Academy Arc 6

While I was walking to the public training ground after spending some time at the Konoha Library, I pulled up my status page to check out my progress.

Name: Shinji Ikari

Age: 8

Level: 12

Next Level: 450/2250

HP: 2500/2500

CP: 4290/4290

STR: 40

VIT: 38

DEX: 45

INT: 66

CHA: 17

Points – 48

Ryo – 5540

Perks:

[Lesser Chakra Sensitivity]: You have acquired a burgeoning talent in your ability to sense and manipulate chakra.

+20% to chakra-related skill effects

+10% increase to CP recovery rate

+10% increase to max CP

-10% CP cost to all chakra-related skills

Title:

[Zealous Student]: +20% EXP gain to all skills when in the Shinobi Academy

[Life Saver]: +1 Point every time you save a life

[Budding Talent]: +20% stat growth to all stats when in the Shinobi Academy

[Precocious]: +20% stat growth to INT before age 12

Skills:

[Observe] (Active) LVL: 4

The ability to read information about the targeted object or person through observation.

Improved proficiency in the ability reveals more information.

[Intermediate Body Conditioning] (Passive) LVL: 1

Increases your body's strength, speed and endurance through training

+12% to physical damage

+12% to movement speed

-12% to physical damage taken

+12% to physical stat growth rate

[Shurikenjutsu] (Passive) LVL: 9

Increases accuracy of thrown shuriken and kunai by 90%

Increases damage dealt by thrown shuriken and kunai by 90%

[Knife Fighting] (Passive) LVL: 4

Increases damage dealt with small, bladed weapons by 40%

[Intermediate Taijutsu Mastery] (Passive) LVL: 2

+14% to physical damage

+14% to movement speed

[Meditation] (Active) LVL: 8

+50% to CP regeneration

+50% to HP regeneration

[Leaf Concentration Exercise] (Passive/Active) LVL: MAX

CP Cost: 0.5 per second

+10% to chakra control

[Tree Walking Exercise] (Passive/Active) LVL: 2

CP Cost: 42 per minute

+24% to chakra control

[Stealth] (Passive) LVL: 6

When sneaking, +30% harder to be detected.

[Konoha Academy Taijutsu] (Passive) LVL: MAX

When using this taijutsu style,

+20% to physical damage

+20% to movement speed

-20% physical damage taken

[Power Strike] (Active) LVL: 5

CP Cost: 80

Increases the damage dealt by your next physical attack by 100%

I had mixed feelings while checking out my status page. My stats were pretty decent after training intensely for the past year. But as I had discovered, my stat gains through purely training alone were slowing down dramatically over the past few months.

When I had first arrived in this world and began physical training, I would be receiving 3 to 5 points in either my STR, DEX or VIT every day. However, over time the stat growth slowed down to 1 to 2 a day and now it would be rare to receive more than 1 a week. What this told me was that there was a limit to increasing my stats through purely training alone, and the value of the free points I received when I levelled up would exponentially increase when I used them later rather than sooner.

Additionally, I had wanted to experiment with using training weights to improve my physical stats more efficiently, but the storekeepers that sold them had refused to sell them to me – stating that I was too young to start weight training and it would only hamper my physical development at best and injure myself at worst. Even though I had the [Gamer's Body] skill that prevented me from being permanently injured.

I had discovered that the [Gamer's Body] skill did allow me to receive injuries, unlike the main character in The Gamer anime who only took a hit on his HP whenever he received damage. Once, in a moment of distraction, I had fallen from a particularly tall tree when I was practicing the tree-walking exercise.

The cuts and scrapes from the fall remained on my body, and blood naturally flowed from them, however I received no broken bones or any debilitating injuries from the fall, not even a sprained ankle or a cracked rib from the fall. My HP went down, and I sustained superficial injuries but nothing else.

I could only guess that while I would receive injuries from any damage taken, nothing permanent would remain on my body. My natural HP regeneration had naturally kicked in as well, and the cuts and scrapes had gone away after just a night's sleep. It was either that or my body's VIT was so high I barely received any damage from the relatively high fall.

