Just as a warning, while I've calculated a few things, as I mentioned in chapter 14's top author's note I forgot to think about the intelligence buff.

Also, I now have a FictionPress account and am working on the first chapter of a new story, so if you think you'd be interested in seeing me make my own thing, you can hop on over there and follow me, it should hopefully have the first chapter finished within a week. It's the same name and profile picture as on here, so finding me shouldn't be too hard ^.^

Chapter 17


After the slightly extreme first bout they had, the following fights were much more tame and level.

Sora didn't go super-easy on the girl, but she also wasn't just playing around with no intention to win. As such, a few times the battles ended in draws, a few ended in losses, and the majority inevitably ended in victories for Sora. It wasn't that she desperately needed to win, it was the simple fact that Anko simply didn't have enough combat experience. Sora didn't either being frank, but her sparring opponent had been her mother, who never held back enough to let Sora taste victory even a single time, which when paired with her intelligence and her title buff led to her exceptional growth.

Piled on top of that was the Game making sure her stats were simply above Anko's by a significant margin, a gap that just couldn't be crossed by the girl, even with her quite frankly bizarre method of fighting using literal snakes as techniques, something that was very interesting to see. So when they made to leave, to pay her back, Sora offered to take Anko out for something to eat, only to be turned down as she told Sora that she was going to head back home soon, but that she hoped to see Sora again, and that next time, she would definitely win more fights than her.

Amusingly enough, that proclamation triggered a quest for Sora.


Quest Received!

Undefeated Streak

Objective: Win every single spar against Mitarashi Anko

Reward: 2,500 experience per victory, increase of 500 experience with each consecutive win

Bonus Objective: Win 100 consecutive sparring matches

Bonus Reward: 2x multiplier to all experience gained during previous 100 matches


Sora came to a stop mid-step, reading and rereading the quest several times as Anko disappeared around a corner.

That...wasn't fair. That was way too much for her to pass up. Not only did it mean she would earn experience at an unprecedented rate, but if she won one-hundred times in a row, she would double it all? Planting her foot down, Sora started slowly walking as she put her intelligence to work calculating exactly what that meant. 100 days with an exponential 500 point increase for each match, which she quickly broke down into 100 sets of 2,500, then 100 sets of 500. But then she realised that doing that wouldn't cover it. Because the third match would be 3,500, whereas 100 sets of 500 would mean all the consecutive matches would be 3,000.

After a while, she gave up, and simply took her notepad out, starting at 2,500 and listing each increment of 500 in a list, eventually reaching number 100, which was 52,500. She then started the really slow process of adding each value together. There were definitely more efficient ways to do it, but she never learned formal mathematics, so the basics were all she had.

It took her all the way through her lunch at Ichiraku's, all the way home, and then another hour at home before she had finished adding all one-hundred incremental numbers together, mainly because she then had to double-check to make sure the value was correct, and then after that she calculated what level she would be left on. And it was, which was a quite frankly staggering number when she looked at it.

For winning a hundred consecutive spars against Anko, she would earn, in total, about 2,750,000 experience. That was before she incorporated the 2x multiplier, which would give her 5,500,000 experience. If her experience followed the same 1000 per level trend, that meant that she would, in the course of a hundred spars, something that could be done in a week or two depending on scheduling, level from 34 all the way up to over a hundred, though a lot of that would come from the 2x multiplier for the hundredth victory.

For the 99th victory, removing 52,500 and the doubled experience, that would still mean that over the course of their sparring she would gain nearly 50 levels, up to 80ish, which was, quite frankly, insane. There had to be a catch of some kind, because that was way too fucking easy. A hundred sparring matches and all she had to do was win against someone who was more than ten levels below her, that would be easy.

Then she realised what the trick of the quest was. A hundred consecutive losses? Would Anko put up with even ten before deciding she didn't want to spar with her anymore? So the challenge wasn't winning, it was about keeping Anko motivated and interested in fighting her. She had to win every single time, but she had to do it in such a way as Anko was never left wanting to quit fighting her, or else she would miss out on that massive payout at the end.

