357 My SI Stash #57 - Medium Meld by Elbowsnapper (Naruto)
-The "some missing memories" MC cliche imo tends to get real annoying fast, but the no jutsus just good ole gamer skills and mana spells hooked me in hard, really curious to see how this'll turn out~
Synopsis: A man from the normal-human-world is unable to remember the names of people or places from his own world. He wakes up on an unknown beach in a world that is a strange mixture of many different Naruto mediums; games, fillers, movies, canon and non-canon, with a variant of the Gamer power.
Rated: ???
Words: 37K
Posted on: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/medium-meld-naruto-oc-gamer.859516/ (Elbowsnapper)
PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (´ー｀)
-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)
Chapter 1-3 (exceptional)
I woke up on a beach.
An empty beach that slowly curved out of sight in both directions with not a single person in sight. The ocean looked beautiful, bright, and blue, with noticeably clear water along the shoreline. When I turned around I noted that the vast majority of the island was covered in tall leafy trees. A massive grey stone mountain towered above the trees in the distance. I had never been anywhere like this before, and I certainly didn't remember having decided to come here in the first place.
I was having trouble remembering a lot of things actually, my name, the names of my friends and family, it was all missing. I could remember what I had been doing last night, but not who I was doing it with. There was definitely something wrong with my memory, how strange. I was a rather calm person by nature but considering the situation I was far more relaxed then I would have expected. I stared up at the clear blue sky, the sun was burning brightly almost directly overhead, nothing strange there.
I sat down on the sand.
What was my priority given the situation I had found myself in? I should attempt to find out where this beach was in relation to something I knew. The city I lived in also had a beach, I remembered that readily enough. I don't remember a mountain being anywhere nearby or such thick forestry so close to the beach. I think I could safely assume this wasn't near my city, whose name continues to escape me.
I had seen several movies and TV shows where people had woken up on a beach, Lost had been one of them. It was strange that I could remember the name of a TV show I had barely watched, but not my own name. I would need to investigate the island and see if I could find anyone, but if I were somehow stranded on a desert island, somewhere in the middle of the ocean, I would need to do several things if I didn't want to die. I needed a place to sleep, sheltered from the weather and any local wildlife, I didn't know how cold it would get here during the night or what might be in the forest looking for a meal. I would also need a source of freshwater and some sort of food.
Intelligence has increased by 1.
I recognized the floating words that had appeared in the corner of my vision immediately. It was from that webtoon where the protagonist could level up like a video game, and whose name I couldn't recall, more due to it being an exceptionally long time since I had read it then my strange amnesia. It was strange that something from a story had suddenly become real, but the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere on a deserted beach felt more problematic overall, but if this power worked as it had in the story, every day I survived, the easier it should become to survive the next.
Perhaps I could eventually become strong enough to swim back to civilization or something. My planning came to a grinding halt when three people wandered into sight further down the beach, with words floating above their heads. They were dressed strangely, and one of them was tossing a spear between his hands, so I immediately moved back into the trees just in case and watched them as they passed by.
Mato Level 17
Shinta Level 18
Toriko Level 14
Maybe I wasn't stranded after all.
---
I was stranded.
Stealth has increased by 1.
If not exactly in the same way as I had initially assumed. There was a large sprawling city on the island, and it was remarkably strange in so many ways that I had trouble reconciling it with what I was used to. There was a massive metal ship sitting in the large harbor, cranes sat all over the docks and roads, perhaps used to unload cargo from the ship, the streets for some bizarre reason were paved with large rough bricks packed down tightly into the ground, instead of tarmac. The houses were all multiple stories tall and made from a perfectly cut white stone, the rooves were tiled with an orange material that might have been clay.
Is that what tiles were made out of? I wasn't sure.
The lines of building stretched far out of sight due to the size of the city and each one had large panes of precisely cut glass lining all of the windows that were set into the buildings. There was a huge advertisement screen built into the roof of one of the buildings, showing a high definition recording of what I could only imagine was the island I was standing on, from far above it. The island itself was shaped like a large crescent moon, with the city sitting right in the middle of the thickest part of the crescent, stretching from one side of the island to the other.
It actually looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn't place exactly where I had seen it before.
There was what seemed to be a castle on the opposite side of the city or at least the large round tower parts that stuck out of most castles I had seen in pictures. I had never seen a castle before, and there was definitely no castles anywhere near my city. The people walking around the city were another element that made it far stranger. There was some wearing metal amour, others wearing leather, some of them carried swords, while others were had spears, almost all of the ones that were armed carried large tower shields strapped to their backs, and each one had a black visor of dark glass covering their faces. I was pretty sure carrying large melee weapons like that in public was illegal back home? They almost looked like riot police, without the signage on their equipment and with fucking spears.
Then there were the people who simply wore cloth shirts and pants that looked like they were made by hand, and their shoes were simple looking sandals, it almost looked like a normal city if everyone was cosplaying as some kind of medieval person.
Stealth has increased by 1.
The stalls that I could see from my hiding place, in the bushes if you must know, were selling fish and other foods in baskets, with not a piece of plastic wrap to be seen, which seemed rather unhygienic. Some sold vegetables and fruits, while others sold simple but neat hand-woven clothes. Alongside the people were wagons being pulled by horses along the roads, although I only saw two of them over the course of an hour, and not a single car, It made absolutely no fucking sense.
Nothing looked familiar to me in any way, this was not the city I lived in.
I was hesitant to go in to ask someone where this was because I had no idea if the guys with the black visors and large weapons took kindly to strangers suddenly appearing in their city. My shirt, jeans, and closed shoes obviously didn't belong here, I would stick out like a sore thumb. If those guys were dangerous I had no way of protecting myself from them if they turned out to be hostile to strangers and I might even find myself captured or something worse.
