14 2/4

Haou-sensei's training also comprised of a lot of technical information. We reviewed formations, shinobi codes, protocols and even the important strategies of the past shinobi wars. We even discussed the importance of the Kinkaku force and their defeat by Tobirama Senju. He was a walking library that man.

I'll never trade Yugito, but this... this felt right. This was a proper team.

Most nights and Sundays were my own, and I spent most of those Sunday mornings sitting with the old man outside at his garden, even after winter began. When I told him I about the chunin exams in Kusagakure, he offered me a mission.

"Kioshi, there's something I have to ask of you." His rusty voice interrupted our morning silence, "I have a... mission of sorts."

I raised an eyebrow and urged him to continue.

"There's a certain item I want you to bring me, an item I want you to steal."

"Steal? Wh-"

"The reasons are my own," he said, "and of course, you can refuse."

It took me a couple of seconds to realize he was waiting for an answer. I trusted the old man.

"What do you want me to steal?"

He took a deep breath, his eyes taking a sorrowful vacant look. "There's a certain document on display in a Kusa museum, a letter from the Nidaime Tsuchikage to his brother."

That was a strange request.

Quest Created:When morning is just a few hours away.

Steal the Nidaime Tsuchikage's letter.

Rewards:-

After the three months of training, before leaving to Kusa, I mentally reviewed my inventory, clothes and double checked my stat screen.

'Status.'

Name: Kioshi Shirasu

Title: Genin of KumogakureAge: 8Level 34 (8470/24400)

HP: 810/810SP: 1107/1107Chakra: 1381/1382Chakra Control: 78%

STR: 84DEX: 102VIT: 79INT: 80WIS: 75CHA: 7/10Points: 29

Money: 131240

I've grown quite a bit over the past few months and judging by my level alone, I was already chunin material.

All that dungeon diving, studying, exercising, training and polishing out my skills increased my stats enormously. I distributed some of my unspent points equally throughout my stats, DEX went over one hundred. I felt stronger, faster, and more mentally capable. My Chakra, SP and HP began to skyrocket.

Yugito even stopped pulling her punches that much. It hurt like hell, but I was giving her a workout too.

Also, most of my most advanced techniques grew steadily, though they still haven't max out yet:

Veiled Fist Lvl. 35 (46%)- A difficult to telegraph and difficult to master taijutsu style, it also takes advantage of hidden weaponry to inflict damage.Increases unarmed and armed damage by 35%.

Advanced Shurikenjutsu. Lvl 19. (91%)- Perfected techniques for thrown weaponry developed by the Uchiha clan.Increases ranged damage and accuracy by 19%.

I hated not knowing when my skills would max out.

My "passive" skills were developing quite well too:

Wind Release. Lvl 34. (84%)- The rarest of nature transformations, transform chakra into wind or control the winds themselves. At higher levels, more advanced techniques can be used.

Poison Resistance. Lvl 20. (4%)- Your resistance to all physical and chakra poisons and venoms you could find in the elemental nations.Reduces severity and duration of toxins by 20 percent.You are now immune to basic and moderate toxins.

Training poison resistance was a pain in the ass, even if meditating got rid of most of the horrible toxins in just some minutes. It's not funny injecting oneself with a paralytic agent you just learned to craft and then waiting for the effects to wear off while your nervous system is screaming at you. The skill, however, was increasing, and I finally became immune to all the concoctions I could make. The Basic Toxin, the Intermediate Toxin and the Contact Toxin were all liquids that causes pain in an area, the first two must be applied by wound, as they were blood poisons, and the third was a simple contact toxin, similar to the venom of a spitter snake, I guessed.

I had to build a small distillery lab to create the intermediate paralytic agent. Kumogakure didn't have a chemical equipment store -no surprise there- and most of the glassware I had to buy from assorted houseware stores. After three attempts, I finally distilled some unripe small plums, mixed them with other distilled fluids, and created the poison, a good remembrance of the Centipede Monstrosity's venom. The whole ordeal was a pleasant way to pass the cold winter nights.

The Great Breakthrough and the Flying Swallow were also sitting at a nice level too, the first one at 18 and the second at 13. I could even now overload the Great Breakthrough to uproot small trees, though it used three times more chakra. The Flying Swallow leveled slower and made too much noise, and I trained it intensively against dungeon animals.

