It was on a cold spring morning when the sunlight finally reached the earth after struggling fiercely. Though it was bright enough that I deemed it safe to do my morning run. The rooftops were painted white with snow that still falling even after winter’s end.
Thankfully, there were no snow on my running track. It was the street that everybody uses after all, so it was being cleaned quite often. Another perks of using a frequently used roads instead of some secluded tracks.
“YOOOOUUUUTTTTHHH!!!”
It was in such a setting that I finally encountered the Konoha’s Blue Beast. After more than one and a half years of daily training, I finally met Might Guy.
… And it was embarrassing.
Seriously. I knew how he acted based on the manga and anime. I honestly thought I was prepared to face his… well, youthfulness.
Turns out I was wrong. Seems like I still unconsciously underestimate the difference between seeing through a screen and experiencing things in real life.
Even worse because as I’ve said before, this is in the middle of the street that everybody uses, and right now there are already lots of people moving about. So people stared, and they stared hard, at both of us.
I can only stare agape at him while he wipes his tears and proceeds to give me a massive thumb-up.
“What a wonderful display of YOUTH, young man! Its admirable for someone so young to train so hard! Yosh! I will not be outdone! I will run around Konoha with my hands for 500 laps!”
“Err… thank you? I guess? Umm… Good luck on that, Ninja-sama.” Thankfully I could snap back into focus to muster a reply. Not… exactly the reply I had planned, but that’s the best I could give at this moment.
“Umu! Thank you, young man. See you later and KEEP YOUR FLAME OF YOUTH BURNING!” And with that, he gone running on a handstand to the… gleaming sunset? Huh?
I rubbed my eyes and when I looked again, the sunset was gone. Was that genjutsu? Or was it simply the AURA OF YOUTH? Was it also a coincidence that my first time meeting him was in spring?
My pondering was stopped short when someone else concernedly calling out to me.
“Are you alright, Takeshi-kun?”
“Ah, I’m alright, Jii-chan. Just surprised because that Ninja-sama was staring at me with his teeth.” I rubbed my temple as I replied to the old man. This particular old man was a cabbage merchant whom my orphanage frequent.
“Hohoho, I guess that’s one way of saying it.” He laughed a bit and then looked at the direction Guy had gone. “That ninja was Might Guy. He was often seen training hard like you. Though as you’ve heard the man saying himself, his training was… much more interesting, to say the least.”
I can feel my lips twitching a bit. Interesting sure, only for those watching. For the one doing it, only Guy and maybe Lee could wholeheartedly enjoy it.
“Might Guy? His training surely sounds much, much harder than the training I’ve done so far. By the way, Jii-chan, are there…”
“Discount? Yes. I can give you some discount, Takeshi-kun. But you sure like cabbage, huh? How much do you want to buy today?” He asked as he went back to his store and I followed him.
.
.
.
I put the groceries away after I arrived home from the morning run. Then I fetched a glass of water before I sat on the dining chair.
‘System, on.’
[Chakra ×494 Quest : - ]
It’s been a while since I managed to complete the Daily all in the morning. And yes, I have also tried to do double that in a day just to see if there’s some hidden reward or something. Nope. Nothing. Just a day lost in training other things as I was simply too tired to do other training that particular day.
Speaking of training, I have managed to do leaf concentration exercise for two hours straight at once. Not the regular exercise, I might add, but with a twist. Courtesy of my reincarnation/transmigration senpai-tachi.
It’s basically a twist that I’ve read in some of Naruto fanfics.
I managed to do the exercise with 7 leaves instead; one on forehead, then one on each elbow, shoulder, and knee, all that while doing chores. After I managed to reach that milestone, I just stopped trying to increase the time and leaf count. This story is hosted at NovelPing.
The next step then should be tree walking, or at least vertical-surface walking, right? Unfortunately, practicing such advanced “ninja stuff” will surely result in “people” knocking on my door.
How about indoor, using the wall? Bad idea. Don’t want to accidentally destroying this house like Sasuke did the tree on his first try.
