Training of the spirit

On the morning of the sixth of April, I woke up and found Mito sleeping next to me with her arm around my neck. In the beginning, when we first moved into the dormitory, we each slept in our own apartments, but one day Mito stayed up late and fell asleep next to me. The clone next to her didn't want to wake her up and just put her in my bed. I, on the other hand, coming back tired from training, gave up and fell asleep in my bed as well. From that day on, Mito started sleeping with me, and she settled down permanently in my flat, even moving some of her things into my flat. Somehow this situation started to smell wrong... but after thinking about it, I let it go. Mito may be my own sister, but due to the changes in my genome caused by the Hoshingan installation, she is as biologically related to me as Uchiha Madara, Rikudo Sennin and Kaguya Ootsutsuki - in short, very distantly related.

After breakfast, we went to the welcome ceremony of the Shinobi Academy. The courtyard of the academy was filled with clan and non-clan shinobi, as well as the occasional civilian who had brought their children to enrol.

We all listened to the Hokage's inspiring speech about the Will of Fire; the village leader himself looked like an old man, dressed in a red and white cloak and wearing a white square hat with the symbol for "Fire" on it. He appears to be the strongest shinobi in Konoha, but the Hokage has always been chosen primarily for his strength, so this old man can indeed protect the village in battle.

The essence of the Will of Fire is to protect your loved ones and your village, so you must become a strong Shinobi to protect what you hold dear.

After the Hokage's speech, the students were divided into classrooms where we began to introduce them to each other and the teacher. Mito and I ended up in class A, where there were many clan heirs. Our class teacher was Umino Iruka, a clanless, not particularly strong chunin. He was a young black-haired man with long hair tied back in a ponytail. Iruka's trademark was a horizontal scar across the bridge of his nose.

Introducing himself, Umino Iruka told a little about himself and asked everyone to stand up in turn and state their first and last name, their age and what they wanted or dreamed of.

Many, like Sakura Haruno, wanted to become strong shinobi or kunoichi. Some, like Ino Yamanaka and Kiba Inuzuka, wanted to become worthy heirs of their clans. Sasuke Uchiha wanted to outdo his older brother. Hinata Hyuga wanted to become more confident. And of course, Mito:

- I, Mito Uzumaki, am almost six years old and I want to become the youngest female Hokage, dattebayo! - The red-haired girl excitedly announced that she had expected a storm of applause after her speech, but all that could be heard in the audience was gleeful laughter.

- Hey, what are you laughing at, Dantebayo?! It's a good dream, Dantebayo! Better than the heirs of all the clans! - Mito started to get angry, but Iruka stopped her and told her to calm down and sit down. Mito sat down a little frustrated and hurt. Next up was me:

- I, Naruto Tatsumaki, am also six years old and I want to help someone to become the youngest female Hokage... well, I also want to found my own clan and take over the world, here. - I spoke with a slight cheerfulness, but my words did not make anyone laugh. When a little six year old girl tells her innermost dreams, it is okay to laugh at her, but when a six year old boy, who looks ten or eleven years old and is almost two heads taller than everyone else, tells his plans, it is no laughing matter, but rather everyone wonders what this senior student is doing here and why he is pretending to be a freshman?

As I sat back in my seat, Mito nudged me, which she smiled at and said softly: "Thank you." Next, Iruka told us how the class would be held and what we would be learning. After that, there was a short propaganda speech about the Fire Will and the greatness of Konoha, followed by a history lesson, which was the same propaganda speech with some dates and historical facts with events inserted into it. And the last lesson of the day was geography, because it was clear, it was the same as before, only in places and with comparisons: and we have the biggest country, and the greenest trees, and the strongest shinobi, and we have the most fiery will and generally the best country, and other countries envy us and therefore pester us with wars. Iruka went on and on, but he ended the lesson early anyway, letting everyone go early in honour of the first day of school.

