Small success
The sun soon rose in the sky, marking the beginning of another day in the ninja world.
Kaito had prepared himself to go to the seal shop in Konoha. He was once again wearing a green shirt and black pants, along with his wolf necklace. This ensemble had become his signature look.
"Even though I have several clothes in my closet, I still prefer this outfit. But I wonder what my mother was thinking when she bought these clothes, all of them are in the same color scheme," Kaito thought about his mother possibly having a passion for the color green, as his father had green hair and the various clothes he had were also shades of green.
After his thoughts, Kaito grabbed his money pouch and sealed it in his scroll, then left home, heading straight to the seal shop.
He had earned quite a lot from his recent missions, a total of 100,000 ryo. They had completed several D-rank missions and two C-rank missions, with the last one being considered a B-rank mission by the Hokage. Additionally, he had been receiving 1000 ryo monthly from his father since he was 10 years old.
The old Kaito was a child who didn't spend much, so he had amassed a significant amount of money over the two years. Counting all the money he had accumulated from missions and his allowance, he had exactly 120,000 ryo, which was already a substantial sum.
On the way, Kaito spotted several familiar teams. One of them was the Ino-Shika-Cho team with their sensei. Ino smiled and waved at him when she saw him, and he returned the gesture with a smile.
Kaito didn't stop to talk to them because, besides needing to take care of his business, Team 10 seemed to be heading to complete an important mission, as Ino also didn't stop to talk to him.
He continued on his way, passing various buildings until he reached his destination, the fuinjutsu shop in Konoha.
Upon entering the shop, an attendant approached him. "Good morning, can I help you with something?" Seeing the headband with the village symbol, the attendant already knew he was a ninja, so he was as polite as possible.
"Good morning, I wanted to know if you have scrolls with sealed ninjutsu in them, preferably water-based ones," Kaito replied. He didn't want to buy fuinjutsu books because his father had many at home that he could borrow at any time. What he hadn't found were scrolls with stored ninjutsu inside.
"Yes, we have several scrolls that use the annexation technique. What do you need, young man? We have scrolls of all ranks, with prices increasing according to the rank of the sealed ninjutsu inside." Saying this, the attendant gestured for Kaito to follow him, showing him the various scrolls on the shelf.
After walking a bit, they reached the shelf labeled Suiton (Water Release).
"Here you go, young man. These are all the scrolls we have with water-style ninjutsu. The cheapest ones are rank E, while the most expensive ones contain B-rank techniques," the attendant pointed to the scrolls as Kaito observed.
Water bullets, water bomb, great flood, water dragon, water prison, water barrier. There were many scrolls, and the prices were quite high. For instance, the water bullet ninjutsu that Kaito knew cost 15,000 ryo.
"Well, all I need is the annexation technique, so I'll need to study it thoroughly. I'll buy a few," Kaito thought as he looked around.
"Give me three scrolls, containing Great Flood, Water Prison, and Water Bomb," Kaito mentioned the scrolls he was interested in. He chose three different scrolls of slightly higher rank because he knew there was a difference for each storage.
"Alright, I'll prepare them for you. That will be a total of 70,000 ryo," the attendant took him directly to the end of the store where the scrolls and the payment area were located.
Kaito retrieved the scroll that sealed his money and took out his money pouch, paying the attendant directly.
The attendant took the money and handed over the scrolls. "Anything else?"
"No, thank you," Kaito replied and started to leave. He was eager to study these seals.
"Thank you for your patronage. Please come again, dear customer," the attendant said as Kaito left.
After leaving the store, Kaito went straight back home as he was eager to study the seals.
Upon entering his room, he tossed the scrolls onto the table and began to study them.
Each symbol in the seal was very different from what he had seen in the storage seal, as it contained several other water element symbols, making it much more complex.
But Kaito didn't give up easily. He went down to the living room where his father's library was and grabbed several books on fuinjutsu before returning to his room.
He quickly understood some of the signs on the seal, which made the rest much easier.
The day passed swiftly, and Kaito was still in his room studying. He had even created a clone to read other scrolls, occasionally dispelling it to obtain the information.