I was too far away to be able to see the names and levels floating above their heads, but I quickly found a solution with liberal uses of Observe. I used it on every person I could see, reading through their summaries and tried to piece together as much as I could.
"Born in the Land of the Moon," was a common theme amongst them, although there was one guy who had apparently been "Born in the Land of Demons," so I made sure to not stare at him for too long just in case. I couldn't remember having ever heard of a place with that name, but I was having trouble remembering any of the city names that I was sure I should know. Either way this island did look familiar to me, and the name had almost brought me to the cusp of understanding, but not quite.
Observe has increased by 1.
Another commonality was the names, they were all in a language that I recognized as Japanese, names like Kozuki, Juko, Sayuki, Mino, and a whole lot more. I didn't speak that language, I spoke English. Which country spoke Japanese? Which country spoke English? I knew there was several, I just couldn't remember the damn names, it was infuriating. What was odd about it, was that despite all having names that were clearly in Japanese, every single one that had passed by my hiding place had been speaking perfect English, with no hint of an accent. I kept on trying to remember which country spoke Japanese, but my strange amnesia held.
I would just call them the 'Japanese Country.'
A lot of the descriptions referenced a 'King' which didn't sound like the 'Japanese Country' either, I'm fairly sure they had an Emperor or a prime minister? or something? My own country had a prime minister as well, although I remembered there was a Queen overseas somewhere, and a President somewhere else as well.
Stealth increased by 1.
An island in the 'Land of the Moon', massive tv screens with high definition video footage, cranes, and other machinery, but they were pulling horses with carts, every single person had the 'Japanese Country' names, but the guards weren't carrying Katanas. They were ruled by a 'King' and everybody here was speaking 'English.' It was like some bizarre combination of different cultures that I couldn't even remember the name of, and it all led me to think that I was very far from home. I Observed them for a long time, but I never found myself any closer to figuring out where I was.
I eventually talked myself into heading back to the beach where I had woken up, still wary of entering the city because of the guys with spears. Despite not remembering the name of where I was from, I think I could safely assume that this wasn't it. Either way, it did provide me with something of a direction to push myself towards, which started with meeting my basic needs of survival.
"Status," I said curiously.
Name – Sora
Title – N/A
Age - 22
Level - 1
Health Points - 100/100
Mana Points - 101/101
Vitality 10 (Total Health, 10 HP per point.)
Strength 10 (Physical Power.)
Speed 10 (Movement speed, Reflexes.)
Perception 10 (Sensory Reception, Accuracy.)
Intelligence 11 (Plasticity, Comprehension, Memory.)
Mana 10 (Total Mana, 10 MP per point.)
Luck 0 (Increases chance of finding loot, Increases quality of item drops.)
Stat points 0
Health Recovery Rate – 0.25
Mana Recovery Rate – 0.25
Stealth Rating – 17
Perception Rating - 10
* () are tooltips that appear when hovered.
I read through it slowly, trying to burn everything into my memory.
My name was Sora, although that wasn't familiar at all either, and unlike everyone else, I didn't have a convenient summary of who where I was from either. I started at level one, which wasn't unusual for a game, with ten points in every attribute except Luck, slightly unusual but not by much, and the point I received earlier had brought my Intelligence up to eleven as well. 'Mana' was an interesting piece of information, it was often used interchangeably with 'Magic' or 'Energy' in games, or some other kind of resource. I wondered why I had one-hundred-and-one Mana though, it looked like it should have been ten MP per point in Mana.
I had observed enough people in the city that I had unlocked the ability to see there attributes and it had taken me almost an hour before I had come up with the idea of seeing if I could work out how their levels change their stats.
I had counted a lot of peoples stats up to a total and tried to figure out what was going on, I assumed that everyone started with the same stats that I had at level one, so I added the sixty starting base stats on top of it. Eventually, I thought I stumbled on the idea to divide the total stats by the number of levels, and it had given me a common number for each person that seemed roughly appropriate for all of them. Five points per level up, distributed somehow amongst there attributes. I would find out if I was correct when I received my first level up, but I was fine with assuming that everyone got five stat points per level for now. I was also assuming that they didn't get to choose as I might.
Perhaps they did after a fashion.
I supposed if you did a lot of physical labor your stats would probably be weighted towards strength and vitality while a lot of academic stuff would probably net you more intelligence. So life choices determined stats somewhat, so if you choose to be a bricklayer you would end up with higher physicals, that was kind of a choice right? At least once dictated on several factors, like society, your immediate environment, and your education. I probably shouldn't be trying to convert other people's experiences to fit with my abnormal situation in the first place.
I had a look at the passive skills next, and there were quite a few, some of which I remembered from the source, others I didn't.
Gamer Body (MAX)
Grants a body that allows for the user to live the real world like a game. (He receives no physical damage from attacks only pain for a few seconds and a loss of HP).
Eating, drinking, and sleeping are optional.
After sleeping in a bed, it restores HP, MP and cures all status effects. Users body is treated like that of an RPG character.
Gamer Mind (MAX)
It allows the user to think through things calmly and logically.
It allows a peaceful state of mind.
Immunity to all psychological status effects.
Mana Core (Level 1) - Allows the user to store mana.
Increases total mana by 1 (+1 per level).
Using Mana grants EXP towards this skill.
Health Recovery (Level 1) – Allows the user to regenerate health passively.
Increases Health regenerated per second by 0.25(+0.25 per level).
Regenerating Health grants EXP towards this skill.
Mana Recovery (Level 1) – Allows the user to regenerate Mana passively.
Increases the Mana generated per second by 0.25(+0.25 per level).
