Potential
Unlike the original merchant though these ones merely found the most colorful creatures they could in hopes of striking it rich. While some of these creatures were poisonous and thus had some use in medicine they weren’t rare or even that valuable. One of the only merchants who did have something I found interesting was a a metal vendor with a chunk of chakra metal ore that drew in minute amounts of natural energy. It was a chunk about the size of a softball that was clearly not from a vein as it was far too smooth for that.-
I bought it as even if it was not enough to make a large weapon from It could make a dagger or kunai easily. I myself still had the staff I had gotten on my birthday a couple years ago from my parents who had been living well all this time. I visited them sometimes when they weren’t out on missions and they visited me as well at my home. It was rather amusing to watch Karin squirm under my moms grilling and my dad merely sitting there stoically. Anyways that staff rarely saw any use outside of practice.-
It honestly wasn’t needed and was also not durable enough for me to use. It was an exceptional piece of weaponry but the sheer force I could generate was more than enough to snap it like it was made of dried wood. As a result unless I was practicing with it relatively lightly it sat in it’s case. Now that I was done experimenting with elemental chakra though I planned to fix this by slowly removing some of the material of the staff and replacing it with adamantite. Adamantite was the most durable material known to shinobi kind and also the rarest so it rarely ever got used. –
The most famous usage of the material ironically was a false version of it that the third Hokages summon, Enma could transform into. Enma was supposedly able to transform into a staff that could grow and extend infinitely made of adamantite. Naturally I couldn’t summon Enma as his summoning contract was made dormant with the thirds death and no one in the Sarutobi clan had managed to get him to sign a new one. Thanks to my eyes however I could make adamantite from pure chakra and thus was planning to slowly transform my staff with it.-
The reason I had bought the chunk of chakra metal however was to gift a weapon to Naruto who really needed one. Karin was learning to fight like my sensei from my sensei so bare knuckles suited her fine but Naruto relied on taijutsu a lot even if he didn’t realize it. Unlike me, Karin and my sensei however Narutos physical body wasn’t that powerful and so him throwing fists tended to take an unnecessarily long time to take down his opponents if the [rasengan] failed to do the trick.-
Don’t get me wrong he’s gotten quite good at throwing fists but the raw damage just isn’t there. As a result I think a weapon would solve this issue perfectly. I even had the type of weapon figured out based on the way he likes to fight, knuckle blades. A weapon that consists of a dagger blade on the front edge of a pair of brass knuckles. Unlike standard blades this leaves the hand almost entirely free so long as the fit is right since the weapon won’t slip off accidentally. Thanks to the weapon being a near perfect mix of dagger and knuckles it was ideal for someone who fought like Naruto.-
This chunk of chakra metal ore was also the perfect size to get one of these things crafted for him. Anyways the only other merchant besides that one with anything I was interested in was Toge who was in the village with some new beasts to sell. The brutish woman had her feet up while she smoked a think cigar when Karin and I walked up.
“Well look at you kid! All grown up and even got a pretty little thing hanging off your arm, good for you. Got a couple of new chakra beasts but nothing as special as that sheep I sold you. How’s the bastard anyhow?” Toge said with a grin.
“Spends most of the day acting like a normal sheep but has a nasty habit of leaving “gifts” all over my property that some of my other beasts have stumbled on.” I said with a shrug.
“Aye that makes sense, got a mean streak that chunk of mutton does. Heard through the grapevine you’ve gotten some more interesting beasts before I could get my hands on them. Including a monkey with a Kekkai genkai, that bit got any truth to it?” she asked with an amused look.
“Boil release yeah. Found it traveling through the land of Hotsprings, at a hotspring ironically. Now about these normal chakra beasts of yours, what do you have?” I asked curiously.
“Got three pretty plain and common beasts. A female wolf with a fire breathing ability, a crab caught by a fisherman that can shoot out jets of water and an earth manipulating badger. Twenty thousand, fifteen thousand and twenty five thousand respectively for each.” she said pointing at the cages and oddly glass fish tank in question.
The wolf was muzzled and seemed to be close to Kiba in age which was good as that would allow my wolf dog to have a mate of his own. The crab was a common blue variety just chilling in the glass fish tank blowing bubbles under the water like it honestly didn’t care at all about it’s situation which was likely true. The badger was a particularly fierce specimen that was nearly twice the size of a normal one and hadn’t made any attempt to stop chewing angrily on the bars of it’s cage even while I was standing there.-
“I’ll take the wolf and crab. The badger would definitely not get along with my other beasts and require too much of my time to keep peaceful.” I said as I retrieved the money from the scroll I kept on me at all times.