4 The Grind Begins 3

As it turned out, all he really needed to do was give his ninja registration number to check out what he wanted, the scroll on the Feather Fist style and a manual on basic fuinjutsu.

He would have returned home after that, but he decided to head back to his training ground.

His Water Walking was still a bit shaky, so once he got there, he hopped onto the water and idly went through some taijutsu motions, while reading taking a cursory glance over his spoils from the library.

"Huh, this looks familiar." Daiki mused as he poured over the Feather Fist style.

The diagrams within the scroll that is. They had a heavy leaning on spring like motions with the feet, basically, bouncing on the feet, or leaning forward on the front of the feet to spring towards an opponent, and with a focus on using the fists, feet, knees and elbows for lightning fast strikes.

'Isn't this just like kick boxing?' he mused. Either way, it was a pretty straight forward style and shouldn't be too hard to learn, especially since it seemed to mesh well with the basic Academy style.

Though, there was also a lot of information on the best points to strike on the body to debilitate or kill using these types of strikes.

His eyes drifted down to the bottom, where some specific instructions lay. Instructions for the Shunshin technique, the vaunted Body Flicker.

Except not really. It was only a vaunted technique in the hands of Uchiha Shusui or Namikaze Minato.

The instructions for the technique were pretty straight forward as well, though there was a warning that it could be pretty chakra intensive. It was a technique that merely needed one to focus their chakra using the tiger hand seal and then expel their chakra from specific chakra points or tenketsu on the body, located at the back of the body to accelerate.

It was basically the same general idea of using thrust like a rocket, only with chakra and a human body.

It even mentioned that once one got used to the sensation enough and had a powerful enough chakra, they wouldn't even need the hand seal to focus their chakra enough and it could be used without the seal.

He memorized the general forms of the Feather Fist style and went through them for a while atop the water.

He kept it up until his chakra was nearing empty, before sitting down atop the water and spending the remaining time he had left before his chakra capacity ran dry pursuing through the fuinjutsu manual he had been given by Shiho.

Within a few minutes, he already felt a headache coming on.

The introduction into the book, for the most part, was memorization of basic fuinjutsu symbol's, how they reacted to chakra and how they overlapped with one another.

It was almost like looking at coding for the first time. And he wanted to give up right then and there, because fucking hell did it look complicated.

He didn't though.

Because instead of coding stupid computer programs, this could let him code symbols together that would let him obtain the power of what may as well be a force of nature.

And hey, the book outright had a diagram for creating storage seals and explosive seals.

That was fucking epic!

…He'd need to get some good paper and ink though first.

So, once his chakra pretty much dwindled away to near nothing, he hopped off the river, much more steadily now and made his way back into the village, into the shopping sector.

He stopped by a calligraphy shop and spent ten thousand ryo on supplies, paper, ink and brushes and such.

He was about to head on home, when he caught sight of a shinobi store, swords and more shown proudly in the windows.

"…Should I?" Daiki pondered to himself.

He was fine on kunai, shuriken, ninja wire and such for now, but, this was the type of shop that would sell body weights for training.

They'd probably cost a pretty penny though. Which meant he'd have to go on another few missions to make up for his dwindling funds soon.

'A few missions won't hurt I suppose.' he mused. He'd definitely be sticking to missions in the Land of Fire though, if he could at least.

Because fuck heading out alone again until he was much stronger.

He headed into the shop, ignoring the various displays of weaponry and headed over to the shop keep standing behind the counter, an older man with a large fuzzy beard, quite short, but with a bulky build and huge muscular arms.

"Something you need boy?" the man asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm looking for body weights to help condition myself," Daiki replied, "Preferably ones for my legs and arms."

"Yeah, we've got em," the man shrugged, "What kinda weight are you looking for? Have you done much weight training before?"

"Some." Daiki replied, though in another life, the ninja academy only focused on basic physical conditioning, all rounder type, though many leaned into one or two specifications on that aspect of training by pure instinct and body type.

"I see that I suppose, you've got a pretty good build on you," the shop keep eyed his broad shoulders, beyond the rotund Choji, he was by far the broadest in his graduating class, only Naruto and Kiba having a chance of competing on that route, "What are you looking for? Strength building?"

