After an entire day of lessons and combat training, Tachibana Kenji finally made his way home, exhaustion weighing heavily on every step.
He sat down in the entrance hall.
Only when he caught sight of his eight- or nine-year-old face reflected in the mirror did the cheerful expression he had maintained throughout the day finally disappear.
Living by imitating someone else was far more exhausting than he had imagined.
“Lan, go put away the ninja tools first.
I’ll start making dinner in a little while.” “Croak…
The little frog looked at Tachibana Kenji with concern and gently patted the boy’s calf with one tiny hand.
In the end, it picked up the ninja tool pouch and hopped toward the utility room.
Tachibana Kenji stared at his reflection and fell into thought.
Some of his more perceptive classmates and teachers had actually noticed the changes in him recently.
Fortunately, most people in Kirigakure were indifferent by nature and rarely took much interest in other people’s affairs.
Tachibana Kenji—or rather, whatever his original name had been—no longer mattered.
He wasn’t originally a resident of this world.
A month ago, he had merely been an ordinary office worker living a routine nine-to-five life.
After narrowly being hit by a truck twice, he began to suspect that his luck had taken a turn for the worse.
So he took an extended leave from work and decided to rest at home for a while.
Yet when he woke up from a nap, he discovered that he had somehow transmigrated into the shinobi world and become a nine-year-old war orphan from Kirigakure.
Fortunately, after transmigrating, he had inherited all of the original owner’s memories.
As someone who had been at least somewhat immersed in anime culture in his previous life, Tachibana Kenji couldn’t claim to know Naruto inside and out, but he had watched the entire series and was familiar with the general course of events.
Naturally, he understood exactly what kind of place the shinobi world was.
After the end of the Warring States Period and the establishment of the hidden village system, the original intention had been to promote peace and create a balance of power.
But in reality, very little had changed.
A Shinobi World War broke out every decade or so, while local conflicts and the bloodshed caused by shinobi missions had never ceased.
Not to mention the occasional ridiculously powerful lunatic with questionable judgment who wanted to wipe out an entire clan, massacre a village, or destroy the world.
Even Konohagakure, the village where the original protagonist Uzumaki Naruto lived, was hardly peaceful.
They claimed to have founded the village so that children would no longer have to set foot on the battlefield, yet in every war, teenagers—and sometimes children barely old enough to understand what war was—were still sent to the front lines.
But Tachibana Kenji was in an even worse situation.
At the very least, Konoha maintained an outward appearance of peace and unity.
Kirigakure couldn’t even be bothered with that kind of hypocrisy.
The implementation of the Bloody Mist policies had only made the entire village more brutal and cold-blooded.
However, those were merely dangers lurking in the background.
The greatest and most immediate threat to Tachibana Kenji right now was the Ninja Academy graduation examination.
In Kirigakure, every Ninja Academy student who wished to become an official shinobi had to kill one of their fellow students during the graduation examination—a brutal test with a minimum casualty rate of fifty percent.
Tachibana Kenji’s graduation examination was only four months away.
And as a transmigrator who knew the story, the pressure on him was far greater than it was on an ordinary student.
After inheriting the original owner’s memories, the first thing he discovered was that he had a classmate named Momochi Zabuza.
Tachibana Kenji knew very well that in the original Naruto story, Zabuza had slaughtered every other student participating in his graduation examination, forcing Kirigakure to abolish this barbaric practice.
In other words, if Tachibana Kenji couldn’t defeat Momochi Zabuza, his chances of passing this examination were— Zero.
As an ordinary person who had come from a peaceful world, Tachibana Kenji only wanted to live a safe and comfortable life.
At the very least, he wanted to survive until the era of Boruto.
By then, the shinobi world would have video games, the internet, and all sorts of modern technology.
He could finally relax and live the life of a carefree shut-in.
Fortunately, heaven hadn’t completely abandoned him.
Like any proper transmigrator, Tachibana Kenji had arrived in this world with a cheat of his own: the [Universal Pokémon Gacha System].
“I still can’t bring myself to look directly at that system name…” Tachibana Kenji covered his face and sighed.
After more than a month in this world, he had already gained a basic understanding of the system’s functions.
The system currently had three sections: [Gacha], [Quests], and [Achievements].
Both Quests and Achievements could earn him Coins.
Unfortunately, those Coins had no physical form and could only be used for draws within the system.
There wasn’t even a system shop.
At present, the Quest section contained only Daily Quests.
Whether he completed them or not, four new quests would refresh at midnight every day.
Each quest rewarded ten Coins, while completing all four granted an additional twenty-Coin bonus.
After completing them for more than a month, Tachibana Kenji had discovered that the Daily Quests were all quite simple, things like [Throw a Kunai 200 Times], [Answer a Question in Class], or [Help the Widow Next Door Buy Some Soy Sauce].
That was why his classmates often saw him training alone after school.
It wasn’t entirely due to his sense of urgency about the future; sometimes, he was simply completing his Daily Quests.
As for quests other than the Daily Quests, he still didn’t know how they were triggered.