Yugito taught me the Shunshin, and it became a favorite. The physics -if you could call them that- behind the jutsu were quite simple: gather your chakra around your body to 'vitalize' it and release it in a burst through your limbs. The poof of smoke I remember from the manga wasn't part of the jutsu per se, it appeared if you overloaded the chakra just before releasing it. Whatever the hell Kakashi did to incorporate leaves into its execution remained a mystery to me, though. But it is a great jutsu and uses very little chakra!

Body Flicker Technique. Lvl 5 (45%)D rank- By vitalizing the body with chakra, the user can move at extreme speeds.Requirements: 50% Chakra control.Cost: Variable.

My chakra control training was going okay too. Of course I remembered the three steps Jiraiya used to teach Naruto the Rasengan, but I took a different approach. I didn't need to learn the jutsu, just its theoretical applicability to train my chakra control, so I didn't use water balloons or rubber balls. If I could go through the steps -rotation, power and stability- without a medium to help me, I would be relying solely on chakra control. That was Kazuya's perfectionism right there.

It proved to be a difficult task: Chakra fought against control. The refined control needed to impart rotational momentum was astounding and the resulting centripetal forces tended to destabilize the jutsu. Accounting for viscosity alone was a pain in the ass.

But those grueling nights of were baring results, and my chakra control began to slowly increase. I expected it would take me another six months to finally form a stable Rasengan if I were to follow my stupidly convoluted and methodical approach. But hell, I was having a great time doing it.

I finally created a new genjutsu that attacked other senses, and it was awesome. I called it Shellshock.

Shellshock Technique. Lvl 6 (11%)B rank- A genjutsu that overloads the victim's nervous system and alters their perception of balance and orientation via the inner ear canal.Requirements: 70% Chakra control.Cost: 34 Chakra points per use.

It was fast and didn't require eye contact like the Petrifying Gaze genjutsu, which I finally maxed out. All it took was a small stream of chakra sent into the victim's ear canal, where it would overload their nervous system and mess up their sense of balance, producing vertigo, nausea, involuntary eye movement, fluctuating hearing loss and arrhythmia.

It was remarkably effective at disrupting enemy actions -movement, jutsu or hand seals, for example. A running victim would stumble to the ground, an attacking enemy would misstep, and an unsuspecting shinobi would feel the world spinning and would be unable to focus. The Shellshock genjutsu was as nifty creation and only required two hand seals. The only drawback: it was easy to detect and therefore straightforward to release if the person had the mental fortitude. Haou-sensei praised its ingenuity as I practiced it mostly against my new teammates. Kichiro also said that he suffered from tinnitus for a couple of days afterwards.

But the best news during these last months was the discovery of another form of my magnet release.

During my first visit to the jonin training grounds, I spotted a blue orb hovering above a rocky formation and so it happened that it was a dungeon right at my level.

So one day at dusk, after training with Yugito and under the excuse of needing to clear my head, I headed to the blue orb of light and entered the new dungeon. It was a small forest of scattered trees and rounded rocks bordering a wide stream of water, and it was packet with wild boars. Those were easy to deal with as was the dungeon boss, a small house-sized boar with enormous tusks that sparkled with electricity. Nothing a fast taijutsu bout with wind enhanced kunai couldn't handle.

It was after the battle that I felt it. The same thing I kept feeling deep underground the valleys of Kumo, I felt it strongly in that forest.

I sat down after killing the boss and went into shallow meditation, shifting my consciousness into the forest ground. There, I felt it again. Sand, iron sand... or so I thought.

Eagerly, I commanded that sand to come forth to the surface and opened my eyes. Floating in front of me was a small glob of brownish red sand.

'What the hell?'

Ding!

Magnet Release (Iron Sand). Lvl 50. (4%)- The famed third Kazekage's version of the kekkei genkai. By controlling magnetic fields, ferromagnetic iron sands obey your commands. Control, sand amount and Chakra cost are variable, depending on skill level.Magnet Release now grants command over the Crimson Iron Sand.

'Crimson Sand?' I was confused. 'Did I just unlock a new type of Iron Sand?' Not a second later, my eyes widened in surprise.

I took a closer look at the floating mass of red sand hovering in front of me. I was mistaken to believe my kekkei genkai could only command the normal iron sand I accumulated from painstakingly grinding kunai to a dry whetstone. It seemed my magnet release would affect any kind of iron, and the most prevalent type of iron in the ground were iron oxides: compounds of iron and oxygen -and hydrogen, if I recalled correctly- which colors ranged from reddish browns to orange to yellows.

