Chương 177: Two Choices.

Fugaku looked at Tsunade in disbelief as did Kakashi, only Jiraiya didn't look surprised since he'd already been told of the fact before. And Haruto didn't look surprised since he was 'too young to know the terror of the Nine tailed fox for him to understand about the ten tails'. In the end Fugaku finally nodded, "Fine. If what you say is true Tsunade-sama… then I shall permit the resurrection of my predecessors."

Tsunade nodded and handed the scroll she was given back to Fugaku, "In that case I don't need any jutsu yet. Just give me money instead. It'll cost quite a bit to travel around the world in hunt for Madara." Haruto and Jiraiya both looked at Tsunade with narrow eyes.

'Travel around the world to hunt Madara?'

'Yeah like that's ever going to happen.'

'She'll more likely than not spend all that money on gambling.' Jiraiya was about to tell Fugaku to give the money to him for safekeeping but Tsunade cracked her knuckles at the same time and shut him up for good. In the end, Fugaku did two things, he handed over to Haruto a scroll containing the knowledge regarding how to execute the Mutually Multiplying Explosive Tags jutsu and unwillingly signed a cheque for fifty million ryo as Tsunade's travel expenses.

Tsunade held the cheque like it was gold, which it might as well have been considering how much money it held, before stuffing it into her pocket after folding it neatly. That was when everyone dispersed to go back to their homes once again. Haruto was excited to get on with his new jutsu training and inventing a method to elementalise into fire, however, as soon as they stepped into the Senju compound, Tsunade stopped him from going to his room.

"Wait a second…" Tsunade said softly. Haruto noticed a clear tremble in her voice as she said that which made him a little unsure of what was about to happen.

'Is she going to take away the scroll from me so that I can't practice it on my own?' Haruto thought while holding the scroll tighter, not wanting to part with it so easily. But what Tsunade did next surprised him greatly. Tsunade pulled out a thread pendant from under her collar and bent slightly before slipping it around his neck. Haruto looked at the simple necklace whose pendant was a blue crystal and sighed softly.

Although he was surprised and shocked internally, his external expression remained calm and slightly confused, as if he were simply asking, 'What's this?' Stolen story; please report. Seeing the confused expression on Haruto's face, Tsunade smiled softly before explaining herself, "This pendant was my grandfather's. It's been special for me since it's been with me and my loved ones for a long time. Now it's yours… I hope you carry his legacy and make him proud."

Haruto's eyes widened appropriately at the 'new' information as he looked at Tsunade in shock and surprise. He was about to open his mouth and refuse the gift, especially since-'I have no death wish!'

'I don't have a protagonist's aura to be able to bear the burden that comes with those who receive this gift!'

'Sakura resurrected Naruto! But who'll resurrect me if I die!?' -however, Tsunade quickly and quietly placed a finger on his lips, shushing him up for now. Haruto simply gulped dryly and then finally nodded to accept the gift, bringing a beautiful smile to Tsunade's face even in the darkness of the night. Soon Haruto was in his room, sitting at the table to read through the scroll, only as soon as he sat down, he got the memories of his clone that he'd created during the start of the day.

'Hmm~! So it's finally done.' Haruto thought to himself. Haruto left his room and arrived at the Senju training grounds where several stumps were nailed to the ground for training practice. He stood in front of one such stump and quickly slapped it with his palm. Firstly the wooden stump was damaged because of his palm which created an indent in it.

Then all of a sudden, the stump exploded from the inside out, the explosion was not large, yet it was not ignorable either since the explosion had taken out a good chunk of the stump, creating a golf ball sized hole in it. This had happened because Haruto had injected a fire needle into the stump which had exploded with Megumin's explosion formulae once it was ready.

'There Unohana-san, I created my own offensive jutsu.'

'Hmmm… I understand I shall accept that as a mission complete.' The new memories regarding Bakudo number four hainawa arrived in Haruto's head giving him a soft understanding about a new sort of power. Instead of using the reiryoku inside the body like in bleach, Hainawa had been transformed into a chakra construct much like the Uzumaki sealing chains. Haruto created and sent away a new clone to the forest of death which was now occupied by no one to experiment with this new power.

At the same time, Haruto got new memories from the second clone he had created today.

'So even that has found a way…' His second clone, which he'd sent to experiment with the Hashirama cells on the fish he'd caught, had also achieved preliminary results in the experiment. Any more research would require Haruto to be physically present since at this point in the research he was faced with a strange choice between power and safety. What the clone had researched was a method to increase Haruto's chakra. And the way the clone had invented to do so was rather unique if not strange bordering on evil.

What it had done was that it had extracted the chakra from the hashirama cells in the fish and created an artificial soul using the spiritual energy in them. The artificial soul was fortunately or unfortunately crippled in its formation, such that it could no longer feel, understand or experience anything. It existed in a timeless void and existed without purpose. Now there were two ways to use this artificial soul: one was risky but powerful and one was stable but not as powerful.

One was to simply implant the cells into the body along with the soul, which would keep the cells under control and make them not rebel since their spiritual aspect of their chakra was stripped and its will was crippled to a non-thinking, non-functioning, dummy. This would allow the physical energy from the soul to be used at full capacity and give Haruto a ton more physical energy. But the second way to use the artificial soul was the more interesting and powerful way, but also the more risky of the two.

The method was simple and it used one of the unused mission rewards that had been sitting inside his head collecting dust till now. Haruto would turn the chakra from the Hashirama cells into a pseudo philosopher's stone. The result would be explosive power in the form of more chakra along with near infinite regeneration of both the soul and the body like Hashirama, but at the cost of a glaring weakness. Haruto would have his life tied to the core, the philosopher's stone.

As long as it was destroyed, he'd die as well. Of course he wouldn't have to display the philosopher's stone openly and it would be hidden inside his body, which meant that as long as he basically took a fatal hit he would die… But there was always a chance that someone like Tsunade could save him from a fatal hit, which would be taken away if he tied himself to the philosopher's stone. Haruto sat down right there in the training ground and began thinking about what he would do…

'Should I go with option number one?'

'Or option number two?'