Chapter 4: Warrior Lv.4

"Shingo, kid, off to train again?"

Just as he finished locking the door and was adjusting the cuffs of his trousers outside, Shingo turned his head to see his neighbor from Kitaki Street, Nohara Seiji, waving at him with a grin.

It had already been three months since he moved to Kitaki Street. Over this quarter of a year, the surrounding neighbors had gradually grown accustomed to the young boy living all by himself.

Kitaki Street was a new district built by Konoha specifically to house refugees and civilians who had traveled leagues across the land to escape the chaos of war.

The people living here were neither members of prestigious noble clans nor local villagers who had remained completely sheltered from the cruelties of war since Konoha's founding.

They had witnessed displacement; they had experienced the biting agony of starvation and bitter cold. They knew firsthand just how grueling a struggle it was for a civilian simply to stay alive in a world like this.

Consequently, unlike the mainstream villagers who had plenty of leisure time to amuse themselves by bullying others, the people of Kitaki Street possessed a much fiercer obsession with survival, and a far more grounded, unpretentious kindness.

They had no idea what circumstances had driven a mere six-year-old child to move to Kitaki Street alone.

Yet, by tacit mutual understanding, none of them wanted to see the boy perish from cold or hunger. Thus, people frequently reached out to extend a helping hand.

Though life here was far happier than it had been out in the wider world, it was still a far cry from wealthy.

Even so, sharing a bowl of hot soup or a few old spare garments was well within their means.

At first, Shingo had felt unaccustomed to it and politely declined a few times.

With his current strength, boasting a physique equivalent to a genin, securing his daily meals was hardly a difficult task.

Yet Shingo couldn't very well explain that, and the neighbors, unaware of the truth, simply assumed he was too proud to accept handouts. If anything, their warmth and hospitality only grew stronger in response.

After a few such encounters, Shingo stopped refusing and instead began preparing token return gifts.

As it turned out, through his various chores repairing his house, crafting furniture, cooking meals, and hunting in the surrounding forests, the system had successively unlocked three common classes: Craftsman, Chef, and Hunter.

Shingo's return gifts were simple, practical items that genuinely came in handy.

A few small hand-carved wooden stools, sturdy and durable wooden shelves, and occasionally wild hares or pheasants bagged from the forest.

Among all the neighbors who looked out for him, aside from the ramen chef who made a remarkably delicious bowl of noodles, Nohara Seiji, who made his living selling oden, sent food the most frequently.

Over time, through constant coming and going, they had all grown quite familiar with one another.

"Morning, Seiji-jisan. Heading out to set up the stall?"

Seiji was pushing a wooden handcart loaded with large stockpots. Steam plumed from the gaps in the pot lids, carrying the rich, savory aroma of daikon radish, kelp, and seasoned broth, which slowly drifted into the crisp morning air.

"That's right, about to head out."

Seiji responded with a warm laugh, then, as if suddenly remembering something, added with a cautionary tone:

"Oh, right, the Ninja Academy enrollment is coming up soon. A bright kid like you shouldn't forget to go try out. If only Shinichi had half your talent, haha, he wouldn't need to learn how to make oden from me."

Nohara Shinichi was Seiji's son.

A few years prior, when Shinichi was around Shingo's age, he too had yearned to become a shinobi.

He had even gone to try out when the Academy held its entrance evaluations, but the results had been deeply disappointing.

The Academy examiner had crushed his shinobi dreams with a single blunt statement:

"Sorry, kid, you simply lack the aptitude to be a ninja."

Ever since that day, Shinichi had dutifully resigned himself to inheriting the family business, helping his father run the oden cart.

After a few more years of learning the ropes, from purchasing ingredients and brewing broth to skewering food and manning the stall, he would eventually be able to take over the family trade seamlessly when Seiji grew too old.

"Got it, Seiji-jisan. I'll go check it out after I finish my training."

After a few more polite exchanges, Seiji pushed his cart toward the end of the street, while Shingo shouldered his water flask and headed toward the forest on the eastern side of the village.

While hunting previously, Shingo had discovered a clearing deep inside the forest north of the village.

The terrain was flat and, though not particularly large, more than spacious enough for training.

A shallow, clear stream ran close by, and almost nobody ever ventured into the area.

Shingo had simply claimed the spot as his own private training ground.

Over the past few months, he had expanded and refined it into a hidden base.

Thanks to the Craftsman class, a single axe and a sharp blade were all he needed.

During breaks, Shingo would sit cross-legged on the grass, trimming branches and carving timber, transforming raw wood into practical tools right in his hands.

He didn't care about aesthetic perfection; as long as it was sturdy and durable, it sufficed.

Stools, tables... wooden kunai, wooden shuriken, wooden targets...

