstacles that he made from earth himself. This would come much later though, as he was still working on this cat he had been working on for nearly an hour now, so he was getting close to finishing it to the best of his ability. The cat looked really scuffed, and there was no way it could be considered a cat, maybe a caricature of a rat was more likely to be interpreted by people, as he had cut too much off of the stomach area of the cat, so it looked far too skinny, and the fur he tried to make it made it look like it was standing up on its back, making it look like some sort of beast ready to attack. If he played a tabletop game, this seemed like it would make a great token for a run of the mill enemy in the sewers. It was terrible, but there was something that he appreciated about it, so it was not getting thrown away, and instead would be put on the dresser when he got back to the apartment. After this though, he was complete with it, as he could not realistically cut any more stone off of it without compromising the structural integrity, and he did not want to destroy this thing, so he stopped for now. Later, he would compress another small ball and try his hand to sculpt things again tomorrow or the next day. It had been a couple more hours, so he had been training in this way for around six hours, so it was time to go back to the apartment, have some small food, and then head to bed after a shower. This day had been pretty exhausting, and so he was going to end it. He got up and started to head out of the training facility, and soon found himself on the streets of sun a in the afternoon, heading towards the apartment complex he had been renting a room from for the past few days, and before he even got there, he noticed a number of not so nice looking individuals clamoring out of a bar, cursing that the bar owner kicked them out so early, but they did not dare to cause trouble here, especially for a resident of the village, as a ninja of the village would be there in an instant to start taking off peoples’ hands, which would be a hilarious punishment, although quite harsh for a couple of drunks. They saw Enrai, and started talking to him as if they were old buddies, asking where the nearest bar was. Enrai had only been here for a few days, and he did not really drink much, so he simply told them he did not know and that the hoped that they had a great rest of their night. They were confused as the nonchalant way that Enbrai carried himself when surrounded by the threw of them, but he was gone before they could actually process it and look for him. Enrai successfully made it into his apartment by climbing the stairs to the third floor, and soon he flopped down on his bed and simply stayed like that for a bit, before getting up. He put away his water bottles and his exercise equipment, before walking over to his dresser and putting down the small rat-like animal that was supposed to be a cat into the dresser and looked at it in satisfaction. This was not pretty, and it was far from perfect, but for the time being, it was a sign of wonderful progress, and it gave Enrai hope for the future of his training. He already felt like he made a large amount of progress, as his chakra was running through his body more smoothly since earlier, and he felt stronger, for whatever reason. Still, he thought that this was just some sort of illusion that one would get after they had trained really hard and knew it probably was not true, and he needed to rest and keep at it to actually see gains. Enrai was getting ready for a shower while he was thinking about what he wanted to eat.  The salad was really good, but he had no idea what else he wanted. He wanted something substantial so that he could go to bed and not wake up hungry, as he usually skipped breakfast and fasted during the morning, so he was thinking of some sort of meat dish, and wondered what sort of meat that suna would have when they were in the middle of a desert. He noticed that there was a large grove type forest in the center of the village, but this could not be used to raise any significant amount  of herding animals, so there was no way that could be used for food, and he wondered how all these people got fed the protein they needed. He decided that he would just wander around outside where he saw all of those food stands earlier and figure something out by just window shopping or asking the locals. The locals around the area should know what the  best food was in the village, and not enough people asked the locals. It also needed to be a trusted local, as there were plenty of people out to scam you, as the people of the village, although they could not outright steal, Enrai was sure that there were people wanting to scam people, as this got around that ironclad rule. It was not really stealing anything if you gave them the money yourself, it was just you being stupd, so there was nothing that the village did when it came to those sorts of scams.
