Sealsmith: Antechamber [I/O]

As the haughty nobleman was looking around and told them to get to work, Keita was currently ignoring him and was looking into the antechamber to see if he could see anything interesting or noteworthy. The antechamber lacked the similar style to the rest of the manor, and Keita noted that there was a large hole where the antechamber was essentially unearthed. The antechamber beyond looked free of dust and it seemed that nothing had touched it for a very long time, not even dirt or dust. It was there, essentially frozen in time for however long it had been there, and Keita was studying the entrance. There was obviously something that would have prevented them from going in there and looting everything. There were very few things adorning the antechamber but it still looked quite opulent in its display. The walls were a cream color adorned with crown molding and plenty of golden accents. The floor was some sort of rich brown wood that looked very expensive, almost as if it was some sort of marble, but one could tell it was wood, petrified wood perhaps. There were a couple of paintings adorning the wall, and a couple of stands showcasing beautiful white vases that seemed to hold golden leafed flowers in them.

The antechamber only had one door, and it was all the way at the other end, Keita looking through it lengthwise. The door was a large double door with two door knockers on them that looked like the face of an oni, the knockers being a ring that was pierced through their noses. Keita kept surveying the entrance, and noticed that there were small indicators of fuuinjutsu seals there, noting that it could be some sort of entrance seal. Something similar to the sealing technique that made a functionally identical copy of you if you tried to remove the seals, but this one was simply using leftover chakra. Keita admired the work, as the seal was able to pull residual energy directly from the earth around the manor to fuel it with chakra, which was ingenious, and similar to his Uzumaki Whirlpool technique. As he was looking through the seal, seeing what it would take to break it and get into the antechamber, there were suddenly loud noises and screaming, and it seemed that some sort of force had started to attack the manor.

Seeing Kizmaru start to head out, Keita simply nodded to him and continued with trying to break the chamber’s seal. The nobleman that had told them to begin came racing into the room, his face red and exacerbated, and suddenly started yelling towards Keita. “Hey! People are attacking my manor! Aren’t you going to do something!” the man yelled, obviously in a state of shock. Keita was calm as the surface of a lake when he responded, as his calmness seemed to calm down other people in times of crisis. Keita continued looking at the seals on the antechamber, but still responded to the man to try and calm him. “My ally is taking care of it sir, I still have a job to do. Besides, who would protect you if I ran out there?” Keita obviously lied, but he did not mind if the man stayed near him while he worked, as he would protect him from the bandits if need be. Keita obviously believed that there would be no need for him outside, however.
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WC: 574

Standing in front of him were the three mercenaries he had just encountered. They were standing in front of him menacingly and it seemed as if they were different from the rest of the rabble. Kizmaru was confident he could slay anybody else that had the misfortune of crossing his path and he could probably slay the three of these if he fought them individually. However, he had a hunch that if he was careless fighting them while they're together, he'd have a really bad time. Still, he didn't have too much worry as now he still had the upper hand. The fight had begun and Kizmaru decided it was in his best interest to make the first move. Being straightforward in his attack, he decided to attack the middle most mercenary whose weapon of choice seems to be a large studded club. The other two that were on the left and the right of him had jumped backwards towards their respective sides as the one in the middle decided not to move and braced himself for impact. Wielding his club, the mercenary placed it in front of himself in a defensive manner as if he were anticipating where Kizmaru's strike would be.  

Kizmaru had indeed telegraphed his blow to be there but that was not where he was aiming for in the long run. He was going to throw a feint and adjust his blow in order to catch the man off guard and sweep his head right from his shoulders. Just as Kizmaru had planned, the mercenary guarded in the exact manner he had intended. Feinting, Kizmaru quickly adjusted his strike towards the neck like he intended. It was going to be a clean hit when suddenly, Kizmaru felt a sharp impact coming from the right side of his body, knocking him off course from his initial target. A meteor hammer had made contact with Kizmaru's right side as he was knocked away from the large mercenary with the club. Recovering from the blow, Kizmaru didn't really take any damage due to his armor but it still hit him hard enough to disrupt his action. Frustrated, Kizmaru had looked in the direction where the meteor hammer was being recalled towards which turned out to be a top of some grand stairwell. Well, it seems like they cover for each other's weaknesses pretty well. On another note, Kizmaru could hear the sound of a bow being drawn.

