"Now, imagine," Aika said, her voice dropping to a low, dramatic whisper, "you're a genjutsu user without the Sharingan. You've cast a complex illusion—a raging fire, a cave collapsing into itself, a crumbling bridge, a swarm of maddened crows—all needing intricate details and your constant undivided attention. You have to maintain every part of the illusion by yourself—every flicker of flame, every pebble in the collapse, every brick of the bridge, every beat of a wing. If your focus wavers for even a moment—snap!—the illusion shatters, and your target sees the truth."
On Aika's mention of a swarm of crows, Itachi's mind drifted back to the time when he jumped of a cliff and met a swarm of crows—these ones were peaceful, however. And for some reason, he felt an unknown connection to them. An idea started forming in his mind and he was lost in thought.
Aika's voice pulled him out of his thoughts. "And what's more, the difficulty in maintaining the illusion increases exponentially with the complexity of the illusion and the duration of the illusion."
"Unlike the Sharingan genjutsu, the longer a genjutsu is used, the more mentally taxing it becomes and will result in severe headaches, even for simple illusions, resulting in a greater risk of the genjutsu failing. And even without taking the duration into consideration, no matter how experienced they are, even a moment's distraction can break the genjutsu," Aika concluded and once again waited for Itachi to absorb all of this.
Itachi had largely calmed down by now, though still surprised by the advantage afforded by Sharingan for his clan. And while his grandma explained how Sharingan plays into the esoteric jutsu category—genjutsu, she still hasn't answered the thing that started led to this information.
Itachi with a slight frown on his face asked, "But grandma, that still doesn't explain why I should learn genjutsu even though I haven't awakened my Sharingan yet. In fact, what you said makes me think that my decision to not focus on it until then was the right one."
Aika's lips curled into a playful smile. "Hmm… It appears that you haven't figured out that part yet."
Itachi's shoulders hunched at that, and Aika said, "It's fine, Itachi. Remember, there's nothing to be ashamed of if you learn from your mistake, Itachi."
"Well, let's see… I have told you that Sharingan greatly lowers the difficulty that is typical of genjutsu—and this is a well known fact. In fact, experienced ninja will avoid looking into your eyes when you fight them, some even avoid looking into your eyes if the Sharingan is activated even out of combat. So, that's a problem. However…" Aika trailed off as she raised her hand and pointed at Itachi.
"We already have a solution for that. In fact, I mentioned it to you just now, but it might have been too subtle to notice," Aika said and looked at him expectantly prompting Itachi to once again metally review his grandmother's explanation.
And he recalled a piece of information that wasn't related to Sharingan. He looked at her triumphantly and said, "Grandma! I got it. You said that the Uchiha have a natural aptitude for genjutsu." Then, he paused for a moment, and as he rubbed the back of his neck said, "So, is the solution to learn normal genjutsu as well? But you said it was difficult…" He trailed off with a "hmm…" at the end.
This was the logical conclusion he arrived at after considering all the information he had at hand. However, he was doubtful about the solution he had arrived at due to the fact that Aika explained how difficult genjutsu is to cast without a Sharingan. So, he waited for her to resolve this contradiction.
Aika didn't keep Itachi waiting any longer and answered at once. "That's right. The solution is to learn normal genjutsu as well,"—she raised her hand to stop Itachi from interrupting her—"I know that might be confusing, but consider this, what is needed for a genjutsu? Of course, apart from having an aptitude for it."
Itachi fell into silence for a moment. Then he looked more confused than ever since starting this discussion as he said, "Sp—Spiritual Energy?" and stared at her.
"Bingo," Aika said with a satisfied smile. "That's it. You need the aptitude for genjutsu and something related to Spritual Energy—be good at using Spiritual Energy, or to be more accurate have a high affinity toward Yin Release."
Aika elaborated even further. "You are aware that chakra is made by moulding Physical Energy and Spiritual Energy. If someone is good at using Physical Energy separately from Spiritual Energy and without moudling it into chakra, then this indicates that this person has affinity toward Yang Release. The converse of this indicates affinity toward Yin Release."
Itachi was now hooked into the explanation—he was aware that those two energies can be moulded to make chakra, and he also learned about Spiritual Energy being applied in genjutsu from the various scrolls at home. He was very vaguely aware of Yang and Yin Release and since his schedule was already packed with so many things, he never looked into them.
