Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto nor The Gamer Manwha. I do, however, own every original concept that I use in this piece of fiction. Enjoy!
Calligraphy. Active. LV 3 [9.7%]. Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a broad tip instrument, brush, among other writing instruments. A contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner.
Increases writing speed by 10%.
Increases writing fluency by 10%.
There is something about the phrase 'Learn to walk before you learn to run' that annoys me so damned much that I wanted to punch the damned blue window staring back at me. Yesterday I had wanted a book on basic Fuinjutsu so I could learn the skill but lo and behold I needed to learn on how to write first before that. And if that wasn't enough I had to master the damned skill before I could learn Fuinjutsu proper.
And what annoyed me the most was the fact that it made sense. Even though I hadn't been able to learn the skill I had taken the book with me in a momentary moment of pettiness and anger and it was now resting in my inventory waiting to be consumed by me. I read about it at my crappy apartment for a few minutes before I practiced the Calligraphy skill and the little I read about was enough to clue me in the kind of precision needed to draw even the most simple of seals if I wanted to keep my fingers in my hand. According to the book fuinjutsu accidents tended to be of the explosive category.
Thankfully when I absorbed the Calligraphy book I got knowledge in all matters of writing and I knew every symbol that was used in the art but I wasn't, however, skilled at it. I could write them almost perfectly but it took me time. And time was not something you had when you were fighting. Most fights between ninjas never went over five minutes, the only supposed exception were Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha who went at it for fucking twenty four hours before Hashirama managed to kill Madara. Anyways, since it took me almost two minutes to write a decent word I didn't want to think how much time it would take to draw a seal in the midst of battle.
Again. It made sense. And I was annoyed by it.
The practice of the skill, however, made for a good and productive way to pass the time when you couldn't be bothered to do anything else. Like right now. I was at the Academy, sitting in the back of the classroom with a unfurled scroll, a pot of ink and a brush writing the alphabet using the Calligraphy skill, watching it steadily increase in level as I waited for Iruka-sensei to arrive for today's lesson.
I had promised Jiji I was not going to waste my time again and I liked to think myself as someone that never went back on his word. As amusing as pranking was the only good thing that came out of it was the ridiculous level on Stealth that it gave me thanks to me using an orange jumpsuit of all of things and managing to sneak around ninja more experienced than me. I did pranks to earn recognition but now that didn't matter to me. I wanted to get strong and I only had a few months before graduation. I didn't have the luxury of time and much less of time to waste.
"Naruto… what are you doing?"
I looked up from my almost finished work and my eyes widened at the two boys standing in the middle of the classroom next to my row of seats looking at me as if I had green hair, pink skin and yellow eyes. One was a thin boy with a pineapple like hairstyle and the other one was a chubby boy with swirl tattoos on his cheeks and a scarf wrapped around his neck. My eyes had widened, however, because of the words above their heads.
Eating to get Stronger, Not Fatter
LV 16
Choji Akimichi
I want to Sleep, Never Think
LV 18
Shikamaru Nara
What in the world… I knew that I was the weakest in my class and I was prepared for it but I was that much weaker? It was a very… humbling experience to say at least. Choji and Shikamaru were right there with me in the category of worst students and Choji was already above level fifteen and Shikamaru was on his way to level twenty. But it didn't make any fucking sense! Choji as far as I knew only knew taijutsu and how to eat without ever feeling full and Shikamaru was only able to sleep during the day and night.
Unless the way my ability judged other people's levels was different than the way it did for me. Choji and Shikamaru belonged to two of the most prominent clans from Konoha and they were the heirs of their respective clans so they had to have some training. I was sure they knew techniques we their classmates didn't know about and they were keeping them a secret to be underestimated or something. That had to be it. Ha! You cannot fool me now! I am all knowing!
