Kakashi finally returned home.
How long had he been on this last mission?
Three months!
Three godforsaken months trying to smooth out relations with those damn Mist ninja, even though it was obvious to everyone that it was a complete waste of time!
What kind of relations can you possibly establish with a country currently tearing itself apart in a civil war?
Damn the elders!
How long had he been doing this, bouncing from one out-of-village mission to the next?
Basically since the Nine-Tails’ attack.
Everyone understood why, but it was still incredibly infuriating.
Fine.
A short rest, and then he needed to go check on his sensei’s son.
He’d only managed to find the time to do so two years ago!
A whole two years!
If he ever got the chance, he was going to personally unscrew those old farts’ heads!
His thoughts of a warm bed and a normal night’s sleep on something soft—rather than in a damp cave or on the side of a road—were interrupted by a knock.
Flinging open the door, the proud representative of the Hatake clan didn’t even have time to step back before he saw a colleague standing there: an ANBU wearing a badger mask.
“You have a new mission.
You have five minutes to gear up,” the shinobi said curtly, handing a scroll to Kakashi before vanishing via Body Flicker.
His dreams of sleep shattered into a million pieces.
Kakashi’s eye began to twitch.
He wanted to rage, throw things, and cry!
Especially the last one!
That’s it.
If there’s ever a quiet period in my life, I’m going to drive everyone insane doing the exact opposite of this!
I’m going to be the slowest, laziest, most chronically late shinobi in existence!
I’ve had it.
I have more accumulated vacation days than I earn from A-Rank missions!
The proud student of the Fourth Hokage and wielder of the Sharingan finally broke, resting his face against the wall.
Anyone watching him would have been surprised to see the elite shinobi’s shoulders trembling.
He hadn’t frayed his nerves this badly in a long time.
Check on his sensei’s son?
He hadn’t even managed to spend three minutes inside his own house after returning from a mission and reporting to the Hokage!
Meanwhile, at the Hospital “Achoo!
Must be a pretty girl thinking about me,” I shrugged, recovering from the sudden sneezing fit.
Now, back to the System notifications!
First things first.
Every single blow from that bastard—and his accomplice, who can now comfortably sing in a church choir—raised my “Masochist” skill by at least five levels per hit.
Though, I have to admit, they were beating me with genuine passion.
Even that fist-clash counted as taking damage, netting me three skill levels right there.
And seven levels of “Iron Fists.” Also, I hadn’t just leveled up; I’d skyrocketed.
I wasn’t quite at Sasuke’s level, but almost hitting Level 14 was pretty damn good.
Considering students usually graduate the Academy around Level 20—clanless kids slightly lower, clan kids slightly higher—I could theoretically skip straight to the final year based on raw level alone.
So, here are my current stats: [Status] Name: Naruto Uzumaki Title: — Level: 13 (EXP: 1,240/1,300) Class: Acolyte of Light HP: 1,880 / 1,880 MP: 585 / 585 (Chakra) STR: 75 VIT: 89 INT: 21 WIS: 0 LUK: 0 AGI: 33 CHK: — Chakra Control: -249 Unallocated Stat Points: 110 Traits: Demon, Jinchuriki, Uzumaki, Orphan, Novice Rescuer, Gamer+ Passive Skills: Stealth (Lv.
62), Butler (Lv.
12), Masochist (Lv.
69), Cold Gaze (Lv.
17), Iron Fists (Lv.
41), Observe (Lv.
9) Active Skills: Singing (Lv.
83), Talk no Jutsu (Lv.
12), Rhetoric (Lv.
8) The real kicker was that I had survived that encounter in the park by exactly six HP.
According to the logs, my rescue had been incredibly well-timed.
But looking at the massive imbalances this event had forced onto my character sheet made me feel slightly sick!
Sure, “Novice Rescuer” was fine—the quest itself had warned me about that one.
I’ll get to that later.
What was much, much worse were my two highest-leveled skills.
I honestly wanted to cry.
I had no one to blame but myself for Singing; I really shouldn’t have belted out tunes in the shower.
But I was going to make someone pay for raising my “Masochist” skill that high!
If anyone, anywhere, ever sees this absolute disgrace of a stat sheet, I will stab myself!
I need to power-level Stealth and Iron Fists immediately!
And I don’t care that both skills barely crawl upward outside of near-death experiences.
I didn’t even care about the “Acolyte of Light” class!
Given my behavior and my heavy reliance on Talk no Jutsu, it was hard to expect anything else.
It just pushed me one step closer to becoming a paladin.
As for the increase in my Chakra pool and the slight bump to Chakra Control…
yeah, it went up by exactly one point, meaning it was still heavily in the negatives.
The explanation was simple: my body had instinctively flooded itself with chakra to survive, forcing a capacity expansion, but the System didn’t give me a dedicated Chakra manipulation skill.