Mito and I were the last to leave the academy, and to celebrate, I suggested we go to the Ichiraku Ramen Café that we had seen on our way to the academy. Walking through the park to the cafe, we saw Hinata Huga surrounded by three boys not far away, and I approached them and heard:

- Hey, Hyuga Clan girl, show us your Biakugan. - One of the boys said mockingly.

- Your eyes are scary! - said another child.

- You're just a monster. A monster byakugan, ha ha ha. - said the oldest of the bullies.

Coming even closer, I called out to Hinata's bullies:

- Hey, punks! Get away from the little beauty, and you'd better apologise for what you said and get out of here.

- Who the hell are you? - asked one of them as the hooligans turned towards me. I think I've seen him before.

- Oh, I remember two of you. I was the one who made you eat dirt for messing with Mito the other day, weren't I? Are you going to apologise, or do you need another lesson in how to behave around pretty girls? - I asked condescendingly.

- We're outnumbered today. Hit him, boys. Take that! - The three boys jumped at me.

- That's what you used to shout, and it didn't work. Ah, they never learn! - I said as one of the bullies tried to hit me, but I phased and became immaterial so he missed and almost fell to the ground, and before he could regain his balance I knocked him out with a punch to the back of the head. The next two boys wanted to hit me from two sides at the same time, but I became immaterial again at the moment of the attack, and the hooligans hit each other, and they did not hold back their strength, so they were knocked out by their blows.

- If children are the flowers of life, these are obviously weeds. So little and already such shits. - I looked around at the lying bullies, then walked over to Hinata, who was still crouching and looking at me with teary eyes.

I sat down next to the girl and said:

- Come on Hinata, don't cry, don't listen to these stupid fools, you are a very beautiful girl, not a monster at all. And your eyes are not only very pretty, but also very useful in your fighting style, so don't get upset about what they say. When you grow up, you'll be able to defeat bullies like this in droves, not only with your clan style, but also with your beauty. - I tried to calm the girl down.

- Thank you... hmmm. - Hinata wiped away her tears and stood up, "Your name is Naruto-kun, right? - She asked as I stood up as well, now towering over the girl by several heads.

- Yes, and you can just call me Naruto. Then why are you alone, Hinata? I thought clan princesses had to be escorted by dozens of Hyuga guards. - I looked around and used the Hoshingan for a moment to check for any shinobi hiding in the bushes, but apart from the spy watching the jinchuriki, there were no adults around, but even that spy was quite far away and only watched Mito, who I overtook to get to Hinata faster.

- A clan chaperone was supposed to pick me up after the lesson, but the lesson ended early, so I decided not to wait long and go home on my own. - Hinata replied meekly.

- Yes, that makes sense. By the way, Mito and I decided to celebrate the first day of the academy at a coffee shop nearby. If you want to join us, I'll buy you a drink. You can wait there for your escort. As you may have noticed, pretty little girls shouldn't be walking around the village alone. And if the escort is gone for a while, after Mito and I have eaten, we can take you to the clan quarter. - I suggested, "Come on, agree.

- Am I disturbing you? - The girl asked anxiously.

- What?! How can a little beauty detract from the pleasure of eating? It will only make the eating experience better and more aesthetically pleasing. - Every time I called her a little beauty, Hinata blushed a little. Princess Hugh was quite cute, and acted like a scared kitten, wanting to be stroked and cuddled all the time.

Mito, who had fallen a little behind, came along:

- "Hey Naruto, where did you run off to so dantebayo? - She asked the red-haired girl, but when she saw the lying bodies and the crying Hinata standing nearby, she added: "And what happened here, Dattebayo?

- He told them that their ideas of beauty were wrong because they had the nerve to call this pretty girl a monster. Mito, you agree that Hinata has beautiful eyes, as bright as a full moon shining at night, don't you? - I pointed at Hinata, who was embarrassed by the attention.

- Well, she has strange, unusual eyes, but it suits her. But why are those boys unconscious after your explanations, Dattebayo? - Mito pointed at the bullies.

