Blacksmith (1)

'Last, but certainly not least, the Blacksmith.'

Hatada was standing in front of a brick building, and could feel some decent heat coming from the place. All of the ninja-related buildings were, thankfully, close to one another, so once Nisi gave him the directions, Hatada didn't need any help to find them all within a reasonable timeframe.

Walking in, it smelled distinctly of metal and coal. There was an employee at the front desk who had noticed Hatada, but didn't bother waving him over after seeing how young he was. 

'Kid probably just wandered in here by accident. Let's see what he's up to.'

"Hey, kid, this is a smithy, not a candy store. Scram~" the clerk said.

"Yes, I know," Hatada responded nonchalantly. "Are you the blacksmith?" 

Looking the guy up and down, he didn't look the part. Not only was he skinny, but his hands were in quite good shape (though a few bandages covered his fingers), not exactly the status quo for any blacksmith he'd seen in his past life.

He reminisced about the enormous individuals… and the dwarves. Definitions of the word; Macho.

"No, but why do you want to meet the old man? Don't tell me you want to be his apprentice! Hahaha!"

"..."

"..."

"...

"W-wait, y-you do?" 

Hatada Nodded, but for some reason, the clerc's eyes lit up.

"OI! DAD! Someone wants to be… (trails off)"

The clerk walked through a door, yelling something about "wants to be". 

'This is turning out to be an interesting day… I guess…'

Not 10 seconds later, a massive man burst through the door, nearly knocking it off its hinges. He was nearly bald, desperately grasping onto the last few hairs left on his head, and had a bit of facial hair, either shaved to, or left to grow into a 5 o'clock shadow. His eyes were basically slits, but seemed to be opened as wide as they could at the moment.

He had a strangely giddy expression as he looked around the store, finally landing on the small figure in front of the desk.

"Amu, is this the kid?" he asked in a raspy voice. "He looks about 8…"

"-Unless a ninja replaced him, then yes, dad."

"....

"Hmm…."

The man observed Hatada for a while in deep thought. "Kid, my is my wimpy son playing tricks on his old man, or did you say you wanted to be my apprentice?"

The clerk, no, the blacksmith's son "Amu" rolled his eyes at the stray he caught, evidently used to such antics.

"Yes," Hatada said, attempting to put on the most serious face he could. 'It looks like he'll need some convincing…'

The man thought some more. In fact, he and Hatada stood there for no less than 5 minutes in complete silence. Amu managed to sneak away without his father noticing not 30 seconds after the silence began, probably expecting how long it would take.

"Okay! You start tomorrow at 8:00 pm sharp! If you are even one second late, don't even bother coming back."

"???

"...o-okay…"

It seems that Hatada had received some sort of "karma" for stunlocking Nisi earlier, because he was now the one rooted in place with his jaw on the floor. Instead of a long process of convincing the blacksmith to let him become his apprentice, he just accepted him. The blacksmith walked back into his smithy like nothing happened, leaving Hatada alone in the empty store.

"*Sigh*...what an odd day…"

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-Hokage's office-

Hiruzen silently toiled away at the mountains and mountains of papers with a little help from Nara Shikaku, Mitokado Homura, and Utatane Koharu. While he was doing so, he received the memories of a shadow clone he sent to observe Hatada more closely.

'To have already been able to complete the leaf concentration exercise, even while doing… whatever he was doing… with his kekkei genkai… I may have to increase my expectations even more.

'Also… what the hell was that training?'

Hiruzen hadn't seen everything, but he at least saw how long Hatada trained for, and how intensely. Every time he thought he maxed out an exercise, he would get up a few minutes later and do it all over again with the same intensity! Sometimes more!

'Does he know medical ninjutsu? No… I'm sure I would have received reports of such a talent long ago… but what could explain that recovery time? His kekkei genkai?

'If so… then Tsunade might have some up-and-coming competition…'

His quick evaluation of what actually happened is definitive proof of how experienced, and scary the third Hokage was. Without any knowledge or input from the person in question, he had already figured out one of the concepts of Hatada's Light Magic, despite not having any prior information.

People from Hatada's old world already knew lots about light magic, but if someone had, without any prior experience or stories, heard of "Light Magic", they would probably think it was just able to create and take away light. "Healing" is an entirely different concept to "Light", so why would they think they were connected?