"The most well know applications of Yang and Yin Release are Iryō Ninjutsu and Genjutsu. However, Iryō Ninjutsu is even more complicated than genjutsu and just because you have an affinity for Yang Release doesn't mean you can be a good Iryō-nin, but I digress. Let's focus on genjutsu." Aika let out a sigh, chiding herself mentally for going off topic—a blonde haired woman flitted through her mind when talking about Iryō Ninjutsu and she went off topic.
Aika continued, "Back to genjutsu… being able to manipulate Spiritual Energy indicates Yin Release affinity…" her voice trailed off here as she looked into the sky with a smile.
"The world is very unfair, Itachi." Aika let out a long sigh. "Among the people with these two esoteric non elemental nature transformations—which are rare affinities—most people would have Yang Release affinity. But it is useless for them—apart from adding it to increase the destructive power of some jutsus. As I mentioned, Iryō Ninjutsu has even more difficult and complicated requirements than genjutsu and Yang Release affinity is just one of them—just an entry level one.
"And the Yin Release affinity. This is even more tragic. Outside the Uchiha clan, very few ninja have more Spiritual Energy than Physical Energy. So, for the people with Yin Release affinity, they have so little Spiritual energy that it is almost laughable. They can strive to increase their Spiritual Energy but it would never match the rate of growth of any random Uchiha.
"But the Uchiha clan, our clan, has both of these things in spades: the aptitude and the Spiritual Energy. In fact, as we grow older, we end up having much more Spiritual Energy than Physical Energy. Do you see where I am going with this now, Itachi?" Aika asked as she looked down from the sky and toward Itachi.
Itachi nodded his head and said, "Yes, grandma, I do. However, that only means that Uchiha are particularly suited for using genjutsu—even the normal type. But that still doesn't lower the difficulty of using normal genjutsu for us."
Aika tilted her head and smiled meaningfully as she said, "Itachi… you see… our goal for using normal genjutsu is much different than normal ninja…"
A brightly glowing firefly appeared in front of Itachi and hovered in front of his face for a moment and then flew toward Aika. Itachi felt that it was brighter and larger than the average firefly and followed it with his eyes.
The firefly flew toward Aika's face and abruptly disappeared. And Itachi found himself locking eyes with his grandma. "We only need to make the target look into our eyes." Her eyes turned red as she said that, and Itachi was suddenly transported to the rooftop and with a sinking feeling in his stomach found himself falling off of it—he was about to yell this time—but the next moment he was back under the tree sitting on the rock.
Itachi, falling victim to the genjutsu once again, looked at his grandmother with a look of betrayal, and in response Aika only let out a hearty laugh and winked at him. "See? It's so simple. Just make them look into our eyes."
Aika reached out a hand toward Itachi and ruffled his hair as she added, "However, you should not limit yourself to this. If you have the ability to use normal genjutsu to achieve your goals, you should do that. Because, unlike taijutsu, genjutsu is a creative field and thinking about it should become second nature to you if you want to excel at it."
Then she had a big proud smile on her face as she said, "The best of us—Uchiha—consider being good at both types of genjutsu a matter of pride just like it is with the Fire Release jutsu." Then she looked at him with her brows raised as if challenging him to do the same.
Itachi, while mature for his age and stoic by nature, was still a child and wasn't one to back down from a challenge. So, he held her gaze with a mad glint in his eyes and nodded—if he was going to accept this challenge, he was going to ace it and be the very best genjutsu user among the Uchiha.
And Aika was happy seeing him react this way—this is the one challenge she wouldn't mind losing. In fact, nothing would make her happier than losing this challenge. Uchiha Aika was already looking forward to that day.
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A/N:
Hey everyone, I hope you enjoy today's update!
I spent a lot of time trying to make sure this category of jutsu makes sense, and I am pretty happy with how it turned out.
We're going to use this as a basis for genjutsu in the book.
And I believe this explains how most genjutsu works in the series as well.
Let me know how you like this?
With that said, I've also been reading the comments, and one of the readers, Neon, gave some really good feedback. The feedback says that the pacing of the story is way too slow, and that Hotaru needs to be focused on more.
This is something I have felt as well. And going forward I will work on improving this.
So, I will be increasing the pacing of the story and of course we will spend a lot of time on Hotaru in the future chapters.
I will take some time to get used to increasing the pace, and I hope you'll be patient with me as I work on increasing the pace.
And don't forget to comment, rate, and review.
See you in the next chapter.