He had even constructed a simple lean-to shed by the edge of the training ground to store lumber and tools.

Right now, the training ground looked surprisingly orderly. For Shingo, though it fell far short of the lavish training facilities inside the Hyūga compound, it was more than enough.

Besides, the training grounds within the Hyūga compound were hardly open to the branch family without restriction. Using them normally required submitting formal applications and dealing with strict time limits.

More importantly, training here allowed Shingo to push himself without reservation, something that would have been completely impossible back within the Hyūga domain.

Inside the Hyūga compound, everyone's training was obsessively centered around the Gentle Fist. Dedicated physical conditioning wasn't entirely nonexistent, but it was pitifully scarce.

Under those conditions, Shingo, as a branch family member, dared not stand out as a "freak." Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have survived until now, having long since been branded with the Caged Bird.

Arriving at the training ground, Shingo placed his water flask beside the stream, letting the icy current wash over the container.

Then, stripping off his upper garments, he walked over to a collection of rocks of varying sizes.

Shingo glanced at his system panel; the Warrior class was on the verge of leveling up once again.

Deciding to bypass hunting and carpentry tasks for the day, he intended to push straight through and raise his level in one go.

Shingo squatted down with his back to one of the boulders, hooked his arms backward, and hoisted it onto his back.

A crushing weight instantly pressed down upon his shoulders and spine, causing his muscles and bones to tighten with a faint creak.

After testing the balance, he took a deep breath and began walking while carrying the heavy load.

Shingo had no idea what specific training regimens yielded the best results.

For a ninja, simple bodyweight exercises were obviously far from sufficient.

To say nothing of the specialized gym equipment from his past life, the high-density training weights used by Rock Lee and Might Guy were well beyond what Shingo's current frame could handle.

Reviewing his current options, he had simply adopted the method Master Roshi used to train Goku and Krillin in Dragon Ball: carrying heavy loads while walking, running, and jumping, alongside lifting and pushing massive boulders.

His goal was to ensure that every single muscle in his body was repeatedly engaged and stimulated through physical exertion.

Time slipped away drop by drop, drowned out by sweat.

It wasn't until the sun slanted low in the west and a crisp ding sounded from the system announcing a level-up that Shingo finally brought his training to a halt.

Having trained here for months without ever running into a soul, Shingo shed the rest of his clothes without hesitation and leaped straight into the stream beside the training ground, letting the rushing water scour away his sweat and fatigue.

He hoisted the water flask, which had been sitting in the chilling current, and drained it in a single long draft. As he felt his scorching, burning skin cool rapidly beneath the crisp flow, he pulled up the system interface to inspect his status.

…

Name: Shingo

Age: 6

Bloodline: Hyūga Clan

Kekkei Genkai: Byakugan (Missing)

Base Attributes:

Strength: 7.1

Speed: 5.0

Constitution: 10.3

Spirit: 9.1

Common Classes:

Chef Lv.1 (11/100)

Craftsman Lv.1 (72/100)

Hunter Lv.2 (21/200)

Transcendent Class: Warrior Lv.4 (1/800)

Class Skill: Mind's Eye Lv.2 (112/200)

Class Skill Points: 1

Innate Skill: Warrior's Physique Lv.3

General Skills:

Chakra Control Lv.5 (12/1600)

Gentle Fist Lv.2 (52/200)

Nimble Hands Lv.1 (32/100)

Gourmet Palette Lv.1 (52/200)

Tracking Lv.2 (113/200)

General Skill Points: 1

…

Throughout this period, Shingo hadn't spent a single shred of energy on the Gentle Fist.

While he recalled a cryptic mention in a certain databook hinting that the Hyūga clan's Gentle Fist shared a deep connection with the supreme taijutsu technique Eighty Gods Vacuum Fists...

Shingo harbored no illusions that simply practicing the Gentle Fist would allow him to master a technique like that.

A taijutsu maneuver of that caliber inherently required three pillars: a massive pool of chakra, supreme chakra control, and monster-tier physical stats.

By the time his foundational abilities reached that tier, employing other martial arts styles would likely yield results just as devastating.

What's more, without his Byakugan, he lacked the X-ray vision required to precisely target tenketsu points.

No matter how proficiently he practiced the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms, he could never strike targets with the blinding speed and pinpoint accuracy of someone wielding the Byakugan in actual combat.

He could memorize anatomical charts of the human chakra pathway system.

Yet individuals varied, and relying purely on remembered estimates of pathway locations meant there was no guarantee every strike would land squarely on a tenketsu point during high-intensity combat.

Even the slightest deviation could spell disaster or death for him.

Furthermore, now that the Hyūga clan had stripped him of his surname, they undoubtedly wished to sever any association between him and the clan.

Consequently, Shingo had completely written off the Gentle Fist.

