Chapter 4 : Progress
Over the next 6 months, Fujin followed the same routine. His physical fitness, concentration and chakra control steadily growing. He also noticed that it also resulted in a significant increase in his chakra reserves. Sadly with nothing to compare, he had no idea how good or bad his chakra reserves were.
On the physical side, he was able to run almost 50 rounds of the playground now. He was able to do 4 sets of pushups with 12 reps, 5 sets of sit ups with 20 reps, 5 sets of squats with 15 reps and 4 sets of pull-ups with 8 reps. He noted that it was much easier to improve physically here as compared to the previous world.
When it came to wind nature training, it took him 3 and half months to successfully cut one leaf, and only after 6 months of nature training, he was finally able to successfully cut the leaf in one go without any issues. While it did take very long, it was understandable due to quite a few factors like Fujin just having unlocked his chakra, with him not having any shadow clones to assist or a great teacher to guide him. As he couldn't cut off a waterfall to complete the next stage, he just tried cutting tougher materials to improve wind nature further. He replaced the leaf, with a small piece of wooden twig and then branch which were lying around.
One lucky instance happened in the 5th month he was in this ninja world. An old couple visited the orphanage and distributed a lot of water balloons in the orphanage. Such instances used to happen frequently, Fujin guessed that they probably were people who lost their children in either the war or Kurama assault. But this time it was very beneficial for him. Since he was an orphan and didn't have any access to money, it meant that he couldn't go to the market to buy water balloons to begin rasengan's training. He took the opportunity to get a few water balloons and hid a few.
With access to water balloons, he finally began the stage 1 of the Rasengan training. While chakra shape manipulation was tough, recalling the way Naruto popped the balloon, Fujin was able to replicate the way to manipulate his chakra to apply pressure everywhere in just a couple of days. However, he wasn't able to pop the balloon. He thought, 'I guess my chakra reserves are too low. I should be able to pop it if I can use more chakra. Oh well, no point in worrying about it right now. But it's probably a good idea to keep practicing this as it'll help improve my skill at shape manipulation.'
A couple of months later, Fujin became 6 years old and eligible to attempt entering the ninja academy. The entrance exam for the same was still 2 months away. Upon inquiring further about the entrance exam and its contents, he understood that the entrance exam was rather standard. It was mostly centered around the physical fitness of the candidates and they inspected their chakra to decide whether the candidate has the potential to be a ninja or not. Fujin was rather confident in clearing both, so he wasn't much worried.
He just continued his usual routine, though he added throwing wooden shurikens to his training routine. In the afternoons, he started to go into the mini-forest, he marked tree stems and tried to hit it accurately with wooden shurikens. This was done in case they added shuriken throwing to the entrance exam. Sadly the orphanage didn't have any shurikens to borrow, and being an orphan meant that Fujin had no money to buy them. So the wooden shurikens were made from small branches of trees in the forest by using wind nature to cut them. The carving of wooden shurikens also helped to increase Chakra control while using wind nature. Still the shurikens weren't perfect, but that was the only option he had for now.
Fujin also had another idea, he thought, 'I have all the basics down, so passing the entrance exam shouldn't be much of an issue. However I wonder if I should start attempting to improve my physical capabilities by aiding them with chakra. I know that chakra could be used to boost speed by concentrating chakra into the legs, similarly the power of punches can be increased by gathering chakra in your fists. I need to experiment on whether I could do more push ups and other exercises if I do them while using Chakra to assist those exercises.'
With those thoughts, Fujin began his experiment. He noticed a significant rise in speed and power, when using Chakra to perform those activities. However there were many issues. The first being that it was too inefficient and a lot of chakra was being wasted. The second issue being that it required a lot of chakra, something his current reserves couldn't handle. So Fujin decided to modify his morning exercises. He decided to keep doing what he has been doing so far, but once he was done with it, he repeated his exercise, only this time doing them with the aid of chakra. And this benefited him immensely, increasing his physical capabilities, his ability to use chakra and also noticed a rise in the speed at which his chakra reserves grew.
He began wondering why his chakra reserves suddenly started growing at a faster rate. Upon analysing, Fujin came to a conclusion, 'I think that it is rising due to the fact that I've been exhausting my chakra on a daily basis. Each time I do that, it probably increases my chakra reserves slightly. If my analysis is right, then currently I have 2 means to increase my reserves. The first being to increase it with a combination of physical exercise and meditation, and the second method being by exhausting my chakra to its limits over and over. I wonder if there are any other means as well.'