It was peaceful, until a few minutes later a foreign sensation began rushing over Kuroichi. To him, it felt like a presence was in the back of his head, itching, clawing and annoying him. He wanted that feeling to be gone.. he was in such a wonderful state before.
"Ahh it hurts, what is this?!?" Kuroichi exclaimed loudly.
'Make it stop, make it Stop, make it STOP!'
Instead of stopping, however, the feeling intensified. Before, it was something he could only feel mentally, it was grating on his nerves, yes, but he felt like could endure. It started growing into a full on whole body sensation. He felt like his whole being was feeling/sensing that foreign chakra.
It was an almost familiar feeling to him, like he knew it from somewhere before, but he also didn't. Eventually he couldn't take it anymore, he decided he'd have to do something about it.
Sharply turning 75 degrees, he hurriedly made his way to where he was getting the sense the sensation originated from.
As he followed his senses, his breathing got more and more uneven and erratic, his eyes unfocused and his pupils dilated. His body started heating up, making him sweat and his hands started shaking.
If before the sensation he was feeling was akin to a presently distant, but constant and annoying fly buzzing around his ear, then now it had turned into something like a hundred microscopic flies buzzing inside his ear canal in comparison.
He couldn't actually see much of anything, but there was a distinct presence he could feel above him in a tree to the right. He was barely in control of his own faculties, only holding back against the overwhelming urge to let go of his consciousness with sheer willpower.
All of a sudden, however, Kuroichi exploded to his right, rushing up the tree using chakra to stick to the bark and instinctively using it to reinforce his legs for more power.
Without him consciously doing it, inky-black, dark chakra began pooling together on his left hand. As soon as it manifested, a peculiar feeling pervaded the scene.
Kuroichi wouldn't be able to describe it as he wasn't even in charge of his own faculties at that moment, but the dark chakra was as if it locked onto a target, not willing to let go, and almost with a mind of it's own. Wisps of black chakra began escaping his hand, flowing to it's target.
With a jump that was too quick, high, and long for him to perform, he grabbed onto.. something.
If it were still light outside, it would have been easy to see the inky dark chakra pulling out crystal clear blue chakra from a small silhouette sitting on a branch in it's nest.
Chakra surged into him like a storm, flooding his pathways with a tingling burn, crackling like static beneath his skin. His breath caught, eyes widening as his chakra pathways lit up with the foreign chakra.
He became completely aware of what was happening again, right away starting to instinctively manipulate his own chakra, making it coil around the foreign one within himself. It was as if he were suppressing it, but in reality he was slowly integrating it into his own. Through every rotation his chakra made within himself, a small amount of foreign chakra would break free and assimilate into his own.
That overwhelming presence he felt started getting dimmer and dimmer as he was absorbing the chakra. What may have felt like a long time to Kuroichi, was in reality only a few seconds.
At this point, his body wasn't able to absorb a lot of chakra all at once. It would be placing too much strain on his small and untrained chakra pathway system, which is why he felt such pain absorbing a small amount of chakra.
As the process of draining chakra stopped by itself, without Kuroichi stopping it himself, the sound of something hitting the floor could be heard.
Thud
Reorienting himself from the experience he just had, he quickly shook his head to get rid of any distracting thoughts and made his way back down to see what he was actually even absorbing chakra from.
Using the small amount of moonlight filtering through the canopy, Kuroichi tried to make out what animal it was that hit the floor.
'A chakra owl?' Kuroichi asked himself, still a little unsure.
It was his best guess and he was pretty sure he was correct, however when he was using his hands to feel, he noticed something that felt like cracked eggshell, a bit of fluid and a slimy.. something.
He could already imagine what it was, an egg of the owl. 'Are there any more in it's nest?' Kuroichi asked himself, feeling mixed about the fact that he lost control.
Using his hands to not miss a spot in the owls nest, he could clearly feel an egg remaining. He carefully held it in both of his hands, trying to keep it warm.
'This is the first animal I encountered that also has chakra.. I will keep this baby owl and hope it'll also develop it's own chakra. Maybe it can be useful later on.'
As Kuroichi stood there, a little egg in his hands and no idea where he was, the realization that he would have to wait the whole night, until the sun shined again, in order to see, made his shoulders sag. He sighed in frustration.
Sigh
With nothing else to do, he held the egg close to his body to keep warm, and then started 'meditating'. He needed to work through what just happened and also check if anything changed within himself.
There were too many questions in his mind, like 'Why did I lose control of myself?' or 'How was I so fast in that moment? Did I use chakra?' or 'Why was the chakra of the owl so overwhelming to me?' or 'What exactly happens to the chakra incorporated into my own?' or 'How do I re-release the absorbed chakra when it start's hurting?' or 'What was that annoying presence feeling when I lost control of myself? Am I naturally sensitive to chakra? Was that chakra sensing?'
He was mainly trying to see if anything with his chakra had changed or if he could notice something else, but since everything seemed normal he gradually began to settle down and just sleep leaning on a tree.
NEXT MORNING
As Kuroichi woke up and last evenings events came rushing back into his mind, he looked around and realized he still didn't have any idea where he actually was. He could see the owl corpse from last evening in the distance where he left it, and quickly made his way over to check what kind of an owl it was. Funnily enough, the were only a few cracked eggshells left, the body of the baby owl that must have been inside egg nowhere to be seen.
It seemed like there wasn't a bigger animal that would eat the owl around last night, otherwise the corpse would not even be there anymore. The body was pretty much still intact and he could clearly see from it's front that it was a horned owl. He didn't know whether there were any more distinctions between horned owls, but it wouldn't really matter to him either way.
Tracing back his steps to the river took him at least 2-3 hours, so once he finally arrived back at his shelter he was relieved to first of all eat a good meal.
He didn't have any idea on how to keep the egg warm until it hatched, so he decided that during the times when he wasn't training, he'd keep it warm himself, and the other times he'd heat up some water. The water would of course not be boiling hot, simply warm enough for the egg to be left alone a little while.
While he didn't know how many days owl's eggs took to hatch, he didn't think it would take too much time, since the small body he felt with his hands the night before seemed to already be well formed.
__________________
Want to read ahead?
Advanced chapters on pa*treon.com/WavyWriter
__________________
Pleaseee drop some Power Stones if you liked the chapter! :)