His three common classes had collectively netted him three general skills and four general skill points.

Over the past few months, Shingo had pushed his Chakra Control skill up to Lv.2 via tree-walking and water-surface training.

After continuing to train for a few more days, realizing that progress at Lv.2 had slowed to a glacial crawl, with hours of grueling practice yielding barely a flicker of experience, Shingo had dumped all four accumulated general skill points directly into the skill, skyrocketing it all the way.

Unfortunately, once a skill hit Lv.5, pushing it higher demanded even greater investments of skill points, with the cost scaling alongside the rank.

Taking Chakra Control past Lv.5 would require two skill points, which Shingo didn't currently have to spare.

Aside from chakra control, Shingo had poured all remaining time and effort into physical tempering.

Two months prior, when the Warrior class hit Lv.3, the class skill point he received had once again been invested into Warrior's Physique.

Shingo was only six years old, right in the middle of a rapid developmental growth spurt.

Two months of grueling training, augmented by innate talent multipliers, abundant meat-based nutrition, and the physical leaps accompanying today's Warrior level-up, had completely transformed him.

Shingo was now confident that even without using the Gentle Fist, those branch family members who had just graduated from the Ninja Academy couldn't best him in pure taijutsu.

Gazing at the glowing golden skill tree of the Warrior class, Shingo knew a new set of teachable skills had unlocked.

Tapping it open, two fresh branches had branched out above Mind's Eye:

[Suppleness: The rigid easily snaps; the supple endures. Further reinforces physical flexibility, coordination, and force-dispersal capacity, making movements, transitions, advances, and retreats exceptionally fluid and agile.]

[Attunement with Nature: A warrior tempers both body and spirit. Aligns physique, spirit, and chakra closer to the breath of nature, bringing one into seamless harmony with the rhythms of heaven and earth.]

Suppleness was easy to grasp, and its combat utility was straightforward.

It would make his taijutsu execution smoother while boosting flexibility, balance, and impact absorption.

Attunement with Nature, on the other hand, sounded somewhat esoteric.

Tempering spirit... drawing close to the breath of nature...

After a moment of deliberation, Shingo ultimately chose Attunement with Nature.

After all, judging purely by the name, this skill sounded significantly more powerful.

The moment the skill point vanished, the first sensation to wash over him was indescribable.

The rustling of leaves, the chirping of birds, the hum of insects deep in the underbrush.

The clarity of the stream, the vibrant green of the forest, the azure expanse of the sky.

The scent of damp earth, the faint fragrance of wild blossoms, the herbal tang of foliage.

His sense of touch felt the most intensely alive. The stream felt almost animate, no longer chillingly cold but wrapping around him like a gentle embrace, while the air itself seemed to stroke his skin like a soft hand.

Shingo stood motionless in the middle of the brook, quietly absorbing every layer of transformation.

…

"Hokage-sama, here is this year's enrollment roster."

Sarutobi Toshiji approached Sarutobi Hiruzen with a respectful bow, handing over a stack of documents. 

Hiruzen gestured for him to sit, taking a moment to look at his clan brother, who had lost his left leg during the First Ninja World War and subsequently withdrawn from the front lines to take up a post at the Ninja Academy.

Though Hiruzen had told Toshiji countless times that such formal courtesy wasn't necessary in private and he could simply call him Hiruzen as they used to, the man remained stubbornly rigorous and formal. Even with only the three of them, Hiruzen, Toshiji, and Danzō, in the office, Toshiji still addressed him by his formal title. 

Hiruzen rubbed his aching temples, clamped his pipe between his teeth, and began flipping through the roster of incoming students while puffing leisurely on tobacco.

The crushing weight of administrative duties left him exhausted, but the Ninja Academy represented the future of Konoha; he made it a point to personally review the profile of every single incoming student each year.

"Uchiha, Yamanaka, Nara, Akimichi..."

"That boy Nawaki is enrolling this year too? I was so buried in work I almost forgot. Tsunade mentioned it to me a while back."

"Hm, plenty of children from civilian backgrounds as well."

Seeing that, the weariness on his face softened slightly.

Over recent years, while the proportion of shinobi clan children entering the Academy remained steady, civilian student enrollment had surged at an even faster pace, steadily increasing their overall percentage year over year.

On one hand, Konoha's stable environment meant more civilian households possessed the means to send their children down the path of a ninja.

On the other hand, Konoha stood like a blazing torch, drawing in citizens from smaller nations yearning for peace and waves of homeless wanderers seeking refuge.

Naturally, among them were many children blessed with extraordinary natural talent.

Such a flourishing spectacle made Hiruzen's previously heavy mood lift considerably.

"Take a look as well, Danzō."

Hiruzen handed the reviewed roster over to Danzō, then turned his gaze back to Toshiji. 

