Okay, for this chapter, I've made some minor adjustments to my writing style.

Before, I used to capitalize kunai, senbon, and stuff like that. But that is actually grammatically incorrect, so I figured I'd try writing it the correct way. However, The Game will still stay capitalized, since it isn't a generalization, it's a specification. Sora is specifically referring to The Game, not to a game, which would be lowercase...I think...I got a D for English and had to retake it, sue me for not being sure.

Also, chapters might slow down for reasons I don't want to really get into, so they might drop to every other week or slower, it just depends on how I feel really. To anyone on my pat reon, I don't mind if you cut back or drop support since I won't really be uploading much. I also have no idea when things will be back to normal so =/

Enjoy the chapter none-the-less!

Chapter 5

"Explain."

Wincing, Sora kept her head angled down. "They attacked me, so I handled them?" Of course, she could still see clearly the expression on her father's face, as well as the fact his eyes kept drifting from the torn-up shirt she'd been wearing to the scars that matched those holes. She'd made the decision to keep them for just this sort of occasion, as Iryojutsu couldn't actually remove them, so having them vanish would definitely put some dangerous holes in her story.

Of course, the fact that they were healed as though she'd been injured a year ago would still be suspicious, but not unbelievable. Her father groaned and pinched his nose. "So, let me get this straight. You went down to the docks, realized you were being followed, assumed they were there to attack you for some reason, and pre-emptively crippled one of them, then fought the other two and gave them both injuries that required focused medical attention and will leave one of them unable to use his left arm for months, whilst the other is now in a medically-induced coma."

"I didn't hit them that hard, I just...cut them up a bit." Her father stared at her for a moment before closing his eyes and exhaling slowly. "Besides, what was I meant to do, let them win? One of them had a poisoned senbon and since they are all clan kids, I didn't want to guess as to just how lethal it could have been." Her father opened one eye to look at her, then closed it and shook his head. Sora felt her lips curl slightly as she could see that he was actively forcing himself not to show any amusement.

"Sora, sweetheart, I don't doubt that those boys probably wanted to take you down a peg or two. But while yes, you can heal yourself, and maybe one day you'll grow up to be the second coming of Tsunade, you are not invulnerable. You need to learn the value of fleeing before an advantageous opponent. What if one day you manage to annoy someone who can simply ignore your strengths and go straight for your weaknesses, your low reserves and your reliance on your eye, hm? What would you do then?"

Sora shrugged. "I don't know, probably find a way to beat them. I could take you down if I thought about it enough, I just don't like thinking stuff through so much. It's way better to come up with stuff on the fly, then nobody knows what's going to happen next." That made her father snort, and she let a smile pull on her lips when he tapped on her head and rustled her hair.

"You have no idea how much you sound like your mother when you say stuff like that, always wanting to leap into combat headfirst and just go with the flow of the fight." He tapped her head again then withdrew. "The clans probably won't get involved in this." Sora blinked at him, genuinely surprised. She expected they'd at least want to get back at her in some way. "Look at it this way. Their kids just got beaten three-on-one by you. If they step in and do something, it projects weakness. Of course, making you disappear would work, but they probably won't even bother. Not only would it also likely mean having to take me out and thus annoying the Mizukage and the hospital, but you aren't so much of a pushover that any old genin could take you down." Smiling, Sora reached out and patted her father on his shoulder.

"Thanks, Dad."

Surprisingly, her father was right.

The clans did make a show of denouncing her actions as violent, but for the most part, what she did was small fry. None of the kids were clan heirs or even close in the line of succession. Two were branch members and while one was main house, it was the second nephew of the current heir, far enough that unless almost the entire clan got wiped out, her attacking him would never get much attention.

Didn't mean she avoided any punishment though. She had extra Taijutsu practice, basically an excuse for the teacher to beat the absolute shit out of her, made worse by the fact he knew she could heal herself and so had to heal any mobility-hindering injuries and go again, which meant she got tired and irritated from the constant draining of her chakra and the pain of being smacked by a wooden staff over and over again.