Because I still didn’t know how to consciously control it and couldn’t replicate the feat!
[Quest Complete: Novice Rescuer, Part X!] [Reputation with the Uchiha Clan +5,000.
Reputation with Maya Uchiha: 16% (See “Gamer+” for details).
Reputation with Saya Uchiha: 89%.
Reputation with Aya Uchiha: 89%.] [With the completion of a ten-rescue chain, a bonus eleventh rescue has been unlocked!
You have acquired the Trait “Novice Rescuer” and the Class “Acolyte of Light.” 10% chance to be reincarnated as a Baywatch lifeguard in your next life!
Your actions have left an indelible impression on the clans, and even on the clanless shinobi.
+700 Reputation with all Konohagakure factions.] [Due to your heroic actions and the completion of the ten-quest chain, the System allows you to select one of the following rewards (this reward remains with you even after a restart): The Overcomer: VIT x2.
Chance to stumble into trouble and be forced to “overcome” it: 50%.
Chance to seduce rescued targets: 80% (Female) and 20% (Male).
Early Chakra Awakening: Begin chakra exercises earlier than your peers.
Chakra Control +200.
Chance to acquire the title “Ninjutsu Genius” in the future: +5%.
Chance to attract the attention of Root: +67%.
Chance to anger the Village Elders: +89%.
Combat mode difficulty increased.
Novice Li Shuwen: Chance to live to the age of seventy: +2%.
Acquiring the knowledge of the great Li Shuwen will allow you to utilize chakra similarly to Qi!
Reputation with the Green Beasts of Konoha +2,500.
Grants knowledge to master Chinese Martial Arts (all other martial arts are permanently locked).
Grants two active skills.
Chance to surpass the glory of the One-Punch Man: +1%.
Increases Genjutsu resistance by 5%.
Increases Genjutsu learning difficulty by 65%.] There wasn’t even a choice here.
The first option had that deeply unsettling line about seducing a certain percentage of “Male” targets.
So that was a hard pass.
The second option looked incredibly tasty, but the last three sentences were pure nightmare fuel.
But the third option…
I didn’t care about locking out other combat styles or making Genjutsu theoretically impossible to learn.
I was sold on the very first sentence!
A two percent chance to live longer!
And not just live longer, but actually reach old age!
Damn it, I don’t know who you are, Li Shuwen, but you are now my personal idol!
I selected it instantly.
Then, I immediately dove into my Reputation window.
I was curious to see how my relationships with everyone looked now.
I was particularly interested in my standing with the Green Beasts.
Maybe I could beg a couple of lessons out of them?
My STR and VIT were actually pretty solid for my age!
Sure, it wasn’t Sasuke’s nearly two hundred STR and hundred and fifty AGI, but his VIT was lower than mine.
The little cheater!
I want a reincarnation buff too!
If the young Uchiha isn’t even considered the genius of the family, how monstrous is his older brother?
Ugh, just thinking about it makes me nauseous.
When I opened the Reputation tab, my brain short-circuited.
Part of it looked normal, but only part.
The way my relationships with girls were displayed now…
terrified me.
Five empty hearts.
Well, not for everyone.
Ino had one fully pink heart, and the second was filled to 3%.
Very sudden.
Let’s see, if I tap on a female character’s name, a “Memory” pops up.
Let’s look at Ino’s.
A gallery with empty slots opened before me.
The first slot was filled with a picture of my goofy, exhausted face, with Ino leaning in to kiss my cheek.
Right, that was a snapshot from her rescue, I remembered that clearly.
Beneath it, a caption read: Event Complete.
Just beautiful.
I officially feel like the protagonist of a Japanese visual novel.
The twins, however, had Event Incomplete under their names.
Wait, there was more?
Though I doubt the remaining eleven percent held anything terrifying.
But it was weird that everything I’d already done wasn’t even enough to fill a single heart!
Then again, in most visual novels—which I knew quite a bit about, having translated them in my past life—the first event is almost always standard.
Meaning, I just had to wait for a kiss on the cheek.
But why hadn’t it happened yet?
Oh, right, because they visited me alongside Ino.
Question answered.
In Ino’s tab, I could actually click the event and watch it like a video.
Free playback.
Amusing.
But the way the System was restructuring itself was genuinely scaring me.
On the bright side, the System also informed me that INT no longer had any bearing on my Chakra pool; it was now purely a measure of mental processing.
My awakened Chakra pool would now be calculated based on VIT and WIS (Spirit/Mind).
The only problem was that my WIS stat was locked for some reason.
But none of that was what truly shocked and horrified me.
No, that honor belonged to a single line in the Reputation tab: [Tsume Inuzuka: 6%] How?!
When?!
I’ve only ever seen her twice, when Kiba invited me over, and our interactions never went past “Hello”!
Suddenly, going to my best friend’s house feels like a very, very dangerous prospect!