He noticed Toshiji was holding an independent report that hadn't been bundled with the rest of the paperwork. "What's that?"

Toshiji offered the report, carefully weighing his words before speaking.

"This child's situation is somewhat unusual."

"Someone pulled strings to reach out to me, hoping I could find a way to reject his enrollment."

"However, the boy possesses exceptional taijutsu skills, and he has already mastered chakra refinement ahead of schedule before even entering the Academy. He is undeniably a prodigy."

"So I wanted to ask Hokage-sama whether you are aware of the circumstances behind this."

Hiruzen frowned slightly, taking the report.

The moment he saw the name on the list, a sense of familiarity stirred within him.

Yet his brain, battered and spinning from the chaos of the internal Uchiha turmoil lately, felt too exhausted to turn over properly; for a moment, he couldn't quite place it.

Shingo... Where on earth had he heard that name before?

Hiruzen puffed deeply on his pipe, smoke curling around his lips before slowly exhaling.

Beside him, Danzō noticed his knitted brow and shifted slightly, his gaze sweeping across the name on the report.

A moment later, he looked up at Toshiji.

"Hyūga."

The Hyūga clan had gone to desperate lengths to cover up the theft of the Byakugan, so Toshiji naturally remained oblivious to the internal scandal.

Yet, however harshly the Hyūga treated their own, they never dared disregard the authority of the Hokage.

The full truth of the matter had been reported directly to Hiruzen the very moment Hyūga Takanobu returned to the village.

And once Hiruzen knew, Danzō naturally knew as well.

Hiruzen turned his head, locking eyes with Danzō, pointing a finger toward his own eye and offering an inquiring look.

Danzō gave a slow nod of confirmation.

Seeing this, Hiruzen exhaled a frustrated puff of smoke from his pipe, leaving an unpleasantly bitter taste in his mouth.

Hiruzen could never have anticipated that when he kindly told the Hyūga leadership to handle their own internal affairs, they would respond by dumping the entire fallout onto the shoulders of a six-year-old child.

By the time the Anbu briefed him on the Hyūga's resolution, it was far too late to intervene.

"Just let the child enroll normally. If you have spare time, keep an eye on him and look out for him."

"Understood."

Throughout the exchange, Danzō remained silent, merely listening as Hiruzen and Toshiji discussed the various logistical details of the Academy.

Once Toshiji bowed and took his leave, Danzō finally spoke up in a low voice.

"Hiruzen, letting Shingo enter the Ninja Academy, what about the Hyūga clan?"

Hiruzen's fingers tightening around his pipe paused for a fraction of a second before he replied in a cold tone:

"If they have an issue with it, let them come and take it up with me directly."

"For something like this to happen right here in Konoha... the Hyūga should feel thoroughly ashamed."

Danzō didn't argue, simply nodding in silent assent.

After a brief pause, he asked another question.

"And what about the Uchiha? How do you plan to handle them?"

Compared to the Hyūga, Danzō, who had lived through Konoha's founding era and witnessed the majestic prowess of Uchiha Madara firsthand, was naturally far more concerned with the Uchiha.

A few days prior, a fierce clash had erupted within the Uchiha compound.

By the time Hiruzen led the Anbu squad to the scene, the battle had already concluded.

According to Uchiha Naori, the conflict was merely an internal ideological dispute among the clan, which she had completely resolved without letting it disrupt Konoha's stability.

Her statement served a dual purpose: it assured Hiruzen that the Uchiha would not compromise the village's order, while simultaneously signaling that this was an internal Uchiha affair, warning the Hokage not to pry further.

Yet the sight of Uchiha Naori and Uchiha Retsuto, the combatants, each left with only a single remaining eye brought to mind the forbidden technique Uchiha Kagami had once spoken of.

Izanagi.

Hiruzen found himself increasingly convinced that his teacher, the Second Hokage Senju Tobirama, had been right all along.

The Uchiha clan was fundamentally too unstable.

Yet because it was strictly an internal Uchiha matter, and Naori had drawn the line so firmly, they had no grounds to intervene. 

Hiruzen sat in silence for a long time before letting out a weary sigh.

"Let it be."

He leaned back against his chair, his voice tinged with helplessness.

"Since Naori has stated her position, we have no choice but to trust her for now."

"If only Kagami were still here..." 

Beside him, when Danzō heard the phrase "trust Uchiha Naori," he had almost instinctively blurted out: "Hiruzen, you'll live to regret this!"

Yet hearing the name Uchiha Kagami stopped the words dead in his throat.

He lowered his gaze, his left hand tightening over his right arm, the one that would ache with a dull throb the moment he applied even a fraction of force.

A moment later, Danzō spoke in a muffled, heavy tone:

"Since you've already decided, so be it."