11 Academy

As he made his way to the Academy for the enrollment ceremony, Shiki pondered on the results of his training these past two years.

His chakra reserves finally started improving once more, the redhead deduced that the physical and spiritual development that come with age were what was holding him back, so with two more years of development, his chakra reserves reached mid jounin. Shiki's chakra control on the other hand crossed into high jonin level mainly due to his training in medical ninjutsu with Tsunade.

His ninjutsu and taijutsu were improved by one rank each reaching peak chunin and low jounin respectively. The boy learned one water style D-rank jutsu, two more C-rank wind style jutsu and one more for each of the other three elements. These were: Water Style: Hidden Mist Jutsu, Wind Style: Wind Scythe Jutsu, Wind Style: Air Current Dance, Earth Style: Rupturing Earth Palm, Lightning Style: Overdrive.

It was at this level that Shiki realised that brute forcing improvements using shadow clones would only continue producing good results if he could make a lot more of them. However this high rate of progress also allowed him to realised the advantages of his Gift of Transcendence that had gone unnoticed.

On the subject of genjutsu, Shiki found that he had a minor talent for yin nature transformation, not even close to his wind nature transformation much less his talent in sealing jutsu but it allowed him to improve his skills a fair bit faster than he anticipated reaching a solid mid chunin level and learning Demonic Illusion: Death Mirage Jutsu and Genjutsu Binding.

And finally, after two years of grueling effort he barely managed to learn the Soul Reading Jutsu. That's right despite all that talent and hard work, Shiki only achieved some rudimentary mastery in one single jutsu making him decide he would instead focus on learning the easy but useful stuff first, in other words most of the legacy jutsus that are not related to souls.

As he finished with his thoughts, the redhead reached the academy and as he arrived he spotted Naruto feeling a bit down and greeted him.

"Hey Naruto how's it going?"

"Hey Shiki! Boring lately."

"Where're Shikamaru and Choji?"

"With their parents somewhere in the crowd. What about you where are Shizune-neechan and Tsunade-san?"

"Beats me! Doing something somewhere."

"They didn't come with you?"

"Psht! As if I need a babysitter, I'm perfectly fine on my own."

"Good point!" Said Naruto feeling a little better after the conversation.

After the ceremony, classes only started tomorrow so Shiki walked around looking for a certain event. A couple of minutes later, he spotted a certain little girl with dark blue hair in a short hime cut and featureless white eyes being surrounded by three bullies.

'Sorry Naruto, but it's not stealing if you get it first!'

"What do we have here three dog shits that lost their way looking for a trash can but don't worry, I'll help you. Hehehe." While deviously laughing, Shiki took care of the punks in seconds and deposited them in the nearest trash can. After that he turned to the girl.

"What are you doing back here my cute little princess? What's your Name? I'm Shiki by the way!"

The girl furiously blushed.

"H-Hinata, my name is Hinata. Thank you for h-helping me" She said.

"Look at you getting all red, how cute! Don't worry about it! Besides, you're a Hyuga right? Taking care of those punks shoulda been easy for you no?"

"I was afraid of hurting them." Hinata explained in a low voice.

Shiki frowned even though he expected the answer.

"Hinata-chan, even though your gentleness is praiseworthy, there are times when one should put their foot down and fight. After all, what would you do if those bullies were hurting someone dear to you?"

"T-That's I would stop them of course but since they were only after me then it doesn't matter!" She answered a bit louder than before.

"But it matters! Just imagine how heartbroken I would be if you got hurt! I'll teach you a secret. Always look out for your friends and yourself even if it sometimes means hurting others, although you might feel bad after hurting someone, you'd feel much worse if someone you cared about got hurt because you couldn't fight. Just like I'd feel bad if you got hurt!"

"S-Shiki-kun! T-Thank you!" Hinata said in a lower voice than before, then she just nodded her head and ran off. Leaving Shiki to wonder if she actually got it but since her chaperon came for her, he decided to talk to her later.

Later that day, Shiki went to his secret hideout to check his Soul Harvesting Pot. Inspecting it, he found three souls inside. After using his newly learned Soul Reading Jutsu, he found out that two of them were elderly people that passed away and just commoners but the last one was the soul of Uchiha Shisui himself.

'That means less than a year until Itachi cleans house. Unfortunately the Soul Melding Seal only assimilates talent and potential which means even though by assimilating his soul, I would get the ability to awaken a sharingan but I wouldn't get his Kotoamatsukami even if I managed to evolve it into a mangekyo.'

'I still managed to get all his knowledge though. I got some Uchiha secret locations, nice fire style jutsus and his own version of the body flicker jutsu that earned him his feared reputation. So I can't say I'm too disappointed.'

Among those secret locations was a secret burial site he'd have to visit. Now that he had learned the Soul Reading Jutsu he should start to extract all valuable information from the souls and transcribe it into scrolls. By the time he finished he would not only have a considerable amount of sensitive knowledge but also hiden jutsu that are not written down and passed down orally.

'Eventually I'll have the best jutsu library in za warudo!'

'Beyond that, maybe I should start working as an information broker? Hmm, food for thought.'

The following day, there would be few preliminary tests to decide which class we would be in according to potential, there was a written exam, shuriken jutsu exam and taijutsu exam.

After the super basic, super easy written exam at least for Shiki it was, all new students started the shuriken exam. He saw all of the rookie nine taking the test and took the top spot. The contents were just throwing kunai and shuriken from a relatively close distance, each student would have ten of each tool and were graded mainly on their accuracy but in case it was similar the difference was decided through speed, Shiki got 100% accuracy and the fastest speed in the class.

After that there was a tournament type taijutsu exam but since almost nobody got any serious training, it was pretty boring for Shiki. In the end, he got first, Sasuke got second, Hinata got third , Naruto got fourth no doubt thanks to his training in the Senju compound and Kiba got fifth.

After the written tests were graded the top three were Shiki, Sasuke and Hinata in that order.

'So Hinata got third unh? I still shouldn't have affected her enough so this is merely her original ability. Well, she should be quite well rounded, she is studious so the written exam shoulda been easy for her, I don't know about shuriken jutsu, too busy feeling good about myself for beating a bunch of kids, as for taijutsu it's he specialty and she got third so it makes sense.'

Shiki got into class A with the rest of the rookie nine bringing the enrolment procedures, finally to an end.

Having done that Shiki quickly decide that the Academy was a waste of time so he sent a shadow clone to attend classes while he worried with more important matters, namely acquiring all the hiden jutsu of the various Konoha clans.

After a few sessions of soul reading he got quite a few but the most important members of such clans were buried in the clan's own hidden cemetery thankfully, he managed to get the locations of these places and for the Aburame clan even where to get their most prized insects.

Changing to less serious but equally important matters, Shiki had improved his relationship with Hinata to the point they made a promise to train together with her sensei. Shiki surmised she had already been left to Kurenai's care and looked forward to meet her.