- Well, they realised how deep their delusions were and were very remorseful, so much so that their brains failed and they fainted in those ridiculous poses. - I apologised.

- That doesn't sound very plausible, Dantebajo. But if the beginning of your story is true, then they got what they deserved. Well, now that you've finished, let's go to a café, I'm already hungry, dattebayo. - said the girl, and her stomach growled in confirmation of her words.

- Let's go, but we'll take Hinata with us as well. - I muttered and took Princess Hugh under my arm and started to lead her towards the café.

"Ichiraku" was a small stall that made ramen, which you could eat right there on one of the five chairs at the counter. We were served by a good-natured cook called Tewchi.

Once seated at Ichiraku, we ordered a bowl of the standard pork ramen, a salad to go with it, dumplings and green tea to try. The ramen itself consists of thick noodles floating in a very rich broth, made on the bone and boiled for a very long time, which makes the flavour very intense. The two main ingredients are topped with shrimp, mussels, pieces of pork or beef, various vegetables and seaweed, and slightly undercooked chicken eggs with soft yolks.

In my previous life I hated borscht and soup, I don't like food that floats in water. But when I was reborn and starved in the orphanage after my education, I became less picky about food, so I liked the ramen, the noodles were good and I drank all the broth, and then I went for the dumplings, which I have always liked.

At the end of the day, Mito had some ramen as well, and she must have really liked it because she ordered two more large portions, Hinata asked for some more salad and I took some more dumplings and a portion of the seafood ramen with the name Naruto or Narutomaki in it, a fish roll with a red spiral, steamed and cut into slices.

Narutomaki is a component of some ramen, but the roll was originally named after the Naruto Whirlpools, which lie off the coast of the Fire Land and surround the island where Uzushio - the Village of the Hidden Whirlpool - used to be located. The village was the home of the Uzumaki Clan, famous for their mastery of Fuinjutsu, a sealing technique, and it was the clan to which my mother Kushina and Mito belonged. The village of Whirlpool had been destroyed a few decades ago, and the surviving members of the Uzumaki Clan had scattered all over the world.

Anyway, the girls and I were sitting around eating ramen, Mito and Hinata started talking a bit, but when I turned to Hinata and asked her something, Princess Hugh answered me much more quietly, blushing a bit at the same time. Hinata's escort never showed up, or more likely just couldn't find us, so we led the princess through the village to the clan quarters, where we handed the girl over to the guards safely.

After thanking us, Hinata said goodbye and went home.

****

After Mito and Hinata met, they continued to chat around the academy, and later they were joined by a couple of other girls, Ino and Sakura, one of them a militant blonde and the other a slightly insecure pink-haired girl who always tried to hide her forehead.

I, or my chakra-flesh clone, would accompany Mito everywhere, and I, or he, would occasionally have to join in on the girls' conversations. At first, it was assumed that Mito was the daughter or granddaughter of a high-ranking Fire Nation official who wanted the prestige of sending his child to learn the craft of shinobi and had bribed someone to sneak him into the elite junior year, passing off his bloodling and her guard as a newly admitted six-year-old. But Mito and I quickly dispelled this assumption by telling him that we were just orphans who lived together in an orphanage and entered the academy together. Mito's behaviour and mannerisms, which were far from aristocratic, did not fit in with this theory.

Later, the girls around Mito also got used to me, and we began to talk on an equal footing. It is like talking to women: you listen to what they say, nod and agree with them. Sometimes you give your opinion, then you listen to what your opinion is wrong and why exactly, and you agree with each of the points, and then again you listen to what they tell you and insert meaningless phrases like "No way!" or "Wow!" or "Unbelievable! What happened next?

Sitting in class at the Academy, I checked almost all the students with Identity and compared their characteristics with mine. And I could see that the clannish ones were two and a half to three times weaker than me, the clanless ones four to four and a half times weaker. But there were some individuals who stood out, for example, Chouji Akimichi's endurance was slightly less than mine, Shikamaru Nara's intelligence and wisdom weren't far behind mine either, but Yamanaka Ino's wisdom was four times less with almost the same intelligence as Nara's. Sasuke was only slightly stronger than Mito, whose only training was active games with me.

