Days gone

The days that followed had a more gray tone in Ryo's eyes, a month had passed since Ryo had the conversation with Sae, and since then, neither she nor the other Uchihas had been going to the academy frequently. The last test was also a few days ago, and Ryo ended up taking first place in most of them without much effort. In the ninjutsu test, they had to perform the transformation jutsu.

In the shuriken test, Ryo, without Sasuke and Sae to take the top two spots, couldn't "hide or reduce" his abilities to let another student win, and the same happened with the taijutsu test, since Iruka already knew to some extent about his abilities. In the end, Ryo didn't come in first in the written exams and in the Henge exam, for which he had to diligently perform all the hand signs to make it seem like he hadn't mastered ninjutsu yet.

During this past month, he had trained more alone than with someone around, namely Naruto. Ryo had spoken to him, warning him that he would need some time alone to train as well, and since it was something Naruto couldn't help him with.

There were still five months left until the end of the year, and Ryo was training in his room now, with all the windows closed again. There was a golden cape on his arm as if it were a second skin, the golden metal. He took a deep breath while doing this, and soon started moving his arm, making the metal flow from his arm to his chest, forming a plate under his clothes.

"Manipulation became much easier after my chakra reserves increased. In the last month, I've managed to increase my reserves by 50%. With this, I can already maintain active control of the liquid metal for five minutes while in contact with my body; if I want to control it at a distance, the time drops to a minute and a half."

He already had confidence in his abilities to manipulate the golden liquid metal. His training was making good progress, especially with the basic healing jutsu. In this last month, Ryo had started making larger cuts on his body.

"Somebody who keeps cutting themselves... In the other world, that would be a problem, fortunately not here, well, not as much."

As he said this, Ryo made the metal flow from his chest to his hand, creating a golden glove, and from it emerged a golden thread, which acted like an extremely sharp tentacle, cutting a red line on Ryo's arm. Feeling the pain, he made the hand signs for the medical jutsu with only one hand, something he was developing, but unfortunately, he hadn't been able to reduce the signs to 0 yet.

The golden chakra in his hand touched the red line on his arm, he ran his finger along the bloodline, slowly healing where he had touched. He had repeated this several times, but it never really became easy.

"The chakra reduction is much better now, I can already tell how much I need to put in to heal a wound or stop the bleeding. This cut on my arm cost me 5% of the chakra; if it were deeper, it would have to be double, and if it were an open wound and not a clean cut, I could stop the bleeding, at the cost of about half of my current chakra."

The basic healing jutsu wasn't omnipotent, unfortunately. Ryo knew this and aimed not to take too much damage with the help of the golden metal, but that wasn't his biggest achievement this month when he stopped to train, but rather the Rasengan. No, he hadn't mastered the jutsu yet, but the first part was done.

Holding a water-filled balloon in his hand, Ryo circulated his chakra in the balloon, causing it to burst a few seconds later, water falling to the ground at Ryo's feet, as he closed his fist.

"If the situation were different, I would be happier, after all, I'm in Naruto's world, right? But... My body still has to mature, my powers have to grow. If I take into account everything I've achieved in a few months, I would already be considered a genius by everyone, being compared even to Itachi, or more, but if they were to discover everything I can really do, it would be bad."

He had no intention of hiding everything he could do forever, but Ryo knew that having tricks up his sleeve could save his life in a difficult situation or without any other choice. And for that, he wanted to fully learn the Rasengan, and also the control of the golden coin.

Ryo didn't intend to openly use control of the golden coin. And he would focus on doujutsus and taijutsu, not even using fuinjutsu for now, maybe in his third year of the academy.

All these choices weighed on his mind, coming from a world where he never even had to fight in the army, to one where he was trying to change a massacre somehow with all his might. Ryo nervously laughed thinking about the beginning of the next year, fortunately, he still had time to adapt and train.

The next day at the academy:

Iruka was entering the school when Ryo appeared after using the high-speed technique. Ryo looked at Iruka as if he wanted to ask something important. "This kid, he's been much more serious in the last month, could it be because Sae hasn't been coming to class anymore?" With that, Iruka then spoke. "Good morning, Ryo, do you want something this early?" The response he received wasn't something he expected from a first-year academy student.

"Yes, Iruka-sensei. I want to learn a jutsu! But I can't because its rank is higher than what I can get in the library, I read about it in one of the scrolls, and I wanted to know how to get it, what do I need to do to learn the Shadow Clone Jutsu?"

Iruka opened his eyes upon hearing this, as he knew it was a B-rank ninjutsu, and one needed a good amount of chakra to use it, and it wasn't something a first-year student would usually be able to use.

"I don't think it will be possible. If you want something like that, you have to come in first in the exams, and I'll talk to someone about it, but don't get your hopes up."

After that day, in the Hokage's office:

Iruka entered it to make his weekly report to Hiruzen while talking about everything that had happened, what the students were doing, and mainly about Naruto, of course, he had one more topic to address. And he explained Ryo's request to the Hokage. Hiruzen analyzed the request for some time while thinking.

"Ryo shows good performance in the academy, not the best but not the worst either, his taijutsu is good, and his shuriken skills are high. Maybe he's thinking that if he can use the Shadow Clone, he can improve his performance."

Hiruzen remained silent for a few seconds, and then spoke to Iruka. "Tell young Ryo that if he finishes the year in first place, I will teach him. However, he also needs to have the necessary chakra; if he doesn't, I won't pass the jutsu to him."

Ryo's move might have created something interesting down the line, but he didn't know that. He only found out through Iruka that he would really have to come in first in the exams from now until the end of the year.

"I didn't expect to get the jutsu so soon, but I didn't want to receive it only at the end of the year; there won't be time to train it!"

He had asked Iruka for the jutsu as a means to train faster for the beginning of the next year, but his plans were frustrated in a certain way.