None of my thoughts showed in my face thanks to Gamer's Mind and I smiled at them in greeting. "What's up Shikamaru, Choji?" They didn't answer me and still looked from me towards the brush in my hand, the scroll and ink pot and finally back to me. My smile widened. "If you are wondering what am I doing then let me tell you: I am practicing calligraphy. Turns out I am from a recently extinct clan that was pretty good at fuinjutsu, you know, the art of sealing. Jiji told me last Friday and he's helping me with it. What you see now a weekend full of practicing with ink and brush. Pretty neat, huh?"
I rambled the best lie I could tell… which wasn't exactly a lie and more a modified truth. It was common knowledge that I was close to the Sandaime Hokage and that he was very fond of me so he teaching me something like this wouldn't be too farfetched. Choji seemed to accept my answer easily enough but I think it was because he wanted to go back to eating his chipsing but Shikamaru took another look at me and what I was doing before he frowned.
"And you managed to get this good in just three days? My mother does calligraphy as a hobby and she has been doing it for a long time and she is barely better than you for what I can see," he said and he turned curious eyes towards me.
Damn it! Had Shikamaru always been this smart? Did this have to do something with his title? I used observe on him and Choji and it only told me their max HP and CP, which by the way also didn't make any sense according to their levels with Shikamaru's being too small and Choji's being too big, so there was no explanation to this development. I rubbed the back of my head and chuckled sheepishly. "I asked Jiji the same thing when I managed to copy the first letter he showed me almost perfectly and he explained that it had to with my genes. I admit the explanation flew over my head but he compared it to bloodlines."
Shikamaru looked at me dubiously for a few seconds before he shrugged his shoulders and I gave a mental sigh of relief. "Alright then. You just keep being your usual troublesome self," he said before walking away, Choji behind him still munching on his chips.
I leaned back on my seat and breathed out. That was close. I didn't count on Shikamaru being so observant and intelligent. He managed to figure out that something was wrong, or at least different, with me in just a few seconds. I needed to tread carefully with him in the future if I wanted to keep this ability a secret. Yes. I fully intended to let no one else know about this. Iruka-sensei always said that a ninja needed to keep their best ability or abilities from everyone else for as long as they could. And I fully intended to do that.
Recalling that and remembering the levels of Shikamaru and Choji I began to look around the classroom to see the levels of my classmates and I was again humbled. Most of them were between the levels eight and twelve and I quickly realized that those were the civilian born kids. Those who didn't have any special traits going for them and had to rely on everything the Academy taught to get better.
The ones that stood out, however, were the heirs of the clans and one civilian born girl.
Like everyone else, I want to Be
LV 15
Sakura Haruno
I Will Blossom Beautifully
LV 17
Ino Yamanaka
Young, Wild Dog
Lvl 21
Kiba Inuzuka
With my Hive, I am One
LV 24
Shino Aburame
Strength like His, I want to Reach
LV 26
Hinata Hyuga
I am The Avenger
LV 29
Sasuke Uchiha
Okay this was getting ridiculous! I know that if you are from a clan you are already stronger than your average civilian born kid but this was way over top! I understand Kiba and Shino being over level twenty easily since I know that Shino is very smart and trains a lot and Kiba, while probably even less smart than even me, was very good at taijutsu and also trained a lot. But Hinata's was over level twenty five and Sasuke, that smug bastard, was one level away from thirty.
And what was up with their titles? I had a title slot on my profile but as far as I knew I needed to do specific stuff to get a title. Theirs were very weird but… maybe it was also different from me? Sasuke's title was 'I am The Avenger' and it is common knowledge that Itachi Uchiha, his brother, murdered his entire family in front of him. I am sure Sasuke wanted revenge more than anything. So… were their titles a clue into who they were as a person? Or how they viewed themselves? I need to look more into this at a later date.
Now I was more than sure that levels for other people worked different than it did for me. Because I trained more than Sakura and Ino and they were still higher leveled than me by a good amount so the only logical conclusion was that level for them was how dangerous and skilled they were. But dangerous and skilled in relation to what? Me? The Hokage? The strongest person in the world? Who? I didn't know but I was sure going to find out.