Sasuke himself was just a normal black-haired, black-eyed boy of six, like everyone else in the village, especially in the Uchiha clan.

However, I had a special interest in Sasuke. Now, in my classes, besides studying, I "analyse" Sasuke because I know that he can definitely awaken both the Mangekyo Sharingan and the Rinnegan version, the Rinne Sharingan.

****

Sasuke, on the other hand, felt a little uncomfortable being in class. He felt as if he was being watched and scanned by the Sharingan or the Byakugan all the time. He looked around for the source of the feeling but found nothing.

****

It's okay, you'll suffer a little discomfort for the sake of my development. The Uchiha themselves cut up their friends and relatives to develop their dojutsu, so it was a small price to pay. And the best part was that Uchiha was looking around, looking for something, restless, but he couldn't get out of the classroom.

Besides Uchiha, I was also interested in Hinata, as she was the bearer of the Byakugan and Hyuga genes. The girl often looked at me, sometimes when she thought no one could see her, even with the Byakugan on, and blushed. So I started looking at Hinata with an appraising gaze, using Analysis on her.

****

Hinata felt someone staring at her. Activating the byakugan, she checked her surroundings and noticed that she was being intently stared at and scrutinised by someone she really liked and had looked at very often. And now, when that strange sensation returned, she knew for sure that it was the boy she cared for who was looking at her. And no one can stare so intently at someone he doesn't like or doesn't care about, which means he likes her too.

****

The only thing I can think of is that I have to be careful how I look at his genome, and I have to be careful how I look at his face.

In addition to my studies at the academy, I have been training on my own in the outskirts of Konoha and have already mastered the one-handed creation of Rasengan. Rasengan and Odama Rasengan as well. Once I added mana to the Rasengan, which stabilised the orb for a short time and allowed me to throw it, it made a great destructive bomb, though too expensive in terms of energy expenditure... at least for now.

The more clones I made, the better I understood the whole process of the technique, and in time I learned how to use shadow cloning without using hand seals, so that in battle I could confuse the enemy by stealthily switching to my copy.

I was also able to learn more about creating a clone from chakro flesh, and understood the whole process that makes a clone so stable. As I use the technique, all the chakra present in my body is absorbed, then I add other energies to the technique - prana, psi and reatsu - which first pass through my entire body to the hearth and from there return to their previous places, already in the form of chakra having the structure of those tissues through which the original components of this almost chakra-organic tissue passed. And here the mana helps to stabilise and combine the chakra that was originally in the body and the chakra that has acquired the tissue structure of the body, creating a chakra-flesh clone.

As you can see, mana is a very versatile soul energy that can do a lot on its own and can also be used to help stabilise and unify different types of chakra. And now I want to develop the transformations of my chakra into Suiton - the water elemental chakra, and Doton - the earth elemental chakra, and use mana and Hoshingan to combine them into Mokuton - the wood elemental chakra, which can be used to suppress biju... since I have a Jinchuriki sister with the strongest biju sealed in her stomach, I can use Mokuton.

And my natural chakra transformation training began. There were two groups of three clones, each training two different elements. The clones training Suiton were sitting in the shallow end of the river, and in front of one clone was a small container on a stand from which water was trickling out. This clone was trying to divide the water into two more streams. The other clone had a slightly different task; there were two holes in its bowl, from which two thin streams of water were pouring out, and the clone had to unite them into one thick stream. The third clone simply lay in the water, trying to feel the water element and accumulate Suiton chakra. When the tank ran out of water, the clones would immediately refill it and continue, and when they ran out of chakra, the third clone would disperse and transfer its energy to the other clones, and they would continue to master the Water Element.

