eyyy I'm back. Haha. Thanks for all the favs/follows and reviews. I really appreciate it. I didn't update for a looong looong time so I apologize for that. Now I have a general direction of where I want this fic to go, so hopefully it won't happen again! (I got really excited and starting typing this up haha)

Naruto: The Gamer

Chapter Two: Knowledge is Power

"Seriously, what is with my jacket?" Naruto bit out in irritation when his attractiveness decreased by ten yet again after wearing it. Taking it off and setting it on the floor, he pointed at it and said, "Observe!"

Dirty Orange Jacket

Value: E

A dirty orange jacket that is very displeasing to the eye.

-10 Attractiveness when worn.

"Hey!" Naruto shouted, affronted. "I have a good fashion sense! It's not ugly, you stupid game!"

He sat down on the floor of his apartment, his expression suddenly thoughtful. "Come to think of it, what does attractiveness do anyway?" Opening his profile window, he scanned his stats once more. His eye stopped on a particular line of text, narrowing them as he clicked on the subject of interest.

Sub-mana

The user's other facet of mana.

His other facet of chakra. Naruto put a hand to his stomach as realization struck him. Kyuubi's chakra. His eyebrows raised at the new information and was unable to hold back a grin of excitement. This meant that he could potentially use the beast's chakra. He wondered if his sub-mana's stats showed as an unknown number because the information was simply inaccessible or if the number was so large that even the game system couldn't put a number to it. Then remembering his original purpose of opening his profile, he clicked attract.

Attractiveness

How attractive the user is. Similar to charisma, this improves the attitude of how other players treat the user.

Naruto scowled, immediately thinking of the villagers' treatment towards him. Fat lotta good attractiveness and charisma do when everyone hates you for keeping the freaking Kyuubi in your gut. He let out a deep breath and shook his head. There was no point in thinking about stuff like that. He needed to leave early; he had a team meeting to attend to, but also wanted to eat ramen for breakfast.

~ Gamer ~

"Hey, Sakura-chan!" Naruto approached the bridge with a grin, feeling sated with his filled stomach. "And Sasuke," he added in afterthought. Both Sasuke and Sakura were glaring at him with different degrees of intensity. Sasuke turned away with a sniff while Sakura came stomping towards him with her fists swinging by her sides.

"Naruto, you stupid, why do you smell like ramen?!"

He tilted his head in confusion at her question. "Because I just ate ramen?"

At this, Sasuke turned back towards him and Sakura let out an unladylike growl. "Stupid idiotic, you! Kakashi-sensei told us not to eat!"

Naruto couldn't recall him saying that. In fact, he could barely remember anything that Kakashi had said to them yesterday. His new gamer ability had been plaguing his mind ever since it had appeared. He flashed Sakura a sheepish smile. "He did? I must not have heard him then."

Behind her, Sasuke scoffed and said with a smirk, "Are you sure your mutt of a brain just couldn't comprehend it?"

Naruto could feel the usual irrational anger rise in him, attempting to push it down this time. Unfortunately his temper wasn't good enough not to scowl and add, "Whatever you'd like to think, Uchiha."

Sasuke and Sakura both looked at him in surprise before exchanging a look at each other. The loud tirade of protests from the boy they had expected never came. After that, they left Naruto to his own thoughts while Sakura attempted to sidle up to her crush again.

Naruto sat on the edge of the bridge, facing away from his teammates. He wasn't going to waste time waiting for their teacher who Naruto suspected would be just as late as he was yesterday.

He was beginning to realize the infinite potential the gamer ability was providing him. It gave him knowledge, which gave him power. Understanding the strange ability could give him a considerate amount of strength. For the first time, Naruto understood what "knowledge is power" meant. He created five other shadow clones and had them sit with him, ignoring his teammates' demands for explanation.

You have entered your meditative state.

~ Gamer ~

Figuring it was time to meet up with Team Seven, Kakashi bid goodbye to his teammates on the black slab of stone and disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

He silently reappeared near the bridge, perched upon a tree branch. His only visible eyebrow rose above forehead guard at the sight of his students on the bridge.

It would be more accurate to say at the sight of a particular student of his, rather than them as a whole. There were six orange figures sitting on the side of the bridge with their legs crossed, somehow looking comfortable on the thin wooden beam, all six of them perfectly still.

Meditating.

From what he had seen and the files he had read, this was not something the kid who constantly reminded the villagers of his more than ambitious goal on the top of his lungs would do. In fact, during his ANBU days of watching the blonde, he had never seen him so still in his sleep.

It was also apparent that the kyuubi vessel had extraordinarily large reserves for someone his age—or anyone's age, really. Not that it was surprising to see.