"I'm an all rounder, despite my looks," Daiki laughed lightly, "Not only strength, but I want to focus on speed and the like as well."

If the Raikage could do it….

Why not him?

Heck, he even had the lightning element as his affinity. God, he'd love to get his hands on the lightning armour technique.

"Right, I suppose then a pair of ankle weights and wrist weights, each one weighing three hundred pounds would fit for you to start off with," the man stroked his chin and nodded, "Bit heavier than your standard beginner fare, but with your build, I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Fine with me," Daiki shrugged, "How much will they cost?"

A total of twelve hundred pounds spread across four limbs. That was doable, it would take a bit to get used to it, he could lift over six hundred pounds when he graduated the academy after all. They were double that amount, but half of that would be on his legs and not all on his arms, so it should be fine.

…Besides, he'd seen people calculate how much weight Rock Lee wore during the Chunin Exams. People had calculated it to be around five tons on each leg.

It would be too embarrassing for him to bare if he couldn't even lift what amounted to a twentieth of what Rock Lee could with just his legs, using his basically his whole body.

"Eh, one hundred and fifty thousand ryo, pretty cheap compared to the heavier shit." the man shrugged.

Daiki winced.

He'd have less than ninety-four thousand ryo left. He'd definitely need to take a few missions to boost his funds.

"I'll take them." Daiki sighed, 'The things I do for strength.' he shook his head. Not everyone could be Rock Lee and have a famous and powerful Jonin take interest in him just because he tried hard despite being 'untalented'.

Such bullshit.

"Alright, one moment." the shop keep nodded and made his way through a door behind him into the back of the store.

He came back out a few minutes later with what looked like two sets of pale straps, each about ten inches long, with heavy a multitude of rectangular ridges popping up over them.

"Right, each of these pockets contain heavy metal weights within them to add the weight to these, they have some seal doohickeys on them that increase weight or whatever, that's why they're so expensive compared to normal weights." the shop keep explained.

Once Daiki paid for them, the man handed them over, and the genin took the time to strap them on.

"They feel alright?" the man asked him once he was done.

Daiki lifted his arms up and down a few times, then repeated with his legs, getting a feel for the weight. There was a definite massive resistance, but, it was manageable.

"Yeah, they're great." he grinned.

He headed home from there for the most part, only stopping to run through some basic exercises to tire himself out and get a bit more used to the weights.

Some people gave him funny looks, but he ignored them, he was much more focused on the gains these would give him.

By time he locked the door of his house behind him and collapsed on his couch, dusk was already beginning to fall.

"Ah fuck!" he groaned, "I totally forgot to get some books to read." the only shit he had in his crappy little apartment were his textbooks and shit from the academy and some children stories.

…And he also needed to make dinner.

But he honestly just couldn't be fucked right now.

"Ah fuck it, I'll do it later." Daiki slumped back onto the couch and decided to just take a look at his progress by calling up his status screen.

[Name: Daiki Yurei]

[Age: 13]

[Chakra Capacity: 412/2200 (Genin)]

[Strength: 15/500]

[Endurance: 19.6/500]

[Durability: 15/500]

[Agility: 15/500]

[Taijutsu: 45/500]

[Ninjutsu: 20/500]

[Genjutsu: 10/500]

[Bukijutsu: 15/500]

[Chakra Control: 132.4/500]

[Chakra Affinities:]

[Lightning - (N/A): You have no training with this element.]

[Fuinjutsu: -]

[Maybe try learning a few seals?]

Wait…what?

There was some interesting things to take there. His chakra capacity had broken two thousand, yet was still genin-tier, his physical stats had increased pretty noticeably. His taijutsu stat had almost doubled, which was interesting. The basic forms for the Feather Fist were easy to get down, but it wasn't like he had mastered the fighting style or something, not even close.

…Was it maybe because the Feather Fist style was just that much better than the Academy Style maybe?

Honestly, a lot about this stupid status thing still confused the fuck out of him.

Perhaps the most interesting thing though, was that he now had a Fuinjutsu…skill? Ability?

"Is thing sassing me?" Daiki gaped at the screen.

The more he thought he knew about this thing, the less he knew. Was it sentient? Or was it just his subconscious mocking him?