Regenerating Mana grants EXP towards this skill.
Mana Mastery (Level 1) – Increases efficiency of Mana use.
Reduces Mana Cost of skills by 0.25(+0.25 per level).
A skill's cost cannot be reduced below 1 Mana.
Using skills with Mana Mastery in effect grants EXP towards this skill.
The two gamer skills were normal, at least as far as any of this was normal. The Health Recovery and Mana Recovery was much more notable, it didn't seem to be tied to any of the attributes in a way I could identify, it also wasn't a percentage of my maximum respective pools like one would assume. I was never a math guy, not really, but I'm pretty sure that sucked, what if ended up with a lot of Mana or Health, 0.25 per second, when you have thousands of mana, would take a lifetime to regenerate.
Hopefully, it leveled up quickly.
Mana Core was interesting as well, the Mana Attribute already gave 10 Mana per point, but this skill could increase it independently, although the amount was really small. Mana Mastery was also new, reducing the cost of spells by a tiny flat amount. I didn't need to eat, drink, or sleep anymore according to the description, and sleeping in a bed would return me to perfect health, along with healing any status effects. If that was all actually true, then all I would need to ensure my immediate survival needs were met in the short-term was somewhere safe to sleep, so I didn't get ganked while I was asleep. It had been several hours since I had first woken up and the temperature hadn't really changed significantly since then, despite the sun slowly vanishing. It was still rather hot all things considered, I hope it stayed that way because I wasn't looking forward to sleeping out in the cold.
I had exactly two active skills.
Observe (Level 9) – Allows the user to gain information on the target.
The higher the level, the more detailed the information becomes.
Using Observe grants EXP towards this skill.
Stealth (Level 7) - Allows the user to sneak around.
Type – Toggle.
Cast time – Instant.
Target – Self, Other.
Cost – N/A.
Increased Stealth Rating by 7(+1 per level)
Reduces sound made while in Stealth by 7(+1 per level)
Stealth Rating is checked by enemy Perception Rating.
Must leave enemies line of sight to use.
Performing actions while Stealth is active grants EXP towards this skill.
Stealth was the only real conflict option I had at the moment, I was weaker physically than everyone I had observed in the city, so I wasn't exactly feeling very safe right now. The biggest thing for me to consider was that I had could use Mana. Mana was a pretty common resource that you used to cast spells in games, I had played a lot of games over the years, and the names of those seemed to still be intact at least. I also vaguely remembered the guy from the source material creating his skills.
So the real question became could I make something to help me survive?
Status
Name – Sora
Title – N/A
Age - 22
Level - 1
Health Points - 100/100
Mana Points - 101/101
Vitality 10 (Total Health, 10 HP per point.)
Strength 10 (Physical Power.)
Speed 10 (Movement speed, Reflexes.)
Perception 10 (Sensory Reception, Accuracy.)
Intelligence 11 (Plasticity, Comprehension, Memory.)
Mana 10 (Total Mana, 10 MP per point.)
Luck 0 (Increases chance of finding loot, Increases quality of item drops.)
Stat points 0
Health Recovery Rate – 0.25
Mana Recovery Rate – 0.25
Stealth Rating – 17
Perception Rating - 10
* () are tooltips that appear when hovered.
Gamer Body (MAX)
Grants a body that allows for the user to live the real world like a game. (He receives no physical damage from attacks only pain for a few seconds and a loss of HP).
Eating, drinking, and sleeping are optional.
After sleeping in a bed, it restores HP, MP and cures all status effects. Users body is treated like that of an RPG character.
Gamer Mind (MAX)
It allows the user to think through things calmly and logically.
It allows a peaceful state of mind.
Immunity to psychological status effect.
Mana Core (Level 1) - Allows the user to store mana.
Increases total mana by 1 (+1 per level).
Using Mana grants EXP towards this skill.
Health Recovery (Level 1) – Allows the user to regenerate health passively.
Increases Health regenerated per second by 0.25(+0.25 per level).
Regenerating Health grants EXP towards this skill.
Mana Recovery (Level 1) – Allows the user to regenerate Mana passively.
Increases the Mana generated per second by 0.25(+0.25 per level).
Regenerating Mana grants EXP towards this skill.
Mana Mastery (Level 1) – Increases efficiency of Mana use.
Reduces Mana Cost of skills by 0.25(+0.25 per level).
A skill's cost cannot be reduced below 1 Mana.
Using skills with Mana Mastery in effect grants EXP towards this skill.
Observe (Level 9) – Allows the user to gain information on the target.
The higher the level, the more detailed the information becomes.
Using Observe grants EXP towards this skill.
Stealth (Level 7) - Allows the user to sneak around.
Type – Toggle.
Cast time – Instant.
Target – Self, Other.
Cost – N/A.
Increased Stealth Rating by 7(+1 per level)
Reduces sound made while in Stealth by 7(+1 per level)
Stealth Rating is checked by enemy Perception Rating.
Must leave enemies line of sight to use.
Performing actions while Stealth is active grants EXP towards this skill.
Chapter 2
The first thing I tried to do was make a spell that could heal damage.
I didn't want to die because a snake bit me or I fell over and broke my leg or something else stupid. So I sat down on the sand, plopped my hands in my lap, and tried to use my mana. I certainly hadn't had anything like this before, and the feeling was obvious when I tried to find it. I found it surprisingly easy to use, it moved where I wanted it to move, although it did feel sluggish. It seemingly originated from the center of my chest. After a brief moment, I managed to push some of it down my arm to rest in my hand. I could feel it roiling beneath my skin, but I couldn't see any hint of it visually. I tried to push it out of my fingers, and a few bluish-white sparks appeared at my fingertips.
I grinned, I'm a god damned wizard.