Narrowing his eyes in thought, he wondered what kind of clones his student had made. He lifted his headband, focusing a tiny amount of chakra into his eye. All six figures had tenketsu points, so they were shadow clones...

The mismatched eyes widened when he finally understood the implications of Naruto's usage of shadow clones.

Perhaps his teacher's son was closer to the kage position than he had originally thought it was.

Kakashi stood, watching the orange clad boy grow smaller as he ran off into the crowded streets of Konoha. The boy had been unusually quiet since the day Kakashi had introduced himself to his students. He knew from past observations that this was most uncharacteristic of his new student.

When he approached his students at the bridge that morning, Naruto had not stopped meditating until Sakura screeched in his ear. Even Kakashi winced from where he had been standing. Naruto and his clones had fallen off the bridge in surprise, but irritation was the last thing that had shown on his face when he emerged from the lake.

The boy looked like he had the world's greatest epiphany.

Kakashi's suspicion was confirmed when Naruto approached him after the bell test and asked him if there was any way he could access jutsu scrolls somewhere without anyone noticing they were gone.

He suggested the library but warned him not to steal anything there. Naruto nodded with a goofy grin on his face-he probably hadn't even heard his warning. When he excused his students, Naruto was gone, running back into the village, leaving only dust in his wake.

Just what happened to his new student recently?

~ Gamer ~

Naruto ran home as fast as he could, paying no mind to the villagers who threw him disgusted looks as he passed them. The genin test was a surprise but he was glad his teammates were able to put their differences behind them at least momentarily. Sakura had been tied to the log post and Naruto did not hesitated to feed her, but she had refused to accept his food, claiming she would only accept Sasuke's. The whole test seemed far away, even while he was in it. The idea he had thought up during his meditation on the bridge was on the forefront of his mind the whole time. He was angry at himself for not thinking of it sooner, but his excitement for the possibilities his idea presented far exceeded his anger.

Naruto made it to his apartment in record speed, took a quick shower and set ten clones meditating on the floor. He exited his apartment and created another ten clones and told them to walk around the village to use [Observe] on people, preferably ninja (they were always much higher level than civilians). Then he set off to his destination, feeling great satisfaction at the true meaning of efficiency.

He stood before a faded green building he had seen countless times but never entered. A large sign in the front in bold read "Konoha Public Library".

Naruto entered the building, eyes wide as he took in the amount of books and scrolls that filled the shelves. If knowledge was power, then the library contained the most power in the village.

He walked up to the front desk where an elderly lady ([Librarian] Keiko Hikida, level 5) sat reading a book and said politely as he could, "Excuse me, but could you point to me where I can read about jutsu here?"

She gave him a speculative look, eyeing his orange jumpsuit in distaste. "Are you even a ninja, kid?"

Trying not to feel offended, he tapped his forehead protector in exasperation. "Yes, I am."

She grudgingly pointed to a door at the far end of the room and told him he was required to show his ninja ID in order to enter the ninja section.

The ninja section was completely empty and dust covered every shelf and table. It was apparent that everyone preferred to physically train than to read. He shook his head at the arrogance of his fellow ninjas. They were denying power that they could easily obtain if they spent a fraction of their training time reading up on information the library provided. Not that Naruto himself was any better. He didn't come to the library to read, no...

Naruto grinned, looking for a title that the library had multiple copies of that he wanted to use. If the scroll was too advanced, he would probably be too low levelled to consume it, so he had to find one that had basic skills.

Soon, he found one called Guide to Rudimentary Earth Jutsu. He grabbed one of the copies off the shelf and put it into his inventory. He tapped the icon of the earth scroll, and then "use."

Are you sure? The item will be consumed.

[Yes] [No]

He hesitated for a moment before clicking yes. If he was prepared to consume the Forbidden Scroll, there's no way he couldn't take a basic earth scroll that no one would miss. Naruto was already heavily regretting letting the scroll go that night.

[Basic Earth Scroll] consumed.

Ding!

Sub-skill unlocked!

{Earth Release: Mud Wall}

Ding!

New info unlocked! See Consumption under Information.

Naruto frowned when no more notifications popped up. He only learned one jutsu from the scroll. There was no way the earth scroll that size only had one jutsu in there. He grabbed another copy of the same earth scroll, quickly scanning its contents. His frown grew even more severe when he confirmed it. He only skimmed the scroll and had spotted at least three different jutsu explained.

He waved his hand to bring his drop down menu out, clicking the information button. Perhaps the new information he had unlocked would explain it. He clicked the "Consumption" button, which had a flashy red "new" next to it.