And so, she began to brainstorm ways to keep Anko's interest in sparring with her. Money was a potential option, maybe she could offer 10,000 ryo for every day that she came by to spar, stipulating a limit of at least 10 sparring sessions so she couldn't just show up, fight once, then leave. However, that relied on Anko being motivated by money, and she didn't know the girl's home situation, maybe she already had plenty of cash and wouldn't be moved.

But other than money, Sora honestly didn't have anything that she thought could motivate Anko into continuing to spar with her.


"You must be Metami-san, I've been meaning to get in touch with you."

Caught a little by surprise at the sudden voice, Sora looked over as she saw a quite frankly serpent-featured man approaching her. "I'm guessing you're Anko's Jonin-sensei then?" She said, assuming based on his appearance and the vest he was wearing that he was likely to be so, especially since he was approaching her directly. "Well, you know my name but Anko never told me yours, so you have me at a bit of a loss."

"Oh, my apologies, I am Orochimaru." Sora blinked, looking the man up and down again slightly in disbelief. Orochimaru, also known as one of the Densetsu no Sannin, was...well, actually, Orochimaru was known for his snake summons and snake-based techniques, so it fit, plus his appearance was so heavily leaning towards a snake that honestly, it seemed reasonable. "I suppose you are wondering why?"

Sora just hummed in response, prompting him to frown. "I would appreciate a proper response but that will suffice. As you likely know, our Hokage has convinced the Hyuuga that persuing the abnormalities of your Byakugan is not something that you can be forced into, and so, I would like to ask for a trade, simply for my own personal studies, unrelated to the Hyuuga." Sora tilted her head to the side. "In short, you would allow me to run tests, experiments and examinations into the functions of your Byakugan and its abnormalities in return for something of lesser or equal value. A fair trade."

About to turn him down, Sora stopped just as she opened her mouth. He probably would agree that what he had planned was going to take up time and likely be quite irritating to Sora, so if she in return asked to spar with his student regularly, he would likely leap at the chance, especially as it would mean being able to gather combat data on her from said student. "Alright, say in return I would like to regularly spar with Anko on weekends for at least two hours each weekend, would you call that a fair trade?"

The man stared keenly at her for a moment. "I would have to ask why exactly you would like such a thing, as Anko spoke to me of your abilities and that you were clearly holding back on her. Sparring with such a weak opponent would see no noteworthy benefits brought to you. Even if you were some kind of combat fanatic, which does not fit your psychological profile or your exhibited activities, fighting her makes no logical sense as opposed to a more social gathering." Sora shrugged nonchalantly.

"I just want to, do I need a reason greater than that?"


After heading to the Hokage's Tower to inform him of what was going on, as he was the only person she could think of to report to, Sora headed to the location that Orochimaru said was his laboratory.

The Hokage didn't seem too happy to hear that Orochimaru had taken an interest in her, but aside from a warning to not let him leverage his authority over her too much since she wasn't actually a Konoha-nin and thus he couldn't order her around outside of an emergency situation, he had let her go with a warning about not trying to pretend to forget to re-activate her Byakugan seal and a reminder that she was still under probation so she wasn't to do anything stupid, common sense stuff basically.

When she arrived, the doors quickly opened to reveal that Anko was actually there waiting for her. "Hiya Sora-san, come in, Orochimaru-sama is waiting for you downstairs. I didn't expect to see you again so soon, though I did plan to go to the training ground this weekend and see if I could run into you again." Sora chatted with the girl a little as they went, asking her about what missions she had been on, whether she'd learned anything interesting recently, that sort of thing, in turn answering her questions about what she did, how long she'd lived in Konoha, and other such questions.

