Chapter 5: Joys of Reading
Disclaimer: Naruto is the work of Kishimoto
Right now Naruto counted that he was on his 15th Loop ever since this started, the 11th Loop since he actually graduated and became a Ninja and the 6th Loop since he asked for Iruka's help on reading and writing.
And he could say that there were so many damn things that were taken from him when the figured to make him unable to read and write.
He even used the transformation jutsu to enter the library and it was wonderful.
In here there was no one to stare at him and no one to throw him out; that is if he kept up his transformation. He had a time limit of around 5 minutes with his current abilities.
Because of this he couldn't actually read many books without notice unless he avoided people which made the experience a bit less fun for him.
But the thing Naruto was most pleased of was that he could read and write now thanks to the month of tutoring that Iruka gave him. This was aside from the attention, good will and his headband was the best thing anyone ever given him.
Another thing Naruto took notice of was his Chakra Control which was finally at High Academy Student levels.
Taking the leaf exercise to the direction Iruka said, Naruto managed to float the leaf above his forehead. After that Naruto tried sticking two leaves on his forehead and do the leaf exercise twice at once.
Needless to say that the difficulties were ramped up several times with that to the point Naruto wasn't able progress there at all without a way to split his consciousness into two in relation to Chakra.
Though Naruto did wonder a couple of times if he was doing this wrong; he would need to read up some Chakra Theory to see if he was missing something.
Transforming into a Genin he saw before, an average looking boy the same height as him with brown hair, Naruto walked into the Library. He had used different transformations each time to make sure no one was suspicious of him and went directly to the area that talked about Chakra Theory. This was the first time he went here since he wanted for information about…everything else first.
Konoha history was actually interesting and he learnt a great deal about how the ninja system worked and why.
There were actually five ranks aside from Kage. Genin, Chunin, Special Jonin, Jonin and Elite Jonin.
From Genin and Chunin was easy for most people with enough hard work.
Special Jonins were ninja with one area in the Jonin rank while everything else could be Chunin or even Genin level.
Jonins were those with two areas that were Jonin rank else one area in the Jonin rank and everything else in the Chunin rank
And finally Elite Jonin were those with at least three areas in Jonin rank else some exceptions.
Like having an area that you were Kage rank in or something completely unique; this would be a good deal for an exception if he ever saw one. One Taijutsu obsessed ninja proved that for a fact.
Picking up a book labelled 'Basic Chakra Theory for Beginners' he read it in his mind.
Chakra is the even mix between physical and spiritual energy in the body. Physical energy comes from the body and represents the health of the person, their immune system and stamina. Spiritual energy comes from the mind and represents the mental health of the person, their memory and analytic abilities. Thus by training your body and training your mind, you are able to increase your Chakra Capacity and by mixing these two properties, Chakra is created and can be moulded by the user.
Moulding Chakra actively drains your reserves and depending on the amount, it may cause dust to small rocks to rise from the ground around the user. Furthermore it has the added effect of passively increasing your physical abilities by a small margin if you do not use it for any jutsus. There are many theories on why this happens but the most agreed on reason is that when Chakra has the effect of amplifying the effects of anything it resides in and when Chakra is moulded inside of you, the Chakra is amplifying your abilities as well.
Using Chakra in a jutsu is another unique thing that occurs. By making hand-seals; you are actually forcing the Chakra to form in a certain way to give effect to a jutsu. Hand-seals due to this are a crutch for ninjas to rapidly use jutsu and can be decreased by repetition of the jutsu due to your body's Chakra having a memory of forming in the way that hand-seals would have normally force it to form. Due to this, with enough practise, there are many ninjas able to cut down the number of hand-seals needed for a jutsu or even use jutsu without hand-seals at all. However even Chakra has its limits and large scale jutsus are impossible for people to use seal-less.
Naruto continued to read the book and found it interesting at the very least.
It explained the concept of Chakra quite well and why Ninjas used it. Then it went to list the different hand-seals and how they affected jutsus as well which was surprising though it did not talk on why it did. He would have to search other more advanced books.
