Hokage: Ryo’s Path

Chapter 132: Improving Ice Teleportation

The following day, Ryo arrived to the 3rd training ground very early. He had spent the whole night thinking about Minato’s approach to improve Ice Teleportation.

Ryo’s Ice Teleportation allowed him to instantly flicker up to 50 meters away as long as there was Ice at the spot to which he flickered. It goes without saying that this movement, being instantaneous, was even faster than his Flicker in the Ice Lightning Chakra Mode.

If he could deal with his distance limitation, Ryo would have a technique that’s rather equivilant to the Flying Thunder God, which might also bring possibilities beyond that.

Minato arrived much later, along with Kushina, Kakashi, Obito and Rin. After handing the Trio’s training to Kushina, Minato started working with Ryo.

Ryo’s Ice Teleport looked like a Kekkei Genkai to Minato. He speculated that Ryo used his own Ice Chakra to locate external ice and achieve the spatial movement.

The reason why Minato could determine that Ryo’s technique was a true teleportation was the fact that he was far more sensitive to Space-Time Fluctuations than most people.

When Ryo used his Ice Teleportation, Minato could clearly perceive the fluctuations in the fabric of space. That’s why he estimated that Ryo ha great talent for Space Perception.

The 1st step in the training was to get Ryo to try to perceive space. Minato covered Ryo’s eyes and placed dozens of Thunder God Kunai around Ryo, and he flickered between them non-stop.

Ryo entered sage mode, and following Minato’s directions, he tried to sense the fluctuations in the fabric of space around him.

Even with the enhanced perception brought by Sage Mode, Ryo was still unable to capture any fluctuations, so the latter could only stop.

In theory, Ryo’s use of Ice teleport should mean that he has already some level of development when it came to his space perception.

The two started thinking of what must had went wrong, until Minato noticed Ryo’s use of an Ice Scalpel.

With that he realized that Ryo’s space perception should be limited to existence of Ice.

He then held an Ice Scalpel in his hand, and repeated the same drill with Ryo.

With the guidance of the scalpel, and Minato’s continuous use of Flying Thunder God, Ryo started finally perceiving Fluctuations in the fabric of space.

Next, Minato threw away the Ice Scalpel and continued, this time, Ryo was able to clearly perceive the fluctuations in space by using Sage Mode.

After finishing this 1st step, Ryo placed the Ice Scalpel a 100 Meters away from Ryo.

“Ryo, what you have to do now is to find a way to perceive this Ice Scalpel that’s a 100 meters away. With this exercise, you should rely on yourself; I cannot help you. The only hint I could give you is to make use of what you’ve learned with the previous exercise.”

Ryo nodded, closing his eyes and focusing his mental power into the distance. He could actually sense the scalpel in the distance, but had no way to make his special link with it.

In reality, Ryo had a special link with his ice. This link is the one that is the basis of his Ice Teleportation, but its range was only 50 meters.

Minato said that he should find a way to “fold” space, and that should make this link ignore this distance, than he could overcome the distance limit of his Teleportation.

Over the following few days, Ryo kept thinking about the process of “folding space”. Unfortunately, he wasn’t getting anywhere.

One of Ryo’s strongest treats was his perception abilities. In both lives he had, it kept helping him time after time.

Even though he wasn’t making progress, Ryo wasn’t giving up. A few days later, he used “Summoning” to bring Kogin to the 3rd Training Ground

Then he did the same, summoning Rashomon this time. on both times, he carefully perceived the flow of Chakra in space.

“Summoning” was also a Space-Time Jutsu. This time of Jutsu with its disregard of distance was the biggest application of Space Folding. Ryo did summoning several times in succession, and finally found a clue to understanding Space Folding.

After the release of Summoning, Ryo closed his eyes and tried to locate the scalpel in the distance with his mental power.

With his spiritual power and Chakra as medium, Ryo finally was able to complete Space Folding, and create that special link with the scalpel that was at the time over 200 meters away from him.

With this link, Ryo finally completed a long distance teleportation for the first time!

After being through with the most difficult steps, practice afterwards became much simpler. With Minato’s guidance, Ryo improved his Ice Scalpel, infusing it with a little spiritual power.

This way, as long as the Ice was within his sensing Range, Ryo could “fold space” and complete the teleportation.

Ryo’s Teleportation distance limitation was finally dealt with under the joint efforts of him and Minato.

For Ryo, while this technique was comparable to the Flying Thunder God in speed, and maybe even more flexible, it was clearly less practical, as it didn’t allow him to teleport non frozen people and objects.

To deal with this problem, Minato suggested making Ryo learn [Teleportation Barrier]

, which was a space time seal.

In Minato’s words, Ryo’s Ice teleportation had more potential that the Flying Thunder God in battle. This was what’s most important. For other respects, it was enough for Ryo to learn the  Teleportation Barrier technique.

After Minato’s explanation, Ryo realized the Nature of Minato’s [Teleportation Barrier].

It was actually a special seal that combines space folding with the Uzumaki’s fuinjutsu.

Its biggest effect was allowing for long distance teleportation. The Reason why Minato developed this technique was that the Flying Thunder God had special limitations in special circumstances. Minato’s development of this special mark was to make up for the deficiencies of the technique.

Ryo was somewhat curious about these special situation, and Minato answer mentioning the incident with the 2nd Hokage when he could teleport away from his death.

The surprised Ryo greatly, he did not expect that Tobirama’s death was related to such a problem.

However, this explains why the 2nd Hokage didn’t use the Flying Thunder God when he and his team were pushed into a desperate situation, staying behind instead to die in order to save his disciples’ lives.

Minato didn’t mention any clear details about the incident, as these are just things that were vaguely described to him in the past.

Afterwards, Minato handed Ryo his mark to analyze, and the latter learned how to make his own “ Teleportation Barrier ” marks relying on his understanding of Folding Space and the Uzumaki’s fuinjutsu. With that, his practice was over.

Ryo left marks at his family’s place, the Forest of Death, the 3rd Training Ground, and just about any place they went to a lot. From then on, there was another person able to teleport through long distances besides Minato!