The clones who trained Doton learnt the Element in a similar way, they were waist deep in earth and dirt, one clone was trying to separate a dry piece of earth into two halves, the second was trying to unite two pieces of dry earth, and the third was completely immersed in the earth and also meditating, trying to feel the earth energy, and when the first two clones ran out of chakra he gave them all his chakra.

Training with this method progressed very quickly, first the clones learned to separate and join thin streams of water, then they moved on to small streams that formed near the bank of the stream. Eventually they moved on to controlling larger and larger volumes of water. It was not long before Doton learned how to connect and disconnect small pieces of dry earth, and the clones began first to increase the size of the pieces, and second to change the material of these pieces, going from the softest rocks to harder ones - from gypsum and pumice to granite and marble. They also tried to make hard rocks softer by reducing their density, and soft rocks harder by compressing them as much as possible.

I was also a bit nervous, so I tried to find some kind of hiding place in the forest when I went hunting. As time went on, the training became more and more successful, and I was worried that they would be seen by outsiders, so when the clones hunted in the forest, they tried to find a cave that could be used as a training ground... the search for such a cave was complicated by the fact that Konoha has an internal security organisation, ANBU Roren, who simply use different caves as their bases, and move between them using underground tunnels.

Any cave could be the entrance to Roren's base, so I decided to keep things simple and just move the training far away from Konoha, where I could dig my own base now that I'm somewhat proficient in Doton.

To sneak out of the village, I used teleportation to a dimensional beacon, I used it to mark the wagon of a merchant leaving Konoha for the Fire Nation capital, about halfway through the night, I stopped and moved to the beacon and went to an empty deserted area to make my base for training. Just in time for an emergency evacuation of Konoha. If Mito or I were somehow eliminated from the village, I could quickly escape from the shinobi and take the first necessary items to go on the run.

I decided to set up my training base in the Valley of Accomplishment, where the final battle between Madara Uchiha and Senju Hashirama took place. Madara wanted to destroy Konoha and even subdued the Nine-Tailed Biju to do so, but the First Hokage was able to use the Tree Element to protect the Hidden Leaf Village. After the explosion of the Biju's bomb, a huge lake with a waterfall appeared in the area and Hashirama erected two giant statues next to it, representing himself and his opponent and friend, Uchiha Madara, who helped him create Konoha and then tried to destroy it.

The two statues, titled "The Valley of Infinity", are of the same order of magnitude as those depicted in the film "The Valley of Infinity", which is based on the statue of Madara's friend and Konoha, and those depicting the Madara brothers. In short, the Valley of Accomplishment is not a good place for merchants to move around, so not many people hang out here, and most importantly, this valley is perfect for me as a training ground because there are simply beautiful giant trees grown by Mokuton and impregnated with Tree Chakra.

I left my teleport beacon in the Valley of Completion, where I now go every day to train, the training itself being the construction and furnishing of the underground base. I also stopped hunting in the forests of Konoha and began to look for food in the forests near the Valley of Accomplishment... otherwise, the Nara Clan was beginning to worry about reducing the deer population that normally lived in their territory, but sometimes wandered into the neighbouring wild areas where I was actually reducing the deer population for my own sustenance.

After four months I had dug myself a fairly comfortable underground base, the entrance to which I had bricked up so that I could only get inside by teleporting. I tried to build a home in the underground cave... and it wasn't very easy, I wasn't an architect and I'd never built a stone house before, so I had to learn the craft of masonry, but not ordinary masonry, magical masonry. With Doton's help, I learned how to create stone blocks suitable for building a house, and how to combine them into a structure... I tried many times, but mostly I came up with very crude structures, as if created by prehistoric man, and at the same time these structures were not very stable because I only made them out of stone.

With time and many hours of practice, my constructions became more stable and beautiful, but still quite crude. When I mastered Mokuton, I would be able to build structures out of wood, but for now I was working with less flexible, heavier and rougher stone. I ended up building a small stone hut in an underground cave, where I left a spatial beacon for emergency teleportation.

At least now I have a roof over my head in case I have to flee Konoha, and once I master Mokuton, building a palace will be a matter of hours... probably.