A few minutes of spamming Observe on my classmates, getting a few levels and with them more information on them and reducing the cost of the skill, our teacher and his assistant arrived at the classroom and my eyes were directly towards above their heads.
My precious students, I will teach them
LV 44
Iruka Umino
To the Demon I will give Death
LV 48
Mizuki Toji
That was more acceptable since they were both Chunin and in Iruka-sensei's case it confirmed that titles were at the least a clue into the character of a person since he was very passionate about his teaching but Mizuki's confused the hell out of me. He wanted to kill a demon? Or does he hate someone so much he wants to kill them because they did something atrocious to him in the past? I didn't know and honestly I didn't care that much but it was an interesting piece of information.
Iruka-sensei cleared his throat as I finished putting my stuff into my Inventory without anyone noticing since I did it under the table and the guy sitting next to me was already falling sleep. I paid attention to him and it felt good to see his approval in his eyes when he noticed that I was early to class for a change. "Good morning everyone. I see that you are all here, yes, that's for you Naruto. Really hope is not only today," he said with a smirk and I felt embarrassed but Gamer's Mind allowed me to not show it and I just nodded at him with a thumbs up while the rest of the class snickered and laughed at me.
"With that out of the way it pleases me to announce that for the first half of the class period today I am going to give a lecture on the History of Konoha and its importance to the development of the ninja techniques of today. After the break we are going to run the obstacle course, kunai and shuriken throwing practice and finally some taijutsu sparring," he said and smirked again as the class groaned at the lecture part but cheered up a little at the stuff we are going to do after the break.
I myself was excited about both things since I was going to start making good on my promise to Jiji by getting smarter and I will get the chance to see exactly where I stood in relation to my classmates exactly since levels was to finicky use that as a reference point.
Iruka-sensei began to talk and I began to pay him the most attention I have ever given to someone other than Jiji.
xXxXxXx
By diligently paying attention in class your INT goes up by one!
That was what the window that popped up immediately after Iruka-sensei finished his lecture and told us that it was break time said and my mood became chirper because of it. I discreetly waved away the window and walked out of the building and into the fields surrounding the Academy building. It was mostly fertile soil with trees here and there. The obstacle course was located at the side of the Academy and next to it were the posts for target practice. The sparring circle was at the back of the building.
I moved towards one of the trees and took a seat by the part of its bark facing away from the building so I wouldn't be seen by my classmates unless they were looking for me and managed to spot me behind the tree. I picked up one of the leaves that had fallen close by and I set it on my forehead, activating Chakra Control to make it stick and after a minute my CP of two hundred and eighty six dropped by two. A minute later it dropped by two more.
The Leaf Concentration exercise cost five CP per minute and at the moment mi CP R was two point nine, technically three. Meaning that as I was now I could keep this up for one hundred and forty three minutes before I was out of CP. I said at the moment because I was planning to change the amount of CP I had along with my CP R, which could be upped by both augmenting my MAX CP, which by way of my perks will always increase by one hundred per level along with my MAX HP, or by puttting points in WIS, which will make it increase one percent every ten points.
My ability gave me a lot of options to get stronger and I was going to abuse the shit out of it. Having so many options was the reason I had gone to Jiji to ask for advice, without him knowing he was giving me a literal advice in how to grow, because he was the wisest person I knew and he would be the one to know what the best choice was. And now I was going to see if what he told me was indeed the best choice. I stopped the Leaf Concentration exercise and picked up the leaf I was using from my forehead and held it in my hand.
"Status."
I brought up my profile window and after a moment of hesitance I put the ten stat points I had into WIS. My eyes widened as three CP I had used in the three minutes filled immediately and I saw the change in my profile page taking place. My CP R was now at two point two percent per minute thanks to the passive bonus of ten percent to CP Regen Chakra Control gave me. I put the Leaf back on my forehead and activated Leaf Concentration. My CP didn't go done even after two minutes. Chakra Control was steadily growing in level. And I had made the right choice by letting Jiji make the choice for me.
