After the new-player starter bundle, the last time Hanabi had drawn a card was when she pulled Mai Shiranui's character card.
Now, after a long wait, another skill card had finally arrived. Hanabi felt a spark of interest.
Here goes—single pull, aim for a miracle!
A flash of violet light blazed through her consciousness.
Then a skill card materialized before her mind's eye.
[SKILL CARD]
[Seance Jutsu]
[Rarity: 4-Star]
[A technique that uses one's own body or another person's as a vessel to summon the flesh or soul of the deceased into that host]
[Casting this technique requires cursed energy as the power source; only a sorcerer can use it]
[Summoning the dead requires the deceased's body or related materials as a medium]
[Physical information and soul information can be summoned separately or simultaneously]
[Card disappears after use]
"This skill…"
Wasn't this… a technique from Jujutsu Kaisen?
The one where the villain used it to summon Fushiguro Toji—only to lose control and get killed by his own summoned spirit.
Not that any of that made the technique itself bad. If anything, it proved the technique could perfectly recreate the full power of someone who had died.
In terms of function, it was basically Jujutsu Kaisen's version of the Impure World Reincarnation.
Of course, there were differences.
"It needs cursed energy, huh."
Plenty of Jujutsu Kaisen techniques ran on cursed energy—which didn't exactly mesh with her own system. Without "localization," this skill was completely unusable.
"If it weren't for the Synthesis Table, this would've been dead weight. Come to think of it… every reward the Stage has given me seems to be working in my favor."
Without getting two rewards at once, she never could've gotten the Synthesis Table in the first place—and without that, the skill would've sat useless.
Her luck really wasn't bad.
All three forms of compensation from the arc had been useful to her in their own way.
"A local technique that I already possess… hmm, actually, yes—there's one."
If she was being honest, Hanabi had initially looked down on Impure World Reincarnation in its un-modified form, before Orochimaru's enhancements came into the picture.
But on the principle of never passing up something useful, she had quietly copied the forbidden jutsu from the Scroll of Seals when the opportunity arose.
If she was going to synthesize, it made the most sense to fuse two techniques that were already similar.
If the Seance Jutsu worked well, she could have some real fun when they reached the Land of Waves.
Impure World Reincarnation wasn't particularly difficult to learn—Hanabi had picked it up with ease—so it counted as a technique in her arsenal.
She opened the Stage's Synthesis Table.
She placed the Seance Jutsu on one side, then slotted in Impure World Reincarnation on the other.
In her consciousness, a vortex churned to life. The two streams of energy spiraled slowly into each other, and something difficult to put into words began roiling inside the whirlpool.
[Ninjutsu — Seance Jutsu synthesis complete]
[Ninjutsu — Seance Jutsu]
[Using the body or materials of the deceased as a medium, the soul of the dead can be summoned from the Pure Land into the living world. Souls that refuse the summons are returned to the Pure Land]
[Requires the deceased's bodily tissue or chakra as a medium. The summoned soul is called into the body of another, and for the duration, that host's body transforms into the form of the deceased]
[Seance comes in two forms: Restricted Seance and Perfect Seance]
[In Restricted Seance, the summoned spirit's maximum power is capped at the vessel's own level]
[Perfect Seance can reproduce the deceased's power at their absolute peak. However, when the vessel's power is too great, interference may occur, causing the manifested strength to rise or fall unpredictably]
[During the Seance, the vessel's chakra drains continuously. Once chakra is fully exhausted, the soul is forcibly returned]
[Souls not in the Pure Land cannot be summoned. Weak, unconscious souls cannot be summoned. Souls in a special state cannot be summoned]
"…This?"
Rather than either the Seance Jutsu or Impure World Reincarnation, the result looked far more like a time-limited, condition-locked version of the Rinne Rebirth technique.
"So the vessel's own condition determines how long the summon lasts?"
"Rinne Rebirth on a trial plan? Well… it's not quite that either. This feels more like a substitute player. Or rather… a spirit possession?"
Actually.
Now that she thought about it—it really did feel like calling in a pinch hitter.
Asking the founding ancestor to sub in?
Like Tsunade calling up her grandfather, Hashirama, to carry her through a tough spot. And if Hashirama saw his granddaughter in danger, of course he'd be willing to help.
"It's called a Seance Jutsu, but honestly it reads more like a god-era Hokage version of the technique. I wonder—could Ashura and Indra be summoned?"
Using Naruto and Sasuke as the medium to summon Ashura and Indra—was that possible?
But the skill description had been clear: only souls residing in the Pure Land could be called. Those two were a special case, and the chance of rejection wasn't zero.
"I'll learn it."
After she accepted the skill, the violet card began to crack. It shattered into motes of purple light that drifted from the Stage's interface into the depths of her mind.
"Rat… Boar… Tiger… That's a long seal sequence."
The Seance Jutsu required preparations—first, a ritual circle had to be drawn, then the hand seals performed.
The duration of the Seance was tied to how much chakra the summoned soul consumed.
The more chakra a summoned spirit burned through, the shorter the window—and it could even drain the vessel's life force entirely. And even if no chakra was used at all, the vessel's chakra still trickled away on its own, influenced by the vessel's chakra control and total reserves.
"I see…"
The picture was becoming clearer.
But right now, in this world—where was she going to find chakra or bodily tissue from the dead to actually use this?
"Actually… there might be something."
Uzumaki Naruto.
Inside Naruto's body lived the chakra of the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato—and the chakra of his mother, Uzumaki Kushina.
The Fourth Hokage was a no-go. Minato's soul was not in the Pure Land—it sat inside the Shinigami's belly.
But Kushina's soul… seemed like it might be reachable.
No, really—this could actually work.
"If Kushina saw Naruto's current situation… I wonder if she'd find it rather surreal?"
The real world held no grand conspiracies, but Naruto's situation was genuinely not great.
"That settles it."
After reviewing the state of the Land of Waves, Hanabi had already sketched out a rough plan.
But this Seance Jutsu was too entertaining a toy not to use.
It was like having a button sitting right in front of her. Not pressing it… no matter how she thought about it, that just felt wrong.
"Time to revise the Land of Waves plan."
She'd already roughed out a small scheme. But this latest batch of rewards made her realize—she could go bigger.
"Let's have some fun, then~"
"Let me think… 'saving the world' sounds like a pretty good theme."
Hanabi couldn't actually destroy the world. But she had no shortage of nerve when it came to using the pretext of destroying the world to scrape together some popularity.
All the audience needed to know was that something was happening—and then the main cast resolved it.
That was what you called narrative sleight of hand.
"And besides, dear Kushina must be dying to see her child~"