In the end, I was basically skipping straight to water walking. Kind of, but not really.
It was the same with tree walking; I can’t really use a lake, river, or other decently sized body of water outside. But I have a bathtub inside the house.
So what I did, was first I applied the principle of water walking to my palm instead of my sole. Then I bend over to a filled bathtub and try to keep my hand from sinking into the water after I put my weight into it, not unlike push-ups.
After I got that “water push-up” down pat, then I tried other “floating on water” exercises on top of the bath tub. Among which were “water squat”, “water sitting”, “water prone”, etc.
And that’s it for my chakra control training. It did work as I can feel my control getting better. Though it surely can’t replace the proper exercise. Sadly, the quickest way for me to do those exercises without worry was to ask a teacher later in the academy.
This is why I really hope I could get to the same class as Naruto and have Iruka as my teacher. If Iruka here was the same as the person I thought he was in the story, then it should be safe to trust him and ask for help to plan my advanced chakra training.
Next, nature transformation training.
For wind, I’ve managed to split a leaf in one go after 7 months. For water, I’ve managed to make a leaf damp enough that it starts to drip a drop in about half a minutes, that also after 7 months. Both milestone reached each with a 10-hour a day training, every single day.
The fact that I reached similar milestone in about the same time for wind and water did make me assume that I have Ice Release. Unfortunately, I don’t even know where to start testing that, so I put that aside. Can’t risk getting myself frozen to death.
For fire, I’ve tried to lit up the leaf but with minimal success. I was essentially trying to replicate Aang’s first fire training without the initial ember. Though the most I could get was a warm leaf even after 10 months.
Well, that’s one dud element, I guess. I mean, it’s worse because I did fire last, as I want to better my control to avoid burning down the house.
Now, if you’ve noticed, what I did was simply trying to replicate chakra paper’s response to those three elements. Also inspired by my senpai-tachi, by the way.
What about the other 2 elements, then? Well…
For starter, I don't even know how to begin in order to make the leaf wrinkled or crumbled, so I shelved lightning nature’s for until I found a proper guide. Though for earth I instead planned to try and make the leaf harden instead.
And if I get the leaf to harden enough, maybe I would end up learning Razor Leaf.
That’s for later though, when academy start. I can use that training to avoid wasting time listening to brainwashing in the classroom. Hopefully I don’t get a nosy deskmate.
As for lessons from my parents’ books? Well, I’ve learned everything on that end. Not because I am a genius with Chunin strength at 6, but simply because the books only taught the very basics. It was so basic that I reckon no ninja will have any desire to steal them.
Maybe that’s why Hiruzen didn’t confiscate it back then.
No ninja should be bothered to write those kinds of books in the first place. Yet to me, those books were exactly what I needed. How to punch properly, how to kick properly, how to hold and swing your sword properly. Then there’s the proper footing for stances. Just footing, not even footwork mentioned.
Still, I practiced those basics religiously in hope that it would enable me to adapt and improve faster at the taijutsu lesson later at academy. I was also preparing just in case I encountered Might Guy like today.
I mean, ideally, I should’ve tried to have him cook up a training plan for me. Unfortunately, I was too overwhelmed to even switch on my shameless mode to ask him back then.
Anyway, back to the books.
Fuinjutsu lessons were basically just calligraphy plus plus, and iryojutsu were simply first aid 101 plus a list of books I should read further.
Well, how about jutsus, then? None of it. Not even the academy three. New chapters come out on g.com first.
The books at most were touching upon nature transformation, its relative strength and weakness, and what element to use in some specific situation. There are names of jutsus, including the academy three, and it’s effects that were described in quite details that I presume the purpose was to prevent me from blindly learning jutsus later on.
Oh, there was also explanation about chakra paper and it’s uses. Which is very handy as an alibi if anybody ever asked how or where I knew about nature transformations’ training.
