Chapter 16

The return journey to Konoha was uneventful but I had time to sort out my thoughts. The mission this time was easy but the gains for me were not much.

I was lacking all in many departments as a ninja and was most concerned about battle experience. So in the end I made up my mind that I would rarely take up investigation missions in the future unless Sandaime ordered me or the missions required some investigation like finding the target before elimination etc.

Right now my mood was good because after finishing delivering the mission report , my quest was also completed. Now I finaly had enough points and could not wait to buy the sword manual. It was a cheap one and did not contain any specific moves but it would provide me the right direction and that was more than enough.

The atmosphere inside the village was as usual. The marketplace was bustling while the areas like sealed Uchiha compound were ghostly quiet. I wonder how Sasuke lived there alone whenever he returns there. I would definitely die of boredom if I was in his place.

I reached my apartment soon and immediately decided to purchase the manual from system shop. After closing my eyes , I mentally commanded and the shop function was opened easily. There was so much good stuff but for now I ignored them and mentally clicked on " Sword of Basics " in the manual section.

Instantly my shop points balance was zero and rush of information came inside my mind. The experience was not painful and I could feel my mind digesting the information at insane pace second by second. It lasted for about ten seconds and I already knew about the basics of various realms of swordsmanship now.

The first realm " Basic swordsmanship " was like its name , one just had to master the basics to some extent and become a natural while wielding a sword. This stage was not the one for me because of my talent I was already a natural for swordsmanship.

The next realm was the one I needed to focus on. This realm would focus on mastering a peculiar state of mind in which I could feel the breadth of things I want to cut. Being able to cut steel without much effort was the condition to graduate from this realm.

The further realms were beyond my reach right now so I decided not to think much about them. One thing I understand though which is that the swordsmanship in this world is different from the one mentioned in the manual.

Come to think of it , this was inevitable. After all here one could do some hard training and would become anko to cut steel with the help of sword enhanced with chakra flow. Even chunin could do that.

But the path according to the manual was different. There chakra was not mentioned so I could only rely on my body strength and training to master the right control and precision. It may take about a week of hard training but I was confident that I would be able to cut steel easily by then. After all I was already familiar with the special state of mind mentioned in the manual.

While training I had entered it briefly before but that was by instinct. Now I just had to become able to enter it on my own and then train to maintain it.

My unparalleled sword talent was really amazing because I could already start mastering the second realm while other swordsmen would need years or even decades of practice to just completely master the basic swings.

To test things out , I took a deep breadth and closed my eyes while focusing on the faint aura which I could feel from the chair in front of me. As I expected, I could feel it clearly after about a minute but this was not enough.

I could feel the breadth but it would barely be of any use if I could not feel it in an instant. But I was also satisfied a bit because at least I was already moving in the right direction.

Thus I discarded my plans to take missions for at least a week and instead focus on improving my swordsmanship in that time.

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After confirming my near future goal , my mind was at ease. So I decided to have fun for rest of the day and start training from next morning.

This was a hidden village so naturaly I could not expect it to have shops like arcades , pools etc from modern earth. But that did not mean it had worse either. At least for me , I loved to simply enjoy my free time admiring the nature quietly.

The Land of fire was filled with forests and so was the village. There existed many abandoned training grounds which were actualy small forests. Other than those , my favorite spot was the forest above the Hokage face mountain.

Naturaly I did not waste time watching trees but the waterfall located there was a great resting spot for me. I decided to go there and bought some yakitori from a stall on the way.

I was already familiar with area by now after coming some times so it did not take long to reach the waterfall. Still I did not expect to meet an unexpected person there. It was Rock Lee and he was practicing basics punches with vigor and hitting a training doll.

I extended my mind's eye radius some more and as expected found Gai along with Neji while Tenten was busy cleaning her weapons not far away from them.

People were already there so my plan to be alone was discarded but I was rather happy because I get to meet some future main characters. I changed directions and went to greet Gai first while thinking about how to impress these children..