'Hmm…I should read the book on Chakra Control theory as well, might let me figure out a new Chakra Control exercise without resorting to go to Iruka-sensei all the time' he thought.
He was more than grateful to the man especially ever since he started to read.
The Konoha Library was actually quite large though part of it was restricted with Chunin guarding the Genin section and ANBU guarding everything else higher; not that they could detect him either way which was strange since Iruka said all Jonin and that included ANBU could detect the Transformation jutsu.
Though Naruto's only problem was that he couldn't use the jutsu for long, he needed more control over the jutsu and his own Chakra for that.
Finishing the book, Naruto noticed his Transformation was undone and recasted it and then took out a book on something else he wanted to work on.
Taijutsu.
To be precise it was the Taijutsu book on the Academy Style which was completely average and neutral in everything.
Naruto read that this style was made by the Nidaime Hokage as a basis for all Shinobi in Konoha when they were Academy Students and not ninjas yet.
The style would allow the person to more easily adapt to any styles they would later learn as well as allow Academy Students to stall enemies until a more trained ninja appeared.
Who said the Nidaime Hokage didn't do much for the village?
From what he read in the histories of Konoha; while the Shodaime Hokage founded the village with his long-time friend Uchiha Madara, The Sandaime Hokage was the longest reigning Hokage or Kage with the exception of the Sandiame Tsuchikage and the Yondaime Hokage was known for stopping the Kyuubi with his own life; the Nidaime seemed to have done more than all of them for Konoha.
He was the one who established the Ge-Chu-Jo system which allowed the Five Great Villages and everyone else judge the strength of a Ninja as well as the S-A-B-C-D rank for missions and ninja alike.
He was the one who made the Academy the way it was, teaching them the basis of everything to know to be a Ninja.
And he was also the one who made most of the base policies that were still being used today in the village. But most importantly he also established the Konoha Library which held texts and jutsus for all Shinobi of appropriate rank to have.
While the Yondaime was his hero, the Sandaime was like his grandfather and the Shodaime was the first; Naruto actually respected the Nidaime a lot for his work.
Not that he would actually say that aloud, not many people actually respected the Nidaime a lot apparently since he was called a cold man. Plus he was kinda overshadowed by his older brother and the fact that most of the things he did were behind closed doors and not recorded.
Anyway, Naruto passed the rest of the loop reading and on the 16th Loop since the start he went to Iruka to help him with his Taijutsu.
"Iruka-sensei!" Naruto waved at the man who just finished grading the same papers time and time again in Naruto's perspective.
"Naruto?" Iruka looked surprised as always and Naruto grinned to that.
It was good to know what the other person felt at times.
"I need a favour" he said scratching the back of his head as he was nervous. He didn't know how Iruka would react…lecturing him was fine but…
"I need some help with my Taijutsu" Naruto answered before Iruka could say anything.
To Iruka, Naruto seemed strange but the previous say it was revealed of why he was hated so much in the village and one of his trusted teachers betrayed him as well; not that there were many.
Not wanting the boy in front of him to be in more pain though not knowing that Naruto really didn't care about Mizuki at this point, he agreed and said, "Sure though I can only teach you the Academy style."
Naruto grinned back at his long time sensei and said, "That's what I'm hoping for."
Naruto was now at Loop 20 which he had counted.
Things were really getting drawn out as he found out that while his mind might comprehend a Taijutsu style via the loops, his body; his muscle memory did not. Furthermore he found out that this was due to his muscles resetting each time and therefore caused his hand-seal speeds to constantly be painfully slow.
"What's weird is your hair!" Naruto shouted at Kakashi charging at him.
Right now, he had used a full week solely on Taijutsu alone to prepare himself again Kakashi-sensei. The lazy man with his better Taijutsu and Shadow Clones seemed to take him a bit seriously now.
While running Naruto made the oh familiar cross sign and shouted, "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" creating another 5 copies of him.