I cared too much for my own sanity and paid too much attention to my desire to minimize self-inflicted injuries to experiment further with the effects of the [Gamer's Body] skill.

I was also able to find out more about how the stats actually affected me, specifically DEX. The stat did not just determine my movement speed and overall agility, but it even increased my reflexes, and reaction speed. It was something hardly noticeable when my DEX was still in the 10s or low 20s, but now I could really feel the difference – when I had to react instinctively to any thrown punches before, now I could see with my own eyes where and when said punch would land, as well as having more time to think about how to best counter it.

CHA was a curious stat ability that I had recently had a surge in. After receiving the highest overall grade for my year in the Academy, I received 10 CHA points as a reward from the quest. Following which I had immediately noticed a couple more fangirls that joined Kaori in their pursuit of my attention. Whether it was the influence of the CHA stat or simply the credit of the deed, I was still unsure.

Regarding the aforementioned pre-pubescent fangirls I had… I did not particularly care one way or another about their fancy. If they were 10 years older and hot as hell, sure, I would be more than willing to reciprocate their affections. But right now they were literal children, and what they mistook for love was merely admiration or a fleeting puppy-crush which I did not deign to entertain.

And speaking of the end-of-year examination quest, it was a pretty simple one with generous rewards to boot. I had one main quest objective which was to reach the top 5 for my year. Bonus objectives following that was to receive the highest scores for each individual exam as well as getting first place overall. I received two new titles, [Budding Talent] and [Precocious] when I got first place overall and got a perfect score for the written examination respectively. The effects of the titles were insanely good too.

I was able to achieve all of the objectives except for the taijutsu section since I lost to Sasuke. It was a brutally close fight and neither one of us were willing to back down. We exchanged blows for 10 full minutes – bizarrely long for a taijutsu match and even stranger for two first year academy students. Ultimately, however, his experience and Uchiha clan fighting style overcame my max level academy taijutsu and he managed to clinch victory over me.

It was a humbling experience for me – firstly because I was, again, facing off against a literal child; secondly because in our last spar I managed to win against him. It might have been complacency or arrogance, or just purely unluckiness but I still had to admit he worked hard to win against me after he pulled out some moves he did not have just a few weeks prior. We had exchanged nods of respect after the fight and he even returned a smile.

Our relationship over the year had settled into a respectful, albeit distant, rivalry. We exchanged pleasantries at times, but I could tell he had no wish to engage in any meaningful conversation. So I left him alone as he clearly wanted but he was too shy or perhaps too aloof to say aloud.

Of course that is not to say I had slacked on my own training, since I regularly sparred with my three senpais, Takumi, Noboru and Hiroki. However, after a whole year, Noboru and Hiroki no longer gave my any challenge in the least. My fights with them quickly went from tough but winnable to ending in 1 minute – if I held back. Similarly, my fights with Takumi quickly went from dark souls level boss to a manageable challenge, that is without using [Power Strike]. With it, a well-placed punch or kick would instantly end the spar.

My performance against them only reinforced their belief that I was a taijutsu prodigy and the three of them became heavily invested in my current success in the Academy and future success as an official shinobi of Konohagakure. Sometimes they would bring their Academy friends with them, other civilian-born students, and have me spar with them as well to mixed success.

All of which rapidly improved my [Konoha Academy Taijutsu], [Beginner Taijutsu Mastery], and [Basic Body Conditioning] skills. The latter two had evolved to their intermediate forms when I reached level 10 on both skills.

I was also able to coerce them into helping me with my other skills, much to their initial protest since they wanted me to focus on taijutsu, such as refining my shurikenjutsu and stealth techniques. And I evem got them to help fine tune the three Academy jutsus I learned from perusing the Konoha Library, namely – [Kawarimi no jutsu], the body replacement technique; [Henge no jutsu], the transformation technique; and [Bunshin no jutsu], the clone technique.

I was able to learn the three basic jutsus when I found their respective instructive scrolls in the Konoha Library. However, there was a huge difference from the Gamer system I was familiar with and the one I was currently living through.

