This past month had been pretty fruitful for me in terms of training. I had summoned my Fel Imp, had made a new jutsu, learned to make a healthstone, and completely by accident I figured out how to partially replicate a spell called Demon Skin from Azeroth. The only thing I hadn't managed to do yet was to create a Soulstone. Partially due to the difficulty, and partially because of the lack of time.

Summoning Aztog was the easiest one of my plans to implement. I had decided on Aztog mainly because of his small size and ability to turn invisible when he wasn't attacking. Similar to when I summoned Xorrion, I had to focus on my connection with Aztog, because of the relative power difference between the two, Aztog had a weaker connection. In the end though I still was able to summon him, the main difference was that he had a more green tint to his energies, where Xorrion had a dark blue, almost violet tinge. Oh, and I only passed out for several hours instead of several days this time.

"Master! Where have you been all this time?!" Aztog said when I woke up. We were still in the forest where I had decided to summon him.

"Here, obviously" I said with an 'oomph' as I was tackled by a hundred pound Imp.

"Where is here? This place feels different." my Imp said

"Not Azeroth. Or Outland, Draenor, Argus, the Shadowlands, or anywhere else in our universe as far as I can tell. There's also no mana here" I explained.

"No mana at all? Hmmm, yes I see what you mean. But I still have my mana, although I see you do not" Aztog said, totally shocking me. I supposed it shouldn't be surprising though. He wasn't born here like I was.

"Yeah, I was born on this planet some 13 years ago. So during my transition to this world, my body was torn apart to create a shield for my soul. I thus retained my memories from Azeroth. I have no idea what happened in that dungeon in Ardenweald to cause me to arrive here, but here I am" I explained to my Imp.

"It's only been thirteen years for you, but for me, It's been three hundred." Aztog said sadly.

"It was three hundred years for me as well" Xorrion said, appearing from my shadow.

Wait.. What the fuck?

"Xorrion, how the hell are you here? You should have been sent back when I summoned Aztog. That's the way it always worked. Warlocks only had enough power to summon one minion at a time" I said, totally shocked.

"I don't know for sure. I have an idea though." He said.

"Oh? Please, share with the class" I said.

"I have two guesses. One, your soul is stronger than it was before, and thus can sustain the power of multiple demons. Or two, which I think is more likely: There are no gods interfering with the balance of power on this world" Xorrion said.

"What do you mean gods interfering?" I asked, intensely curious. I knew gods interfered, but what would that have to do with me summoning minions?

"It was something I learned during my three hundred years in the shadow realm. The gods have meddled with the energies that a warlock draws upon. They limit the powers of said warlocks, so that the balance of the world is not thrown into chaos. A warlock can only summon one demon at a time" Xorrion explained.

"So… the gods feared warlocks, so tampered with our power to make it so we couldn't summon more than one at a time? I suppose that kind of makes sense, after all if every warlock could summon all of their demons at once, it would cause pandemonium. But what's the difference between me being here, versus me being on azeroth? It's the same energy connecting our souls." I thought out loud.

"The difference is that now you're using chakra to summon us, not mana. Also I doubt it's fear. It's probably jealously. They don't want anyone gaining enough to challenge them. One warlock being able to summon all their demons wouldn't destroy the balance, but every warlock? Different story." Aztog said.

"Yeah, good point. But either way, In theory I'll eventually be able to summon all my demons when I get stronger." I said, getting excited.

"I would hold off though. I could feel the strain on your soul as I came through the portal. Summoning all of my companions right now would kill you." Aztog said.

"So both of Xorrion's theories were correct." I said.

"Partially. It's not that your soul got stronger, It's that your soul isn't used to the strain, so it will take some time to grow accustomed to it most likely." Aztog replied.

"Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I don't think there's a way to measure how ready my soul is. I'll have to wait a year or so between summoning you all. I'll also have to summon Arax last, since he would be the most powerful." I said, once again thinking out loud.

"It will be hard on him. Among us, you fought with him the most. He could be alone for at least another fifty years." Aztog said.