Only skill tomes can be consumed. Informational tomes must be personally read by the user. The user will only gain one random skill from the skill tome. Consuming tomes will result in the tome to disappear.

He cursed. "Stupid game, couldn't tell me this earlier could you?!"

Still, he was glad he didn't consume the Forbidden Scroll. All but one jutsu would have been lost otherwise.

Naruto sighed and shook his head. This game really liked making things difficult for him. He wasn't going to be able to take advantage of the book consumption after all. Nonetheless, he spent another half hour grabbing a stack of books and a bundle of scrolls from the library. If there was one thing he learned from coming here, it was that he wasn't going to be the next ninja to forfeit the wealth of information the books and scrolls provided.

He dropped his stuff in his apartment and headed to training area seven to test out his new earth jutsu. Naruto sat at the foot of a tree and navigated to the earth jutsu from the game menu.

{Earth Release: Mud Wall} [Auto-learn] lvl 1

Sub-skill under [Ninjutsu] skill.

Rank: B/E

Brings up a hard mud wall. The rank varies depending on whether the user produces his or her own mud or uses already existing earth.

Then in red text under the description, it said:

-20% effectiveness due to user's elemental incompatibility.

"Elemental incompatibility? Auto-learn?" He asked in dismay. There was a never ending list of complications. Naruto would have to look into elemental compatibility later. "For now, I'll just try it out," he muttered to himself.

He stood and said, "Earth release: mud wall!" As he spoke, he felt his body move on its own, his fingers moving to form a series of hand seals. A wall of rock rose from the earth, around the same height as himself. He stared at it in silence.

He tried it again, once again feeling the strange detached sensation as his own body formed the seals on its own. "Oh my god. The game took over my body. The game just took over my body."

This was more than creepy. This was absolutely disturbing. Just what was this game system? Where did it get its information from? If it was an ability that came from himself, shouldn't the game have the exact same amount of knowledge as he did?

"Well, at least I know what it means by 'auto-learn' now."

Ding!

New info unlocked! See Auto-learn under Information.

When a skill is not learned manually but from a skill book, the skill begins with an auto-learn status. Using auto mode uses more mana. Once the user has familiarized with the skill, it will be upgraded to a beginner status.

So this meant if he practiced enough, he'd be able to use the jutsu without the game system's help. He nodded to himself, and created twenty new clones. He would get rid of the handicap as soon as possible. Soon, there were twenty-one voices—who all sounded the same—shouting out the technique in the training area.

~ Gamer ~

Weeks passed quickly as Naruto submerged himself in scrolls and training. Instead of attending the team meetings himself, he sent a clone to go in his stead. A few times the clone had popped during their mission, but Naruto had simply created another and sent it to where the previous clone had dispelled. He was sure Kakashi had long noticed his usage of shadow clones to attend the meetings, yet the older man had not spoken to him about it. He wasn't sure what that meant, but since Kakashi hadn't told him to stop, Naruto went on doing it. He received their memories in the end and clones had the exact same personality as him, so it was equivalent to him being there himself anyway. Plus, the D-rank missions Team Seven did were closer to community service than anything else. Each mission's payment was lower than minimum wage. The only good thing that came out of it was that missions were equivalents of game quests, so when he completed a mission, he completed a quest, which gave him some free EXP. Either way, it wasn't worth his time to personally be there.

Naruto had decided the tome consumption just wasn't worth it and chose to manually learn everything. While he learned the technique much faster (the auto-learn status shed after his twenty clones had all only used the technique once), he would lose all the other jutsu in the books. He also simply hated the lack of control over his body while the game performed the technique for him. Even now, the concept baffled him.

After receiving the message of "elemental incompatibility", he dived into his scrolls and books for more information when the game did not seem inclined to divulge him more information itself. Very quickly he learned the existence of elemental chakra and had asked Kakashi for some elemental paper. Kakashi did not seem surprised and only gave him a analyzing look before he agreed. This resulted in a whole lesson with Team Seven about elemental chakra and techniques. Better for him, anyway, since he didn't need to filter important stuff from the dense lines of text. He read for necessity, not enjoyment.

The elemental paper signified he was purely wind affinity. (Sakura was earth, and much to Naruto's ire, Sasuke was lightening and fire.) He was slightly disappointed at this; he wanted at least a second element. The difference between his earth and wind techniques was huge. He had grabbed the scarce number of wind scrolls from the library (apparently Konoha didn't have many wind users) and one of the techniques he had learned was wind release: great breakthrough, which released a gust of wind forward. Inputting the same amount of chakra as he did with the mud wall had resulted in the tree that he had stood in front of almost knocked off its roots. It also sounded way cooler than "mud wall."

