Chapter 2

(MC POV)

Walking through the forest, I think about what I should do now.

I'm in a new world. A world of opportunities and high risks. Should I just be on the sidelines? Everything should just work out, right?

Haah~ well, I can say a lot of excuses. But as I am alive, I have to admit this world is all true. And hoping everything will go as my canon knowledge is just naive.

I need to solve as many problems as I can and I need allies. I can't solve everything by myself. That's just wishful thinking. So, I need strength and I need allies.

But first I need a name. Something cool and badass. So, I take a name from a favorite character of mine - Yami. I wasn't talking about the full name. I just wanted it to be something similar to my features. Namely my hair color in this case.

Now, joining hidden villages is a big NO. Why? Well, senile old guys with bullshit ideals and power-hungry schemes don't create a great mixture. And it's something I don't want to get involved in.

But yeah joining a village does have some benefits. I get access to weapons, jutsus , teachers, etc. But my concern for freedom kinda outweighs them all, at least for now. And for my jutsus, I kind of got a whole catalog of basic jutsus, Konoha taijutsu, shurikenjutsu, earth release, water release, and wood release jutsus from Orochimaru's lab. Coincidence?

Well, if any entity helped me get started, you have my gratitude.

Moving on...

I'm pathetically weak right now. I need to get strong. I don't know if canon knowledge works here or not. But, hopefully, I have some time before canon starts.

I have my chakra pathways unlocked. So any sensor ninja should be able to tell that. The Shinobi world is pretty ruthless. I don't want to get near towns at the moment before I get strong enough to escape any deathly encounters.

Well, life in the wild, for now, I guess. Mother wild shouldn't be hard, right?

Going through the forest, I came upon mountainous areas. I was looking for a cave, might be able to use.

During this time, I thought about trying a thing I theorized.

You see, wood release is a nature transformation Kekkai Genkai, which characteristically is a mixture of earth and water release, focusing on the pool of yang chakra. I heard some theories in my past life about how it came to be in Hashirama. Some predicted it to be caused by the influence of God tree or Gedo Mazo. Again another one says it was in the legacy of the Senju (which I doubt), which only sprouted in Hashirama. Well, it wasn't explained why it was naturally seen exclusively in Hashirama. But what can't be denied is that this kekkai Genkai has a very intimate relationship with trees, as that's self-explanatory with its title. And I wanted to use that.

I wanted to know if I can locate anything in the forest using trees. I tried spreading my chakra to the trees near me. And it worked, well partially though. I can sense the trees that are in contact or influenced by my chakra and through their comparative location I can make out a rough picture of the scene around the trees. Well, the problem is the range is very low and it left me with a splitting headache afterward. The range might be because of my chakra pool and control. Something that I will try to improve as much as I can. I move on to next thing I wanted to try, making wooden constructs with my thoughts. Well, doesn't work. Haah~

I found a cave. Now I need food and water. Life in a forest huh?

-(Scene break)-

[ 1 month later]

A boy can be seen running up a tree. He ran halfway to the top and then fell miserably on the ground. But the boy still kept practicing. This continued till the sun came low.

(MC POV)

I took my tired body and went to the spring I found a month ago. My muscles were aching with pain. I cleaned myself up and rested my body in the water. A tired sigh came out of my mouth.

Training isn't that easy as people in fanfics make it out to be. It took a while to get adjusted here. I didn't need to eat always to live, as I had a great vitality. But it's still a necessity. I didn't know how to hunt so I had to improvise. I would hide and wait. During this time I would use the trick I experimented on earlier (which I now call wood release: search). I wait for any prey there and then when one comes I just bind them with my wood. Simple, right?

Well, that's how I've been hunting.

After settling down, I made a training plan which was physical training, shurikenjutsu, and training with kunai in the morning, chakra control during the day, and learning jutsus at night. A very simple plan, I think. The start was hard. I start my exercises by running to the spring back and forth to the cave 10 times, which I assume to total 10 KM. Then a 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 100 squats. I wanted to quit a lot of times during this month. But I still persevered. I guess, fear of the future is a good motivator.

I finished leaf concentration practice a couple of days ago. I started with a single leaf on my forehead and now I can stick about a dozen in my body. The main trick is just concentrating the chakra at a focal point to make an object stick. I moved to tree climbing exercise then. It might take a couple of weeks or so to get it completely correct. But I need to get my fundamentals right.

My chakra pool increased a bit. Well, almost exhausting my chakra pool every day does do the work. I learned a few D rank jutsus during this time. I don't need to learn all of them. So, I only learned those I might need.

One of them is transformation Jutsu.

Another thing I came to know is that total isolation is kind of scary. I haven't met any people this far in the forest. So I made a few friends. Well, those friends are crows. I saw them a few weeks ago observing me training. A bit creepy. But hey, they're now friends. So, I gave them a bit of my food the other day, and then they kept coming every day. I talk a bit about my day and then give them some food. It might seem a bit paranoid but I get a feeling that the crows seem to understand me. Now that you think about it, Itachi and Shishui had contracted crows as their summons. Are they the same type? Who knows? I'm not wasting time thinking about that stuff.

I get out of the water and dry myself. I had a long day and I still need to practice my jutsus.

Training is hard. haah~~