However, it didn't take long for them to descend down several stories by her estimation, then along a short concrete corridor and into a rather advanced laboratory. Not as advanced as a modern lab, but still a damn sight closer to the technology of her time than anything else she had seen, which meant it was likely state of the art, fitting with Orochimaru's seemingly large thirst for knowledge. "Orochimaru-sama, Sora-san has arrived."

The man waved her off, and Anko quickly departed with a wave, heading back the way they had come. "You are punctual, that's a good trait to have. Now then, I will alleviate any concerns you may have immediately, this testing will be strictly controlled and orderly, so I will not appreciate any unorthodox actions or results. I understand that you may get frustrated if I require repetition, but for an accurate outcome-"

"-you need to have multiple comparisons, crossing out any outliers and anomalies, ensuring that the outcome you arrive at is an accurate one. Don't worry, I get it, and it's not like I'm not getting what I want out of it, so complaining about it would be really dumb." Orochimaru nodded without looking away from where he was writing, seemingly quite satisfied that she understood the scientific method at least to some extent.

"The first tests will be part of a preliminary assessment of your Byakugan. I understand that all Byakugan are different, just as many Dojutsu are. As such, I will need to establish the basic parameters of your Byakugan to arrive at a more accurate conclusion." He then went silent, finishing what he was writing while she waited before rising and taking up a clipboard. "If you could activate your Byakugan please."

Sora focused, directly taking control of her chakra, then moving a small segment of it to the seal on her eye and holding it there. After a few moments of nothing, the seal promptly de-activated, and for the first time in months Sora was able to perceive the entire room, nodding after she had done so. "First test: Range. As I understand it, your Byakugan has been reported to have a range of approximately 15 metres in radius, centred directly on your eye. I would like to measure this accurately down to the centimetre, which would also allow me to track any potential growth which might interfere with other testing."

Sora nodded, watching as he took a tape measure out of his pocket and gave it to her. "Place the end of this tape measure on the bone just beneath your left eye, then tell me exactly when the tip of this pen enters your range." Following his orders, Sora did so, watching and waiting until she saw the very edge of his pen appear in her Byakugan, immediately calling it out. "Alright, now tell me exactly when the pen disappears."

Again, she did so. This was repeated over two dozen times, and each time Orochimaru made notes of it diligently, before finally, he stopped. "Alright, taking the average of all results, adding the extra distance between the centre of the eye and the start of the tape measure, then removing the outliers, your Byakugan has a median range of 15.46 meters, which is neatly within estimations." Orochimaru then went on to measure all kinds of different aspects of her Byakugan, fully forming a complete profile simply for her eye.

When he was finished, it felt like at least an hour or two had passed. "Now then, with basic profiling complete, it is time for a closer examination on exactly how your eye functions. As I understand it, ever since you had your Byakugan implanted, it has been constantly active. My initial hypothesis is that your Byakugan has been operating at reduced function all this time due to only being able to receive a small amount of the necessary chakra to be used. This eventually formed into a permanent change, much like how repetitive actions can erode or change certain things. As such, your Byakugan no longer functions as an active or inactive, but as simply a passive. This is why your range is so low compared to other Byakugan users, why you cannot increase that range, and why you have a comparatively small chakra pool compared to your peers."

"Thus, forced de-activation via Fuinjutsu may have induced a growth rate increase of your available chakra reserves. Do you know how to expel chakra?" Sora hesitated before nodding a little. "Do you believe that you can accurately expel half of your current available chakra reserves in one second?" Sora nodded again. "Alright, then please do so now." Sora split half her chakra, then forced it all out of her tenketsu in one big go, almost stumbling at the feeling of sudden light-headedness

"Yes, your chakra levels are definitely much higher than reported. Over a period of over two months, without the drain of a Byakugan permanently passively active, your coils, which reportedly have a vastly increased regeneration speed compared to others, would find themselves expanding at a rapid rate as your body has to handle the sudden surplus. What is more fascinating is that you haven't suffered from chakra oversaturation in the slightest, it's as though your entire body self-regulated the exact amount of chakra it needs to grow and not a modicum more."

