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!

Alright. How to deal with this?

Kiba was stronger, faster and more skilled at taijutsu than me. That much was certain and I was not going to be repeating that again because it was physically painful to admit. Thankfully, I didn't need to win to complete the quest. I just needed to last more than one minute with him when in the past I hadn't even managed to last thirty second with him and I was sure he improved every day. Everything was pretty much against me except for one thing.

I, too, was different. I was more intelligent than Kiba and certainly wiser than him too. I had more choices than him and I had the ability to make the best choice. I was two times as fast as I had been and also slightly stronger and way more durable. I was sure I couldn't win but I could do my best and the chances off completing the quest, which was what I wanted, were high if I played this smart. And I intended to do just that.

Kiba's style was aggressive and seemingly never stopping as he used precise footwork to get the best angles to hit me with his claw poised hands. According to Observe, which I had activated the moment I stepped into the sparring circle, he could turn his fingernails into actual claws to make his taijutsu deadlier, meaning that he was somewhat limited to the moves he could perform and the damage he could do.

If I went and faced him directly I would lose in seconds, no questions asked, but what I could do was to evade his attacks and defend against them as best as I could to tire him out and when that was done I would attack. That was my plan. And I hoped that this plan survived contact with the enemy, in this case Kiba, because if I failed I would be the laughing stock of the class. Again. Not that I wasn't but you know what I mean.

"Begin!"

Iruka-sensei declared the start of the spar and Kiba, as expected, immediately charged towards me with a grin on his face, his arms coiled back to sweep at my face. I fell back into a defensive stance, most likely surprising Iruka since I would normally also charge forward to meet Kiba, and waited for my foe to make the first move. Predictably he swept at my face horizontally with his right hand and with ease that surprised even me I ducked neatly under it and stepped to his side and away from the edge of the sparring circle.

Kiba followed up with a backhand with the same hand and I stepped further away from him, his fingers grazing my chin as I leaned back. If he had been able to use his claws he would've cut me but thankfully that wasn't the case. Kiba seemed confused for a second before he grinned and approached my again this time with a straight left hook/claw attack towards my face and I again duked under it and my eyes widened as Kiba hit me in the face with a right palm strike.

I backed away rubbing my cheek and I glared at him as grinned cheekily. "Got the first hit. C'mon Naruto. You have gotten faster and better at dodging. Show me if you have gotten better at striking too!"

I growled at him and I was about answer him with a colorful choice of words but a window appeared in front me that had me grinning from ear to ear.

A skill has been updated through a special act! By fighting using hand to hand combat techniques you have updated the skill 'Taijutsu'. Due to previous experience with 'Taijutsu' the skill will be displayed accordingly.

Taijutsu. Passive/Active. Lvl 15 [4.0%]. Literally meaning Body Techniques, Taijutsu is basic form of techniques and refers to any techniques involving the martial arts or the optimization of natural human abilities. Taijutsu is executed by directly accessing the user's physical and mental energies, relying on the stamina and strength gained through training. It typically does not require chakra, though chakra may be used to enhance its techniques. Taijutsu is simply put: Hand-to-hand combat. Skill grows with practice and adaptation of new styles. Known styles: Basic Academy Style.

Passively increases STR, VIT and DEX by 25%.

Increases damage done by physical attacks by 50%.

Increases dodging speed by 50%.

Increases blocking defense by 50%.

Increases parrying success by 50%.

I dismissed the two windows with a thought since it would be weird if I randomly swept my arm to the side and flexed my fingers as I smirked at Kiba, confidence filling me as I felt the boost in power and knowledge taking place. I set myself back into my stance, feeling immensely more comfortable doing it than the first time I did a few seconds ago, and I locked eyes with Kiba. "With pleasure," I told him and taunted him to come forward with a challenging look.

Kiba took the bait and charged at me again but this time I was ready for him as he threw a claw strike to the right side of my face with his left hand and I dodged to that same side and I let his trike pass by me which resulted in him overextending. Then with my left hand I grabbed his forearm and I managed to hit him twice on the ribs getting grunts of pain from Kiba before he got a hold of himself and spun as best as he could to the right to strike me with a backhanded punch.