Tachibana Kenji guessed that once he became an official shinobi and began accepting missions from the village, new types of quests might become available.
Next was the [Achievements] section.
The advantage of Daily Quests was their consistency.
However, perhaps because he had only recently arrived in the shinobi world, Tachibana Kenji had triggered quite a few Achievements over the past month as well.
Only [New Arrival to the Shinobi World], a beginner’s gift of sorts, had awarded him a generous three hundred Coins.
Other achievements—such as today’s achievement for beating up a fellow student—were worth only a pitiful five to ten Coins.
But there were simply so many different ways to trigger Achievements that the rewards gradually added up.
He had unlocked Achievements for things like tasting ten different dishes and talking to one hundred people.
Yesterday, he had even triggered one for being late to school for the first time: [Sorry, I’m Still Finding My Way Through Life…] What exactly that was supposed to mean, he had no idea.
However, since the conditions for unlocking Achievements were completely unknown, he had spent some time randomly experimenting when he first arrived.
After discovering that actively hunting for them was terribly inefficient, Tachibana Kenji stopped focusing on it and simply let them unlock naturally.
Finally—and most importantly—there was the [Gacha] interface.
According to the explanation that appeared after pressing the [?] button on the Gacha screen: One draw cost 160 Coins.
A ten-pull guaranteed at least one Purple-rarity item, while a Gold-rarity item was guaranteed within ninety total draws in the same banner.
After obtaining a Gold-rarity item, the pity counter would reset.
As for exactly what Gold- and Purple-rarity rewards were available, that depended on the contents of the current rate-up banner.
Despite calling itself an all-purpose Pokémon gacha, the system currently offered only three banners.
The first was a mysterious [???
Banner], which Tachibana Kenji still had no idea how to unlock.
The second was the Normal-type Rate-Up Banner, whose rewards ranged from moves like [Explosion], a move practically designed to take the user down with its target, to bizarre and seemingly meaningless items like [The Coin on Meowth’s Forehead].
Its prize pool was an absolute mess.
The third was the Beginner-Limited Rate-Up Banner, which allowed only twenty total draws.
Because the Beginner Banner offered a twenty-percent discount on ten-pulls, Tachibana Kenji had decisively spent 1,280 Coins on a ten-pull more than half a month ago after saving up enough.
The result was a mixture of disappointment and surprise.
Aside from [Summoning Technique × Unique]—a Gold-rarity Unique item that allowed him to master the Summoning Technique and randomly summon a Pokémon as his contracted summon, with the summoned Pokémon possessing growth potential and beginning with maximum friendship—the rest of his rewards were rather underwhelming.
And despite how impressive that description sounded, the Pokémon he had summoned was merely a Froakie that hadn’t even reached Level 5.
The Blue-rarity items, [Potion] and [Ether], could at least be considered somewhat useful.
However, perhaps because the system had localized them for the Naruto world, the Potion had turned into a medicinal ointment after being retrieved, while the Ether had directly become a special Soldier Pill.
Tachibana Kenji had taken out a small amount and tested them.
At best, they were slightly better than the medicine sold in the village pharmacies—and only slightly.
The remaining rewards were all White-rarity items without even a proper description: [Pidgeot Feather], [Yellow Apricorn], [Roasted Berries], [Orange Mail], [Tiny Mushroom], [Iron Scrap], and [Marble].
Still, at least he had Froakie.
Like Tachibana Kenji, it was a living being that did not originally belong to this world.
Yet it was also a companion he could trust completely.
Even though its combat strength was still limited, its presence brought him considerable comfort.
So, Tachibana Kenji had given Froakie the name Tachibana Lan.
He wanted the name to remain with it even if it eventually evolved into a Greninja.
He wanted them to grow together as partners—not as the relationship between a master and a mere ninja beast or Pokémon.
Of course, out of a slightly embarrassing sense of self-consciousness, Tachibana Kenji usually just called it “Lan.” After all his efforts over the past month, combined with the Achievement reward for today’s fight and his Daily Quest rewards, he had finally accumulated 1,305 Coins again.
Tachibana Kenji looked at the number displayed on his system panel, then at Lan, who had finished putting away the ninja tools and was now looking at him with concern.
“Let’s eat first.
We’ve waited all day already.
There’s no need to rush now.” Since arriving in this danger-filled shinobi world, Tachibana Kenji had consciously tried to remain calm and composed in everything he did.
People who were too impulsive and reckless didn’t live long in the shinobi world.
He would definitely be able to make a draw today anyway.
Waiting a little longer wouldn’t make any difference.
Tachibana Kenji forcibly calmed his emotions.
He got up, changed his shoes, prepared dinner, and ate with Lan, completing everything in his usual unhurried routine.
When he checked the time, it was already 10:00 p.m.
After washing his hands and face and settling his mind, Tachibana Kenji opened the system panel.
“Lan, come pray with me!” A shinobi needed to face everything calmly, but considering that transmigration itself had already happened to him, surely there was nothing embarrassing about asking the gods for a little blessing?
“Gods and Buddhas of every heaven, Supreme Lord Laozi, Buddha, and…
Arceus…”