Twenty five minutes later Chakra Control reached level five, giving me an growth of five percent to the passives and with it an increase to my CP and CP R that while small was still progress. And from here onwards I will only grow further. I stood up and pocketed the leaf I had been using so I could use it later. I was not going to waste my time ever again and every waking moment I will use to get stronger somehow. That was a promise.
Iruka-sensei called us to the obstacle course after the break was over and we stood in line after he told us that we needed to make it in under three minutes if we wanted to get good marks. The obstacle course was as generic as it could be done. There were twenty tires angled from each other in a way that we needed to sprint putting our feet inside of them each at a time, a rectangular water body with rocks meant to jump from one to the other, five wood beams each one higher than the other meant to also jump from one to the other leading into a rock wall that we were supposed to grab and push ourselves over it and fall to the ground in a roll to sprint to a set of monkey bars before making another sprint and jump through three rings and finally land into another roll. Like I said. Very generic.
I saw the other boys and girls going through it and I was not surprised to see the boys doing better than almost every girls, Hinata being the exception. It wasn't too much of a surprise because for some reason every girl, except Hinata, was focused on their looks to appeal to Sasuke, which was stupid. If they took their time to watch serious kunoichi that exercised regularly and hard they would realize that the best they could for their looks was to do the opposite they were doing, meaning stop dieting and exercising. That, however, was not my problem and I appreciated my health too much to approach that subject with them.
When it was my turn I was surprised as a window appeared in front of me.
Quest: The Generic Obstacle Course of Genericness Doom!
Complete the obstacle course in less than three minutes.
Rewards for success: 1000 XP. Increased closeness with Iruka Umino. Increased closeness with classmates.
Penalties for failure: Decreased closeness with Iruka Umino. Decreased closeness with classmates and they laugh at your incompetence.
I accepted the quest with a twitching eye. While excited at the highest amount of experience points I have ever seen from a quest, the sassiness of my ability annoyed me to no end. It wasn't the first time it did something like this and I was sure it wouldn't be the last but I needed to learn how to deal with it otherwise I would be driven insane. Thankfully the quest was going to be an easy one since I had done this obstacle course many times in the past and in way less time than that.
A timer appeared in the upper left corner of my field of vision just as Iruka-sensei rose his arm up and blew his whistle. "Go!"
I ran forwards towards the first part of the course and my legs rhythmically went through the tires as I focused on not messing up my timing in between steps and managed to not mess it up before I reached the body of water and I jumped between the rocks easily enough that I didn't waste too much time. Then I reached the wood beams, still with my momentum and it was very easy to jump from one to the other and I used both of my legs to easily reach the wall, grasping the edge tightly with my hand and forcing myself over it. My muscles were already aching but thanks to Gamer's Mind I managed to ignore it and pushed on as I landed on frontwards roll and kept up the momentum of my fall and sprinted towards the monkey bars, my arms burning as I went through them. I used the last one to launch myself forward to gain enough momentum in my sprint to successfully jump through the tree rings and easily landed into a roll and stood up holding my fist up.
I panted for a second as my muscles ached but after a moment I regained by breath and the aching faded completely and the windows came.
By successfully finishing the obstacle course your VIT goes up by two!
By successfully finishing the obstacle course your STR goes up by two!
By successfully finishing the obstacle course your DEX does up by two!
I couldn't help my smug smile as I dismissed the windows. I had a perk that made it so my physical stats grew twice as fast through physical exercises and it looked like it mean literally that. I would gain two points every time I made enough exercises to get the one point a normal person would get. I wanted to find out what the other two perks could mean about me but I didn't have clue so I was going to ignore them for now but that didn't mean I wasn't going to reap the benefits.
I finally reached Iruka and he was grinning at me in approval. "How was that Iruka-sensei?"
"While not the best score you managed to perform just beneath Sasuke, Hinata, Kiba and Shino and you managed to surpass your personal best by fifteen seconds! I saw that you managed to not lose focus as you normally would and ignore the burn on your muscles. It was an outstanding performance Naruto and you finally managed to do the course in less than two minutes and a half! Congratulations!" He declared with a grin and ruffling my hair.