Then she had to go straight from the academy to the hospital to do assistant work, healing minor injuries. Cuts, bruises, sprains, stuff like that. She wasn't even allowed to do any of the more 'fun' stuff like fractures, crushed tissue, nothing interesting. Most of the patients she had to heal were genin brats who were particularly arrogant, thinking themselves better than her since she was a lowly medical assistant. She was also barred from going to the docks. All her practice had to happen at the hospital or at home. It was basically the equivalent of being grounded which kinda sucked, but since she was still getting to use her Iryojutsu it didn't matter that much.

On the plus side, none of the kids at the academy wanted to come anywhere near her. Word had gotten around about how hard she had beaten down three clan kids, and rumors warped until the story went that it was the Mizukage who ended up stopping her before she decapitated one of the kids, and she had to be kept in the Mizukage's tower until she could come out of her blood-frenzy.

The teachers all seemed to know the truth, or at least they just didn't believe any of the rumors and just didn't care. After a week or so, the rumors were already dead and things were going back to normal. The clan kids bloc hated her guts still, the bloodline kids were a bit more acceptable for taking some of the clan kids down a peg or two, probably assisted because of her Byakugan, and the civilian kids were just as annoying as ever.

During that period, she managed to go over pretty much her entire new life-defining system and figure out how all of it worked. There were plenty of niche options and settings to mess with, as well as a pretty major jumble of seemingly random features. There were things like achievements, perks, a map, a music player, a crafting system and other random assorted stuff to mess with.

The perks page just listed her starting choices, so presumably she had to unlock those through special actions, and the achievements page listed a bunch of random objectives like travel a certain distance, kill/knock out a certain number of targets, take a certain number of targets prisoner, heal a certain amount of health, that kind of thing.

Having an in-built map was honestly super useful. It marked Kirigakure and had a full world map with grey icons denoting all the locations she knew about, but that she hadn't actually been to before, like the other villages, smaller towns in Kiri itself, and then sublocations inside Kirigakure, like the docks, the academy, Mizukage's tower, hospital and her house. The ones she had visited before were a whiter colour, probably for being discovered or something. The music player had a bunch of songs, and there were a scant few she recognized, so presumably it was just a dump of all the music that was from her old world. Nice to have, but not something amazing.

The crafting system on the other hand was very interesting. She could make weapons, armour, consumables, the works. Practically everything was unavailable, and she had to get a crafting proficiency to actually do anything aside from the very basics, but there were still some available that she supposed were to get her started. For example, her rusty naginata could be crafted with a whetstone to make a worn naginata, which had more damage. Or her kunai could be worked with the same item to make sharpened kunai, again with an increased damage as a result.

A whetting stone could be crafted with ten rocks, and a quick test saw that it did literally mean any kind of rock. Amusingly enough, she was even able to split a larger rock in half with a kunai and input the two halves as individual rocks, so The Game did identify differences like that, it didn't just classify the rock as one rock. That had led her to test a bit further and find that she could actually make the rocks fairly small, only about the size of the tip of her pinky finger, and it would still register them.

Any smaller than that and they weren't rocks any more, they became pebbles. She hadn't actually seen a use for pebbles, but the fact they had a damage value, admittedly of only one point, reflecting their trash-level rarity, led her to presume that they were meant to be used with a slingshot or something. Or maybe they were just meant as an item to teach her that she wasn't supposed to push the boundaries quite so far.

Nonetheless, she crafted a pair of whetting stones and refined one kunai and her naginata. The kunai jumped up from 10 damage to 15, and the naginata rose from 15 damage to 25, very substantial increases for basically just gathering a bunch of rocks and mashing them together in her inventory. The action also unlocked her crafting proficiency, which was at level 1 and had 25% progress to the next level. The level 1 proficiency didn't unlock anything, but grinding it would definitely be worth it, as there were some items in the crafting menu that she most definitely wanted to get her hands on, no matter how damn hard getting the components for them would be.