Then there were diagrams and instructions on how to form hand seals. All twelve of ‘em. Which I also practiced religiously so my hand could get used to it. Just like how my hand was used to… ahem. Never mind.
Hmm? “How about Rasengan?”, you asked?
Yeah, of course I tried it. But only after I reached the milestones in chakra control exercises I mentioned earlier. I ended up skipping several Dailys because I was too absorbed trying to master Rasengan.
No, I did not immediately master it in those days. But I did dial it down and continue to practice it along after that, and lo and behold! A 6-years-old Rasengan user! Hooray! Youngest in any Naruto-verse -NOT!
Sigh… pretty sure there was a fanfic MC somewhere who mastered Rasengan from the womb.
And no, I did NOT try to hit something with it and just let it dissipate. After all, I learned it indoor inside my house and I’m definitely not crazy to inflict any damage to it.
Anyway.
As expected of an A-rank jutsu, the Rasengan sure drain lots of chakra. I was kinda panicked when it drained almost a HUNDRED system-rewarded Chakra reservoirs at once.
Thankfully, I only tried the Rasengan after I have well over a couple hundreds of those. Though that little accident also led to a massive discovery that motivate me to never skipped the Daily ever again.
Because of how chakra intensive the training was, coupled by actually trying the Rasengan, 114 out of 228 chakra reservoirs ended up empty that day. But when I was about to fall sleep, I checked my chakra reservoirs on a whim.
What I found was not 114 empty and 114 full reservoirs, but instead all 228 reservoirs were being 50 percent full, which is a VERY big deal. Why? Two words: recovery speed.
Let me stress it out. Each reservoir actually grew along with my reserve. More importantly, all reservoirs recovered concurrently in parallel, with each reservoir recovered at the same rate as my reserve.
So, let’s assume that I emptied 4 out of 100 reservoirs (for simplicity), and my current reserve could recover from empty to full in 5 hours. Then I need 5 hours to refill those 4 reservoirs, right?
That’s what I thought. But instead, I actually only needed 12 MINUTES in that case because I only needed to fill 4 percent from each 100 reservoirs. And it freaking scales.
Now imagine when I have a bona fide Jounin-level chakra reserve and my multiplier hit several thousand. I will genuinely become a ninjutsu freak then, spamming ninjutsu like there’s no tomorrow.
Of course, there’s more to a fight than just spamming jutsu, so I can’t abandon my training in other areas.
The last training worth mentioning, funnily enough, was actually juggling. I thought that was a good training for reflexes and eye-to-hand coordination. The most I can do was juggling 9 balls at once for 16 minutes straight. Pretty sure that would be a world record material in the previous world.
Sadly, I ended up unable to train any throwing skill. Main reason was because, for some reason, there were none of any projectile weapon stored in the house. Maybe my parents always brought along every kunai and shuriken they had on their person?
The next question would be, ‘why not just buy some’, right? First of all, my parents actually strictly forbid me to train those skills unsupervised in one of their book. Second of all, I’m afraid that buying some ninja-stuff like that for my background would bring some unwanted queries. So I never bothered to check out any ninja related shop at all.
That means no chakra paper either, if they were easily purchasable in the first place.
Overall though, it was a pretty solid training result, if I do say so myself. I can’t really see anything that made me think ‘I could do better’, without significantly increasing the risk of getting some long lasting injuries.
Now, to keep it up while waiting for academy entrance exam in two weeks.
Note
And another info dump chapter… I know, I know “show don’t tell”. I’m working on it. So please bear with me. Again, hopefully not too many canonical / factual error in this one.
For those who expect immediate apprenticeship with Guy, sorry to disappoint. I do plan to have my SI learn from Guy, but not now.
So, eight chapters in and sometimes I did finds it kinda slow. Problem is, I honestly don’t have a clue how to speed it up. And also, I kinda don’t want to at the moment. This is my first ever attempt at writing a story, and I just went in with minimal planning and wanna just get comfortable with converting my thought/imagination into text. What do you guys think?