The bright afternoon sun was blaring down upon Chizuki and Uehara as they fought. Parts of Chizuki’s ice woman were broken off and a hole arm was already missing. Learning from her mistake, Chizuki didn’t hastily draw in nature energy to fix it. She used all manners of tactics and techniques to fight back but Uehara and his clones were more persistent than flies.

Uehara was using guerrilla tactics to chip away at Chizuki. A clone would draw her attention while Uehara would chip away at the ice statue while the other clone would defend against the ice spikes and water waves Chizuki would make.

Time went by and it was nearly evening. The conclusion of the battle was already nearing. Chizuki threw out a massive punch in a last ditch effort to injure Uehara. But she didn’t expect that his two clones would appear next to him. All three of them brought two fingers to their lips and casually blew golden flames that immediately melted the fist, causing massive amounts of steam to limit the visibility in the area.

When the mist cleared, Chizuki’s ice sculpture was revealed to have had its whole arm and even part of the shoulder melted off. When she was about to create another arm, she felt six blade chains grip into the remaining left arm of the statue. Before she could even properly react, the arm was ripped clean off its socket.

“You’re still too green.”

Her heart nearly stopped when she heard Uehara’s voice sound right above the statue’s head. . Uehara’s fist was covered in a tough bone gauntlet.

“Always pay attention to your surroundings.”

Then like a cocked gun that was just released, his fist barrelled down on the statue’s head, destroying it immediately. The torso where Chizuki was at was also destroyed by the following shockwaves.

When Chizuki was about to repair it, she felt her sage state recede. Her blue hair turned back to black and her ghastly white skin turned back to normal and her eyes regained the pupils.

“You did well.”

Uehara had appeared next to her. All that was left now were chunks of ice and ocean water as far as the eye could see. She was on all fours on the ocean surface. It was clear she was very tired.

“I’m sorry master. I couldn’t keep it on anymore. If I controlled it better I-“

“Look at me.”

She raised her head to take in Uehara’s appearance. His skin had partial scrapes and injuries caused by the ice spikes and a few of his ribs were deformed from being unable to dodge a powerful wave of water that drilled into his sides. Along with a few tears on his pants, this rogue-like appearance was further accentuated by his long wild black spiky hair.

“I only expected you to enter your water-sage form for a few hours at best. You holding it for the whole day is already exceptional.”

He gently touched her cheek and replenished the chakra that she had expended.

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“You have done very well Chizuki. I am proud of the effort that you’ve put in.”

Her eyes became clouded but she lowered her head while smiling.

“I’m your attendant master. I can’t bring disgrace to your name.”

Uehara smiled at her response but he soon adopted a serious expression.

“In future, we will have to work on your control but for now, your training is complete.”

A trace of fear flashed in Chizuki’s eyes.

“Does that mean that I have to leave you alone for some time?”

Uehara looked at her with a neutral expression.

“You don’t have that option.”

A dark portal swirled into existence in front of them.

“You’re my attendant…forever. You have to be beside me.”

But silently, he thought to himself.

[Even the gods can’t take you from me.]

He walked into it while Chizuki silently walked behind him. If one looked closely enough, a subtle smile was displayed on her face.

…

Two weeks passed since their spar and Chizuki was feeding Uehara some tea with her blood in it. After they had sparred, Uehara had made Chizuki rest. She was not allowed to do any sort of strenuous exercise besides circulating her chakra and attempting to lengthen the duration of her sage transformation.

Unlike demons who naturally had little to no trouble keeping their respective sage modes activated indefinitely due to their connection to nature, humans had to work much harder. Thus, Uehara had given Suzuki her next training. After having observed her for years, he had noticed that she derives joy from peace. So he instructed her to relax and take it easy.

He had already planned to go back to the capital city to visit Sakura after not having seen her for three years. He gave Chizuki three months first to truly enjoy the island of Aokigahara. Ever since she had woken up from her unconscious state, she barely had anytime left before Uehara thrust her into training. But with her determination, she could grit her teeth and gloss it off. With her endurance now having paid off, she could finally tour around the island.

Although she was reluctant to part from Uehara, she treated the tour as a duty for her to know her master’s territory. Thus, she set off. She encountered lots of interesting things on the large island. From centipedes as long as buses with hundreds of legs to bears with four limbs. She even found various combinations of different animals that would no doubt cause a great uproar if the common people found out about them. She was even able to find all types of plants that fed on the beasts.

“Before peace, must come chaos. To understand peace, you must first see, feel and smell and hear chaos. When there’s peace, joy can exist.”

She uttered the words Uehara had told her some time ago. While kneeling down to pick up a pink lotus flower, she kept recounting all the memories she’s made ever since Uehara saved her from the Minamoto shinobi in the forest.

Although the opinions of outsiders would vary, Uehara never treated her harshly. Everything he did was for her own good. Yes, his training methods were…questionable, but he never broke her beyond repair and the very next day, she’d feel that she had become stronger.

Absorbing that feeling, she came to admire Uehara more and more. Initially, it was just a desire for strength and Uehara was a means to that but she was genuinely loyal to him. He was always diligent in teaching them and unlike Sakura, Chizuki fully understood that Uehara didn’t have to teach them so well.

She has seen how many teachers would deliberately slow down the progress of their disciples in fear of being surpassed by them. She had even come to understand that the whole power structure of the humans was based on keeping the weak, weak and make the strong, stronger. Rarely any subordinate class or person would get a chance to advance.

This made her extremely grateful to Uehara. In just nine years, she had become an existence that would have no problem casually annihilating a country in a day if she uses her sage transformation. But she still didn’t fully know how strong Uehara was. Even when she was in her sage transformation, he was able to take her down rather easily by mostly relying on brute force.

Gazing at the sunset, she asked herself a question.

“Just how powerful are you master?