I stopped my third punch as I was forced to use my right hand to stop his and smirked as I grabbed Kiba's other forearm and he now stood facing away from me. There was something to be said about sudden power-ups and catching your opponent off guard with said power-ups that tasted so sweet in my mouth. It had only taken moments for the bonuses of the Taijutsu skill to set and for everything to fall into place in my mind about the Basic Academy Taijutsu Style that I was taught.

The style was more a base to build on once we got more experience since it focused in how to correctly punch, kick, knee, block, parry and dodge and how to chain those movements using basic and effective footwork in order to make the best of what we could do. When the Taijutsu skill updated everything I had been doing wrong was corrected and now I was able to use the most basic style of taijutsu to perfection.

Both hand tightly grasping Kiba's forearms as he struggled futilely to release himself with zero leverage, he had made the mistake when he assumed I would predict another backhand strike at my face and much less from this position, I bent my knees slightly and released Kiba, who stumbled forwards at the unexpected lack of resistance, just as I tucked my knees into my body and immediately sprung them forwards in a drop kick that caught Kiba right in the middle of his back.

He flew forwards a few feet and landed in a heap, and also on his face I shall add, just before he reached the edge of the sparring circle. He shook his head off cobwebs and got to his feet immediately and turned towards me, his face scrapped slightly and a lot of dirt covered the front of his clothes. I stood up from the kneeling position I had fallen to after performing my mood and smirked at him. "So… did I get better at hitting too?"

Kiba growled deep inside his chest as he glared at me but I could see a sliver of respect in his wild eyes and I smirked at him as I fell back into my stance, daring him to go in the offensive again. Like I said earlier I couldn't match Kiba's ferociousness if we set in a rhythm of only attacking each other but I could match him by fighting defensively and poking holes on his form to exploit and counter attack him.

He was faster and stronger than me still but the moment Taijutsu skill got updated I wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I was more skilled in hand-to-hand combat. My ability made it so everything I learned and got catalogued as a skill was done to perfection. And since you couldn't be better than perfection itself…

Kiba charged once again at me and we fell into a ferocious bout of him attempting to hit me any way he could and me attempting to prevent that from happening any way I could. Kiba managed to hit me cleanly some times since a perfect form can only get you so far without actual experience on using the style but I took solace on the fact that I managed to catch him cleanly as well once or twice. That would teach him to never underestimate me again.

"Stop!"

It was when I heard Iruka-sensei's voice that I realized I was badly panting and that my chest was burning. Gamer's Body took care of that and I realized that both Kiba and I had stopped at Iruka-sensei's call to stop. We were both holding onto each other's left forearms and his opened hand was inches away from my face and my closed fist was at roughly the same distance away from his. Later today I would spend a few minutes feeling smug because of how epic it must've looked.

Quest completed!

By way of spending a prolonged time fighting with nothing but your body your VIT goes up by two!

Kiba kept his grip around my forearm as he grinned toothily. "We both know should the fight had continued I would've whoop the soil with your ass."

His grip tightened and I did the same as I shared a grin with him. "I can admit that, yes. But you have to also admit that I had gotten better and that I every time I hit you was a good one. I have gotten better and if you don't step up your game I'll be better than you and it will be me whooping the soil with your ass."

Kiba's grin widened as he released me and I did the same. "Challenge accepted. I'm willing to crack your face in any time."

My smirk was challenging as I nodded at him. "You are on."

Iruka-sensei approached me and I could feel the pride he had for both me and Kiba as he grinned at us. "Splendid performances both of you. You have clearly improved a lot in the past two weeks. Kiba you must work more in your patience and implementing more defensive moves into your style along with footwork that helps you dodge attacks directed to your legs, which Naruto demonstrated are your weak point. Naruto for your part I couldn't detect mistakes on your form but you need to work both on your speed and strength to get the most of the style before you build up on it with other forms of attacks. Top marks for both of you! Go stand with the rest."