I played around with it for a long while, trying to get it to visually appear but I mostly just got more of the sparks. There was no spell creation menu where I could choose the effects as I had seen in some RPG's, and no real intrinsic understanding of how to do it. Things like this were usually intent-based? Perhaps I needed to give the mana some kind of direction on what to do. I didn't have a grasp on how to change any properties about the energy itself, so I was only left with trying to actively tell it what to do.
"Heal," I said calmly while trying to push the mana out of my hand.
I felt, something?
The mana twisted slightly beneath my skin, so I repeated the word and tried to pulse my mana in time with it, it twisted slightly more with every iteration seemingly working towards something over the course of a few very long minutes. I focused all of my attention on the mana and let the world fall away, like when you stare at something for so long that your vision tunnels and everything blacked out around it. I focused entirely on the feeling of the mana and what I wanted to do.
Mana has been increased by 1.
"Heal," I said intently.
The mana twisted into an impossibly complicated shape, my hand suddenly glowed with a bright translucent green light and I felt my mana start to drop quickly. The spell abruptly faded after a moment and I stared at the little notice that had appeared.
You have unlocked a new skill, Heal.
You have unlocked a new skill, Casting Speed.
I felt a flash of triumph cut through me, I had managed to do this, me. I'd even unlocked another passive and got another stat point out of it, I felt elated as I opened the skill menu back up to read the description.
Heal (Level 1) – Use mana to heal injuries.
Type – Cast.
Cast time – 4.75(5) second charge.
Target – Self, Other.
Cost – 1 Mana.
Exchange 1 point of Mana to Heal 0.25(+0.25 per level) point of HP on target.
Can exchange up to the maximum available Mana.
Casting Heal grants EXP towards this skill.
It was almost exactly what I wanted, but why was it so weak? Most 'Heal' spells in video games healed anywhere from twenty to one-hundred HP at level one and cost anywhere from one to one-hundred MP. Even if I dumped all of my mana into a single Heal, the most I could do was heal twenty-five HP, at the massive cost of one-hundred MP. That kind of sucked, but I had a way of fixing myself up if I got hurt now though, that's all that mattered, weak magic was still magic.
The 'Casting Speed' passive was about what you would expect from the name.
Casting Speed (Level 1) – Reduces the casting time of skills.
Decreases the time taken to cast a spell by 0.25 (+0.25 per level.) seconds.
Spells that are reduced to 0 seconds become instant.
Casting spells with reduced cast times grants EXP towards this skill.
I was beginning to notice a trend with all of the skills, they all started extraordinarily weak. They might end up strong at much higher levels, but right now they all sucked incredibly. I thought about it for a while, but there wasn't anything I could do about it right now I had other priorities. The next thing I wanted to do was eat something, I wanted to know if I could recover health or mana with consumables like in most systems like this and hopefully, it was another way to heal myself if I ran out of mana while injured.
Safety first kids.
I had two ideas on that front, try and catch a fish of some sort, or try and steal something from the city. One of those ideas might get me jailed or killed, so I was going to try fishing first, which was incredibly unfortunate. I hated fishing, I'd spent hours with others nearby, watched them reel in multitudes of fish while I caught nothing, far too many times for me to ever enjoy it. I didn't have a rod here either, which would make things almost impossible. There were maybe two hours of light left before it was dark, judging by the position of the sun, so I wasted no time. I turned towards the tree line and searched around for a long stick, it took a while to find something the right length, but I eventually just fought with a thin green tree branch until I managed to tear it off. I managed to find a few stones that had a kind of edge on one side to use at a tool.
Me caveman now, me hit the stick with stone, Ooga Booga.
It took a little while to shape the end of the stick into a very rough point, and I had to strip off a couple of layers of bark but in the end, I had what was probably the worst fishing spear in the history of mankind, my caveman ancestors must have been looking down at me with disappointment.
You have unlocked a new skill, Crafting.
I glanced at the notice, but didn't bother opening up the menu again, I didn't exactly have much time to waste with the sun still going down, I could read it later. I headed back down to the beach before kicking off my shoes and socks in the sand. I tested the water and found it still rather warm, before wading in up to my knees. I stared around at the water for a while before I spotted some small dark shape moving. I fought back the urge to run away from it, before holding my spear up and getting ready, but the thing vanished a moment later.
Huh.
I searched around again and the next time I saw movement I stabbed the stick at it straight away. I missed entirely, and ripples spread over the water from the failed attempt. I stabbed at another dark shape and missed again.
You have unlocked a new skill, Fishing.
You have unlocked a new skill, Weapon Mastery.
You have unlocked a new skill, Spear Mastery.
Nice, but I was a bit busy here dammit.
I kept stabbing at the moving dark spots for over an hour, and the sun was starting to dip pretty low. I had received four levels of Fishing, five levels of Spear Mastery, three levels of Weapon Mastery and two Strength points but not a single fucking fish, my terrible luck at fishing apparently holding on strong, but every little notification worked like a little burst of recognition for my efforts and fuelled me ever onwards, despite the many, many failed attempts. I couldn't help but noticed that more shapes were appearing in the water the longer I kept at it. I took another stab at a shape before I pulled the spear out of the water very slowly and watched as the small silver fish wriggled about on the end of it.
I was a god-damned fisherman.
I celebrated like an idiot for a moment, shouting and waving my stick before I started making my way back up the beach and belatedly remembered to collect my shoes along the way, there I didn't have much light left now, so I hurried back into the edge of the forest and leaned my spear up against a tree, the fish still impaled on the end. I searched out a bunch of sticks, branches, and even a small section of a fallen tree that had broken off with the decay. I dragged it all back to the small clearing with some effort and stacked it all together. I put the little twigs and the thinnest dry bark at the bottom before making a little tepee of sticks above it.