"Wouldn't he take another summoner in that time?" I asked.

They both just looked at me like I was an idiot.

"Have you learned nothing my Master?" Aztog said, shaking his head.

"What?" I questioned.

"There is no way in any version of hell that Arax would take another summoner so long as there was even the slightest chance you were still alive. None of us would" Aztog explained.

Damn. I was a jerk.

"Yeah, you're right. Let's hope I can get strong enough to summon him before he has to spend so long alone." I said, somewhat sadly.

"It will not be long. You are already stronger now that you have summoned Aztog" Xorrion said.

At his words, I took a look at myself, and he was right. My chakra hadn't skyrocketed like it had when I summoned Xorrion, but it still had a small leap. Probably the power level of Aztog, or maybe it was the opening of the connection to the demon realm that made it spike, and it didn't matter who I'd summoned first. My theory was it was some combination of both. If I had to guess, I was in the top ten people in the village with the most chakra.

"What do we do now that I've been summoned?" Aztog asked.

"We train. And train our asses off. You need to get used to this new world. I have a tournament I need to win in less than a month." I said with a grin.

-

Learning my corruption spell wasn't as easy to do as summoning Aztog was, but it wasn't an arduous task either. Drawing on my knowledge from how I did the Curse of Exhaustion, it wasn't a huge leap to do Corruption. It mainly involved shooting a very thin strand of chakra at my enemy, causing it to enter their body similar to a medical needle. While I was connected to my enemy, I could send Chakra infused with energy from the shadow realm along the thread and into their body. Before disconnecting the thread from them, I would give an order to the shadow energy infused chakra to cause as much damage as possible.

I had no way to know what damage it caused, since I couldn't see inside the body like the Byakugan could. I had tried it on a rabbit I'd found, and there was no visible damage caused from the outside. The rabbit simply writhed on the ground and keeled over after about a minute. After more testing, I found that the chakra I sent into a target wouldn't last forever. I tried it on a larger target, and it seemed to dissipate after some time; I would have to keep my thread of chakra connected at all times if I wanted to prolong the effect on a ninja.

Eventually the person's own chakra would get rid of the chakra I put into them, or at least that was my theory. I had no way to prove it right now. All I really needed to know was that it worked, and similar to my corruption spell, my corruption Jutsu was deadly when prolonged.

During my experimentation with Corruption, I had accidentally created a version of my Demon Skin passive ability I'd loved. It was simple now that I thought about it, and smacked myself for not trying it earlier. I was already doing half the Jutsu anyway with my mana reinforcement, the only difference was, Demon Skin used my demonic chakra as I'd come to call it. Ever since summoning Xorrion, his demonic biology had somehow changed my chakra ever so slightly, making it less like normal chakra, and closer to my fel infused mana from before I was reborn.

I say I created a version of Demonic Skin because it wasn't exactly like Demon Skin from Azeroth. For one, Demon Skin on Azeroth was an augmentation of a staple warlock spell called Soul Link. Soul Link would absorb the life essence of things I or my demons attacked, and convert it into a magical shield. That shield would absorb a certain amount of damage, based on how much damage I did myself, up to a certain limit, around fifteen percent of my total vitality.

After a while, the shield would vanish since I wasn't attacking anything to refresh it. Demon Skin was a passive ability that would turn that shield into a permanent one, and doing damage would keep the shield topped up when it went down after receiving damage. Still had a cap though.

The version of Demon Skin that I created though used my demonic chakra to thicken my skin somewhat, it would also give me sharper fingernails, and pointed teeth. I suspected that the changes would get more dramatic the longer I had my demons around. My version of Demon Skin instead blunted about half of all incoming damage, at the cost of spending chakra for every hit. If I got a Kunai thrown at me, it would only sink into my arm about half as much with the Jutsu enabled.

It wasn't perfect, and I could still easily die with the Jutsu active, but it was a start. Every little bit could end up saving my life when push came to shove. It also would replace my mana reinforcement, since Demon Skin did the same things with the benefit of damage reduction. Overall, I had spent about two weeks learning these couple skills and summoning Aztog.

