The new student had a strong reaction to the chakra paper, leaving it as nothing but soot on his small fingers.
"Excellent, very good. Fire is a good type for a strong offense. As you start learning techniques, you will need to focus on defensive abilities and techniques which will allow you to survive and escape, as many of our enemies are strong. However, as you become powerful yourself, your ability to match foes in offense will increase, and you will want to shift your studies and practice to learn more attack techniques.
"The last few decades of Kumo's chakra teachings had an unfortunate focus on learning offensive abilities. But the attack power a Genin or Chuunin can bring to a fight does not even begin to match what a Jounin and many rogues can do. This strategic error on Kumo's part means that we have lost the better part of three generations of shinobi before they even came to the full bloom of their power.
"The result is that more and more Academy sensei are, like me, emphasizing learning tactics and techniques that let you
endure, avoid, and escape and perform various useful tasks. Even if you go into battle under the protection of a higher-ranked shinobi, you should not be taking a primarily attacking role in your team. You should be using your techniques to prepare to body switch away from attacks, to improve your strength and reaction time, to create barriers, and to fortify your comrades. If you learn healing jutsu at a young age, this, too, will provide a great deal of help to yourself and your teammates."
Gaburieru cleared his throat. "Well, anyway, I do not intend to criticize teachers who came before. We must all do what we think is best. To get back on the subject of ninjutsu...
"Having an affinity for one or two elements does not mean you are unable to use their opposites, but affinities do give you a natural advantage in your element or elements. One of the simplest things is that you can make your attacks more powerful. There are many special things you can do to jutsu of your favored element.
"Indeed, as you grow as a shinobi, you may be able to master all of the base elements. However, one thing does not change--no one can master all of the advanced elements. There, it seems, we are all confined by a cosmic constant. If there is some way to circumvent that beyond the use of kinjutsu, I do not know. It seems that certain innate abilities, like some kekkei genkei, do not count against this limit--the well-known Storm element affinity among Santaru does not prevent them from learning other advanced elements in addition to Storm.
"Now, we call these elements advanced elements because they require the combination of basic elements. There was one basic element I did not name. This is the "void" element--it cannot be properly called an element. Many of our most useful techniques are non-elemental in nature, such as body switch and barrier. Skilled shinobi can learn ways to imbue some of these non-elemental techniques with elemental power. Though the non-elemental jutsu are null and void in the elemental wheel, mastery of this void branch of ninjutsu can help you unlock the secrets of certain advanced elements.
"Would anyone like to venture a theory as to why?"
