Chapter 27.4- One Thousand Hands

“But that is because our bodies are different. The other animal clans can teach you to gather natural en ergo with their methods simply by staying still and not moving, but for us we will have to change your body as it presently exists to allow you have access to our form of Sage Mode” he said.

“What do you mean by that? Change my body?”

“Think of it more like a metamorphosis. What we propose doing for you, we have done for one other in recent memory. The process is simple. You enter my mouth and spend three days there. After that you come out a different person. Expect your skin to darken a fair bit and you will develop some physical differences in line with our clan. And then you will gain the power to constantly use sage mode,” He said next.

“What’s the downside?” I asked.

“The process. Well, it essentially kills you more or less”

“What?”

“My saliva is going to destroy and remake you. Your chakra capacity will cease to grow naturally, and things like your strength and speed will be capped off at the level they reach when you complete your process. You might get more efficient or gain more control, but being a Sage of the Whales means accepting that your growth shall come to an end from that point.” He said.

“No growth?” I echoed the words. It felt unreal to me, the concept. I could not understand it for true. Not more growth didn’t make sense to me. Like training and not being able to make any progress at all. If it was just regular sage mode then I would have told Boss that the costs were too great and left to see my fortunes elsewhere but it wasn’t. It wasn’t regular sage mode by any means.The power to take in natural energy even while moving meant that the only bottleneck on my sage mode duration would be my ability to balance that natural energy with my own chakra to create sage chakra. Considering I had virtually perfect chakra control and a doujutsu that made it even easier to do that meant that bottleneck was going to be virtually non-existent in my case.

The only issue was that the prospect of being locked at this level of power forever was something that I did not want to even consider.

“Two years” I finally decided.

“Ho, ho. What do you mean?”

“I’ll take two years to train my body until the point where I’d be comfortable forfeiting future growth for present benefits. War is coming. I have to be ready” I said in reply.