-

Learning to make a Healthstone was the hardest thing I'd done in this world so far. I first had to learn some medical Ninjutsu, which was annoying as hell. I was good at it, but it was so boring. Up until now, I could just accomplish what I wanted with vivid imagery, while manipulating my chakra to do something, and it would do its best to replicate what I'd wanted. This time however, I was healing something, not destroying it which was much easier. I'd never been a healer in my time on Azeroth, so my chakra had no knowledge to go off of it seemed.

I'd succeeded in creating the actual stone during the third week of the month we had to prepare. By combining Yin Chakra, demonic chakra, and using part of the soul of a random rabbit I'd found, I'd managed to create the outer shell of the stone. However when consumed, usually by shattering it in one's hand, nothing happened. It looked and felt exactly the same as the ones I was used to, so then the only answer seemed to be my own lack of knowledge. I could tell the chakra inside the stone to heal someone, but after a long while using chakra, I'd learned that it couldn't do things I had no knowledge about.

Therefore, the chakra didn't know what to do when I gave it the image of healing someone. It just sat there swirling in place and doing nothing, not entering the person's body. Normally when someone used a healthstone, they would draw on the power of the soul shard inside it, but apparently souls worked differently here than on Azeroth. Fucking perfect. That meant I'd have to rethink how to create the soul stone as well.

I came to the conclusion that I'd have to learn more about the human body if I wanted my healthstone to work. So I sought out someone at the Konoha Hospital that might be able to teach me. Unfortunately there was no one available, and on top of that they all knew I was in the chunin Exams right now and didn't want me to waste my time. In the end though I at least got them to let me use their library after some convincing.

I'd spent the last of my remaining month learning nothing but anatomy and how the body worked. It was so damn boring, I much preferred destroying things than learning to fix them. However I did learn a lot and my healthstone improved ever so slightly. The healing went into the body, but it was so inefficient to not even be worth the effort I spent creating it.

During this time I also got a visit from the Hokage, which surprised me quite a lot. I hadn't done anything to warrant his attention.

"Why hello there Kari, what are you doing here?" He asked.

"Learning anatomy, and general things about the body" I replied.

"Oh? Those things are good to know, but why learn them now, of all times?" He questioned, confused.

"I've done all I can for now with my martial training, so now I'm trying to make a new jutsu" the Hokage already knew I'd "invented" shadowbolt, so there was no use hiding this. Besides, he'd learn eventually.

"That's wonderful, what would your new jutsu do, and why would learning about the body help?" He asked, always hungry for more knowledge on jutsu. The title of professor suited him well.

"It's a healing jutsu, and knowing more about the body will help me to refine and improve it" I explained.

"That's excellent! We can always use more healers" the Hokage said with a smile.

"Sorry to disappoint you Lord Hokage, but I'm a battlemage at heart and this is just to improve my toolkit" I said.

"What do you mean by battlemage?" He asked, puzzled.

I inwardly cursed at my slip up.

"It's just a word I found somewhere that I liked the sound of. Basically I plan to bombard my enemies with long range jutsu" I said. I doubted he believed my lie.

"I… see… and you said becoming a medical ninja is not your focus?" He asked.

"Yes, learning all this is just a means to an end. A way to round out my survival toolkit as it were. This jutsu could one day save my life if I'm near death." I told him.

"Interesting, and what is wrong with the current jutsu that the other medics use?" He asked, eager to learn more.

"Honestly nothing. That jutsu is actually more powerful than mine, the difference being mine is near instant, and I could use it in the middle of combat. The downside is that it wouldn't heal very much, just enough to keep a wound from being fatal" I explained.

"My my, that's very interesting. If you could teach this jutsu to others, the amount of ninja that are KIA would drop down dramatically. Every little bit helps when saving a life" the Hokage said, his eyes twinkling with excitement.

"Sorry to disappoint you again, but until I have perfected the jutsu, I have no idea if it would be possible to teach to someone else" I explained, leaving out the part where this "jutsu" was actually an item anyone could use. I think his brain would explode.