I was almost certain this fire would fail, but I was hoping my power would pick up the slack. I grabbed some of the rocks from early and started striking them together next to the bark. Almost an entire minute of failed attempts finally led to some recognition of my actions.
You have unlocked a new skill, Firemaking.
If the system saw my attempt at making a fire as valid surely it would end up lit eventually. It took at least an hour, three levels of Firemaking, many frustrated noises, and one bleeding finger before I was finally sitting in front of a glorious fire. When it had first become dark, about an hour ago I had considered trying to make a fireball spell, but I was far too invested in Firemaking at that point, the nefarious sunk cost fallacy at work. I carefully moved more of the branches into the fire until it was properly burning, took my fishing spear in hand, and poked it into the fire.
I finally relaxed a little to enjoy the warmth of the fire that I had managed to create through the sheer power of smacking rocks together and just stared into the fire thoughtfully. I needed more information about the island and to remember where I had heard of the 'Land of the Moon' before, It was on the tip of my tongue but I needed something, anything to jog my memory that tiny amount. I needed more information about the people here, and find out if they were actually going to be hostile, and I needed to get strong enough to protect myself in case they were. I needed to get my hands on some clothing that looked normal enough for me to blend into this place, so I didn't stand quite so much.
I had no money so I would have to steal what I needed, which was dangerous for obvious reasons, I would have to be careful about how much I stole though because being seen carrying a handful of goods while dressed in strange clothing would make anyone suspicious of me. Did I have an inventory? I did have an inventory, that was one problem solved, I could just put whatever I stole in there, I pulled the fish out to have a look at it, before poking it back in.
You have unlocked a new skill, Cooking.
There was going to be a lot of these, wasn't there?
I spent the rest of the night watching the fire and using up the rest of my firewood, the temperature on the island remained surprisingly tolerable even after the fire had dwindled down to coals. I kept expecting to suddenly feel tired, or fall asleep, but it never happened. I busied myself with casting Heal on myself until my mana emptied and then waited for it to slowly recover again. Heal was increasingly incredibly slowly, probably because I wasn't actually fixing anything, but it did use up my mana.
It took roughly seven minutes for it to refill, math was never my strong point, so take it with a grain of salt. I wasn't being very efficient about it either, lapsing into long periods of musing and trying to remember the names of people with no success. I never ended up eating my fish, either. It was sitting in my inventory after I observed it, +1hp from a badly cooked fish wasn't too bad. I considered it another test to see if I would get hungry enough to eat it or not.
The sun eventually returned, the dark started to recede, and I had already decided on what I was going to do today. I would spend the morning grinding out Stealth and Observe near the city. See if I couldn't find out more information about this 'Land of the Moon'. If I ended up getting restless I would return to camp and try some more spearfishing, as much as I hated it, the more I failed now, the easy it would be to catch the stupid things in the future.
I might even be able to sell them for money in the city if I ever made it that far.
When the light was finally bright enough to see, I headed back to the edge of the city. I found my bush untouched and quietly toggled Stealth back on. There were a surprising amount of people already up and walking around, which was strange, but it made it easier for me to gather information so I couldn't complain. I watched them all go about their business from afar, reading about there lives and comparing their stats. There were a lot of people near the docks, and even more, were appearing there by the minute.
Stealth has increased by 1.
I was distracted by the massive metal ship heading slowly lumbering out of the docks, and I tracked its progress until it finally vanished from my sight, and only later realized that I hadn't Observed it while I had the chance, I hadn't actually Observed anything other than the people. I felt abruptly stupid and started Observing all of the buildings to see if anything showed up and found some interesting but otherwise unnoteworthy things.
Observe has increased by 1.
There were a lot of fishermen in this city, and I meant a lot. I was guessing that they exported a lot of seafood, probably on that big ship that had left earlier. The next most common job was laborer, then quite a few people who worked in inns, bars, and taverns. There was also a lot of woman with the job 'Working Girl', they were openly talking to people on the streets, and occasionally leading men into buildings or alleyways. I guess that kind of thing was legal here, that was pretty cool.
Stealth has increased by 1.
I ended up staying for a couple of hours but eventually grew restless enough to head back to camp. I was slowly becoming more comfortable with the idea of going into the city, I hadn't seen a single bad thing happen throughout my entire time watching them. No weird things that lead me to believe they were cannibals or something else horrifying, they were seemingly just normal, average people. I would give it another couple of days first just to be safe, but if it still seemed alright I might try entering the city. I picked my spear up when I got back to camp and gave it a once over. It was looking pretty beat up, and the end was severely burnt because I stuck it in the fire last night like an idiot.
I observed it out of curiosity.
Sharp Stick – Common.
Durability - 12/100
Well, shit, my spear was almost dead.
On a whim, I tried to cast Heal on it, but it didn't even activate, unable to target a stick. I sat down before I tried to push some mana into the stick, maybe I could fix it or reinforce it or something, the stick didn't really take the mana, it kind of just washed over it. I focused more mana into my hand as I had with the Heal spell, but this time I focused on healing the durability instead. I started a mantra in my head about fixing and durability, repeating the words with single-minded focus.
Repair, Durability, Fix, Durability.
I repeated it for almost ten minutes before the mana twisted into another complicated shape, strangely similar to the Heal spell, in a sense. My hand lit up with a blue glow and the stick shuddered once in my hand before the spell ended.
You have unlocked a new skill, Repair.
I pulled it up after a moment to see what it did.
Repair (Level 1) – Use mana to repair items durability.
Type – Spell.
Cast time – 4.75(5) second charge.
Target – Object.