However, Kizmaru didn't have much time to deal with that as the man in front of him with the large club was getting ready to swing at him. Kizmaru had dash backwards in order to evade the club swing but he was at the mercy of some arrows coming his way. They were aimed at the only exposed part of his body which would be his face. Kizmaru easily shifted his left arm, putting it in front of his face in order to block the incoming arrows. This was rather annoying how coordinated they were. He could simply end this with a single jutsu of his choice but unfortunately, he didn't want to risk destroying the noble's home. Instead, he decided on jutsu that would help him out in this situation. Weaving the hand signs of Tiger, Dog, Snake, Dragon and Boar, conjuring two wood clones from out of his body. With this, this fight would be three on three. With that, he was ready to restart this fight once again. This time, Kizmaru would see how their coordination holds up when they are each preoccupied with an opponent of their own. This would be interesting to say the least. 

W.C: 608

After Keita stated that if he had left to go and deal with the people attacking the estate, that he would not be able to stay here and protect the nobleman, the nobleman immediately coughed a bit to himself and started agreeing, calming down a bit at the notion. “Why yes, of course, hmm hmph. O-of course you would stay here to protect me, yes.” The nobleman would say, before walking over to a small decorative chair off to the side and sitting down. It seemed like he was extraordinarily stressed, as if he could not fathom that he was actually being attacked right then, and so it seemed that there were some apprehensions in his heart about the whole thing. He still could not fool himself into thinking that Keita was telling the whole truth, and figured that the contents of the room beyond the antechamber were still the main goal of the powerful ninja. He figured that the ninja were powerful, because he had heard the sounds of combat happening outside for a while, and the ninja that left had not come back, and there was no way that the normal guards he had hired for the manor were causing such ground shaking combat to happen. It must have been the other ninja, Keita’s partner that was causing such discord outside, and it was at this point that the nobleman noticed that the two were probably way more powerful than the normal ninja that would have taken on this kind of job, and so he simply sat where he was quiet.

He realized that he might have offended these two ninja beforehand, and if he had done so, he might be in a world of hurt, especially because he had no real power. He had some slight political power because of the goods and money he was funneling into the village every year, but he was a smart enough businessman to know that the ninja did not need him to run the business, he was being allowed to have a cozy and carefree life because he was not some sort of security threat. This calmed him down a bit more, as he realized that even though the ninja here were far higher of a level than he thought, they were still willing to protect him and his estate, and so he remained seated and thinking about something. As he was having some sort of mental crisis in his mind, Keita was busy studying and attempting to crack the code on the initial part of the antechamber so that he could get in and see what the rest of the seals would break. The beginning was fairly easy, and it only took him a minute or so before realizing that this particular area was only protected by a marginal use of fuuinjutsu. This one he could break with the normal fuuinjutsu breaking technique, and all he needed to do was to select the correct strength. This was the only challenging part, fine tuning the strength of the fuuinjutsu breaking technique to match the power output of the entrance seal. Soon however, Keita was met with the seals silently fading away, which meant that he had succeeded.
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WC: 537

Smirking like a deranged man, Kizmaru was now ready to try this battle one more time as he was still in combat with these three mercenaries from before. If he couldn't beat them together, then he would even the odds with the two clones he made to serve as his teammates. Once again, the real Kizmaru would charge at the mercenary with the large club, brandishing his petrification gauntlets in order to take a swing at the enemy. Once again the mercenary readied himself to defend with his club until Kizmaru heard the sound of something heavy attached to a chain coming for him again. He didn't break from his course however as this time he had backup with this time. One of the clones had thrown a Fuma shuriken at the meteor hammer, knocking it off course from the real Kizmaru and having sent it in an entirely different direction. That wasn't the only thing the clone was willing to do as he began to lunge towards the mercenary with the meteor hammer. This time, he'd skip up the stairs towards the opponent with the meteor hammer and begin to savagely assault him with the cloned version of the petrification gauntlets. 

Now that the clone was dealing with the mercenary with the meteor hammer, the original Kizmaru was free to deal with the mercenary with the large club. Once again, he could hear the sound of a bow being drawn from a distance. Since he heard it, he could only assume his clone had heard it as well and as he thought that, his clone sprung into action in order to tail his original. Once the sound of the bow being drawn could no longer be heard, Kizmaru's second clone sped up while the original Kizmaru slowed down in order for the clone to overtake him. What had happened was the original was the target of arrows being fired so he simply slowed down to draw the archer's attention and harmlessly blocked the arrows of said archer with his gauntlets. After that the original Kizmaru decided it was in his best interest to trace the direction the arrows came from by activating his eternal mangekyou sharingan and heading in that direction to deal with him. The second clone had instead been the one to deal with the club wielding mercenary as he was caught off guard by the sudden switch up from the original Kizmaru and his clone.

