Chương 81: Tree Walking.

Haruto arrived at the Hokage office promptly following his departure from the I. T department. He asked around a little to figure out where the mission managing department was and planted himself in front of two receptionists who were body busy dealing with various scrolls in front of them.

"Ahem…" Haruto coughed slightly to get their attention at which point one of the receptionists elbowed the other to distract him from his work. The receptionist looked up with an obviously annoyed expression and glared at Haruto when he noticed that Haruto was just an eight year old.

"What do you want? This is not a place for kids you know?" Haruto nodded, understanding the misunderstanding before speaking up in his defence, "I'm here to issue a mission." The words got the attention of both the receptionists who were now looking at him with wide open eyes and a certain amount of suspicion.

"Huh?" the receptionist asked with some parts fascination but most parts surprise.

"I'm a researcher at the Konoha R&D department, I have just received funding approval for my research so I wish to hire a few people to handle my research."

"You are a researcher?" the receptionist asked and Haruto nodded, "So? Will you or won't you accept my mission?"

"Ye- Yes… could you please fill out this form for us?" the receptionist said, handing over a form for Haruto to fill out. Haruto nodded and picked up the form before looking at it with interest.

'Hmm… all they need is the mission details, the number of teams that can accept my mission and the pay for the mission.' Haruto quickly filled out all the details before handing back the form to the receptionist who looked at it for a whole minute before nodding at Haruto and explaining to him that the mission would be posted on the public mission board tomorrow.

"Erm… is there a way I can recommend someone for the mission, I was told that I could do that here." Haruto asked politely. And when the receptionist nodded, waiting for Haruto to explain who he wanted to recommend, Haruto elaborated, "I would like to give preference to those that have worked in the village as graph makers before or done something similar and don't have a job for now."

"Hmm… while that will make the recruitment process a little slower for a day or two, it should quickly fill up after word goes around that there's a job looking for about twenty people and pays about twenty thousand ryo per month." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Thank you, that's all for now then. Should I check in here everyday from now on, or will the people who will be recruited be sent directly to the R&D department?"

"Please check in everyday since otherwise the newly recruited teams won't have the permission to enter the R&D department building."

"Alright then, I'll be at the mission distribution center at around nine am every morning from tomorrow until all the slots are filled, if that's alright. Please convey that to the teams so that they don't have to wait around if they miss my timings."

"Yep, that's fine, we'll let them know." the receptionist said quickly scribbling a note in the margins of the form Haruto had just filled. With that Haruto quietly left the Hokage office building and returned home. It was already afternoon by the time he returned home, so he quickly had some lunch, which was the same old ramen he was now already used to making blindfolded, after which he slowly arrived at Training ground seven along with his textbook.

"I've finished practicing the leaf concentration exercise. Time to move onto the next chakra control training exercise." Haruto walked up to a tree at the edge of the training ground and placed his foot on it. As expected his foot slipped back down almost immediately but Haruto was not done yet. Haruto placed his right foot on the tree once again, except this time he did well to circulate some chakra through the tenketsu in the soles of his feet.

Haruto felt a slight sticky sensation from the bottom of his foot and so he tried climbing up the tree by sticking his foot to it. Only, as soon as Haruto put some weight on his foot it slipped right off as if it never was stuck. He stumbled forward slightly before almost hitting his head on the tree trunk but he managed to save himself from the embarrassment.

"It doesn't work like that… I should probably read the textbook before trying to experiment meaninglessly." Haruto opened the textbook to the chakra control exercise chapters and began reading through the second part of the chapter.

"Advanced chakra control from genin to chunin level begins by practicing surface walking. The simplest surface to walk on is a tree trunk and then water. Let us first begin with tree walking since the principles are similar to water walking if only slightly complicated."

"To do so simply begin by circulating chakra through the tenketsu in your feet. Then try placing your foot on the tree trunk and increasing or decreasing the chakra circulating through your foot by controlling the flux through your chakra circulation pathways."

"When you feel your foot stick to the tree trunk that's when you know you've got the least chakra density required by the tenketsu in your feet to stick to the tree trunk, at this point once your foot is firmly stuck to the tree trunk you only need to learn how to freely adjust your chakra flux to be able to detach and reattach your foot to the tree trunk to walk across it without being affected by gravity."

"Hmmm…? How's that any different from what I already did?" Haruto pondered out loud. He flipped a few pages to figure out any tips or tricks mentioned at the end of the section when he noticed a glaring issue he'd ignored earlier.

"Removing your sandals on your first attempt would be easier to practice with since you will make direct contact with your skin, but to protect yourself from any splinters if you decide to wear sandals while learning tree walking, you only need to form a circulatory loop within the sandals and suck that chakra back into your body to extend the suction effect through them."

"I see…" Haruto mumbled before looking down at his right foot.

"The problem now is how do I form that circulatory loop?" Haruto closed his eyes and focused on his right foot, more specifically on the chakra currently circulating within it. He gently coaxed his chakra to flow out of the tenketsu within his foot and into the sandal and surprisingly, it was rather easy to do so. However, when Haruto attempted to reabsorb the chakra that had been expelled from his heel back into his chakra circulation system through the ball of the foot he found it immensely difficult.

"Hmm…" Haruto frowned, not wanting to give up so easily he thought back to the one time he'd already absorbed chakra from outside into his body, the time of the physical energy expanding medicinal bath he'd done.

'Although that situation was more so possible because energy was flush with my body and really wanted to enter into it because of the jutsu I performed back then… if I can replicate something similar… it should work just fine.' Haruto quickly circulated chakra through the tenketsu in the ball of his foot and created a slight suction force in it before restarting the circulation of chakra through his sandals. The results were quick and immediate.

"It worked!" Although only a small victory on the pathway of advanced genin level chakra control, Haruto was happy.