I could not simply 'absorb' the techniques from the scrolls. I had to first read through the scrolls, understand the mechanics of the jutsu and how it worked before a new skill would be automatically created. But after the skill was created, I would consequently be able to perform the jutsu perfectly without a problem.

To put it simply, using the analogy of building an IKEA chair; after reading through the instructions, identifying the different parts of the chair and learning how the different parts are supposed to come together, the chair would automatically be built in front of me. I did not have to go through the painstaking process of putting it together myself.

Similarly, if learning a new jutsu had three parts – learning how it worked, practicing and finally performing it correctly – I was able to skip the middle part of practicing entirely. Of course that was not to say that I could neglect practicing the jutsu once I had acquired the skill since it wouldn't level up otherwise.

However, just because I knew how a jutsu worked did not mean I could subsequently create a new skill from scratch. I knew how the Rasengan worked from watching the anime – rotating chakra in different directions and condense it into a ball – but despite that I could not create a new skill just from that. I was unsure whether the system prevented me from taking advantage of knowledge from my past life or I simply needed a scroll every time I wanted to learn a new jutsu.

But even that didn't make sense since I was able to learn the [Leaf Concentration Exercise] and [Tree Walking Exercise] without any scrolls or someone teaching me. I just tried it out a few times, and it worked, and the corresponding skill was created as a result of that initial success. Maybe without a scroll I had to learn jutsus the hard way, actually practice it and be able to successfully perform it before a new skill was created.

I was tempted to start training in forming the Rasengan, but I didn't think it was such a bright idea since I didn't have the chakra capacity to waste in something that might or might not work. The limited chakra capacity that I did have would be better suited for other purposes – basic economics of scarcity: with limited resources and unlimited wants, opportunity cost needs to be weighed to maximize efficiency.

Albeit, learning new jutsus for me was still perhaps 10 times faster than the average shinobi since the actual practicing would take the longest time. But alas, my biggest obstacle to acquiring more jutsus was the fact that ninjutsu scrolls that a first year academy student could access in the Konoha Library was only limited to the three basic ones. Any other required me to be in the last year of my academy training, have special permission from my academy instructors, or be in active shinobi status.

Other than the taijutsu portion of the exams, I aced the others, namely the written test, shurikenjutsu test and the physical proficiency test which was simply testing our fitness level.

The theory exam was easy, at least for a reincarnated individual like me – 20 multiple choice questions that tested elementary level math, some shallow historical knowledge and basic logical reasoning questions.

Shurikenjutsu portion of the exams tested our accuracy with kunai and shuriken at different distances, from 10 meters, 20 meters and 30 meters. We had not been expected to accurately hit the 30 meter target, but with my [Shurikenjutsu] skill at level 9 which granted me a 90% accuracy boost to my throws, I was able to land all of my thrown weapons on the target. No one else even came close.

And then the physical proficiency test mere evaluated our physical fitness by measuring how fast we could run a certain distance, how many push ups and sit ups we could do under a certain time limit. Comparing my performance with my classmates, I could objectively assess that my physical stats were definitively the highest in the class. I outpaced every other student in the run and could also do the most push ups and sit ups as well.

This had come as a surprise to me since I was hardly over-levelled as compared to the clan members. Even now, I was only the same level as Uchiha Sasuke, but our performance for the physical proficiency test said otherwise. A rough estimation would put my physical stats around 30% higher than his, which I still could not measure with a LVL 4 [Observe]. That also meant that my physical stats were roughly 40% higher than the other more physically inclined clan heirs like Kiba and Shino, and 50% higher than everyone else.

It had to be the [Gamer's Body] that made the difference, since I gained stat points that empirically strengthened my body, while others had to put in the time and effort to slowly train their muscles. This gave me an intrinsic, overwhelming advantage over the others. Since not only did I grow stronger much faster than the rest, but I also had the benefits of needing less sleep and little rest to always be in tip top condition. Training, for me, was easy and fun. But for others it was a prolonged, gruelling experience that they had to endure for the slightest modicum of results.

As I turned the corner towards my accommodations, I spotted a few of the older academy students ahead. Some of them were sitting on some crates along the sides of a wall while the others were standing around impatiently, tapping their foot on the ground.