My grin couldn't be contained and the same could be said for Kiba as we both walked towards where the others were looking at us impressed by what they had seen. I turned towards Kiba and shared a smirk with him as I held up my fist. He got the hint immediately and we fist bumped. I was going to make good on my promise to get better for our next fight and I was sure Kiba would also improve.

My improvements, however, I was planning to make them more meaningful than his to make good on my other promise to whip the floor with his ass. I never went back on my word whenever I could help it and in this past few days I was feeling very generous.

xXxXxXx

My apartment was not something even remotely close to decent and much less something to be awed at. I could barely called an apartment because it was actually a one room studio with a separated bathroom the only other room. The main, and only room, was certainly bigger than a normal room but it looked smaller than what it actually was with a bed, a drawer, a dresser, a desk, a night table with a small T.V., a two chair table, a sink and a stove arranged almost awkwardly to fit.

I have lived here for four years and while it contained everything I would need to live it didn't have anything I wanted for myself after I thought about my living conditions for more than a few minutes. I was worth more than this and I used to think the reason Jiji had not given me a better apartment was because he couldn't find it. I knew better now. The most likely reason was because everyone else refused to let me near them for some reason.

I wanted to find that reason and see if I could somehow change it so I wasn't hated and scorned anymore and I didn't have a clue into what it could be so until I got a clue that was sent into the backburner and I focused on more immediate matters as I sat on the floor of my studio/apartment: Using Calligraphy and Chakra Control exercise Leaf Concentration at the same time and being very successful at it.

Turns out I was capable of instinctual multitasking. After I put the five points I had gained after I leveled up into WIS my CP R shot to eleven CP per minute because for one point put to WIS equaled to point one percent of my MAX CP as CP R which meant that every point counted as far as I was concerned. Normally I would've saved the points for later to get a more substantial advancement but now I could use two leaves at the same time without technically using chakra because it regenerated one point faster than it was spent.

So now I sat there calmly writing symbols with two leaves glued to my temples. It must have looked ridiculous but seeing the skills Chakra Control and Calligraphy growing at the same time at a decent pace placated me. I didn't know how much was me and how much it was the Gamer Ability that allowed me to do two concentration demanding tasks at the same time but I was not going to complain any time soon. If I could get stronger it would be done as long as it didn't mean to do something I considered incorrect like killing someone for no reason.

Calligraphy was very easy to level up because of the knowledge implanted in my head and since it made it so I got faster and better at writing the more levels I got then it essentially became faster and easier to improve the more I improved it. The same could not be said for Chakra Control because the bonuses of the skill didn't affect the skill directly like Calligraphy's did so every level I gained on it made it slower and harder to improve. I was sure that if I changed exercises to Tree Climbing it would go up fast again but I will use Leaf Concentration until it didn't give me XP on the skill before I moved to Tree Climbing.

There was also the fact that I didn't want to spend more chakra than I could regenerate while training because it would mean that at some point I would have to stop to recover and that meant a period of time in which I won't improve, which was unacceptable. Slow and meaningful continuous improvement in key areas was better than exhausting myself doing a lot of things at the same time and improving all of them a little.

It was when my head began to hurt and my hand felt numb that I stopped because the discomfort was messing up my concentration I my leaves kept falling off and I would subconsciously stop writing. It took a second for Gamer's Body to take care of that and as it did I looked at the two skills. Calligraphy was now at level fifteen and Chakra Control was at level ten, their bonuses having improved by five percent each five levels as was the standard for skills.

By spending hours and hours writing and drawing DEX goes up by 2!

Well wasn't that a welcomed surprise?

I dismissed all the windows I had opened and threw everything I had been using into my Inventory before I stood up and stretched my arms over my head before I stretched my legs trying to reach the ceiling by putting myself on my tiptoes before doing five little jumps in place and shaking my arms like a monkey. I rolled my head a few times getting some satisfying pops and cracks before sighing in relief with my eyes closed for a second.