Learning element based jutsu was one thing, but pure elemental chakra manipulation was another. It was a bitch. He had read up on a basic wind chakra exercise and spent, with fifty other clones, a good number of hours and only managed a slit of about two centimeters down his leaf. If it really came down to it, he would consume a scroll from the library on elemental chakra manipulation. No one had noticed the absence of the earth scroll he consumed a few weeks back. In fact, he doubted any ninja other than himself had been visiting the library anyway.

On the flip side, [Observe] and [Meditation] had been going well. His mana control stat was much higher, and miraculously, the D-rank missions had somehow upped his other stats a bit—a miniscule amount, but it was something.

It was evening now, and Naruto decided to try adding something other than ramen to his diet. Basics of Becoming a Ninja had said having balanced meals was one of the basics of basic skills of shinobi. (It had also said something outrageous about wearing black or dark colors. Ridiculous.) So he henged himself to a civilian and bought some groceries.

Naruto constantly referenced the cookbook he borrowed from the library, attempting to cook beef stew. He finally managed to get the ingredients all in the pot and only had to wait for twenty minutes.

When it was done, he poured a bowl of it for himself. The stew was pure black with purple fumes emanating from the bowl. He looked at his bowl of stew, then back to the picture from the cookbook contemplatively, muttering to himself, "Mine's a bit darker than the one in the picture…" He nodded assuredly and continued, "but I'm sure it's only because they used flash to take the picture."

Ding!

New skill unlocked!

Naruto's heart sped up in excitement; he hadn't learned a new skill since his first day with the gamer ability. The box faded, and a new one appeared:

[Poison Cooking]

He furrowed his brows in puzzlement. "Poison cooking?" He clicked on it, opening another box of text.

[Poison Cooking] lvl 9

Cooks poison. Food cooked with this skill cause extreme nausea, and possibly death.

And then in red, it wrote:

Due to the lethality of the nasty dish that unlocked this skill, it began above level 1.

Naruto sputtered at the text, completely offended at the blasé insults the game system threw at him. "I-I can cook! Why would a dumb game know better than the person who cooked himself!" To prove his point, he grabbed his spoon and swallowed a spoonful of his stew without hesitation. He felt his throat burn as it slid down and suppressed the urge to choke. His tongue felt as though a blacksmith decided use it as an anvil. The furious burn pooled in his stomach, spreading as quick as fire. "I-it tastes as good as T-teuchi old man's ramen…"

His eyes widened when he saw an HP bar appear, the full green bar quickly reducing to lower than half, and still going lower. "N-no!" He shouted when the bar was red now. His tongue felt numb and swollen. A bit of stew dribbled down his chin, but when he wiped it away with a trembling hand, he realized it was blood. "I dun wanna die…"

It was 5/920 now.

Ding!

A red text box appeared.

Warning!

You are dying.

"Thanks for the news update."

Four HP.

"No! Stoooop!"

Three HP.

"OK, OK, I admit it, I can't cook! I'll die if I eat my cooking!"

He cursed his unlucky and miserable life, swearing someone was out there laughing at him at this moment.

The last thing he saw was a blue text box that appeared in his vision, but he was far too gone to catch a glimpse of what it said…

OMAKE 1: Naruto Did Math

He wondered if his sub-mana's stats showed as an unknown number because the information was simply inaccessible or if the number was so large that even the game system couldn't put a number to it. Then remembering his original purpose of opening his profile, he clicked attract.

Attractiveness

How attractive the user is. Similar to charisma, this improves the attitude of how other players treat the user.

His eyes widened marginally as he took in this new piece of information. He leapt to his feet and scrambled for paper and a pencil. Almost vibrating in excitement, he forced himself to sit at the table as he quickly scribbled his new idea down:

higher charisma/attractiveness = people treat me better

becoming hokage = people treat me better

Naruto grinned almost savagely as he shouted, "THEREFORE BY THE ASSOCIATIVE PROPERTY…!" And quickly wrote:

higher char/attrt = BECOMING HOKAGE!

He underlined the last line three times and circled it with shaky hands. "Oh my god, I just found the secret to becoming Hokage. I'm such a genius!"

A/N:

Sorry the poison cooking thing was not part of the plan at all. it will contribute though XD

IMPORTANTO NOTE: I'm adding a prologue before chapter one. It doesn't add anything to the current plotline of it, but eventually far far later maybe you guys will see a connection, hint hint. :D

Hope you enjoyed the chapter! You'll be seeing me soon enough. \ (=u=) /