During this time I was able to manage a four metre high ball of water with about forty tonnes of liquid, and I was also able to lift a wall eight metres high and five metres thick and wide out of the ground with a kick of the earth element. I think I can try to combine the water and earth chakra into the wood chakra.

Before I began to master Mokuton, I found the largest trees near the Valley of Perfection and sat on them with the clones to meditate and feel the Tree Element.

A little later, the clones practised on these trees in pairs, trying to create Mokuton by combining Suiton and Doton. The clones worked together to facilitate the process, and I worked alone, but I had Hoshingan and Mana with its stabilising properties, so in the end I was the one who managed to create the Tree Chakra and sprout a small acorn that I had gathered from the same forest. It was a small success, though.

The chakra loss is about ninety-eight percent so far, but that's okay, Konoha wasn't built all at once either. The only thing that remains is the fact that he's not even aware that this isn't the first time he's been built. The Senju, notorious for being the Forest Clan, are the only ones in their history to have mastered the Wood Element and to do so to a satisfactory level.

Now that I have found the right balance to combine the two types of chakra into one, I will try to reduce energy loss as well as mana and hoshinjang.

I have also begun to master Futon, the Wind chakra, a training method I didn't have to invent from scratch. First, the clones used the wind chakra to try to cut the leaves from the trees, and when they succeeded, they used the wind chakra to try to cut the waterfall that was falling next to the statues of Hashirama and Madara. The clones then learnt how to create gusts of wind as large as possible and how to compress the air into windmills.

And when I started to get windmills big enough to cut through thick trees, I decided, after some thought, to try to combine the water and air element chakra into Hyoton - the ice element chakra. I don't know why, but if it works, so be it. As they say, better to have and not need than to need and not have. This time it only took two days to fuse, and I ended up with a ten-centimetre fragile ice spike.

Hmm, mastering three elemental chakra transformations in six years, in six months, and combining them into Ice and Wood would sound like nonsense to many. Unless, of course, you add that this six-year-old can create shadow clones, then it would sound, well, delusional, but theoretically possible. Furthermore, this six-year-old would have to have the chakra reserves of a Chunin, a high recovery rate, and the ability to deal with the fatigue of multiple dispersing clones. I had all that and knew how to do it.

Each of my shadow clones halves the time it takes me to master an element, and I usually used about six clones, but as my chakra supply increased, so did the number of clones, now a dozen. "Healing helped me avoid getting a stroke while dispersing a dozen clones, which dispersed one by one in a few minutes. In the end, you could say I wasted not six months, but about four years, if you add up the time spent training clones. Considering that I have a system, a hybrid dojutsu, and genes that give me a predisposition to the elements, it would be very strange if I couldn't have mastered suiton, doton, and futon and combined them into mokuton and hyoton in those "four" years.

Generally speaking, the presence of clones in this world, capable of transferring experience to the original and thus accelerating its development, was one of the main reasons for choosing this world. The other reasons are, firstly, the ability to throw fire, water, stone, lava and other elemental orbs. Secondly, it's a new, amazing, if sometimes cruel, whole world, with a special kind of magic, and at the same time it's not the Middle Ages, and civilisation is advanced enough that I have a fridge, a cooker, and a normal modern shower and toilet in my flat. Well, and thirdly, beautiful girls, who hasn't dreamed of a beautiful life partner, or preferably several... if there is such a desire and such an opportunity... and I have them.

Next, I focused on creating and controlling basic and mixed elemental chakras, and a small group of clones tried to add various elemental chakras to Rasengan. Well, good luck to them and to me... I was getting very tired during the day, but I just knew that without this training, I wouldn't become strong and simply wouldn't survive in this world. I had already died once as the mage Leon, once as the pupil Leonid, and I have no desire to die as a Naruto Shinobi.

But since another advantage of training in the Valley of Perfection was the beautiful view of the sunset, I would even sit down and rest during that time to admire the beautiful view... and then get up and continue training.