"Alright that's enough rest," I said after a minute or two and I was about to check the sun to see what time it was before something occurred to me. My life was essentially a game and if it was really based on a generic RPG then I must also have…

"Options."

Settings

Interface

Sound

Commands

Difficulty

I grinned smugly.

A few minutes later and I had successfully developed and customized my Heads Up Display or HUD as it was commonly known. I had a digital clock on the upper left corner of my field of vision and I set it so a timer would appear below the clock should a quest or anything else required it. On the right upper corner was a circular mini map centered around me and the direction I was going that displayed my actual position on the village and key places like Ichiraku, Ramen and the Hokage Tower.

And finally on the lower part of my field of vision, right in the middle and occupying three fourths of it, were three bars: My HP, CP and XP bars. The HP bar was colored a deep red with the numbers displayed in bold white, the CP bar was colored blue also with white bold letters for the numbers and the XP bar was colored a yellowish orange and the numbers, both the exact amount and in percent of what I needed for the next level, were colored bold black.

Satisfied for now –I couldn't change the Difficulty, which was set on Insane, so I only played with the other options a little but didn't change anything major like making me left handed. I moved my eyes from right to left and then up and down and grinned again as everything that I set moved with them. Now I only needed to bring up my status to check my stats, stat points, current amount of money and for more detailed information.

My clock marked four o'clock in the afternoon and that meant that the library was open and I recalled Iruka-sensei saying that I needed to work on both my strength and speed to get the best out of the Academy Style. The library must have something on how to train to get the best results. While my body no longer functioned as a normal one it was somehow still affected by physical exercise like the body of a normal human.

I stepped out of my apartment and didn't bother to clock the door since everything remotely important I owned was in my Inventory, which only I could access so it was fool proof security for my things and the money I had saved until now.

The moment I was out I activated Observe to improve something while I walked and since the entire village hated my guts I could train Detect Bloodlust which was a passive ability that alerted me that somewhat wanted to cause me harm and who was it that wanted to cause me harm in a radius of sixty five meters. At level one it had been twenty meters and as it leveled up it gained five meters per level so do the math and you'd see how much I was hated.

Walking through the village helped me train into paying attention to what I wanted and ignore unimportant stuff. The 'Bloodlust detected from 'x' direction' windows were ignored in favor of the windows that relayed me information via Observe. I spammed the skill on everything I laid my eyes on, mentally closing windows as I was finished reading and turning to a new one and repeating the process.

In the end I managed to finally level up Observe to the point it tell me the base stats of the people I used it on and I found out just how far behind I was. The highest leveled Chunin I observed, who was at level fifty three, had base physical stats above eighty and his INT was above fifty with WIS barely above thirty and LUK barely above twenty. His max HP and CP didn't make sense with what I knew of the modifiers that saw to those bars but I didn't know what perks and passives they had. Observe was still limited but what I had now could give me a fairly good idea against anyone I could observe.

Detect Bloodlust gained three levels and with them an increase of fifteen meters on my range of perception. Thankfully it had never went above glaring and denying me things so I could somewhat tolerate it and as morbid as it was, that fact that I was hated helped me. I had a skill that told me who wanted to cause me harm from a max distance of eighty meters and it was passive. If you wanted to cause me harm you wouldn't surprise me and/or catch me off guard.

I entered the library and waved cheekily at the librarian who actually growled at me with a hateful leer on her eyes. I shrugged my shoulders and made my way to a section of the library that had books on physical fitness and I began to look through them. I absolutely ignored anything that as much as mentioned dieting since those books were trash and as trash they should be treated. I finally found something promising and I was about to pick it up when a voice stopped me.

"Ho! What is a youthful fellow like you doing picking books on muscle building?"

I turned towards the voice with eyes wide since he had managed to go unnoticed by my passive methods of perception and the first thing I took notice was the green leotard covering his entire body, then I noticed the caterpillars he had for eyebrows and finally the text above his head.