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WC: 2953

Enrai knew this quite well from traveling around, and he did not think that it would be much different here in the sand village, it would just be of a bigger scale, and the people that were scamming you were probably trained a bit as ninjas or at least trained to deal with ninjas. This did not mean that the people could fight the ninjas, but they could force the new people or visitors to don something like attack them or try and steal their money back, and this would result in the ire of the village officials and peacekeepers, so this was a win win situation for the scammers. You simply had to realize what goods were worth, and what you were worth to different people, as there was always some sort of price to pay when dealing with these people. Luckily, Enrai had traveled to quite a few places while he was getting from Volcano to Suna, so he was definitely able to spot one of these scammers before he fell victim to them, so he would not have any trouble in finding a good spot to eat some meat. Enrai was walking through the streets in the evening, and it was starting to smell really good, as he had finally reached the food stalls. There were even more here in the evening, and he saw some of the ones that were open earlier had now closed, and he was sort of sad to see the salad bar closed, because if none of this worked out and he could not find anything to actually whet his appetite, he wanted to fall back on the salad bar, but this was no longer possible, so he had thought that he had better get to finding something good before it was too late. As he looked around, he mostly allowed his nose to guide him, before he came to a part of the street that had a few people sitting around in chairs talking to people, and so Enrai walked up to them. They were older men, and Enrai politely asked them if they had any suggestions for something filling, and after a bit of a heated discussion about which food stalls were the best, especially when it came to the old men’s families, there was finally a consensus saying that if he did not choose one of their children’s shops, he should go and find a specific stall that sold mutton kebabs, as they were delicious and sold with a potato side dish that was pretty damned filling. Enrai nodded and thanked the older men profusely before heading in that direction with a big grin on his face. As he got to the stand, there were only a couple of people in line before him, so it was a really short wait, and everything that was handed over the stall counter to the men looked delicious, and so Enrai was really hopeful due to this, and so when he got to the stand, he looked around, and he knew that the first menu item was usually the most popular or their staple item, so he chose that, which was a simple lamb kebab with some home fries with some special tzatziki sauce. Enrai did not really know what any of that meant, but it sounded good and smelled even better, so he was waiting with great anticipation for his food, so when it finally came out he could not wait to dig in, and barely got to the table before he started eating the probably too hot kebab. The meat was delicious and lean, but still had a bit of chew to it even though it was really soft. It also came on a stick for easy eating, as he did not even need to use any utensils, so the food was finished in a short order. Enrai knew that he had found his new favorite place, and this combined with the salad place would ensure that he would have plenty of good meals while he was staying in the village to help people and get a bit stronger. As he was finishing up his food, he sat there in satisfaction and started to rub his stomach, sighing. After a couple of minutes, Enrai made sure to clean up his tray and threw the paper and other stuff into the nearest receptacle before heading back to his apartment. He was full and satiated, ready to go ahead and take a shower before heading to bed. He stepped into the shower, and finally opened up a bit of his skin, letting the water flow through the threads that comprised his body, which was a strange feeling that no one else would ever get to experience, as if one was getting a nice cool burst of water washing their muscles and veins. After the strange experience when he knew he was clean, he hopped out of the shower and dried off as best he could, although his insides were still wet and he would have to sleep on a towel to make sure that he drained properly. After that, he fell asleep almost instantly as soon as he put his head to the pillow. In the morning, he woke up quite early to an alarm that had been set, and so he sat up and stretched, feeling really good, as his mind and chakra network had been expanded yesterday, which was much easier to recover from than physical exertion. It was early in the morning this time, and he had decided to go and grab some mud  in a small bucket from a nearby park, and then head to the training grounds. Today, he was going to practice manipulating the earth in less than geometric shapes, and also how to harden and soften the earth at different intervals. He knew how to make the earth soft and travel through it, but nothing much else with the dirt, and so he was going to practice more complicated things with the earth, but it would be easier on his chakra network, but would take more chakra than other workouts, which was why he had trained his chakra capacity the day previous. That would make this much easier of a work out today, but he was pretty excited about it and started heading to the park immediately. He chose a park because there was plenty of dirt instead of sand, and the kids he had seen playing before had been messing with some water from a fountain to play in the mud, and so it was a perfect chance to get a bit of it. He