'A new type of Iron Sand?!'

I didn't even tried to ponder about the magnetism of iron oxides -weren't they ferromagnetic too?-, nor the formation of rust when exposed to humidity. I neglected most of my chemistry and soil engineering classes back in the real world and they wouldn't come back just like that.

Disregarding its color, the Crimson Sand looked remarkably similar to the regular Iron Sand at first glance. Upon closer inspection though, I noted the new sand was coarser, probably because of its natural origins. But there was so much of it! In just one hour I mustered as much Crimson Sand as regular Iron Sand I gathered during these last years.

I could see it now. Every time my Magnet Release leveled up, my control over the Iron Sand also increased, allowing me to control more sand at the same time. If my kekkei genkai continued to develop and if my increasing perception of iron sands underground followed the same principle, I could eventually draw out huge amounts of Crimson Sands from the ground itself, just as the Yondaime Kazekage did with his Gold Dust during the fourth war. True, that was in a desert, but that's beside the point.

This new sand would open doors to so much more!

'Fuck yeah!'

Naturally, inspiration hit me. I trained for days at a time inside the dungeon, leveling up the skill, improving my command over the sands and coming back every week after it reset. I couldn't really tell how much time passed inside, as the sun remained static and never moved an inch, but after a month of coming back to that dungeon I was able to command both the regular Iron Sand and the Crimson Sand to form different shapes like in the manga; cubes, cylinders, spikes, blades... you name it.

There was an important difference between the sands: the Crimson Sand was brittler, and its coarser grains also meant that any cutting shape I fashioned didn't have the sharp edges as when using the regular iron sand. That didn't mean they couldn't pierce the dungeon's wild boars like butter; all of them were reduced to the small glimmers of light in minutes, speared, stabbed and cut by my iron sands. The dungeon boss didn't get to move at all as I held it with the Crimson Sand and skewered it with black stakes.

I decided there and then that the black Iron Sands were going to be my first choice when forming shapes and offensive elements, while the Crimson Sands were going to be relegated to capture targets and as a defense mechanism, like Gaara's. Shame it didn't have the same automatic response, though. Moreover, until I could summon large amounts of sands from the ground like he could, I'll carry my new sand sealed up in a slot in my inventory just like the regular iron sand. By the final day before leaving to Kusa, I had five times the amount of Crimson Sand than of Black Sand stored in my inventory.

This new sand felt overwhelming. It felt like I was finally starting my journey to become another shinobi monster in this world.

Nevertheless, this new version of the Magnet Release would paint a huge target over my head if it goes out, so my original plan would stay the same: keep it hidden until I could defend her and myself from all the other monsters. That didn't mean I couldn't use the sands, but that I shouldn't leave any evidence or witnesses.

I didn't tell anyone about the crimson sands, not even Yugito. It was my trump card.

Going back to my new team, we went on two C-rank missions. The first one a simple courier mission to a small village in the northern part of the Land of Lightning -in which I learned that winter was a harsh season in the Land of Lightning and that snow was, in fact, a pain in the ass during missions. The second one was an escort mission, and that one turned out to be though. We had to escort this rich civilian trader to a border outpost, and we ran into some bandits. I had to kill one of them.

I learnt two things.

First, I only receive Exp points by killing an enemy and not by knocking them out, which made sense as I wasn't getting any exp from sparring.

And second, I really thought it was going to be a grievous and painful situation, but there was no moral conundrum. Nothing. Yugito's words resonated in my mind during the scuffle. Better to be a shinobi than a civilian. And like she said, all I could think about was 'better them than me.'

It's not that I didn't feel like shit after the fight, but the gamer's mind took the blunt of it, and I let it drown it away.

Kichiro and Suguna were faring better than me, but it wasn't easy for them too.

We were shinobi, we were supposed to kill. Even if we didn't like it.

The day before leaving, Yugito and I were sitting down, leaning against one of the big angular rocks on the training grounds, admiring the cold sunset. The red colors reflected off the snow-covered ground, and bathed the trees and the village itself, giving a radiant but soothing atmosphere that was difficult not to be overwhelmed by.

She was wearing her normal attire, her special jonin vest, a chain of blue beds around her left hand and her hitai ate holding her blonde hair back, unbraided. She looked so much better with her hair untied.