When the clone made it towards the club wielder he had delivered a fatal blow to the neck with his sharp petrification gauntlets as the mercenary was still in the position of trying to guard against the original's attack. Unfortunately, he had caught on too late, was too slow in changing up his guard so he perished. It was a shame, as he looks like he was strong enough to take out a small militia himself and Kizmaru wouldn't have minded having potential like that on his side. Seems fate was cruel to this one, running into the second Mizukage without even knowing it. After a few moments, the first clone came back with the mangled body of the archer over his shoulder before dropping him near the corpse of the club wielder. A minute after that, the original came back, dragging the corpse of the archer he went after. Turns out of course, the archer was the most swift and agile so he had a bit of trouble catching and cleaning him up. Now that they all regroup he figured he'd help out with the lesser rabble and split up once more. Single handedly, he had managed to turn the tide of the battle simply by culling some of the mercenaries before they decided their lives were worth more than a couple thousand ryo.

After the skirmish was over, Kizmaru checked for survivors on both sides of the opposition in order to aid or finish off the mercenaries.  He thought about interrogating them to figure out how they came to discover the antechamber, what they wanted with it and who sent them and all that but that grunt work was better left for the local authorities. So by finishing off, he means just incapacitating them for the authorities to appear and do all of that for him. It was their job after all. After that, he went back downstairs to see what Keita was doing and if he had made progress or finished. Either way, he'd wait for everything to be complete so they can finally get out of this place and return to the village of Kirigakure. 

[Exit.]

W.C: 768
T.W.C: 4276

Mission Claims
Claiming 18,000 Ryo and 4000 Ryo from AP conversation.

Ability Claims
Using 3,000 words to swap to Ninjutsu as my primary specialty.
Using 1,275 words into A-rank Iron Wall

Stat Claims
Using 2,200 words to take away 22 Str
Using 500 words to take away 5 Chakra.
Using 1500 words to increase Speed by 15

As Keita was looking through the seals on the floor that surrounded the antechamber, he was able to finally crack them open, just as another strange rumble rocked its way through the estate from the mercenaries out there trying their hardest to survive Kizmaru’s onslaught. Keita ignored it, and it seemed like this gave a bit of peace of mind to the noble that owned the estate, as he only jumped for a moment, looked at Keita, and then resumed sitting in the chair, attempting to relax. Keita had broken through the Antechamber’s first layer of security, and so he ventured into the area. He was walking around with his guard up, as he had no idea what was in store for him in the chamber, but soon his fears were allayed when he got to the end of the room, where the door to the chamber beyond actually lay. As he did so, he noticed that the seal that was keeping the room sealed lit up, becoming visible.

It seemed that the seal was set up in such a way that allowed the previous owner to access it with some sort of password, that Keita did not have at the moment. So, he needed to act as a safe cracker and get down to doing this with his own skill. It seemed like the fighting had calmed down a bit as Keita was working on the seal, and it was enough to where he assumed that all of the mercenaries that had been hired were either dead or had been chased off of the property, and so Keita could fully concentrate on the seal in front of him. Although the seal was complex, Keita was a master seal smith, and got to work on it. It only took around ten minutes for Keita to find the pattern, as there were minute traces of what the previous owner had used, meaning the password was essentially visible, if you knew what to look for. After that, Keita simply unlocked it using the password, which meant that none of the extra security measures would activate, and he was able to open the door that was sealed.

As he did so, what greeted him seemed like a veritable treasure trove that a dragon might horde. It was filled with old coins from before even Xyxer was Mizukage, as well as a lot of ryo notes and fine art pieces. Keita nodded to himself, recalling that the nobleman said that he would donate everything in here to the village, and so he activated his Uzumaki sealing technique. The sealing technique spread, engulfing everything in the room before there was a slight fluctuation, bringing everything into a small seal on the ground. Keita then walked over and picked up the seal, placing it on a scroll he had prepared, like a sticker, before placing the scroll back into his cloak. As he left, he bowed to the nobleman, expressing that the village would be grateful for his contribution and that any damage to the estate would be paid for by the village. After that, he headed out of the estate and back to the village proper to meet back up with Kizmaru and hand over the scroll with the spoils.
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EXIT
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WC: 544
TWC: 4500
Claiming 18,750 ryo for mission and Anbu rank
Claiming 4,000 ryo for the 80ap conversion with max ap
Using 25% max stat discount
Using 1875 words for A rank Fuuinjutsu Amplifier
Using 2063 words for A rank Seal of Protection
Using 562 words towards Storm Sphere 562/750

Approved