Sora smiled honestly as he spoke, quite amused at how...different Orochimaru felt when he was doing science. Before, when he met her in the training ground, her first reaction was to be a bit creeped out and even slightly afraid at his imposing and predatory demeanour, but now that he was doing research and finding out things, he was an entirely different person, driven by curiosity and a drive that she supposed many great scientists had. No wonder he has such an advanced laboratory, obviously he loved the pursuit of knowledge enough to truly invest in his laboratory.

It was why she genuinely didn't mind giving her all for his different tests, because he seemed just so...genuine, he wasn't just doing this for the village, he really wanted to know how her Byakugan worked, and more importantly, why it worked. So many people would just go ehh, it works, and leave it at that, and Sora was included in that, mainly because she already knew it worked only because the Game was responsible. But Orochimaru wasn't satisfied with knowing simply that it worked, he wanted to know why it worked, and so, being honest with herself?

She was surprisingly happy to work with him. He in turn seemed very satisfied with the effort she put in and the fact that she was receptive to his descriptions, offering her own hypotheses for why certain things were the way they were. At more than a few points, they accidentally deviated from talking about her Byakugan to more broad hypotheses about much broader subjects, not that either of them minded.

And so, over the course of a few hours, an odd sort-of friendship which was more just mutual acknowledgement began to form.


Another three months passed, during which a few changes occurred in Sora's life.

The first was that she grew one year older, and received a collection of kind gifts from the few people she knew in Konoha, one of which came from Orochimaru and was a scarf, along with a reminder that winter was not a joke and that he didn't want to see her wandering around without the appropriate attire, owing to one such visit during the early days of December when she had showed up at his lab with her typical outfit on, despite his warnings of the changing weather, which then led to him effectively trapping her inside until he could get her mother to come by and collect her because by the time they were done, the temperature outside had dropped significantly, such that he was wary of sending her home and having her get ill, as that would mean she would potentially miss visiting the next day.

Secondly, she had continued to practice her music, occasionally to Kushina but more often to Anko, who really enjoyed listening to her music, which helped to break up the action of just sparring each other constantly. She hadn't diversified yet on which instrument she would use, preferring to stick to a guitar as it was simple and easy for her to handle, though she knew that when she eventually did use another instrument, thanks to the fact her proficiency covered musical instruments at large, she wouldn't need to worry about then having to grind a whole other proficiency.

Thirdly, the Hyuuga had finally approached her. More importantly than just the Hyuuga though, the brother of the Clan Head himself personally visited her at home, in order to ask her what she wanted in return for giving Orochimaru her consent to share the data he had logged to the Hyuuga clan. At first, she was a little bit tempted to just turn him down, but once he actually presented the offers, she realised that she most definitely did have a price.

The Hyuuga definitely played their hand early in their offers to her, proposing to offer her ten million ryo for the information. On top of that, their other offers were equally as extravagant, including an offer to train her in the Gentle Fist, or to give her and her family a valuable walled-in house in the middle of prime Konohagakure real estate, offers of those magnitude, making it clear that the Hyuuga were serious about wanting to know what the fuck was up with her Byakugan, probably so they could refine it, discover any weaknesses, and how they could potentially apply it in a less limiting fashion to their own Byakugan usage, if it proved useful.

In the end, she had managed to talk the man, who had introduced himself as Hizashi, into giving her the house and the ten million ryo in exchange for the information, on top of any updated information either she or Orochimaru uncovered. The fact he accepted quickly did cause her a little regret at not pushing to see if she could also get another offer added on top, but she didn't want to be too greedy, as while her Byakugan's quirks might be valuable to the Hyuuga, they probably wouldn't accept her pushing their limits too far.