I also changed little from my normal clothes. Black shinobi pants held by the Belt of the Monkey God, a black long-sleeved shirt and closed-toe shinobi sandals. Because of the cold, I wore a hooded coat with short sleeves and that dropped at my knees. It closed to one side, but wider at the bottom almost like a haori, allowing me to move my legs unhindered. It was dark gray colored in a tone similar to my hair, which was short and spiky, my hitai ate preventing it from covering my mismatched eyes.

The sun was quickly setting, and Yugito looked at me directly for a full minute before turning back at the sunset.

"You better come back alive, or else..." She said.

She wasn't smirking nor she was crying.

"I'll come back, whatever it takes." I answered her seriously.

Haou-sensei, Kichiro, Suguna, and I left the village gates at dawn the next day, just as the sun rose over the eastern mountains. The cold was heavy, so we traveled with thick winter cloaks over our shoulders.

We could fight the cold by shuffling chakra under our skin, but even though the Winter Coat jutsu didn't use that much chakra, it was used only as an alternative in case you didn't have the right clothes or you were traveling through freezing environments.

We crossed the endless blanket of clouds and began our trek to the borders. Our way was set. We will go through the Land of Frost and the Land of Hot Water directly into the Land of Fire and travel along the border until we reach the Land of Grass. As Haou-sensei told us, even if the Land of Lightning wasn't currently at war with the Land of Fire, the Hyuga incident worsened the then flimsy trust between them. Nothing was set in stone, but Kumo shinobi avoided entering the Land of Fire unless under strict reasons, and vice versa. We had permission to go through, but we would avoid spending more time than the absolute minimum on Konoha's domain.

Haou-sensei set a gruesome pace, shunshining every now and then and throwing shuriken in our direction to test our reaction times. Training, he called it. In my opinion, he was too demanding of us. I didn't particularly care, I demanded much from myself, but if Suguna or Kichiro didn't have the strength or the maturity I came to acknowledge during these months, I doubted they would have lasted this far. Haou-sensei trained the best, true, but I could guess a lot of mid-tier genin get left behind because nobody gave a rat's ass about them.

It was close to midnight that day when we arrived at the same snow refuge near the border, the one from my first C-rank. Suguna and Kichiro collapsed on their beds, while I lied down and watched my SP points finished recovering. I tired much slower than my teammates, a consequence of how far I've taken my stamina training. It started with morning jogs, which became morning sprints and which, in time, turned into interval training and weighted dynamic drills. I hated every single day of that training, but that was the idea; if you're always enjoying training, you probably have to kick your training up a notch. Now I could jog at a decent pace and my SP points wouldn't drop at all since my regeneration was now high enough to compensate the loss. To put it in numbers, it took 22 minutes for my SP to fully regenerate while standing still or ambling around, and 10 minutes if I meditated. On every small rest Haou-sensei gave us on our way here, my half-spent SP points recovered completely. The trip was easy!

The next day we showed our papers at the border control point and crossed to the Land of Frost. It lived up to its name. The snow was so thick we had to run channeling chakra to our feet. Aside from that, nothing of notice happened, we didn't run into any town or any living being for that matter. No shinobi controlled us on our way in or our way out. From the map I had we did cross the border control point, but there was no sign of any anyone...

It was a slow way across the Land of Frost, but we arrived at the border with the Land of Hot Water by afternoon, where we were controlled by Yugakure shinobi before crossing.

Yep, I thought the Land of Hot Water didn't have shinobi at all, but they did. Only for domestic affairs and security, though.

We arrived at our second stop way past the sunset, a small roadside town called Kurigawa. The moment we entered the town, my global map updated showing a new point with the town's name next to it. Neat.

Ding!

Map updated.

Suguna vainly tried to convince Haou-sensei to stop at Yugakure itself, arguing its hot springs were legendary and whatnot. She had to come to terms with a small hotel and its hard beds.

The next morning, we took back to the road after a big breakfast and a good sleep, and by noon we approached the border with the Land of Fire.

The landscape changed drastically, rocky grounds and scattered bushes gave way to increasingly lush tempered forest of enormous green trees that obscured what little light shone through the clouds. Two jonin and five chunin guarded the control post and, from what by Observe passive skill showed, three more shinobi were hidden among the trees.