Her inventory also had a subtab for her equipment, a discovery that was honestly really useful. By using her inventory, she could change clothes in the blink of an eye. For a shinobi, that would be utterly invaluable, it'd help her lose a tail super easily, as she could entirely change her outfit, and as it wouldn't be a Henge but a literal clothing swap, there would be no indication of what happened. It made getting dressed in the morning super easy as well, she literally just dragged the icons of her clothing onto herself, and she would find herself clothed in an instant.

In terms of her proficiencies, Sora was making...admittedly pretty slow progress. Her Bukijutsu and Sōjutsu were coming along nicely thanks to the extra lessons, and so was her Mystical Palm proficiency, but her Taijutsu and Shurikenjutsu weren't getting as much attention for the simple fact that classes weren't currently working on them much aside from a baseline small amount every day. They were still progressing, but they were already now both behind her other proficiencies by a few levels and were dropping back further and further with each passing day.

Shurikenjutsu falling back was fine with her, she wasn't really able to just throw her weapons around anyway, not when she had so few of them. But her Taijutsu was necessary, since she had so few weapons that ending up unarmed was almost a certainty. Sure, she knew the basics and with her Byakugan was fairly able to punish anyone roughly on her level who made a mistake, but for the stronger clan kids or pretty much anyone above her, chances were she'd lose a fight unless she pulled a trick them like in her previous fight.

Her father...probably had the right idea being fair.

"Next, Metami and Ashikaga!"

Hopping up, Sora stretched her arms out and headed to the ring, using her Byakugan to study her opponent. One of the clan kids, looked pretty enthusiastic for the coming fight, so he probably had some plan for fighting her. He had the typical loadout of kunai but no senbon, and from what she recalled of watching him fight, he favoured Shurikenjutsu over Taijutsu or Bukijutsu, so she could expect him to deal in ranged attacks more often than not.

Each of the kunai he had equipped were attached to thin strands of what she recognized as ninja wire, so she'd have to watch out or those razor-sharp threads would slice her open. He'd almost removed the arm of one opponent using those wires, a fight that Sora from before had never forgotten. If he managed to get one looped around a limb and pull it taut, it'd bite deeply. Simple yet deadly.

Her own plan was pretty much to get in close, drop that range gap and not give him an opportunity to set up any wire tricks. Even innocuous actions could have devastating consequences. A tug here, a flick there, and he could use those wires to make the entire ring dangerous to cross. So if she was already on top of him ramming a kunai up under his ribs or through his shoulder, he wouldn't get the opportunity to be tricky. Of course, the approach would be dangerous anyway, but it'd be better to risk an early rush than to end up forced into an inevitable defeat later on.

Nodding subtly to herself, she cemented her plan in her mind, watching as he came up to the ring, fiddling with his wires. They went up his sleeves and into small reels that kept them neat, with small rings along his sleeves keeping the wires from slicing into his arms. Each kunai had its own line of wire, so as he had a half-dozen kunai, he had half a dozen wires he could use. If he threw them out in a spread and then whipped them inwardly, the wires would be pulled across and slice anything on the ground into pieces.

Idly she pondered whether she could maybe incorporate ninja wire into her own repertoire. It was expensive as hell, but it was hard to break without a firm grip and sharp as a fine blade. Plus, tying some to her kunai would mean that she could retrieve them after throwing them. She wouldn't be able to get a set-up like the Ashikaga kid she was about to fight, but just having lengths of wire she could attach to something like metal rings would be good.

As the other kid sized her up, Sora pushed her thoughts out of her mind and prepared to dart forwards. "Ready?" The teacher looked between them, then took a step back. "Begin!" Immediately she drew a pair of kunai and bolted forwards, seeing quite clearly as her opponent drew out two kunai from his sleeves and flung them at her. She avoided then by dodging to the side, then watched as he manoeuvred his fingers and then flicked his hand to the side, sending a wave along the wire that kicked the kunai to the side, sending the two lines of wire towards her.

