Seeing Rowan begin to move his mana according to her instructions, Serie nodded in satisfaction.
She liked people who actually listened.
Over her long life, Serie had seen plenty of greenhorns—people with no real ability who still thought they were something special, and who scoffed at well-meaning advice.
People like that rarely amounted to much.
Fortunately, Rowan wasn't one of them, which pleased Serie greatly. She gave him a few more useful tips and explained how to control mana.
They weren't hard to pick up, and Rowan learned them quickly.
His control over mana gradually became smoother as well.
"Thank you very much, Serie."
"No need to thank me. They were only a few little tricks."
Serie waved it off, then warned him, "But for the time being, don't continue extracting mana."
"I don't know why you gained so much mana in such a short time, but mana beyond your control can very easily cause magic to spiral out of control and bring disaster."
"That wouldn't be good for you—or for anyone around you."
"So until you can fully control the mana inside you, leave it at this."
Rowan nodded and agreed without hesitation.
"No problem."
In truth, even if Serie hadn't said anything, Rowan had no intention of continuing to extract mana. He knew all too well how dangerous uncontrollable power could be.
Lelouch, Jugo, Hiei—those were all cautionary tales.
Rowan had no intention of following in their footsteps.
After that pleasant exchange, Serie suddenly shifted the topic to Hashirama Senju and Minato Namikaze.
"Those two of yours… they're not alive, are they?"
"You noticed." Rowan smiled, then corrected her. "Actually, they're not my subordinates. We're working together. Their world is being invaded by aliens, and I have the ability to travel between worlds, so I can take them to other worlds to gain stronger powers and fight back."
"So in this partnership, my position is only slightly higher, that's all."
Serie didn't care much about that. Whether Rowan ranked higher or lower meant nothing to her. What interested her was the state those two were in.
Rowan said, "It's a little complicated to explain. Just read their manga and you'll understand."
He opened an air door to his own world, brought Serie into his bedroom, pulled out the Naruto manga, and handed it to her.
Serie spent a little over ten minutes reading through the story.
"Ninjutsu, huh? What an interesting power. Other worlds really do broaden one's horizons."
The strange Devil Fruits in One Piece had already felt novel to her.
And the techniques of the Naruto world were no exception.
Of course, most ninjutsu didn't impress Serie much, because she could accomplish the same things with magic—and often in a more versatile way.
Only a few techniques truly shocked her, like Edo Tensei, Yin-Yang Release, and Truth-Seeking Balls.
After all, even in her world, there was no magic that could restore the dead to life.
And yet in the ninja world, there was a technique that could bring the dead back.
And not just one.
That alone was enough to make Serie want to study it carefully.
"You want to study ninjutsu? No problem. I'll find you a real expert, and the two of you can have a proper exchange."
When Serie said she wanted to study ninjutsu, Rowan agreed without hesitation.
He even opened a door to the Naruto world, brought her into Orochimaru's secret base, and found Tobirama, who was still researching Devil Fruits.
At first, when Tobirama heard that someone wanted to learn ninjutsu from him, his first reaction was annoyance.
He was in the middle of researching Devil Fruits. He didn't have extra time to teach anyone ninjutsu.
But the moment he learned that the person asking was a great mage from another world—someone who had lived for thousands of years and mastered countless spells—he immediately changed his mind.
Serie wanted to learn ninjutsu from him, but he likewise wanted to learn magic from Serie.
At this point, Tobirama had no intention of rejecting any power that might help in the fight against the Ōtsutsuki.
The man and the elf hit it off instantly and began exchanging knowledge from the basics on up.
Tobirama explained ninjutsu and chakra to Serie.
Serie taught mana and magic to Tobirama.
Both of them were masters in their respective fields. They explained their systems clearly and in depth, and to make sure the other fully understood, they broke their knowledge down piece by piece, laying out exactly how they understood chakra and mana.
Even Rowan, sitting off to the side, listened with fascination.
His understanding of both mana and chakra deepened.
At first glance, chakra and mana seemed completely unrelated.
But that wasn't really true.
After all, above ordinary chakra, there was something even more advanced: senjutsu chakra.
Normal chakra was formed by balancing and combining physical energy and spiritual energy.
Senjutsu chakra, on the other hand, was created by absorbing natural energy from the environment and then balancing and fusing it with one's own physical and spiritual energy.
And what was interesting was that mana was actually refined by mages through absorbing mana from the atmosphere.
So what exactly was atmospheric mana?
Once Serie stepped into the Naruto world, she immediately understood.
In this world, atmospheric mana was called natural energy.
Whether you called it mana or natural energy, it was ultimately just power produced by the planet itself.
Ninja could use natural energy to create senjutsu chakra.
Mages could use natural energy to refine mana.
They looked different, but in essence, they were just different applications of the same force.
Another point worth noting was that mana could also be converted from life force.
And when ninja extracted chakra, wasn't that, at its core, not all that different from squeezing their own life force?
That made Rowan think of Nen from Hunter × Hunter.
If he remembered correctly, Nen was the ability to freely control the life energy, or "aura," that flowed out from one's body.
Everyone slowly leaked tiny amounts of life energy all the time, but most people couldn't control that loss, which was why they needed to learn to regulate it.
Once you could control aura, you could awaken Nen.
Aura, really, was just another term for life energy.
At the same time, Rowan thought of Haki.
In the One Piece world, Haki was a latent power possessed by all humans, an inborn ability that existed almost like instinct.
But most people could neither consciously perceive it nor ever draw it out in their lifetime.
That description felt awfully similar to Nen.
~~~
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