"That's really a shame. Let me know if that changes. You will be compensated handsomely for such an important jutsu. I must get going though, I had a reason for coming here after all. Good luck with your studies." he said, giving me a wave as he walked away.

That was something. He seemed to have a bit of a bounce in his step after talking to me. Did I make a mistake in telling him? Only time would tell.

By the end of the month, I had made marginal progress on getting my healthstone to work properly. It was only about twenty five percent as effective compared to the one I was used to. I needed something more than just knowledge for it to work. I think I'd need to actually learn the jutsu the medics used for my soulstone to work. Maybe my healthstone would turn into an itemized healing jutsu? I had no clue right now, and no time to figure it out since the finals started tomorrow. I had a dinner with Shikamaru and our father to go to in a couple hours as well.

  -

Choza, Inoichi and our father were drunk as shit. They were all arguing what it was like to raise a daughter, and I wanted to smack them.

"Hey daughters are much easier on the wallet. All my money goes to food" Choza said with a hearty laugh.

"Hey quit complaining, you aren't the only ones with problems. I know how you feel, daughters are such a drag" My father said to Inoichi

"Hey… said daughter is standing right here you know" I said, my eye slightly twitching.

"Reinforcements have arrived! You two, come order something" Choza said as Shikamaru and I entered the room.

"Dad, can we go home already?" Shika asked.

"I agree, also can you stop shit talking about your favorite daughter to your buddies?" I asked

"Awe c'mon, don't be such a drag you two. You're supposed to be having the time of your lives tonight" Dad said.

"Partying with a bunch of drunkards doesn't sound like fun when you're sober" I commented.

"Hey! We're not drunkards" Choza said.

"No, sis is right, this party is such a drag." Shika said, backing me up.

"Hey, since time immemorial… the final exams have always been a festival" father said in between a long chug of some foul smelling alcohol.

"Yeah, we're in that final competition tomorrow." Shikamaru said.

"We don't have time to babysit you three" I said with a sigh.

"Wait, seriously? You're in it?" Dad asked, surprised.

"Of course we are, how could you not know?" Shika sounded incredulous.

"Well I knew Kari was going, she's too good not to. But who knew you had the motivation?" Father said.

"He doesn't, his opponent in the preliminaries was just an idiot" I said with a grin

"Ugh, whatever. Let's go" Shikamaru said.

-

After leaving the restaurant, I parted ways with my brother. I needed a few more hours of practice with my new jutsus. Aztog needed more practice as well surprisingly. As it turned out, Aztog had a limited amount of mana in his body surprisingly. Normally when he ran out of mana, he'd need to rest for a bit, and his mana would recover. This didn't happen often though since he had long ago learned to pace himself when attacking so he wouldn't run out.

Now though, he was losing his mana every time he used it; it didn't regenerate like it should. Instead of regenerating mana, he was regenerating chakra. How? I have no idea. He shouldn't be capable of having chakra since he still had a body from Azeroth, unlike me. Until I trusted someone enough to examine him, the only theory I could come up with was that he was pulling in chakra from the surrounding environment, just like he'd do with mana.

The consequence of this was that he had no idea how to use chakra. I'd had thirteen years to figure it out, whereas he'd only had a month so far. It wouldn't take him nearly that long anyway, as a Fel Imp, he had an intrinsic understanding of mana that I could only dream of having. It wouldn't take him long to figure out the differences between mana and chakra. I'd help him all I could of course, but my experience with the two energies was very different from his, so there was only so much I could do.

As it stood right now, he wouldn't be able to help me in the exams tomorrow. At least not for long range combat. He could still fight with his claws, he was a demon after all, but that was not something he had to do often, and was thus out of practice. For now, I had him learning all he could about this world while remaining hidden. I hadn't told anyone yet that I'd summoned another demon, how would I explain it? I was just barely able to cover for summoning Xorrion, and even then, I wasn't sure my father bought my story on how I'd done it. Unless an emergency arose, I'd have to keep him hidden until I found a plausible explanation on how he came to be here.