still walked up to one of the patrols and asked if it was okay, because he did not want something trivial like that to end up being considered theft, and losing him an arm. To his happiness, it was not any sort of crime, just a little strange, but nothing illegal or anything, and so Enrai walked over to the park and grabbed some of the mud he had made after filling his bucket with water and dumping it on the ground. He again ignored the strange stares he got from around the park, and headed toward the training facility once again. As soon as he got in, he walked over to the corner he had occupied before, and he saw a couple of familiar faces in the training facility, a lot of them visitors just like him, and he was surprised that no one had taken his corner, as it was spacious and open. He glanced around and nodded to people, before putting down his bucket. A lot of people in the training facility looked to see what he had in the bucket, and had a strange look on their faces as he lifted out a bundle of mud with his chakra. He needed the mud to get smoother and more liquid, and he was going to ddo this with his chakra, as he had specifically left the mud slightly dry, but he needed to be able to manipulate it like water. As he filled the mud with his chakra, he started twisting it and turning it, slowly working it to where it was more malleable, before using the chakra to try and thin out the solid particulates in the mud, which made it slowly start to get less thick and more runny, like quicksand instead of mud. This made him quite pleased, as this was the first step in developing a bunch of jutsu in the future, and learning more things later that day even. He made the mud quite thin and runny, before turning it into various shapes that he could not do with standard dirt or mud, including the infinity symbol, and a strange symbol that looped around on itself infinitely, coils, springs, and other things. After doing this and feeling comfortable with it for a while, he was then practicing slowly turning it back into dirt, removing the water from it, which was much harder when one did not have the water element. This meant that he was using the solid matter within to scrunch together and squeeze the water out, as if it was some sort of sponge that was being grabbed and groped. After fumbling around with this for a while, Enrai finally figured out how to do it by moving the chakra in a certain way. It was sort of like rotating a muscle to figure out how to properly flex it, and would simply take time, practice, and experimentation to eventually figure out how to do it. It was just all about practice after that, and Enrai was never one that shied away from practice makes perfect. As he was finally finished with emptying the water out from the mud, turning it back into dirt, he simply dropped the dry dirt back into the bucket, watching the water and the dry dirt rapidly meld back into each other, forming more mud and simply returning the bucket to normal form once more. After that, he knew that he could try more and more mud, making it harder to do the same exercises with more and more mud, which would help him when learning similar jutsu in the future. One might think this was useless, as you could pretty easily turn vast parts of the earth into mud if you practiced for a little bit, and this whole bucket mud training was unnecessary, but this was just like flexing a muscle with tension, and as long as one did it slow and methodically, it was a really great workout and helped one perfect the control they had over the element down the line. He was only doing this for the earth element because he was in love with it, especially because he was born with it and found it much more interesting than normal elements that people seemed to have, which was water and fire. Sure, both of those elements seemed to be flashier than earth, but earth was the element that could last the test of time. Endurance was the main facet of Earth, and that’s why he loved it so much. Eventually he would see what other elements he had affinities with and start to work on those, but there was definitely nothing that was better than earth in his mind. After he had finished with the bucket, he calmly put everything back in the bucket and grabbed it. He got up and stretched, and this time the stiffness was a bit better because he figured out his posture, but it was still him sitting down in the same position for a couple of hours, so there was bound to be some sort of sore spots with his muscles. He had thought of something interesting, and it was time for him to get some lunch and continue on later. He no longer needed the bucket, and so he was first going to head back to the park and dump the mud back onto the playground, and soon he had found his way back, and there seemed to be even more children there, as it was close to noon now, and so he got a couple of weird questions form the kids as to why he was dumping mud into the park. He thought it would be fun to mess with the kids, so he said he was refilling the park because it had a leak, and if he did not do it, the park would turn into a huge sinkhole and kill everyone here. The kids gasped before looking around at the ground, and Enrai laughed a bit before leaving the area. He then headed towards the food stalls again, hoping to get another salad with some different toppings on it. Enrai was having a great day.
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WC: 2147
Total WC: 5100
Advanced Training Facility 25% discount
Claiming 27 Vigor
Claiming 41 Chakra
Using 1875 on Tearing Earth Palm A rank
Using 1875 on Swamp of the Underworld
Using 1125 on Earth Flow Spears B rank
Using 225 towards Moving Earth Core 225/750

Damn man. Sizable thread. Nice work. Good read

Approved.

I'm always around to teach you earth techs 🥺