No known name, regrettably; it would have been amazing to meet Kakashi, Asuma or any other jonin from the manga. Or a shinobi from a clan.

Haou-sensei agreed to stay close to the borders and away from the inner areas of the country or any major city in our way to Kusa, and the Konoha shinobi let us enter. We were supposed to report at the control points along the borders with the other countries: the Land of Rice, the Land of Iron, the Land of Waterfalls and finally the Land of Grass.

This was going to be at least a three-day trip through the Land of Fire, so we immediately began our journey.

"That was a busy control point." Kichiro commented.

"The Land of Fire takes border controls very seriously. They don't have the luxury of our single land border." Haou-sensei enlightened us. "Besides, they also take a lot of international missions to the minor countries because of the amount of trading they do."

"We don't?" Suguna asked.

"Not as much as them, we export mostly weapons, iron and gold. We used to export grain, too."

"Wait," I interrupted, "aren't we importing grain and produce right now?"

That was what I saw during the C-rank missions I took with Yugito; caravans entering the Land of Lightning with grains and vegetables and whatnot.

"Our lands are dry," Haou-sensei answered me, "we haven't got a good rain in years now and the northern crop lands were attacked by a plague. It will take years for them to recover."

'Huh. So that's why food is getting more expensive in Kumo.' Not that I cared. I reserved the issue for later musings.

The Land of Fire was beautiful. It was green, even during winter, and the sun shun heavily on the sky through the clouds. By the end of first day we arrived at the control point near the border with the Land of Rice and began our climb onto one of the Land of Fire's extensive mountain ranges. It was a wide collection of middle-sized mountains that received snow mostly during the winters; none had the eternal glaciers of the Land of Lightning's peaks.

This range was born right in the middle of the Land of Fire and extended to the north into the Land of Iron, growing in altitude and width far into the Land of Iron, forming the cold plateaus they are known for, where the Three Wolves mountains stood tall. That was the land of the samurai.

I would love to visit that place sometime, but shinobi from every nation respected the one unwritten world-wide law: You do not mess with the samurai. And not because shinobi couldn't actually wipe them out in a war, it was just one of those rules that no one broke, because reasons. I was inclined to believe it was because the Land of Iron did produce most of the chakra channeling metal of the elemental nations -it was the only product they exported in bulk- and no nation was going to risk their supply by provoking the samurai.

Whatever the real reason was, I loved how that rule was so ingrained among shinobi that even the children in Kumo were told the rule as parts of their bedtime stories.

The climb over the Land of Fire side of the mountain range was slow, and Haou-sensei set a fast pace. We only stopped when Suguna or Kichiro needed some rest.

"How the hell aren't you tired?" Suguna asked me between huffs and grunts.

"Training." I answered with a devious smile.

"I hate you." That was a panting Kichiro.

We were two thirds of the way to the Nissho mountain pass when the last rays of light began to fade, so we made camp that night. Snow covered the area as we were high enough, but again, nothing we weren't prepared for.

The sky was empty of clouds when we were reached the pass the following day. We could see the top of the ever-green forests that characterized the Land of Fire. To the south, small canyons and hills stood out between all the green.

"That's the central formation of the Land of Fire." Haou-sensei told us. "Konohagakure is somewhere around that area."

There, somewhere around there, the main part of the story was unfolding. It brought a smile to my face knowing that Naruto was probably sleeping in class by then.

After entering the land of Grass, we crossed a new Kanabi Bridge built after the original was destroyed by Kakashi, Obito and Rin. The same bridge where Kakashi received his Sharingan from a 'dying' Obito.

There was no commemorative plaque, no written story nor shrine; there was nothing to remind people that this bridge's destruction during the third war was such a pivotal event.

But some shinobi did know about the importance of this place; Haou-sensei took a couple of seconds to marvel at the bridge and the ruins down the ravine before crossing it, just like I did.

A forest extended after the ravine to the north as far as my eyes could see. This valley was remarkably similar to the Land of Fire's forest, the smaller size of its trees the only noticeable difference. As my map said, right after crossing the hills to the west, the huge extensions of grass commonly known as The Grasslands would start. There, between the pasture covered hills, the Village Hidden in the Grass stood.

We were asked for our papers again at the entrance of the village, where we had to register our team for the exams. Apart from one turned head and one raised eyebrow, none of the Kusa shinobi guarding the gates commented about my age, for which I was thankful. That sort of comments got old fast after all the border controls. One Kusa shinobi guided us to our designated hotel.