Cost – 1 Mana Point.
Exchange 1 point of Mana to repair 0.25(+0.25 per level) Durability.
Can exchange up to the maximum available Mana.
Casting Repair grants EXP towards this skill.
I was getting really sick of this 0.25 nonsense.
Mana Core has increased by 1.
I cast the spell and watched as the stick was magically pulled back into better condition, the burnt end that had partially fallen off became rough wood again, and the missing material returned.
Repair has increased by 1.
It took four casts of Repair to fix the stick, and seven minutes of waiting to recover mana in between each cast, which was a really long time, I could have probably just made another spear by the time I had finished. I did get a level of Mana Recovery which sped it up a tiny bit, but it was still a problem. How did the guy deal with his mana issues in the source? Didn't he just put all his points into a mage build? I was still only level one though, I didn't have any points. I vaguely remembered that he had some skill he got from a book about breathing or something.
Mana Recovery has increased by 1.
No, it was meditation. I could probably recreate that without too much issue, I was already almost completely certain that it was going to only increase my recovery rate by 0.25 though. It seemed to be an ongoing theme. A complicated mantra and almost thirty minutes of my time later I was proven correct.
You have unlocked a new skill, Meditation.
I studied the description.
Meditate (Level 1)
Type – Toggle.
Target – Self.
Cast time – Instant.
Cost – N/A.
Meditate to increase Health and Mana Recovery by 0.25 per second (+0.25 per level).
Increases stamina recovery speed by 0.25 per second (+0.25 per level).
Unable to move more than 1m while in use.
Meditating grants EXP towards this skill.
I bit back my annoyance at being correct and tried to look on the bright side, eventually, I would be able to regenerate quicker. The not being able to move limitation was kind of expected but still disappointing. I toggled it on and immediately felt my mind clear. It was a strange feeling like my thoughts had both sharpened and broadened at the same time. I almost felt more focused as well somehow. I'm glad it wasn't an unpleasant feeling, because I could already tell that I would be using this a lot. I finally made my way back to the beach and spent the rest of the day fishing and splashing around in the shallows, while waving my spear around like a maniac. I had a great deal more luck while fishing today, and everything I caught immediately went into my inventory. The higher the skill grew the easier I found it to locate and spear the fish, it was actually bizarre how much more successful I was today than yesterday.
I earned myself several levels from my efforts, three more fishing, one more weapon mastery, four more spear mastery, and another two strength levels. The second strength point was what got me to stop fishing, curious as to what it was actually from. Swinging the stick around maybe? It wasn't exactly heavy, but I was technically carrying something. I set up my camp for the night when it grew dark, it only took me half the time to make a fire this time and I spent the night coming up with a training plan.
Push-ups would probably be enough for Strength grinding, at least for now. Running would probably be how you got Speed points, but I wasn't sure about Vitality. Perception said it increased accuracy, so maybe throwing things at a target of some kind would work. I didn't think I could train Intelligence on the beach, not unless I could get a hold of a pack of cards or something, maybe I could play memory? Mana seemed to be easy enough, whenever I cast spells or played with my mana it seemed to increase.
I set my first goal to reach the equivalent stats of a laborer in the city, they seemed to generally be around level fifteen to twenty, with an average stat distribution of twenty-five points across the board, although most of them tended did have slightly lower mental stats while the physicals were approaching thirty. The guards were entirely out of reach, for now, each of them sitting between level thirty to fifty or even higher. They averaged stats in the high fifties, with some much higher outliers. I was putting off my trip into the city until I could at least handle an angry laborer, as it was I was weaker than even the tavern girls. I had a plan now, Stealth, Observation, Meditate in the morning, physical training during the day, Mana training at night.
I toggled Meditate on.
Chapter 3
Four days later I finally figured out where I was.
I felt incredibly stupid for having not realized it. I had been working under the assumption that I was still in my world. When I was doing my daily Observation I noticed a ship, not the same massive metal one from a while ago, but a smaller, but still quite large, wooden ship. When I Observed it I found that it was a passenger and cargo ship bringing people from the 'main continent' which was an interesting tidbit, but what was even more interesting was three of the people that exited the ship, they were low leveled and had rather standard jobs, a seamstress, a laborer, and a merchant. They were also born in places outside of the Land of the Moon.
Places that I recognized, and places that absolutely didn't exist. Born in the village Hidden in the Stone. Born in the village Hidden in the Bamboo. Born in the village Hidden in the Waterfall. Stone and Waterfall were both ninja villages from an anime I knew pretty well, while I hadn't actually heard of Bamboo at all, it was apparently a 'Hidden Village' none the less. I was in the world of Naruto.
Primary Quest Unlocked.
Stop the world from ending.
Failure – Capture, Enslavement, Death.
Could that be any vaguer? There were plenty of things that might constitute threats to the world here. Pain wanted to nuke a bunch of countries to threaten the world into peace, which might have counted. Obito and Madara Uchiha wanted to stick everyone inside a permanent illusion of some kind. Black Zetsu wanted to revive Kaguya, and she wanted to absorb all of the chakra or something, either way, the end result was everyone in a genjutsu as well. Hell the rest of those Otsutsuki people or whatever they were called, also wanted to do the same thing, and those were all just the main problems. What did world-ending mean? All of the people dead or otherwise incapacitated? Was it more literal and the world would explode or something?
I didn't know.
There was also weird things like the zero-tail running around that absorbed hatred or something to grow stronger, and the Sky Ninja that wanted to kill everyone along with it. There was that strange prison from that one movie where the immortal demonic flying monster escaped and wanted to kill everyone or that other movie with the weird stone of Gelel and that wasn't even the end of it either. There was that super-powered tower thing that Kabuto was trying to use to do something to become a god or something or the guy that lived on the fucking moon who planned on smashing it into the earth at some point, that probably counted as well. What about that movie with the future telling girl, with the immortal army and the shadow demon that wanted to conquer the world. What about Orochimaru? He could probably count as well if he managed to survive long enough.