?
LV?
Maito Gai

"Um…" I tried to look for a lie to tell but something told me that it wouldn't work with this guy so I decided to go with the truth. "Well… according to my sensei I have already mastered the forms of the Academy Style Taijutsu and he suggested that I increased both my strength and speed to get the most out of it. I was looking for books that told me how to go around doing that since sensei forgot to tell me how to actually do it."

The man chuckled and I noticed that he Was very muscled but no overly so as he put one had on his hip and raised one finger to point at the book I was about to pick. "Let me tell you then that the book that go your interest would do exactly the opposite of what you want to accomplish. The exercises contained in those books will stunt your growth and make you slower at the same time."

I grimaced at that and gave the book a look of disgust earning another chuckle from the man. I turned towards him and bowed my head. "Thanks, sir. Erm, you seem to know a lot about this stuff so could you tell me how can I get strong and fast without stunting my growth?" I rubbed the back of my head. "I am already rather shot to begin with so…"

He laughed at that and I was thankful for Gamer's mind since it helped me to not show my embarrassment. When he finished laughing he nodded his head. "Of course, of course. I'll do anything to help a youthful fellow as yourself to get better at Taijutsu. You told me that your sensei told you that your form was perfect already, right?"

I was sure it was thanks to my ability but I was not going to tell him that. "According to him yes and I have to admit that I don't feel any discomfort when using the style. The moves flow perfectly into each other and I don't have to think much of what I am doing while I fight."

He grinned showing impossibly white teeth that I was sure would've glinted if we had been outside. "If you feel indeed like that then you must have mastered the style. Congratulations on that since few people go out of their way to master the basics and build a solid foundation to build further into it."

"Thanks."

"Anyways since you are still growing I suggest that you buy a set of five chakra weights that are sold at shinobi stores. The consist of two wrist bands, two ankle band and a vest that automatically absorbs your chakra and adjust to the weight best suited to work out with. I recommend you keep the weights on anytime you would move around and only take them off when you are going to take a break and when you are going to sleep. All the exercises you normally do should be done with the weights on to get the best out of those too."

I nodded my head in understanding. "I would be working my whole body at the same time doing the things I normally do then. Even walking will become a workout and since the weight will be equally distributed through my body then my growth won't be stunted. That must be one of the most used methods of physical training, right?"

He grinned at me and shook his head. "You are correct on the first thing you said but sadly incorrect on the second one. Most ninja prefer to channel chakra through their bodies while doing regular exercise and while it helps it doesn't do too much. Apparently they don't like the burn."

I crossed my arms and pursued my lips. "But the burn feels good."

His grin widened if it was possible and he ruffled my hair. "You and I are going to get along great. What is your name?"

"Naruto Uzumaki. What's yours?" I already knew what his name was but he didn't know that. I was sure he also knew who I was because everyone did but he was apparently different from the others if he was going out of his way to introduce himself.

He hit himself on the chest with a fist and then pointed at himself with a thumb grinning all the time. "I am Konoha's Sublime Green Beast of Prey! Maito Gai!"

I was officially awed by this awesome guy. "How do I get a nickname like that?"

He smirked. "You have to earn it."

I nodded resolutely. "I promise I will earn myself the most awesome nickname once I become an official ninja. Something like the Orange Comet of Doom! Or the Blond Walking Disaster! Or better yet! The Orange Death of Konoha! Oh I can't wait for my own nickname!"

As I began to ramble nicknames Maito Gai began to laugh and for some odd reason I felt that some people were shivering in fright or lamenting about something.

How odd.

So the first jonin that Naruto meets is Gai of all of them, it's only chapter three and he thinks Gai is awesome.

This is not going to end well for anyone. And don't worry. He is not going to be wearing a leotard but he will be influenced by Gai's best qualities.

Stay tuned for the next chapter. I'm sorry if it is terribly boring but I need to build Naruto and the world up a little before the story proper can begin. I promise that the wait will be worthy because you'll never see a Naruto as badass as the one I am building.

See ya next time minions!