That meant they could sell the house they had bought, pay off the remaining loan they had, then move into their newer, bigger and better positioned home with the capital to turn it from a house they lived in into an actual home. The sudden income meant that Sora was tempted to stop working at Terumasa's forge, but when she brought it up with him the next day she went into work, he told her the reason why he hired her in the first place.

The reason was that his wife was expecting a child, and so he wanted to have someone who could hold down the shop in case of emergencies. He hadn't told her simply because he didn't see it as necessary, he paid her a fair wage for her skills and her work ethic, so when she told him that she and her family had come into money and so wages weren't that important to her anymore, he simply asked her to help out for two months.

His wife was expected to give birth within the month, and then having an extra month would ensure that he could be there if there were any complications, so in the end she agreed, not wanting to put herself ahead of helping him out when the job he gave her was the main reason her family was able to move out of their temporary accommodations so quickly and into an actual home.

Finally, she visited Orochimaru frequently, their schedule being simply that she would go to his laboratory every Friday for examination and testing, as she had cut her days working back so she would have Friday free. Then on the weekend she and Anko would spar together, and barring missions that would take both Anko and Orochimaru out of the village, which only happened over one weekend, they didn't miss a day, aside from occasional days where Orochimaru would take over the sparring in order to teach her.

It did block a few days where she could have been fighting Anko and getting closer and closer to that one-hundredth match and the reward beyond, but she honestly didn't mind, because being taught by one of the Densetsu no Sannin was honestly a hell of an experience. He never kept his fighting style bland and similar, he always came at her in a way she wasn't ready for, teaching her very efficiently how to be dynamic and flexible in how she fought, something that paired far too well with her Sticky Fist taijutsu, allowing her to switch from offence to defence or evasion in a heartbeat.

As such, when the end of the third month was coming around, Sora finally finished her quest, her fingers brushing Anko's throat which marked her hundredth defeat in a row, not including the defeats she had suffered on the first day they met. "Good match!" Sora heard clapping from the side, glancing over at Kushina, who occasionally stuck around to watch them sparring when she felt like it.

Grinning, Sora patted Anko's shoulder, showing no indication that anything had changed, even if in reality, she had just finished the quest that would power her up with a massive amount of levels. She earned the experience from the quest as she earned victories, and so her stats slowly increased as she added points to them. The one thing she had forgotten to account for when doing her calculations a few months ago was her intelligence stat. That raised experience gained, which included the experience from quests.

As such, every time she earned that reward, she was earning a lot more than predicted. That, in turn, meant more levels, more intelligence, and thus more experience earned in an increasing cycle. At first, her reward was increased by 66%, which meant their very first spar had netted her just over 4,000 experience in one fight. Their second fight was then nearly 5,000. As such, after just a few fights she had levelled up, and upon realising exactly what was going on, Sora didn't hesitate for even a millisecond before placing all 5 points into her Intelligence.

That then meant that the next spar earned her 71% extra than it normally would, meaning after just 4 sparring rounds she had levelled up yet again. With this, she massively raised her intelligence, and at the time of the one-hundredth round, Sora was sitting pretty at level 124 with a neat 500 intelligence, as well as having placed 12 points into wisdom. With 500 intelligence, the doubled reward, which didn't add the intelligence buff that she had applied to the experience, meant that for the 2,832,500 experience she would earn from the final 52,500 experience spar and then the cumulative experience earned across the entire quest, having spent some time to calculate the final reward directly, she would multiply that by five whole times, for a total of 14.1 fucking million.

Finishing the quest, Sora checked her level, fingers crossed to see if her estimation was right, grinning as she did so. Level 209, with 425 spare points to spend. She roughly estimated that she would be at about level 200, so she was fairly close. That was some pretty amazing growth being frank, since that put her only 50ish levels below the Hunter-nin Commander back in Kiri. Her mother was now actually a dozen or so levels below her at level 195, so the fact she was above her made Sora appreciate, just a little, the insanity that a high intelligence stat was.