Unlike before, he sent three of them to attack first coordinating with each other to-
Poof Poof Poof
Annnnd they were easily defeated.
Naruto was not surprise at that at all; his Taijutsu was only Academy level though bordering Genin level. Either way, a Jonin can easily destroy his clones without trouble.
Naruto signalled to the other two clones to start throwing weapons at Kakashi-sensei just before they too were destroyed.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto shouted for a second time.
This time 20 clones appeared at once. His Chakra Control was now good enough that he was able to summon the amount of clones he wanted to a factor of 3 clones variable with larger amounts.
"You can make that many?!" Kakashi blurted out in disbelief.
He had heard his blonde student was able to use that jutsu but to this extent…his Chakra must be extremely large, larger than his at least.
"But…numbers won't get you anywhere!" Kakashi said with a more serious look on his face.
In an instant, Naruto heard a large number of his clones being popped with a large number of slashes as they charged at Kakashi with their average Taijutsu.
To summarise what happened at the end, Naruto stilled failed though he made sure that Kakashi worked a bit harder for it. Now that his Taijutsu was at a good enough level for now, he decided it would be good to focus on another area for a while.
Genjutsu defence training would be useless against Kakashi right now so he disregarded that for a bit and while Ninjutsu was useful in making his Jutsus better, it wouldn't help that much as well.
Therefore Naruto decided he would work on his stealth and trapping skills with some tracking on the side.
Using the Transformation jutsu again to gain access to the library, he read up on some basic details on each of the areas. Naruto had a soft spot for Trapping and also looked up details on wiring and how they could be used in Trapping.
Turns out that it was extremely similar to how his pranks worked out. He grinned at the thought that his years of pranking was training for this.
Naruto had a whole list of pranks that he could use but made a mental list on the more…lethal types of traps that he could make currently. Most of the more complex ones involved seals or Fuinjutsu which he was not familiar with…hmm he could look up the subject later on.
However after a loop, Naruto was quite familiar with flinging weapons from different directions, pitfall traps and smoke bomb traps or rather the stink bomb traps which were wonderful as a distraction.
Naruto didn't even bother to show up to the team selection as he went on to read and apply in practise some of the traps as pranks to various random mean people in the village but not before reading up on some things about stealth.
Naruto changed his outfit temporary into a darker green colour to blend into the background forest more easily and also practised decreasing his breathing and moving sounds.
Breathing through the nose was a useful habit to have since you make less noise in breathing and can detect foreign substance in the air as well.
As for tracking…Naruto spent the next four loops on it along with Chakra Control, Taijutsu, Trapping and Stealth so that area progressed quite slowly. Naruto couldn't get the hang on using Chakra to enhance his senses since he lacked the control to do it properly without overloading it and damaging those parts of his body.
But he quickly found out that through pranks once again that he was quite good a tracking small movements and other clues to avoid people and thus find them as well.
Loop 25 End.
A/N:
This chapter is more information dumping. The 5 ranks of Genin, Chunin, Special Jonin, Jonin and Elite Jonin makes a lot more sense to me than the 4 ranks in Canon where you sometimes have Jonins, the top of the pack being beaten in mass by a single S-rank immediately.
I mean you have Kakashi and Gai, both Jonin who can fight S-rank enemies and even defeat them while there are no other recorded people Jonin rank (A-rank) who can fight on par with S-rank ninjas.
Therefore, those two are Elite Jonin. The true top of the pack who can even face S-rank enemies and not die immediately.
Moreover, does anyone else think that the Nidaime Hokage was the least developed of ALL Hokages. I mean we know all about all the other Hokages but the Nidaime? Nope, nothing. He just died in a battle from what we know saving his students and naming the Sandaime Hokage.
Seeing the Shodaime Hokage is frankly an idiot, I made it so that the Nidaime in his rule set up the real foundations of the Hidden Village System. There are tones of stories out there that label the Nidaime the origins of ROOT as well since he was Danzo's teacher.