It was a pretty impressive manoeuvre, forcing her to dip herself low under the wires so they wouldn't cut her. As she did so, she also kept her attention on him as he withdrew another pair of kunai. As he tossed them, she blinked and then grinned, charging forwards between the two weapons. He'd thrown them to either side of her, possibly planning to pincer her between them and trap her.

Unfortunately for him, she wasn't exactly a slowpoke, and as he started to adjust his wires, she closed the distance then lunged towards him, forcing him onto the backfoot. In the moment he was unable to properly react, she then threw one kunai at him, forcing him into an unbalanced dodge. From there, she then pressed her advantage, ignoring the wires that sliced her arms as she charged forwards and slammed the ring of her remaining kunai into his forehead.

She then dipped down under the wires and around him while he was dazed, slamming her elbow into his spine, then kicking his legs out from under him before dropping to a knee and placing the blade of her kunai against his neck. "Match over!" The teacher called as her blade touched his skin, and she removed it just as quickly, looking at the small slices that had been opened on her arms and frowning. The wire had only caused minor lacerations, but it was scary just how sharp ninja wire really was. Those wires were literally just running from his sleeve to the kunai behind her, but because she had to brush against them, she had to accept those cuts.

Very quickly she checked her health and made sure she wasn't poisoned or anything, but it seemed the Ashikaga kid wasn't stupid enough to poison a weapon during a student vs student match. Turning her focus to the downed boy, she snorted as she realized that the combination of hits had actually knocked the kid out, then glanced at her experience and smirked as she saw that it had increased from where it was before. She didn't have a quest for beating him or anything, so the only thing she could assume was that because she had knocked him out, she got experience for that action.

That was...convenient.

After a few more matches against other students, Sora had confirmed the fact that her game gave experience for knock-outs.

Of course, few matches ended up with a knock-out, and that still meant she was only gaining experience very slowly, but at least it was something. Though, what really confused her was that she did have a perk that seemed unrelated to combat. Or rather, a title. She had the title of Academy Student, and yet she didn't gain experience in the classroom for studying or anything of the sort. Maybe it worked by way of just boosting the experience she gained from fighting in the ring against other students, but that still seemed...off.

Still, she only had maybe three months left before she was due to graduate, and that meant she'd be made a genin and tossed out into the wider world. It was there that she realized there was actually a discrepancy in the introductory wall of text she was met with when choosing a starting location. She decidedly did not pick Konohagakure because being shoved into a 3-person team sounded like utter bullshit.

And yet, every ninja village had their genin put into teams of three. She knew this because the Chunin Exams featured teams from all kinds of villages, both major and minor, and they all had three people. Maybe the depression thing she remembered was involved, and that if her team died but she wasn't a Konohagakure kunoichi she wasn't at risk of depression, whereas if she was from Konohagakure, even if she didn't give a shit, The Game would force a depression debuff on her.

It still smelled just as fishy as The Game suddenly handing out experience for knock-outs, but in the end, it really didn't matter to her. As long as The Game kept feeding her experience and opportunities to advance, she would accept them all greedily. Though, it still left the issue of a team. If she got put in with the clan kids, they'd hate her. If she got put in with...well, any of the students in class, it'd go poorly and someone was liable to end up dead pretty quickly.

But, was there really a way to avoid it? There was the chance of an apprenticeship, but she'd have to pick a teacher exceptionally well, since if they decided she was dead weight they'd probably leave her behind on a mission which would get her killed or, potentially worse, captured. Maybe she could lean on the interest that the Hunter-nin corps now had with her to get inducted and training there against vastly superior shinobi. That would definitely power-level her proficiencies and hopefully give her enough of a pure skill boost to be able to fight against enemy shinobi without immediately being stabbed a dozen times.

