“Excellent. You’re even more talented than I expected.”
Rie Shibata’s voice trembled slightly inside the training room.
When she’d first watched Koji treat those fish with the Healing Jutsu, she had thought she might have stumbled across a genius.
Now?
She could confidently walk straight into the director’s office and tell her:
This kid really was a genius.
In just seven days, Rie had personally watched Koji progress from treating ordinary fish to handling more complicated creatures like octopuses.
And almost every time he used the Healing Jutsu, nothing went wrong.
At this point, his command of the technique alone was enough for him to qualify as a proper medical ninja at Konoha Hospital.
As for ordinary wound treatment?
That was hardly difficult.
Even a normal person could become competent at basic wound care after one or two months of proper training.
For someone like Koji, who could already successfully treat much more complicated animals, it would be even easier.
“That’s enough training for today. Come earlier tomorrow. You’ll follow me and officially begin learning the rest.”
Rie glanced at the setting sun outside the window, then quietly picked up the now energetic octopus from the treatment table.
Today’s session was over.
“Thank you for your guidance.”
Koji smiled as he tidied up the equipment on the table.
His proficiency with the Healing Jutsu was already extremely high.
But becoming a medical ninja required far more than mastering a single technique.
The Healing Jutsu itself was only a basic form of medical ninjutsu.
Otherwise, its proficiency wouldn’t have stopped increasing after reaching Limit Break +2.
The Healing Jutsu was essentially a simplified version of a more advanced technique— the Mystical Palm Jutsu.
Perhaps that was precisely why the Healing Jutsu could no longer progress any further.
It was simply too basic.
Unfortunately, learning the Mystical Palm Jutsu wouldn’t be easy.
Not because Koji lacked confidence in his ability to master it.
The real problem was that even within Konoha Hospital, there weren’t many medical ninja capable of using the technique.
The Mystical Palm Jutsu could practically be considered the dividing line between ordinary medical ninja and high-level ones.
Naturally, access to it was heavily restricted.
Other medical techniques with similarly high requirements included the Chakra Scalpel and the Delicate Illness Extraction Technique.
The Chakra Scalpel was extremely useful for field treatment.
It could perform the role of a normal surgical blade while dramatically reducing the risk of contamination and infection.
The Delicate Illness Extraction Technique, meanwhile, was designed to remove abnormal substances from cells and tissue.
It was commonly used to extract poisons, though it could also be applied to certain types of ordinary wounds.
Unfortunately, very few medical ninja could use either technique perfectly.
And most of the ones who could weren’t exactly the sort of people who stayed quietly in the rear lines.
Tsunade was the most obvious example.
In the original story, both the Chakra Scalpel and the Delicate Illness Extraction Technique were techniques she eventually taught Sakura Haruno.
They also happened to be complete monsters when it came to violence.
Walking home, Koji maintained his usual harmless smile while considering his next objective.
Nearly half a month had passed.
His Healing Jutsu had already reached its current limit.
Unless he obtained the Mystical Palm Jutsu, trying to increase its proficiency any further was basically impossible.
Tomorrow, he would begin learning proper wound treatment.
That shouldn’t take very long.
But from the perspective of medical ninjutsu as a whole, Koji had only just stepped through the door.
His current abilities were nowhere near sufficient for what he actually wanted to accomplish.
Research the Rinnegan?
Forget it.
Right now, he couldn’t even perform the simplest transplant.
My first priority is raising my medical ninjutsu to a genuinely high level…
A tower had to be built from the ground up.
For an ordinary person, researching something like the Sharingan or Hashirama cells was extraordinarily difficult.
At the moment, Koji wasn’t even remotely qualified.
Obtaining those research materials would be difficult as well.
Still…
there was one particularly convenient old rat hiding deep beneath Konoha.
Once Koji reached the necessary level of medical and research expertise…
perhaps he could find a way to cooperate with that rat.
With those thoughts in mind, Koji returned home.
A few days earlier, ANBU had visited him.
At first, Koji had thought they had discovered something suspicious.
He had nearly started preparing an escape plan from Konoha on the spot.
Instead, ANBU had delivered some unfortunate news.
They hadn’t managed to locate the supposed Kumogakure spy who had killed Koji’s two teammates and their chunin captain.
And that was basically the end of it.
ANBU questioned Koji about the original incident one more time, then eventually allowed the investigation to go cold.
There wasn’t much else they could do.
Even ninja couldn’t solve a case without clues.
Koji could only see the ANBU investigators off with a suitably disappointed expression.
And just like that…
the entire matter quietly faded away.
At first, even Koji had found it somewhat unbelievable.
But after a few days, he gradually got used to the idea.
Ninja were still human.
As long as you handled something thoroughly enough…
there were plenty of things you could get away with.
And so Koji—the actual murderer—continued living peacefully inside Konoha. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Today, meanwhile, he faced a completely different challenge.
“You’re going to learn basic wound treatment and healing from me today.”
The moment Koji arrived at the training room, Rie assigned him his next task.
Koji had no reason to object.
This was something every medical ninja had to learn.
And since he had a very clear objective, he certainly wasn’t going to complain about necessary training.
His luck was fairly good.
He had only followed Rie into the treatment room for a few minutes when a villager walked in clutching one arm.
After sitting down, the man exposed the injury.
It appeared to be a cut caused by a tree branch.
Nothing particularly serious.
However, dirt was clearly visible inside the wound.
“Rinse the wound with saline first. Then disinfect it with iodine solution. After that, use the Healing Jutsu to accelerate the healing process.”
Koji had still been examining the villager when Rie’s professional voice came from behind him.
Koji was speechless.
Isn’t teaching supposed to involve you demonstrating it first and then letting me try?
You’re just dumping the whole patient on me immediately.
Isn’t that a little excessive?
He really wanted to ask.
In the end, however, Koji kept his mouth shut and simply followed Rie’s instructions.
The treatment took several minutes.
By the end, the villager was grimacing from the pain while Koji continued inspecting the wound with painstaking care.
Finally, the emerald glow of the Healing Jutsu faded away.
Only a thin line remained on the man’s arm where the original injury had been.
Koji stared at the result for a moment.
Compared with his previous world’s medicine, the general medical standards of the shinobi world didn’t necessarily seem especially advanced.
But the Healing Jutsu itself was completely unreasonable.
As long as the technique was active around the user’s hands, infection was hardly a concern.
Wounds could also be closed within an extremely short period of time.
In many cases, there wasn’t even any need for stitches.
“Not bad.”
After the villager left, Rie looked at Koji and nodded in satisfaction.
A talented student really was the ultimate tool for slacking off.
If only this kid could keep handling all these minor cases for her forever.
That would make life so much easier.
Watching Koji give her that slightly embarrassed smile, however, Rie knew perfectly well that such a dream wasn’t realistic.
A medical ninja this talented would never spend his entire career treating ordinary villagers.
After all— the truly skilled medical ninja were the ones assigned to treat shinobi.