I grinned up at him smugly. "Thanks Iruka-sensei! Can I repeat the course until it's time for the shurikenjutsu practice and the sparring? I'm feeling full of energy today and I don't want it to go to waste. I'm not even tired right now!" Which was the truth. Apparently Gamer's Body didn't register physical tiredness and pain and negated them after a moment. It was probably the reason why my physical stats could grow like they did because my muscles would be 'healed' immediately after they were 'damaged'. This gamer thing was awesome!
Iruka chuckled and nodded. "Of course. Just make sure you have enough energy for the sparring half an hour from now." He said and walked away and I another window appeared as he finally left.
Quest completed!
Secret bonus objective completed: Surpass your past limits and perform better than your previous personal best! Reward: 500 XP.
Secret bonus objective completed: Run through the obstacle course in less than two minutes and a half! Reward: 500 XP.
I grinned in delight as I dismissed the windows. The experience gained put me two thirds on my way to the next level. If the trend continued then every level I would need to get one thousand more experience points than the previous one to reach the next level. From level one two level two I had needed one thousand XP, which I got from a quest from the land lord and from level two to level three I had needed two thousand XP which were gotten through several quests across the village.
As I waited in line for my turns since others were going for another run too, I thought about how I could get levels fast to get stats points for my mental stats. I quickly reached to the conclusion that I needed to fight people or things with higher level than mine and kill them to gain XP, like any other game. I couldn't go around killing people of my village so that was out so the only logical thing to do was to go through training grounds 13 to 43 and face the Chakra Mutated Creatures there. Quests were good and all, but they tended to be time consuming. If I went to grind that way I could get the same amount of XP in five minutes as in a quest that took me thirty minutes. And I could get a quest that required killing Chakra Creatures all the better.
I only managed to go through the course three more times, each time almost unnoticeable easier than the other and only got two more points to VIT, DEX and WIS before Iruka-sensei called us to towards the throwing range. There were two body shaped targets with bull's-eyes located in specific part of the body that should a kunai or a shuriken hit those places it would mean a short bleed out until death to anyone since those points were located in major arteries and organs.
Again I watched the others before me go at it and surprise, surprise the boys did better than the girls, except for Hinata of course, for the same reason that I had explained earlier. The one that did the best was Sasuke who managed to hit every target throwing the kunai and shuriken at the same time at the different dummies. My eye twitched as he smirked at the praise of Iruka and Mizuki and the squeal of his fangirls. I get that he is a badass but he doesn't need to be smug about it. The voice in my head telling me I would do the same if it was me was promptly ignored pointedly as I stepped forward.
Iruka-sensei gave me an expectant look, obviously hoping I did better at this like I did at the obstacle course. And guess what? I was not going to disappoint him. Along with learning the calligraphy skill and reading some of the Fuinjutsu book I also managed to update another skill of mine.
Shurikenjutsu. Passive/Active. LV 11. [8.2%]. Literally meaning sword hidden in the hand techniques, Shurikenjutsu allows the ability of correctly handling and throwing shuriken, kunai and senbon. Normally used as support techniques, but with high enough proficiency and mindset it can become a deadly part of a ninja's battle style.
Passively increases DEX by 20%.
Increases accuracy with thrown senbon, kunai and shuriken by 20%.
"Alright Naruto. You just have to hit at least seven out of ten targets in the center to get a passing grade. Do your best," Iruka encouraged me and felt confident I could do this. When Iruka signaled me to go, another quest appeared with the same rewards as the one in the obstacle course but with the parameters of the throwing range and I accepted it easily. I activated Shurikenjutsu and picked up the kunai provided by the Academy and let them loose one by one.
I hit ten out of ten targets easily. By updating the skill I corrected anything wrong I had been doing when throwing kunai and shuriken and since I was attempting to hit stationary targets it was a piece of cake to hit them with tools that flew in a straight line. Shuriken was another matter since they tended to curve but I still managed to hit eight out of ten targets easily enough and the grin on my face as I turned to the equally grinning Iruka was surely splitting my face in half.