Above all else, she lacked real-world experience fighting against shinobi that were looking to kill her. Sure, she'd had people try to kill her before, but being shot at and having knives swung or thrown at you were two vastly different experiences. So sure, she had an advantage in that she wasn't likely to freeze up during her first real combat, but that was nullified by the fact that if she encountered an enemy, she'd get her ass kicked just because she wasn't as experienced as they were.

She got her ass beat quite frequently by her Bukijutsu teacher, so that was an acceptable benchmark for how fucked she'd be if she actually got into a serious fight where she wasn't able to stack the deck in her favour. If she managed to at least hold her own against someone with presumably decades using weaponry, she could safely say she could handle enemy genin and maybe even chunin.

Thus her plan to get involved with Hunter-nin early on started to shape up. Firstly, she had to make absolutely sure that training her to be a good Hunter-nin became an enticing prospect. Between her weak chakra reserves and her inexperience, she needed an advantage over other candidates. And, as it just so happened, she had one. The Game definitely had to potential to support her, since it would give her progress in leaps and bounds.

But the problem was that she had to fuel it with experience, and she had no good sources for the experience points required. Quests were seemingly pretty rare, since after the ones she'd received already, she hadn't yet gotten another, not even for her ring fights. Knock-outs were also definitely not assured, and actual kills were...well, actually, there was a few possibilities.

Sora hadn't yet tested whether animals would give her experience. If they did, then it would depend on animal sizes required. Could she kill rats and birds for experience? Dogs and cats? Fish perhaps? If she could, she could set up a farm and grind experience through breeding those animals and then killing a small excess, giving her an exponential source. The only issue would be in getting the food to feed them all, but if she picked something like rabbits, she could simply feed them with grass.

If animals didn't count, and it had to be humans, then, while a bit distasteful, she could hunt down homeless civilians and use them as a farm, as well as a source of Iryojutsu experience. She could repeatedly knock them out, and use her Mystical Palm technique to heal any brain damage sustained. Using them, she could even figure out the exact limits of sources of experience from a person. Would inflicting a permanent injury like cutting off a finger do anything? What about an eye, a nose or ear? Maybe an entire arm would do something, there were possibilities she needed to explore, and since she wasn't going to be free to find an enemy shinobi to test the extent of her game for a good few months, she had to make do with what was available.

Worrying her lip slightly, Sora made mental notes of what she planned to do, however distasteful as it was. Sure, she wouldn't be happy about doing it, since while she did sometimes enjoy watching someone suffer before their death, causing them needless pain wasn't her goal, it was simply a fucked up part of her brain releasing dopamine from the experience. But she would do what she needed to do in order to have an actual chance at survival.

She got the feeling that, when it came down to it, simply going along with the world wasn't going to work out for her.

Name: Sora Metami

Level: 4

Age: 12

Experience: 352/4000

To Next Level: 3648

Title: Academy Student - 50% Experience Gain within Classroom

Health Points: 210 (100 Base HP + (Vitality x Strength)

Regeneration Rate: 7/minute (Health ÷ 30) (Severe or noticed injuries can be chosen to retain scars)

Chakra Points: 220 (100 Base CP + (Wisdom x Intelligence)

Regeneration Rate: 7.3*/minute (Chakra ÷ 30)

Strength: 11 (Each point increases melee damage by 1%, adds 1 slot to inventory)

Vitality: 10 (Each point raises poison resistance by 0.1%, reduces need for sleep by 0.1%)

Agility: 12 (Each point increases top speed by 0.1m/s, increases weapon proficiency gain by 1%)

Wisdom: 10 (Each point decreases chakra cost for techniques by 0.1%)

Intelligence: 12 (Each point increases experience gain by 1%)

Luck: 10 (Each point increases the chance of something lucky happening by 0.01%, decreases the chance of something unlucky happening by 0.01%)

Available Trait Points: 15