3 Goals

Past couple days I spent just lying in bed, trying to ignore the commotion everywhere due to the Nine-Tails attack. 

The commotion is gradually diminishing as everything settles down. 

Adults come and go, always in a hurry, children come and go as new orphans join the orphanage and those that are already here are taken by their parents and relatives if lucky enough to have them still alive. 

I'm spending my time mostly in bed trying to formulate the plans for the future of my new life. 

I'm used to have goals and plans in my previous life, it's just those goals were not very ambitious. They were just about establishing a comfortable and simple life, with making just enough money for a good living and having a lot of free time for my hobbies and enjoying life. 

'Well, to think about it, there is not much that I wanted in my previous life. Like making more money? Getting in to the position of power and playing politics? Become famous? I didn't see any reason for that when I can just live a comfortable life and do whatever I want to.' 

'But now everything changes. Now I'm in a dangerous world with tons of possibilities, chakra and a lot of cool stuff. Now I actually want more than just a good life! Now I can dream big and set my goals high!' 

'What I want to achieve here? Well first of all I want to surpass everyone in this world in terms of strength, so no one can threaten my life anymore. That much is the very least I should aim for.' 

'My second goal will be to explore this world above and beyond, learn all the good stuff there is about chakra, natural energy, ninjutsu, space-time jutsus and maybe find the possibility to travel to other worlds if there are any.' 

'I still hope to be able to master Hiraishin (Flying Thunder God) technique without selecting Space-Time affinity and Sage mode without nature energy affinity. After all, with Time control ability I should have all the time in the world I need for that.' 

'Third goal will be immortality of course! There are definitely ways to do that. Like who wouldn't want to become immortal and live as long as they want without having to worry about time and age? I will able to achieve some kind of immortality with traveling back in time, but that is not enough.' 

'Well, that quite the ambitions I have here. But the good part about all of this is that it is doable and definitely is not impossible to achieve! I feel very excited about this!' 

'But that won't be easy!' 

About immortality, for example, that is Orochimaru's goal. And he spends like what, 3-4 decades of studying and research and the best thing he comes up with is the flawed jutsu of possessing other shinobi's bodies every few years and making himself vulnerable to genjutsu in the process. 

'And that was Orochimaru, the genius and a high level specialist in many fields like medicine, research, iryojutsu, fuinjutsu and more!' 

About the goal of surpassing everyone in terms of strength it also won't be easy. Especially with average talent in terms of all aspects of a shinobi, like chakra capacity and control and other stuff like taijutsu and ninjutsu. 

'And I don't have anything special other than Time control ability that is not making me any stronger. It just grants me the ability to survive and avoid danger, but in terms of combat it's useless for now.' 

'I don't have any Kekkei Genkai, and my elemental affinity will be random and nothing special. So in terms of strength, I have to rely on training my body and mastering a large variety of ninjutsu.' 

'And if I eventually travel back in time without physical body – all my progress in terms of training my body will be lost.' 

But there is good news about that - while trained body and physical energy that trained body grants will be lost, the spiritual energy will stay with me. Spiritual energy is based on a soul, mind and experience, so it will travel with me back in time and not decrease and will only grow the more time I will live in this world. 

And as spiritual energy is a one of the two components of the chakra – my chakra reserves will also grow with time. And this should eventually fix the problem with chakra reserves if I spend enough time in this world gaining experience and traveling back in time and repeat the process. 

'But better to not rely on that loophole too much. If I spend a hundreds of years in this world like that, by constantly going back in time just to grow my chakra reserves, I will just go crazy and lose my mind!' 

'It's not some kind of videogame where everything can be done by pressing some buttons or letting PC stay running through the night so time in game will pass. I will have to live through those years by myself!' 

'Well then, my primary goal is to become strong. To get there let's split that goal to smaller ones.' 

First things first I need to enter the academy and graduate. Get a Jonin Sensei, learn stuff, train and go to missions to get experience. 

Entering the academy is not going to happen any time soon. I still have a year or two to wait for that. So maybe I should train my body a little bit by running, I don't want to push myself too hard knowing that all the efforts will probably be wasted if I will do time travel. Also training the body at such a young age too much will likely be harmful. 

I can try to figure out how to control my chakra and do some chakra control exercises like leaf concentration exercise. The experience of controlling chakra will not be wasted by time travel. But for that I need to learn how to control chakra in the first place. 