~BANG~

I was startled by the sudden noise, and I looked around for the cause. The only obvious source was a dust cloud on a nearby roof. A dude came flying out from the dust, and I could tell from the way he landed that he'd been injured. Quickly summoning my Inquisitors Eye, I got in close and saw that the dude was one of those Sound Ninja. Seemed he was fighting someone, however unless it looked like he was fighting a Leaf Shinobi, I wasn't going to interfere. What loyalty did I have for another village after all? I mean I barely had any to this one, but being a ninja was hard, so as long as we were allies I'd help out some.

As the cloud dispersed, what looked like a sand monster with black sclera, and golden star shaped pupils came out. It was half formed from a human, so either it ate the human, or the human had transformed into it. My money was on the latter since I could see a familiar patch of red hair poking out from under the sand. The chakra also felt familiar, both of them. So this was the reason I felt more than one chakra coming from Gaara. Did this mean that Naruto had something similar sealed away inside him? Would it escape like this? I doubted it. I was no Fuinjutsu master, but I could tell from the amount of chakra I'd felt from Gaara versus Naruto, that Gaara's seal was of a lesser quality. If I hadn't had hundreds of years of sensing mana, I doubt I'd be able to tell the difference between their two seals.

"What the hell are you?!" The sound Ninja said.

Instead of responding, Gaara-not-Gaara just attacked, throwing a shit load of sand at the dude, and crushing him in what seemed to be his signature attack. Wasn't that guy supposed to be Shikamaru's opponent tomorrow? Oh well, all's well that ends well I suppose, one less match for my brother to fight. I really didn't feel like fighting Gaara right now, so I dismissed my eye and headed back home. Nope. Not my problem. Someone else can deal with that shit. Oh wait… fuck it actually was my problem since I had to fight Gaara tomorrow.

    -

All of us were standing in the arena with the crowd going wild, and the Hokage had just finished his speech. Naruto had shown up late, landing face first in the dirt, and going on about a horde of stampeding cows. What?

"Listen up everyone, there's been a change in the roster" The proctor said, getting our attention.

The man held up the new sheet for us all to see, and sure enough, it was different. For one, Shikamaru no longer had to fight another match. So I was right in that the guy who fought Gaara yesterday had been Shikamaru's opponent.

"The conditions are the same as last time: There are no rules. The match will continue until one person either surrenders, or dies. I do have authority to stop the match if I think it's a lost cause. No arguing. The matchups for the first round are Naruto Uzumaki, and Neji Hyuga. Everyone else can leave and wait until your turn" the proctor said.

I was curious if Naruto could beat Neji; I could tell Naruto had gotten stronger, but had no clue if it was enough to match with Neji. My guess was that Neji would underestimate Naruo just like Kiba had.

Walking up the stairs, I was curious what my brother thought.

"Hey Shika, do you think Naruto will win?" I asked.

"Hard to say. I was dead certain that he would lose against Kiba, and look how that turned out." my brother said.

"Fair point, I was thinking the same thing. Neji will probably underestimate Naruto and it will be his downfall." I said.

"Will you both shut up?" Gaara said.

"Hey just cause you're perpetually depressed and gloomy doesn't mean the rest of us have to be" I said.

Both of his companions looked at me like I had grown a third head. I had seen Gaara fight in his monstrous form. He was intimidating, but honestly he was nothing special to the real monsters I'd fought against. When a god can kill you with a literal glare if you aren't careful, an edgy kid with an attitude problem was nothing to be scared of. Granted, my power level was still much less than I was used to, but I at the very least could tie with the kid as I was now.

Getting to the top of the stairs and reaching the balcony, we were just in time to see Naruto and Neji face off.

"You got something to say to me? It is your destiny to lose to me today" Neji said with his pompous face.

"Yeah, I'm gonna kick your ass for what you did to Hinata" Naruto replied with a glare.

"You may begin!" The proctor said, jumping away.

(A/N: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Imp Kari's Imp minion if you want to learn more.)