'I'll give him a few more months, and then ask him about it,' Hiruzen thought. 'He probably doesn't know the full extent of his kekkei genkai.'

In the corner of the room, Shikaku had been sneakily taking strategic breaks. While in his latest one, he noticed something:

'Hiruzen's thinking really hard about something… what could it be? I already know of most of the work he has to do right now, and we've already discussed many of the important topics… 

'What could it be…'

He wracked his magnificent mind for a few moments, eventually giving up after finding no realistic idea.

'What a drag~'

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.

Hatada woke up the next day the moment a hint of sunlight littered the sky. He put on more shorts and another plain t-shirt, and went over to training ground 75. For 6 hours, he trained as hard as his body would allow him, healing and recovering every time it gave out.

Though this style of training was potent, outclassing even PED's without any of the downsides, it was mentally taxing. Hatada had long since crossed "normal" levels of pain tolerance and had thrown away many words and phrases of complaint from his vocabulary, but he wasn't omnipotent in this aspect.

Soon, his mana reserves were exhausted, leading him to begin his Mana Meditation session.

The rest of his day, up until 7:00 pm, went almost identically to the day before. This time, however, Hatada stuck 3 leaves to his body. This increased the concentration required by quite a bit, but he decided that it wasn't enough.

After he stopped the mana tracking method + leaf concentration exercise, he began his run to the other side of the village to the blacksmith's.

While he did this, he stuck a leaf to each side of his head. After a few minutes of running, one fell off. Hatada didn't care, and snatched it out of the air before it reached the ground, and continued to run.

This version of the exercise had a different kind of difficulty. Instead of multitasking, it required him to react to the changing wind conditions, as well as the movement of his body every time his foot struck the ground. His sweat didn't make it easier, either.

His run was a little longer than before, but he got there with 10 minutes to spare. It would have been faster had the leaves never fallen off his head, but that was inevitable. 

'When I can do that with two leaves on my head, two on my wrists, and two on my ankles, I'll say I've completed the leaf concentration exercise, and will move on to the next step.

Hatada's bar for completion was far past the typical one, but he would thank himself once he began the next few exercises. 

Amu saw him walk in, and smiled. "Thank goodness you showed. Since you were here yesterday, he hasn't pestered me at all!

"Come, he's almost done with the day."

Hatada followed Amu through the door and into the smithy, who had a noticeable pep in his step. Now, the smell of coal and metal was even more pronounced. On top of that, the sheer heat in the room made his eyebrows tingle.

The blacksmith was in a corner sharpening some blades that looked to have been finished not minutes before. 

"Don't bother trying to talk to him while he works, dad gets way too focused," Amu said. "He'll stop before 8:00, so just wait on that stool for a few minutes."

Hatada thanked Amu and sat on the stool, watching the blacksmith work. Without any aid, the blacksmith expertly sharpened the blade of a katana to a razor's edge. Only when he was done did he look up, seeing Hatada already patiently waiting there. 

He smiled wide, closing his eyes further… if that was even possible. 

"Good, you passed the first test."

'Eh?'

"Test?" Hatada asked. 'There was a test?'

"Yes. Blacksmithing is tedious and uncomfortable, so if you couldn't at least watch me do this for a couple of minutes, I'd have kicked you out without question."

"...Wait, what if I arrived exactly at 8:00?"

He shook his head. "Who comes to their first day of apprenticeship EXACTLY on time? I would have been quite impressed if you had the balls to do that."

He got up from the stool and carefully laid the katana down on a rack. "My name is Assai Yamada, and my family has been blacksmithing in this village for the past 3 generations. Annoyingly, my lazy ass son seems hellbent on uprooting our legacy and starting a clothing business, so I have been in need of an apprentice. My standards, however, are high, so if you aren't able to keep up, I'll find another.

"Now, introduce yourself," he said while crossing his arms.

[A/N:

Discord link should be permanent now. So... JOIN PLS! I've added roles as well, so if you're scared of spoilers, the chat that has them is locked behind a special role. 

If you have any ideas, suggestions, or requests, there is also a channel for that as well.

Also, thanks for all the support and new ppl who added the novel to their collections. If you haven't done so, though, ADD TO COLLECTIONS!