Was that where I had heard 'Land of the Demons' from? Wasn't there a puppet-guy who time-traveled as well? Was he trying to end the world or take it over? Whose perspective was the world ending from mine? Was there a distinction? Which threat did I need to save the world from? It wasn't here, was it? On this island? Now that I was remembering all of the random nonsense from the show I was reminded of the movie with the rich dude and his son, the one with the circus, wasn't that here? How did I forget that?
I refocused before I got too far off track.
That movie probably took place on this island, sometime before Shippuden had started because Naruto was still short. Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura, and Rock Lee? They had been the main cast, I think. There was also that one dude who could turn people to stone with his hand. Had those events already happened? Or was it going to happen in the future? I'm fairly sure the king died in that movie, turned to stone if I recalled correctly. I had no chance of remembering what his name was, but he was an old dude with long hair, and his son bought a circus before coming back here. The son also had a son, and he shot people with suction cup arrows!
I don't think any of this was going to help me, but memory worked strangely, the more random things I could remember the more related information I would probably uncover as a result.
They showed up on this island sometime after Sasuke had left Konoha because Rock Lee was with Team Seven instead of him, but it had to be before Naruto had gone on his training trip with Jiraiya. Somewhere in the interlude between Naruto and Shippuden? That gave me a timeline of sorts, now I just needed to figure out when exactly I had arrived here in regards to that timeline.
I refocused again.
Okay, if the old guy with long hair was still the king that meant it was some unknown amount of time before the events of the movie took place. If the large dude with short brown hair was king, it was during Naruto's training trip? or sometime afterward. That was goal number one, for now, find out who the current king was. I also needed to figure out what I could actually do to stop any of these threats, and then work out the order in which they came about. Each of the threats I had thought of that could fill the criteria would require a high level of personal power to accomplish which I didn't currently have. Almost all of the world ending threats were S-rank ninjas or monsters that were even worse. I needed to be able to survive a fight with those guys at a minimum if I wanted to even affect the outcomes.
That meant that I had a bunch of things I needed to work on and no idea how much time I had to figure them out. I knew that this ability created things in line with my intentions to some degree, like the heal skill, or even the repair skill. I needed skills to become as fast as a ninja, so some kind of speed-related skill, and a way of perceiving fast-moving targets. I needed to be able to survive getting hit by jounin level ninja, people who could punch through stones and crack the earth through physical attacks alone, so some kind of full-body shielding skill of some kind. I needed to be able to deal damage to people who could tank those same attacks with ease, so an offensive ability of some kind that dealt damage in a way that could bypass durability or Peirce through physical defenses. Something that worked at a far range would be ideal.
There were many one-hit-kill techniques in this world, a simple punch from someone like Sakura would also likely one-shot me. There were conditional things as well like Nagato's soul ripping touch thing, the God of Death Summoning. Pure overwhelming force like Bijudama, Chidori, Rasengan, and others that all qualified as well. Almost every elemental ninjutsu would kill me as I am right now. I needed a way to avoid them if there was no way out, so some kind of fast-acting teleportation that could get me out of the way regardless of obstacles. That left energy defense, I needed something to block, absorb or otherwise nullify chakra attacks, and defense again illusion.
I didn't have anything in mind yet for the first but the second I might have gotten lucky with.
Genjutsu, if I was remembering correctly had something to do with jamming your chakra into someone with a technique to disturb their chakra, and the result was they could make you see, hear, feel, smell things that weren't there. I didn't have chakra at all, which was bullshit, but it might not work on me either. I also had that passive which said I was immune to 'Phycological Effects.' If mentally influencing me to see things that weren't there counted as a phycological effect, it might have some form of reduced effectiveness, or if I'm really lucky I might even be immune entirely. I would have to test this out sometime in the future, and I had no idea how I was going to do that safely.
Physically I was still far below where I needed to be, I still wasn't anywhere near as strong as the guards, although I was slowly approaching the Laborers, so there was an upside at least. I had unlocked several skills when I first started working out, but I still had to stop all the time, and Meditate was getting a lot of training when I ran out of steam. All the running had become easier over the last few days, it seemed to contribute to Vitality as well as Speed. Although Vitality seemingly leveled at a much slower rate so there was probably some better exercise specifically for it that I hadn't thought of. It felt amazing being able to watch myself grow stronger from even simple actions and exercises.
I had stayed next to the city for much longer than usual, worrying in the bushes and the sun was high in the sky when I finally started heading back to my camp. My mind turned over what I needed over and over again, as I refined my list of goals a hundred times but I kept coming back to the same things.
I needed to continue my physical training as much as possible, that was my primary goal. My secondary goal was to find out where I was in the timeline, and my tertiary goal was to create at least one of the skills I had decided on. A ranged attack, a physical defense, and energy defense, a speed skill, a perception skill, and a teleport skill.
A week passed by quickly.
I had moved my observation and stealth training to later in the day, so I had more time to train my physicals, and I'm not going to lie, I kind of hated it all. I had never been the type of person to follow a routine, but 'Capture, Enslavement, Death,' wasn't something that I could just choose to ignore, suddenly having superpowers after a life of relative mediocrity was pretty novel as well.
