“Hiss~”

  Steam rose faintly as Ami moved her hand slightly on Link’s vest. She gnced briefly at Iris, who was diligently slig leaves, and then at Link, who had returned with two rabbits, their purpose unknown.

  She exhaled softly and tinued releasing chakra to dry her leader's vest.

  e to think of it, this felt a little strahe image of a ninja she had in mind wasn’t supposed to be like this—more like a human dryer…

  Was this training, perhaps? Well, if the boss dema, it robably for her own good.

  Abandoning further thoughts, she focused early on removing the moisture from the vest.

  “Excellent, bor force! Make my vest dry!”

  Link g Ami w diligently and nodded in satisfa. He then turned his attention to the two rabbits. “It’s you,” he muttered, seleg the sturdier one, pinning it down with his foot while tying up the other with a rope aing it aside for ter.

  Gathering chakra, f seals, releasing—

  Shadow e Teique: Success!

  The shadow in his vision rippled once more. He lifted his foot, allowing the rabbit to scramble up and dart away. With a thought, the rabbit’s shadow separated from its body.

  “Huh?” Switg the target from a pnt to an animal, he noticed something iing. The lively rabbit, which had been trying to flee, suddenly colpsed, legs outstretched weakly as it gasped for breath.

  Moments ter, the rabbit got back up and tried to run again. However, a small hand quickly grabbed it, thhly iing it from top to bottom.

  “After the shadow separates, the body feels exhausted. Could it be…”

  Link had a vague hypothesis. The rabbit was struggling with noticeably less vigor, clearly drained of energy.

  He tied up the now-shadowless rabbit and pced it o its panion, then shifted his attention to the shadow.

  The ft, two-dimensional rabbit shadow, upon his and, ran toward him across the ground at roughly the same speed the rabbit had tried to escape.

  The sight was incredibly uling.

  Have you ever seen one of those flipbooks where a character appears to move as you rapidly turn the pages? The rabbit shadow’s movements in its two-dimensional state resembled that—jerky, frame-by-frame, and unnaturally fast yet seemingly "dropping frames."

  It was thhly unfortable to watch.

  Link directed the shadow to run around, finding it increasingly bizarre. In the sunny clearing, a swift-moving, glitchy bck shadow darted about—a sight better suited to a Lovecraftian horror set.

  With a thought, he ahe rabbit shadow to stand up. It transformed into a pitch-bck, three-dimensional rabbit croug on the ground, mimig the inal rabbit's posture and habits.

  “Let’s test its attack power.”

  Under his and, the shadow rabbit dashed toward the same tree he’d experimented oerday and smmed into it.

  Thud!

  The trued a dull sound. It felt no different from what a normal rabbit’s collision with a tree would produce.

  The only difference was that the shadow rabbit didn’t get dizzy. Instead, it prepared for another reckless charge.

  Thud!

  Thud!

  Thud!

  The strange aitive noise quickly caught his teammates’ attention. When they saw the eerie shadow rabbit, both were visibly shocked.

  There was o hide this. The teique would iably be used in front of his teammates someday, so Link hadn’t go of his way to experiment i.

  After about ten collisions, the shadow rabbit suddenly froze mid-run, colpsed into a shadow on the ground, and then dissolved into bck specks, disappeariirely.

  The inal rabbit’s shadoeared in front of it.

  “Iing.”

  Link’s eyes lit up. He seemed to have an inkling of one of the uses of this teique.

  Gathering chakra again, dividing it evenly, f seals, releasing—

  This time, his target was his own shadow.

  A brief sed passed before the shadow at his feet stepped forward and stood upright.

  Fag him was a pletely bck replica of himself, like looking at a colorless, distorted mirror.

  “My shadow feels deeply ected to me, as though it’s aension of my body…”

  “Whoa!” Iris excimed in awe.

  Ami quickly shushed him.

  Ign his teammates, Link trolled the shadow to take a step forward, then run, leap onto a tree, perform backflips, front flips, ninja runs, and more. After pleting a series of movements, a look of uanding appeared on his face.

  His stamina was being ed!

  The shadow’s existeanding, running, and perf any a ed his stamina—just as if he were moving himself. This meant that the shadow’s iion with the physical world drained his physical energy, and o was depleted, the shadow would return to a non-iive state.

  “No, wait.”

  Link quickly realized something else. His shadow seemed subtly different from the rabbit’s shadow.

  He turo look at the tied-up rabbit. Despite beirained, it clearly hadn’t pletely run out of stamina and even seemed to have recovered a little.

  “When I separate someone else’s shadow, it drains their stamina and energy signifitly. In other words…”

  “I steal stamina from others when I split their shadow.”

  Link came to a preliminary clusion. As for how much stamina was drained, recalling the shadow e’s characteristic of evenly dividing chakra, he reaso might also divide stamina evenly.

  The reason he hadn’t felt his stamina being ed was likely because it wasn’t his own—it was taken from the other target. Ohe target’s stamina was depleted, the teique would automatically end.

  “Let’s try again.” He dismissed the shadow, aware that keeping it active tinuously drained his stamina. Though minimal, serving energy was still wise.

  However, there was still no chakra return. It seemed this modified shadow e teique pletely cked the return process.

  One instance wasn’t enough to prove anything. He needed more experiments to validate his findings. For now, he’d use rabbits to ehe teique was harmless to living beings. Afterward, he’d ideally find two willing human subjeot too old, not too chakra-rich…

  Gathering chakra, dividing it evenly, f seals, releasing—

  Bang! The shadow e teique failed.

  Apparently, he’d overestimated his chakra reserves. With excessive stamina ption, he couldn’t bahe chakra distributioing in failure.

  “This teique definitely does more than just drain stamina. There must be other undiscovered effects…”

  “Does damaging the inal affect the shadow? What are the shadow’s limits? shadows i with each other?”

  P these questions, Link sat on a nearby rock to rest.

  The development of this shadow e variation seemed far more intriguing than the Earth Release: Hiding like a Mole teique.