6: Chapter 06: Why Is My Hokage Different from Everyone Else’s?
6: Chapter 06: Why Is My Hokage Different from Everyone Else’s?
Time flowed by like running water.
In the blink of an eye, a month had passed.
Ever since obtaining Lara’s Multi-Purpose Archery Mastery, Akira had quickly crafted several bows and, thanks to the system’s built-in inventory space, stockpiled a large number of specialized arrows.
Explosive arrows were the hardest to make.
There weren’t any mines around Konoha, so he couldn’t gather the ingredients to make black powder himself.
Instead, he had to buy it from the village shops.
Not only was black powder expensive, but it was also considered a sensitive material that easily attracted the attention of the Konoha Military Police Force.
Fortunately, Akira was a born-and-raised citizen of Konoha.
After being stopped and questioned by the Military Police, he explained that the powder was for developing specialized ninja tools.
Once he’d registered the hazardous material, they let him go without further trouble.
As the saying went: A man carrying a weapon naturally develops the urge to use it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [The More You Know] “A man carrying a weapon naturally develops the urge to use it” is based on the Chinese saying, meaning that possessing a weapon, power, or special ability can tempt a person to misuse it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Now that he had the skills, Akira couldn’t resist putting them to the test.
With a bow slung over his shoulder, he ventured into the forests surrounding the village.
Combining a shinobi’s agility with flawless marksmanship, his hunts were almost always successful.
One especially useful feature was that whenever he aimed his bow, a crosshair automatically appeared in the center of his vision, making hunting dramatically easier.
Akira’s body hadn’t been in particularly good condition before.
Growing up during wartime had left him somewhat malnourished.
Over the past month, however, he’d frequently hunted deer, rabbits, and other game, significantly improving his diet.
With all the extra protein restoring his health, he’d become noticeably sturdier than before.
According to the system, his Constitution had already risen to 4, approaching the average adult level in the Ninja World.
During this month, Akira hadn’t neglected his training either.
Although his chakra reserves were rather limited due to his ordinary civilian lineage, he had still managed, after plenty of trial and error to master the Rasengan.
After all…
A hand seal-free ninjutsu was simply too good to ignore.
Besides, the original story had already explained its training method in painstaking detail.
If he still couldn’t learn it after that, it’d honestly be embarrassing.
Unfortunately, there was one major drawback.
His body was still that of a young child and hadn’t fully developed, so his chakra reserves remained limited.
At the moment, he only had enough chakra to create one Rasengan.
That made it unsuitable for regular combat.
Chakra was formed from the combination of physical energy and spiritual energy.
Akira currently had 8 Spirit but only 4 Constitution.
As he grew older and his body matured, his Constitution would naturally increase, giving him far greater chakra reserves.
A high Spirit stat had another advantage as well.
It granted exceptional chakra control.
Exercises like tree climbing and water walking only required a little practice before he mastered them with ease.
Taking advantage of that precision, Akira had even succeeded in creating a fingertip-sized Rasengan.
Sadly…
Its power was somewhat lacking.
Poking a tree with it only left behind a hole about the size of a fist.
Pure, attribute-less chakra simply didn’t hit very hard.
Once he awakened the various chakra natures in the future, that would likely change.
During this month, Akira had also discovered an interesting rule governing the system.
Whenever someone mentioned his name…
He gained Reputation.
Each individual could provide Reputation two or three times a day, earning him one point each time.
Despite doing almost nothing noteworthy, Akira had effortlessly accumulated over 400 Reputation during the month.
He spent it on several more Wishes and obtained a number of excellent skills.
The first was a talent skill ━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━ [Iron Bones] Effect: Reduced damage taken from both melee and ranged attacks ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Previously, Akira could be killed with a single stab.
Now…
An enemy would probably need to stab him twice.
A truly joyous occasion.
The second was another talent skill ━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━ [Heart of Stone] Effect: Greatly reduced damage from melee and ranged attacks.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The damage reduction from Heart of Stone stacked with Iron Bones, gradually pushing Akira toward the role of a walking tank.
Even the toughness of his skin had noticeably increased.
With both talents combined, he estimated he could now withstand four or five knife wounds in a street fight against ordinary thugs.
That was practically elite mini-boss territory.
If he were dropped into a Hong Kong action movie…
These two talents alone would probably earn him the status of a legendary enforcer.
Unfortunately…
This was the Ninja World.
Against actual shinobi, he’d almost certainly be unable to withstand the destructive power of ninjutsu.
At the moment, he was simply tougher than an ordinary person.
As for Tsunade’s monstrous strength…
He had absolutely no intention of testing it.
If she dared to punch…
He dared to die.
The third skill was practically a miracle during this stage of his growth.
Adrenaline When driven into a desperate situation, it unleashed the body’s hidden potential.
If he were gravely injured on the battlefield, activating Adrenaline might let him struggle on for a little longer.
Who knew?
He might even turn defeat into victory.
The fourth skill was…
Rather sinister.
━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━ [Corpse Trap Crafting] Effect: Allowed you to turn an enemy’s corpse into a deadly trap.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Anyone investigating the body would trigger the release of a cloud of lethal poison gas.
Akira had absolutely no idea how a tiny poisonous mushroom could instantly produce a toxic cloud covering a three-meter radius.
But there was no point asking.
The answer was simply: System skill.
With all these abilities under his belt, Akira finally felt a small measure of security in this dangerous world.
After living here for a month, he’d gradually accepted his new reality.
More than anything, he was grateful he’d been born in Konoha instead of somewhere like Amegakure.
The world wasn’t peaceful.
But at least someone was there to protect him.
It wasn’t so harsh that survival itself became impossible.
Every month, he received a village stipend.
On top of that, he regularly hunted wild game to supplement his meals.
Life was actually quite comfortable.
The only downside…
Was school.
It wasn’t that Akira disliked studying.
The problem was that the system was simply too powerful.
He had already taught himself the entire Academy curriculum.
As a result, every day consisted of listening to teachers repeat knowledge he had already mastered.
It felt like a tremendous waste of time.
He didn’t want to spend class sleeping, either.
Unlike children from the great clans, he couldn’t use Shadow Clone Jutsu to study efficiently in multiple places at once.
So he had no choice but to sit there every day, bored out of his mind while the teachers lectured.
The biggest surprise of all…
Was Sato-sensei.
He had actually begun literacy lessons using The Will of Fire as the reading textbook.
One character at a time.
Reading.
Writing.
Repeating.
Akira had assumed the Will of Fire was merely ideological propaganda.
He never imagined it doubled as the children’s first reading primer.
No wonder so many people devoted their lives to the Will of Fire.
From the very moment children learned to read…
They were already studying it.
Akira was utterly speechless at the state of education in the Ninja World.
Seriously?
Don’t tell me there are actually kids enrolling in the Ninja Academy who still can’t read.
Shouldn’t basic literacy be taught before entering ninja school?
Why is the Hokage world I ended up in completely different from everyone else’s?
Akira screamed silently inside.
Though only five years old…
He somehow radiated the exhausted aura of a middle-aged salaryman who’d already seen too much of life.