Quest Completed!
Bonus objective completed: Surpass your personal best! Reward: 500 XP.
Your level goes up by one!
"Congratulations Naruto! You are on a roll today! Keep it up and you might not graduate as the dead last!" He declared and I thanked Gamer's Mind for allowing me not to show the embarrassment I felt as my classmates laughed at me. It also helped that I felt noticeably stronger with just leveling up and I felt too god about that to feel bad about the other laughing at me.
I glared at Iruka-sensei with totally not a pout on my face. "Stop it Iruka-sensei! I have been practicing a lot lately!" That seemed to placate everyone as the laugh subsided and sensei began to chuckle as his amusement continued. "Do we have time for me to go at it again or are we going to spar right away?"
Iruka shook his head. "Sparring will start in half an hour. Have at it as much as you want until I call you," he said before he walked away with Mizuki to give pointers to the kids that hadn't done as well.
So for half an hour once again I began to throw kunai and shuriken at the dummies, only pausing to remove them from where they were imbedded since for some reason no one else was interested in repeating. Since I was now doing the motions correctly and hitting the center of the targets continuously I managed to get Shurikenjutsu to level fifteen after I don't know how many times, getting the expected by now increases in bonuses and not so expected two points in DEX. Thanks to my bonuses I was already two times as dexterous and fast as I had been since getting this ability a few days ago. I repeat: This is fucking awesome.
At Iruka-sensei's behest we walked towards the sparring circle and I watched as he began to apparently randomly call a pair of kids so they could beat the shit out of each other with their feet and fists. This time I noticed that only the civilian girls were underwhelming since Ino and Hinata, thanks to previous training probably, managed to show decent skill in taijutsu in Ino's case and Hinata beat hers easily, which was expected since she was from the Hyuga Clan whose specialization was taijutsu.
I got a good laugh when Shikamaru refused to fight claiming that he could spend his time better by sleeping and Choji performing a full german supplex on his opponent to beat him. Sasuke made a show of beating his opponent with flaring kicks and flips and being a smug prick about it again and Sakura got knocked out with one punch by a civilian kid. I cringed and looked worriedly at her as she was taken to the infirmary. She needed to work on that glass jaw.
And then finally it was my turn. "Kiba Inuzuka and Naruto Uzumaki."
Thankful that my nervousness was not shown in my face I stepped forward as di Kiba who, in contrast to my serious façade, was sporting a fanged grin on has tattooed face. He had a good reason to do so since he was many times better than me at taijutsu and we were both aware of that. The fact that Kiba resembled Sasuke in that they both took every waking opportunity to show off was not lost on everybody.
"Get ready Naruto! Imma kick your ass!" He declared as he crouched low with hands coiled, arms crossed at the forearms just below his eyes in the signature stance of his taijutsu style. I went into the basic stance of the style taught in the Academy with knees bent, my left side slightly facing Kiba since I was right handed and my fist closed as I held my left arm level with chest and my right fist was level with my chin.
This couldn't get any worse.
Quest: Easy boy! Easy!
You have been pitied against Kiba Inuzuka once again and you acknowledge that he is better than you at Taijutsu but that doesn't mean you can't put a good performance! Last one minute or more with him and awe your sensei and classmates with your progress!
Rewards for success: 1000 XP. Increased closeness with Iruka Umino. Increased closes with Kiba Inuzuka. Increased closeness with classmates.
Penalties for failure: Decreased closeness with Iruka Umino. Decreased closeness with Kiba Inuzuka. Decreased closeness with classmates and they laugh at your incompetence.
Fuck me.
Wow. I can actually deliver chapters faster if they are shorter since it doesn't feel like a drag to write. I hope to keep this up through my month or so of vacation. I will probably slow down my updates to once a week once the college term start again but for now expect chapters if not daily then every other day. Every five chapter I will put Naruto's profile window so you can see his progress. See ya tomorrow or the day after tomorrow!