Fanma walked the geisha to the entrance of the inn, kissed her hand gently, and said, “Alright, you can leave me here.” He pressed a stack of banknotes into her palm and gave her a playful wink.
The girl looked startled, her face flushing with a soft, bashful glow.
“Actually…
I really like you…” Fanma patted her hair, offered no further comment, and retreated into his room, leaving her standing there in a daze, her heart a flutter.
This wasn’t a display of legendary self-restraint; it was simple pragmatism.
If Fanma were to actually engage in intimacy, the physical mismatch would be lethal.
It was one of the many inconveniences of his current state.
Ever since his “breakthrough” where he accumulated six traits at once, his physique had undergone a cataclysmic evolution.
He had effectively retired from standard recreational stress relief.
After all, geishas were ordinary humans; Fanma had no interest in causing a fatality.
In the shinobi world, a mere Chunin could live like a king in districts like this, reveling every night.
While the Feudal Lords might view ninja as heartless tools, to the common folk, they were tangible gods—both the arbiters of life and its protectors.
In this twisted world, becoming a Jonin was the equivalent of achieving the highest glory, far more significant than the success of a traditional scholar.
Lying on his bed with his legs crossed, Fanma pondered his future.
His path in taijutsu was reaching the ceiling of what a “standard” ninja could achieve.
If he wanted to maintain a crushing advantage in the later stages of the shinobi world—against threats like the Otsutsuki—he had to find a way to transcend these conventional limits.
Based on his vague memories of Boruto, committing to taijutsu was an incredibly promising investment.
In the realm of Six Paths-level combat, chakra had effectively become nothing more than “white rice”—filler.
Jutsu formed from chakra could often be absorbed at will.
The only way to truly damage such enemies was to overwhelm them with sheer kinetic output.
To survive the endgame, space-time ninjutsu, sealing techniques, and Senjutsu (Sage Mode) were non-negotiable.
Or, he could follow the path he and Guy shared: the mastery of raw, fundamental violence.
Regardless of how flashy an enemy’s technique was, his own attack would always be defined by a simple kinetic equation.
Fanma’s taijutsu differed from Guy’s.
Guy pursued high-attack, low-defense, burning his life force to reach the peak of offensive power.
Fanma, however, walked the path of balancing hardness and softness, where soul and flesh complemented each other.
He emphasized both attack and defense, though he prioritized defense above all else.
This was heavily influenced by his life before transmigration.
In the Naruto world, two things had always baffled him.
The first was his ancestor, Madara Uchiha, being pierced through the chest by a single kunai.
It had shocked him for a century.
A world-ending level ninja, brought low by a fifty-ryo piece of steel forged in a village smithy!
Was the stat allocation really that unbalanced?
Could you not spare a few points for defensive armor?
It truly made the title “Rose of the Battlefield” sound ironic: I touch you, you die.
You touch me, I die.
It was a game of heart-stopping tension.
The second was the “strongest genjutsu”—Kotoamatsukami—wielded by his clansman, Shisui Uchiha.
The mechanism of that technique was so profoundly unknown that it had to be guarded against at all costs.
To avoid becoming a “disgrace to the Uchiha,” Fanma had established two principles at the start of his training: Even as a taijutsu specialist, he must strictly cultivate resistance to genjutsu to avoid becoming anyone’s puppet.
High attack power wasn’t a true specialty; high defense was the key to true immortality.
These requirements were extravagant; only a handful of people in the ninja world could achieve them.
But as a man with a “System,” Fanma found the grind much easier: he simply accumulated experience to exchange for the corresponding traits.
From his graduation at nine, to joining the Anbu, he had fought his way through countless battles.
Once he unlocked “Savage Growth”—which granted him monstrous recovery and damage immunity after healing from an injury—Fanma began his insane training regimen.
He started taking Five Element Nature Transformation jutsu directly to his face, arms, and thighs.
His Anbu colleagues had initially mocked him, claiming no taijutsu ninja trained like that and he would surely end up a cripple.
But eventually, they realized something was wrong.
Fanma went from barely resisting a C-rank Fireball jutsu with minor burns, to standing unmoved before B-rank jutsu like Fire Style: Flame Bullet or Earth Style: Earth Dragon Bullet, feeling nothing but mild irritation that his clothes were scorched.
His colleagues’ mentalities shifted.
Was this really an Uchiha, or was he a member of the Yotsuki clan?
If he hadn’t lacked the crackling blue electricity of the Lightning Release when he fought, they would have suspected that the Third Raikage had defected to Konoha to pick up some side work!
Similarly, to master genjutsu resistance, he had tortured the clan’s genjutsu specialists for years.
He went from being trapped in their dreams, sitting dumbly on the ground while they mocked him for his lack of ocular prowess, to actively welcoming their techniques.
Now, he would simply walk right up to the caster, stare at them face-to-face, and ask in a confused tone, “What’s wrong?
Your ocular power hasn’t grown at all in years.
Is everything okay?” He had successfully broken the morale of an entire generation of Uchiha genjutsu users.
Recalling his past training, a smile spread across his face.
These were his happiest memories.
Comparing him to current figures, the Third Raikage was the best benchmark.
Fanma held the advantage in genjutsu resistance, while their speed and defense were likely neck-and-neck.
However, in terms of raw lethality, Fanma’s best technique probably didn’t match the Raikage’s Hell Stab.
The Raikage’s use of chakra was simply more refined.
This was a conscious choice.
Fanma believed that using chakra for defense would always have a flaw.
True armor could only be one’s own body.
For now, Fanma was the “Tank” class—extremely forgiving in combat with solid single-target damage.
But like most taijutsu users, he struggled with large-scale warfare.
Characters like the Third Raikage and Guy proved this limitation.
Look at Guy’s range-extension move, Morning Peacock—it was, frankly, an inefficient technique.
Creating fire through air friction and then throwing it with gusts of air?
The energy loss was absurd.
It only served to highlight the desperate lack of long-range tools for a taijutsu specialist.
When speed wasn’t enough to overwhelm the opponent, taijutsu ninja found themselves in dire straits.
How to wipe out hordes of low-level grunts, how to maintain close combat, and how to master space-time or Senjutsu… these were the problems Fanma needed to solve.
He squinted, weighing his options.
Space-time ninjutsu remained the gold standard.
If he had Obito’s Kamui, he could teleport behind anyone.
Given his hand-to-hand lethality, he could likely force-kill any Kage-level ninja if he could get within range.
Flying Thunder God would be slightly less effective, but still potent.
Fanma clutched his face, forming a “mask of agony.” Minato was still just a child who begged him for grilled meat and hit on girls.
As for Obito?
He was likely still drinking milk in the nursery.
Space-time affinity was just too rare in the ninja world.
“Space-time, Senjutsu, wide-range combat,” he muttered to himself.
Even with his System, acquiring the power of space was not an easy task.
Whoosh.
He ripped off his shirt and flicked his hand, the gust of wind extinguishing the oil lamp by his bed.
“Forget it.
Things will work out when the time comes.
Time to rot, time to sleep.” “Maybe one day, when my body evolves again, these powers will naturally manifest…” “I need to recharge.
I have to properly teach those old men in the Jonin squad a lesson tomorrow.
That’s what matters right now.” “Goodnight.” Snuggling into his blanket, Fanma drifted off to sleep.