I also need to test my time travel at least once to better understand how it works and what to expect. It will leave me with depleted soul energy for unknown amount of time and make me vulnerable up until it regenerates, but I still need to test it, the sooner the better. 

The last thing to do in the meantime while waiting for the academy entry is to remember all I can from the Naruto series and make use of that memories to avoid all the hidden dangers like Danzo and his Root recruitment, or just making or saying something wrong that makes me suspicious and get me in trouble. 

'While I can use time travel to fix any problem – that ability is very limited up until I grow my spiritual energy strong enough.' 

'Hmm… Wait a minute! What I know about Danzo's Root? They often recruit children from orphanages and sometimes from academy students or whoever catches Danzo's eye if Hiruzen allows it.' 

Training practice for new recruits in Root is very hardcore with killing each other included. Danzo also places the cursed seal on everyone's there that prevents them from leaking information. Danzo is not valuing the Root member's lives and sends them on dangerous missions left and right with no care at all. 

'Hmm… It is actually not too bad, if only my time travel ability were more reliable right now! Then I would be able to go through the Root, gain experience, some good jutsu, useful knowledge and then just return in time to the point when I didn't join the Root yet.' 

'But as it is now it's too dangerous to get in to the Root. What if I will be sent on a suicide mission that I can't avoid? I will use my time travel to travel back in time up to couple weeks or months, whenever my spiritual energy would allow me at that point.' 

'But what would I do if that is not enough to prevent me dying? Sure, I will have the second chance but if my soul energy does not regenerates fast enough there will be no third one.' 

'So, let's just avoid Root. I don't like Danzo anyway and thinking about being subservient to him and kneeling to him is just disgusting! Even if my time travel was more reliable right now I most likely would not choose to become stronger by going through the Root.' 

'I like the classic way to become a shinobi through graduating from the academy more!' 

 As I'm taking my time forming plans, Chitose, the old woman from before and caretaker in this orphanage suddenly comes to me with a difficult expression. 

"Yuta, I'm sorry to say that, but I'm afraid that your mother Yasumu died in the Demon Fox attack. You will stay here in the orphanage from now on, but don't worry as we will take care for you from now on. If you need anything just find me" She says and leaves immediately not waiting for any response from me. 

'Well, that was expected after all. And what with her attitude, it doesn't seems like she cares at all. Well, I can understand her, she's probably says those lines a lot this days. Now I'm officially an orphan.' 

'Not like I feel anything about that. I don't associate Yasumu as my mother. I probably never have ever seen her in person, only in my dream as I got here, so no point feeling bad about it.' 

For the next few days, I continued staying in bed and not going outside to play as other children do. I'm trying to getting the hang of my chakra first and I'm also continuing forming my plans for the future. 

As days pass nothing actually changes. Chitose confronted me a few times to say some things like "Everything will be alright, don't be sad!", and "Go make some friends and play outside, it will be good for you!" 

I went outside a couple times just so she would leave me alone, and then I just continuing to do my thing. 

'Making friends with other children is just stupid. What do I even talk about with them? Playing 'ninja' with them with sticks and running around like an idiot? No thanks.' 

As another couple days went by and I still trying my best to feel the chakra inside of me with zero results – something unexpected happened. 

As I woke up at evening, it seemed like I fell asleep accidentally again at afternoon while trying to get the hang of my chakra, I spotted that there are much less children around. There used to be around 60 of them but now there only half of them left. 

'What happened, did some of their parents suddenly appear and take them or what?' 

But that was not it. As I wandering around, I overheard some talks about ANBU taking children for 'training them and making them a good shinobi for the village' while I was asleep. 

'ANBU took away some children? More likely that it was Root who took them! Well, bullet successfully dodged without me even realizing it, lucky me!' 

While I was thinking that, I was actually shaken and my heart beating fast. 

'That was too close! I almost got in to a world of trouble, dodging it by a coincidence that I decided to try to figure out my chakra first. If not it, then my only choice would probably be to try to travel back in time for 3 days and to try avoiding it, but there is not much I can do in 3 days' time.' 

As I was figured later on when I approached and asked Chitose - the Root took the most active and healthy looking children that are around 5 years old, and as I spent one and a half weeks while I'm here by staying in bed, they didn't seem interested in me, probably thinking that I was weak or sick or something. 

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[AN: What do you guys think about the possibility of our MC going through the Root? This might be dangerous but there might be some interesting content out of it, hard missions, MC pretending to be loyal to Danzo, dirty work… Well, not gonna happen, at least not right now, not with how MC is cautious and prefers safety.]