I would go catch something at first light and drop it into my inventory, then I would start running until I couldn't anymore, dump all my mana into a Heal before Meditating back to good condition again. Then I would start all over again in a second rotation, only with push-ups, the gains were great, but the boredom was awful. Once I got sick of doing the same thing for hours on end, which was frequently, I would stealthily make my way to the edge of the city and try to gather some information that might lead me to some insight on when I was. The time of day I had previously going seemed to have crippled my progress because I learned some remarkably interesting information very quickly when I started going to the city later on in the day. It was a numbers game really, there was simply way more people out and about later on in the day.
Like the important-looking guy who was surrounded by a large number of guards as he wandered through the market, I only saw him for a minute, but he was one of the names I actually remembered from the movie, simply because it was so ridiculously out of place I couldn't have forgotten it if I wanted to.
Shabadaba.
It was the guy who hired the three ninjas to assassinate the king in the movie, I'm fairly sure the guy ended up dying near the end, so if he was alive right now, this had to be sometime before the movie occurred and before Shippudden. Eventually, if the events of the movie actually took place in this world an opportunity would arise because Team Seven minus Sasuke plus Rock Lee would be coming here. I could interact with them in some way and a question had been plaguing me ever since I realized it.
Should I interact with them at all?
If I was around the time I thought I was, there was a minimum of roughly two years until the events of Shippuden? That was two years of training to turn me into a god-killing machine. It could be much more if I was several years earlier then the events of the movie. What if the world-ending threat happened before Shippuden? Should I be already heading somewhere else to stop whatever it was? If I left or ignored them if they did come here, would I be dooming myself and everybody else? What if I was supposed to ignore them?
The Stone of Gelel movie should have happened before they came here, I think. So if that were the that what the quest was referring too, I would probably never be able to get there in time if it hadn't already happened. I couldn't even remember which country that one had taken place in. Wasn't Gaara involved somehow? Somewhere near Suna maybe? Forget the Stone of Gelel then. I probably couldn't do anything about that. What was the next incoming threat? The possessed shadow demon guy with the immortal army from the Land of Demons? No, that happened right at the beginning of Shippuden, which was still several years away.
The chunin exams would have already happened, so the Third Hokage was probably dead. Tsunade would be the Hokage now, Sasuke would have defected to Orochimaru, whose arms are still busted? Kimmimaro and his team was dead, which was unfortunate because he was one of the most interesting ninjas in the entire show. Jiraiya would soon be taking Naruto away from the village, likely right after the events that happened here. Akatsuki starts to move around now as well, they start going after the Jinchuriki before Shippudden.
Akatsuki or just Nagato might be the target of the quest, should I try and interfere with Akatsuki? Sabotage or delay them? Could I even do that? Which Jinchuriki did they go after first? I couldn't remember the exact order but I had a rough idea of it, I think it changed depending on the medium as well? I'm pretty sure there were some changes between the manga and the anime. I was in a movie location, so I had no idea which this place was drawing from. I knew that they weren't going after the Jinchuriki by the number of tails, I think the first one might have been that steam guy in the red armor? I think he was from Stone? Iwa? Then it was the green-haired girl from the Waterfall Village, right after the Suna-Leaf joint chunin exams. That was a couple of months before Shippuden in the timeline, who had gone after her again? Kakuzu was a from that village, Taki? It was probably Kakuzu and Hidan, when did they recruit Hidan? Didn't Kakuzu have an unnamed partner before him? The next one was Gaara? That was like the first episode of Shippuden, so two years away at least, Deidara and Sasori went after him at Suna, he was already the Kazekage by then as well.
I still wasn't even sure if they were the threat, I would just have to mess with everyone.
To mess up Akatsuki's plans, I had to either try and save the steam-guy from Iwa, or the green-haired girl from Taki. Who had gone to bring in the steam guy? Deidara was a rock ninja, wasn't he? Deidara and Sasori, maybe, if I tried to save the steam-guy, or Kakuzu and Hidan if I tried to save the green-haired girl. Neither of those was a good starting fight. Hidan was probably the weakest member of Akatsuki, but from what I remembered he was super durable, and together with Kakazu they had taken like two different teams to bring them down and they still almost failed to do it without Naruto appearing. Kakuzu himself was one of the physically strongest members, with both close combat and ranged abilities, he was durable as well with that earth technique he used.
Deidara was sneaky as fuck from what I remembered hiding inside his own attacks and generally being a motherfucker, he was a long-ranged fighter with high mobility and massive damage potential, he had defeated Gaara and almost managed to kill Sasuke as well. Sasori was an entire bag of fuck no that I didn't want any part of, all his weapons were coated in a lethal poison that immediately killed you or something, and he could summon like hundreds of puppets at a time all with weapons coated with the stuff. I was struggling with the idea of fighting two people at once, fuck fighting hundreds of them, and he had that iron sand ninja as well, one of the previous Kazekage.
Fuck that.
Kakuzu and Hidan seemed like the safer bet if there was such a thing. The green-haired girl had an episode with Gaara which might have been filler? I'm not sure, at that joint chunin exam in Suna. I remember that she had two jounin teammates for some reason, and they kicked everybody's asses. What a total cheater. Then some random guy had tried to steal both the tailed beasts but failed, who was that guy? It wasn't Akatsuki that time, but some random dude with a grudge against somebody? Was he important?
I couldn't remember.
Akatsuki had appeared somewhere near Taki, right as they arrived? Presumedly they killed the two jounin with her and then kidnapped green-haired-girl. I had no idea how they had stumbled upon them there, but I assumed they must have at least checked Taki first and found her missing? I could find out where the next chunin exam was going to be located, and make sure to be near Taki during it, see if I couldn't gank the pair when they attacked her. Keeping at least one of the Jinchuriki out of their reach would slow down the whole Akatsuki plot, at least a little bit. That had to contribute in some way to saving the world right?
So how the hell did I kill Kakuzu and Hidan?