Of course, that didn't mean she got complacent, Orochimaru was a monster at level 314, a full 105 levels above her, but it just went to show that focusing on intelligence really was the best choice. She supposed it probably would cap out at 10,000 anyway, since being able to get more than a 10000% increase on experience earned would start giving some extreme diminishing returns and would not be worth it.

Distributing her newly-acquired points with 200 to wisdom, then 75 each to her other three stats, Sora glanced at her luck stat then ignored it, as it was just far too much of an investment to bother with. 10,000 points to reach the maximum, that meant 2,000 levels of purely focusing on luck, it really just didn't seem worth it to waste any points on it. Maybe she could go to a casino and gamble to see if that even counted as 'luck-training', but honestly, she didn't feel like it.

It was a shame though that her quest didn't continue. If she was able to go up to 200 sparring matches or even beyond, the rewards would be astronomical, and then she really would be able to invest in luck, mainly because she'd be drowning in levels. But no, while it was a really strong quest, that was probably why it didn't let her continue, because it would be absolutely insane.

That didn't mean she would stop sparring with Anko or heading to Orochimaru's lab each week, because she had honestly found Anko's drive to improve really impressive, and spending a day with Orochimaru talking about pretty much every subject under the sun while he did experiments and tests on her Byakugan was a truly enjoyable experience for both of them.

And, if nothing else, she just felt like the man needed a friend of some kind, someone who was knowledgeable about at least some aspects of science and would actually listen to him and respond instead of just being a sounding board that didn't know anything. He was dedicated to science and discovery, but there were times when he just seemed lonely, as his team had split apart when Hanzo gave them their moniker, so those teammates he had been around for ages were no longer there.

As far as she was aware, the only person he regularly interacted with other than her was Anko, and that relationship was teacher and student, plus Anko was definitely not a good person to discuss science with. Not that she wasn't intelligent, the girl was sharp as a knife for her age, it was just that Sora had years of extra mental age over her, and came from a more advanced society where science was taught in pretty much every education system. And so, Sora was probably the only person Orochimaru could talk to who could understand him when he went off on wild tangents and could keep up that kind of conversation with him.

So, sure, maybe it wasn't necessary, but that didn't mean she didn't want to do it still.


So...yeah, that happened.

I wonder if people still don't believe me when I say that I don't plan things, they just...happen. I only had Anko run into Sora when I realised how similar in age they are, then had that quest which made me realise that I needed a reason for Anko to stay, so having Orochimaru be interested in her Dojutsu considering his fascination with the Sharingan seemed like a good idea. Then from there I started to think about whether Orochimaru would appreciate someone who could back-and-forth with him on that level, since he really didn't have anyone who would do that with him in Konoha after his team split apart.

And then realised that because of her intelligence stat the quest was even more freakish than I first realised, and now she's at level 209 with several hundred-thousand chakra...oops.


Name: Sora Metami

Level: 209

Age: 12

Experience: 113,365/209,000

To Next Level: 95,635

Title: Civilian - +100% increase to civilian-based proficiencies, -25% decrease to shinobi-based proficiencies

Health Points: 14,968 (100 Base HP + (Vitality x Strength)

Regeneration Rate: 498.9/minute (Health ÷ 30) (Severe or noticed injuries can be chosen to retain scars)

Chakra Points: 123,100 (100 Base CP + (Wisdom x Intelligence)

Regeneration Rate: 4,100.3/minute (Chakra ÷ 30)

Strength: 118 (Each point increases melee damage by 1%, adds 1 slot to inventory)

Vitality: 126 (Each point raises poison resistance by 0.1%, reduces need for sleep by 0.1%)

Agility: 127 (Each point increases top speed by 0.1m/s, increases weapon proficiency gain by 1%)

Wisdom: 246 (Each point decreases chakra cost for techniques by 0.1%)

Intelligence: 500 (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%)