"So," I asked the shinobi on our way to the hotel, "anything you can tell us about Kusa?"

She was a level 67 kunoichi, a jonin, dressed in a simple sand colored garb over blue pants and long-sleeved blue shirt. Her jonin vest looked remarkably similar to Konoha's. She wore a conical straw hat over her head, and now that I realized, it was a common headdress among the residents of the village. Why would they use them when the winter sun shone so dimly? Perhaps it was part of their culture.

The kunoichi looked down at me. "Kusa is a small village with strong traditions."

Cue in the usual uncomfortable silence that follows such short answers.

She didn't say another word until we arrived at our hotel. "You are to remain within the village at all times. Any type of misbehavior will be sanctioned." She gave Haou-sensei a scroll and shunshined away.

"Bitch." Suguna commented.

"Yep." I answered shrugging.

We checked in at the hotel's reception desk and were shown to our rooms. They weren't half bad, a simple room with three beds and a bathroom for Kichiro, Suguna and me and a single room for Haou-sensei.

Hanging from a wall next to the reception desk was a map of Kusagakure, so I took a closer look at it and got the alert.

Ding!

Map added:Kusagakure.

That was important, all I had from the area was a border and border crossings map, and a Landscapes maps that showed the different biomes of the elemental nations in a very rough and vague way. Now I had a detailed map of the Village.

It was lunch hour, so we took a stroll outside to find some place to eat and get acquainted with the village. The exams would start in two days, confirmed by the scroll Haou-sensei was given, so we decided to take it easy and rest until the start.

Kusa wasn't anything impressive to be honest. It was just a quarter the size of Kumo and looked like a small resting town, like those found along trading routes. The feel was somewhat similar to what you expect from the holiday spot far from the big cities: open spaces, wide streets and small buildings. Roof tiles of varied tones of red and yellow crowned every structure, and green grass and small trees adorned every corner and the numerous gardens and parks. Winter didn't seem to affect the flora here too much, as most of the trees and bushes still wore their green leaves proudly. Clearly, Kusa wasn't subjected to harsh winters like Kumo was.

But the most beautiful feature of the village wasn't its architecture, it was its surrounding mountains. Beautiful green-covered hills surrounded the grass-covered valley. You could see a thin mantle of clouds rolling across the highlands squeezing between the mountain tops and falling into the surrounding forests, shrouding them with humid air that fed the vast collection of rivers that traversed the lands.

As we ambled around, civilians went around their lives and only gave us sideways glances because of our hitai ate and Kichiro's and Haou-sensei's tanned skin. And probably because the lack of straw hats over our heads.

We spotted a shinobi team from Iwa and one from Amegakure also wandering the streets. As per our orders, we didn't greet them in any way, but Haou-sensei gave his jonin colleagues a cordial nod that was reciprocated with a similarly cordial nod.

Who would have guessed? Shinobi can be civilized...

I Observed the genin. Their levels ranged from 35 to 41, the highest one being a tall Iwa genin that glared at us.

This exam was going to be tough. I smiled, feeling eager to start the exams and fight strong.

We ended up having lunch in a small stand of, you better believe it, ramen. Ramen! Suguna just smelled around the food district and decided to run towards that particular stall.

"She always does that," Kichiro commented with a smile, "we just follow her nose. She has never been wrong."

It wasn't as cold as Kumo's icy winters, but the warm broth and noodles really uplifted my mood. I can see why Naruto is addicted to this stuff.

After our lunch and some small talk -we were not supposed to talk about the exams in public- I convinced my team to visit the local museums.

I had a mission and the more information I collected beforehand, the better.

We looked around for a moment before Haou-sensei asked for directions to a civilian passing by.

"We can get you one of those straw hats too, sensei." I quipped. "I bet it's still cold up there."

"But not for you, you'll disappear under one." Haou-sensei taunted back.

Suguna and Kichiro chuckled at my expenses.

'Touché.'

"Are we going back to Kumo before the final rounds? I've heard there's always an interlude." I asked Haou-sensei as we began walking to the nearest museum.

"According to the chronogram, you'll only get a two-week rest before the final fights, so I don't think we'll go back to Kumo."

'Perfect,' I thought, 'let's see in which museum the letter is and devise a plan to steal it during the interlude.' An idea started to brew in the back of my mind.