"Damn thing is giving me a headache," Kaito grumbled in frustration at some failures but persisted nonetheless.
"I got it!" he exclaimed as he had an idea and immediately put it into practice.
The air cooled, and a block of ice formed in his hand, which he then placed directly on his head. It seemed like an illusion because as soon as he placed it on his head, vapor-like smoke emerged, followed by a clear sense of relief for Kaito, who quickly returned to his studies.
In the late afternoon, Kaito finally stopped studying.
"Finally, I managed to study all those seals and the one my father gave me yesterday. Besides, I found others in the books I took from him. Now, I can finally attempt to create my own seal that I was thinking of," Kaito said with a smile as he started to sketch his own seal.
It wasn't easy, as he was failing in all parts, finding it challenging to implement a seal into another. Through trial and error, he was improving.
Night fell again, and Kaito was still studying, having left his clone to continue the task. He was contemplating how to transform a part of his body into an elemental form.
He had concluded that it wouldn't be easy, but he felt small signs that it could work, so he persisted.
During his first attempts, he mostly ended up freezing parts of his body, and the night passed quickly as he exerted maximum effort.
Just as the sun was beginning to rise, he finally achieved his first success. He managed to merge a small part of his body's tip with ice. He quickly took a kunai and cut towards this piece, and as he expected, it worked. He didn't feel anything when the ice piece was removed, and he promptly generated more ice at the tip of his finger, recovering as if nothing had happened.
"Now let's see if it really worked," Kaito deactivated the ability, and indeed, there was no sign of a cut, making him smile. But at that moment, all his muscles screamed in excruciating pain, and his chakra was rapidly drained, fortunately only 10% of his total capacity.
The smile on Kaito's face vanished, replaced by a grimace. The pain was intense, clearly indicating that this wasn't a technique he could use at any time, only in life-threatening situations. After all, if he had only done that with the tip of his finger and suffered such pain and chakra loss, imagine if he had done it to his entire arm.
Kaito hesitated for a moment and attempted again with a larger part of his body, but he quickly realized he was incapable.
"Damn, I'll have to improve more," he said, trying to fuse his body with ice again, but this time only with his finger, and he succeeded. However, this time, even before he could deactivate the ability or cut it off, he felt extreme fatigue, leading him to quickly disable his ability. There was no chakra drain this time, but the muscle pain persisted.
"I guess that's it for today. I'll try more tomorrow," Kaito said as he collapsed to the ground, his body overwhelmed by exhaustion.
As soon as he fell asleep, he found himself in a white hall.
Kaito was now before God, with desires to choose from, and finally, he was directed back to the world of Naruto.
When he opened his eyes, he felt that his body was not responding to his commands, and his limbs seemed shorter.
"Damn, am I a baby? How did this happen? I was doing just fine. How did I die and end up here?" At that moment, he saw two red eyes in front of him.
"Why does this seem familiar?" The next moment, he saw blood flowing on the ground, and the person with red eyes was pointing a blade directly at him.
"Damn, this is the day of the Uchiha clan massacre," Kaito pieced the puzzle together, finally understanding, but the next moment, his head was severed from his body.
His only thought was how unlucky he was.
In that moment, he jolted awake. It had all been a nightmare. Kaito was drenched in sweat as that would have been the worst thing to happen, to be reborn as a helpless Uchiha baby on the day of the Uchiha massacre.
"Phew, thankfully that didn't really happen. Those damn Uchiha eyes scared me," Kaito got up from the ground, feeling his muscles ache, yet he seemed a bit stronger.
Kaito concluded that his muscles had been hurting so much because his physique wasn't that strong, as he hadn't focused much on taijutsu. He decided to add physical training to his to-do list.
He began with some squats, sit-ups, and push-ups to start the day, after which he took his katana and went through his daily exercises.
Afterward, he looked at the clock on the wall and realized it was close to lunchtime. He had woken up quite late this time due to exhaustion, but he wasn't worried as his father had already informed him that the Chunin exams would start soon and had given them time to improve.
He had a few days until the exam, so Kaito decided to train as much as possible in his fuinjutsu and the fusion of his body with ice.